Four hundred and twenty-one dollars later, I realize why it is that I don’t play solitaire in Los Vegas.

It’s been a very bumpy flight so far. We are about an hour out of Tampa, by my guess, and the seat belt light has been on for at least half of the time. It seems as though most of us aren’t paying much heed to that fact, but a few moments ago I noticed that the man next to me (who has been sleeping for much of the flight) seemed to be praying. Not really sure if that is what he was doing, but it gave me pause for a moment.

We all think that “those things” happen to “somebody else.” But right now, as the plane is shaking fairly violently, I’m wondering if it’s my turn to be somebody else.

I’m not scared by the notion. In fact, I’m facing it with a sort of morbid curiosity. Like the times when I’ve contemplated suicide. I wonder what the consequences would be. What would people say? What would they do? Would they be sad? Angry? Would my family sue the airlines? Would Lu kick Karen out of my house? Would they find this laptop and pull all of my writings over the last few days off of it? Have I made my after death wishes known to the right people (as I still do not have a will).

All of these things just crossed my mind. Not an altogether pleasant experience.

Notice, however, I do not say that I joined my co-passenger in prayer. Even when I have flashes of worrying about my existence, I do not turn to the Lord. I just see it being hypocritical. I don’t believe in him. Why the hell would he accept me if I waited until the last minute to say hello anyway??

Hrm…Interesting thing to write if this did turn into a fiery ball o’ airplane.

I snapped a picture of the sleeping guy. He’s funny. I also took some pictures of clouds. Because that’s what you do when you’re flying. You take pictures of clouds.

The batteries in this little lap top are pretty impressive. I’ve been using the machine quite liberally since I left Seattle this morning, and I still apparently have 30% of the power left in them. I need to get one of my own. While I could never code on a regular basis on one of these machines, the ability to write with it is very appealing indeed. I hate to write free hand because I cramp very easily. I think it’s the arthritis that runs in my family. I can’t use a pen or pencil for long periods at all. But I can type for hours on end, and I think perhaps that if I had a lap top I could occasionally hook into my network at home to transfer data from I’d be in really good shape. I’m going to have to look into getting one.

Heh. And I actually said that I thought I was written out for the weekend, didn’t I?

I’ve decided to star recording my times in Eastern Standard Time again. At this point, I have no idea what time zone I am in at all, and I’m not going to bother trying to guess.

I actually believe that I may have succeeded in drinking too much coffee this weekend. I’m having yet another cup right now. I think I’ve had all of two bottles of water, 3 sodas, and nothing else but coffee since Thursday afternoon.

Ate like total crap this whole weekend. Not really extraordinary amounts of food, except for today. I had two breakfast sandwiches at the airport, and then a large Quizno’s sub during my layover in Denver. I also ate the snack box that they just passed out on the plane. What is it about those snack boxes?? Why are they so appealing? I mean, it’s cheap assed bread with processed cheese and meat, some kind of candy item and Fritos. Yet we treasure them as if they were a can of expensive caviar. They are eaten without hesitation or doubt by just about everyone on the plane, including myself.

I don’t know if it was the long stretches of inactivity, or simply being in a new environment, but I have written a ton this weekend. Most of it you see here on my live journal, but I’ve also finished another erotica story. I need to refine it and get it out to my editors and critics before I submit it to the general public, but not only am I going to send it to Literotica, I’m also going to send it to Gallery magazine. They pay like $300 for good stories to print in their periodical. So, if I get published in there, not only will I be a professional actor (hey, pay is pay…so what if it was only 36 bucks) I’ll be a professional smut peddler.

I like that.

I called Karen while I was at the airport, and she told me that she heard from Dani this weekend while I was gone. Apparently, Dani got a chance to see the Washing Well Wenches site and she loved it. I’m so relieved. I was really afraid that Dani would be disappointed in my work, and as this is one of my first independent paying gigs I was really anxious about it. While on the plane I finished the Ask Mr. Wetums logic, and now I just need to do the graphics for it. The site is coming together nicely, and I figure about another week or two of solid work will have it running at 100%. That should segue nicely into the Kicks on 7th Project, and then when Eve and I get that done we should start rolling in full force on the Mortgage Application that Brooks, Karen and I are going to work on. Somewhere in all of that I need to find time to get the Neon Samurai web site up and running. Of course, until I get my artwork from Hailey, I can’t really start moving on that. It’s a good excuse, and I’m sticking with it anyway!

Mmmm…one more cup of coffee. Yay!

Ok, I actually think I may be written out for the weekend. This may change before I land in Tampa (got about an hour and a half to go in that regards) but I think I’m going to spend the rest of the flight seeing how much money I can lose in Vegas style solitaire.

Spending time with Uncle Mike always makes me think about my father, for some very obvious reasons (the most glaring of them being that the two are almost frighteningly similar in appearance). It seems as though Uncle Mike always wants to know about the relationship I had with my father. What he meant to me, and how we got along.

The truth of the matter is that I never really had much of a relationship with him.

My Dad and Mom split when I was six. I have three clear memories of time I spent with my father before he left. The first is of him coming into the bathroom after a drinking binge while I was in the tub and having a good vomit fest. The second is when we went to Washington State for Uncle Mike’s first wedding. The third is him standing in the driveway of our house and screaming “I’ll see you and your fucking kids in court” at the top of his lungs.

So I was one of his “fucking kids.”

After a few years went by and the court thing was done with, I started spending summers with my Dad. I always felt like an interloper when I visited Mississippi. I was the city boy going out to the country. This is where my hatred of trailer trash rednecks comes from. Whenever I was in Mississippi, I felt like an unwanted intruder, and I was made to feel that way be people who, even at that young age, I knew were beneath me. They knew it too. They didn’t know how to handle me. I was too smart and too insightful for a boy who hadn’t even hit puberty yet. I knew them. I could see through all of their bullshit and lies. For that, they hated me. I think my father resented it a bit, too. I would go there, expecting to be with my father, and instead I was with this drunken man who didn’t want to deal with any of the responsibilities that life had for him. He let his wife deal with all of those. He wanted to go to work every day, come home at night to a good meal, get drunk and fall asleep after shagging his young wife. He didn’t want to entertain a bookworm. I do not doubt for a moment that he loved me, but he did not understand me by any means or stretch of the imagination.

Eventually, I stopped going there for the summers. I don’t know who made that decision. I am certain it wasn’t my mother. She may have felt hatred for my dad at that point, but she always insisted that he was my father, and that he deserved my respect and my love. She would not have tried to drive a wedge between us. Maybe I decided I didn’t want to go there any more, or maybe Dad told Mom that he couldn’t afford to have me up. I’m not sure. All I know is that one summer I did not go to see Dad, and I didn’t see him again until after I had graduated from high school and moved to the University of Alabama.

He wasn’t really a father to me at that point, either. When he first saw me, he didn’t even recognize me, and after he invited me into his house he sat a bottle down between us and we proceeded to spend the next few days drunk off of our asses. I suppose he figured that, since he was a drunk, his son would be as well. I have to admit that, at the time, I thought the events were pretty cool, but it was far from what I needed then. If he had been there for me as a father and not as a drinking buddy, I might have been able to tell him the troubles I was having at Alabama. I might have gotten encouragement from him to stick it out, and deal with the bad decision I had made instead of running away from it. Instead, I had a place to run to. Even if he was on the boat I could go over to Mississippi and spend the weekend with Pam and the girls. Maybe try and hook up with their cousin Missy. Anything other than deal with the fact that I was failing every class that I was registered for.

After I left Alabama, we kind of lost contact, and we didn’t really start talking again until after Pam had left him and he realized that he finally had to stop drinking. At the age of 22, I finally got a father.

Six years later he was dead.

Six years. That’s all I got of my Dad. And in that time, we probably spent a total of about 3 months together, if that. We talked on the phone quite often, but the actual physical presence of my Father was not there. I never spent a Christmas or Thanksgiving with him. He never got to see any of my performances. He didn’t come to my graduation. He didn’t come to my wedding. He wasn’t there when my son was born, or when I went through my divorce. In fact, most of our contact during the time when he came back into my life was focused around my two younger sisters. I don’t think there was ever a time when we were together just because we wanted to be together.

So when Uncle Mike asks me about my Dad, I’m not really sure what to tell him. I miss him terribly. I miss the man he became before he died, anyway. I miss his laugh and his good sense of humor. I miss the comforting fact that in his entire life he never changed his hair style, and that he wore the same Old Spice cologne every day. I miss talking to him about history and politics, and how this simple farmer turned mechanic could stun you with his intelligence if he felt like doing so. What I miss most of all is him telling me he was proud of me. He did that a lot, and when he said it not only did I know it came from a place of respect, it came from knowing the mistakes he had made in his life and how I did not follow in his footsteps.

I was honored on Saturday when Uncle Mike told me that I act a lot like him. That we had the same laugh, and that he got the same glint in his eye that I do when there is mischief working behind the scenes. I find it comforting to know that part of him lives on in me, and I hope that carries through to my son as well.

I’m sitting in the terminal at the Seattle Tacoma International Airport resisting the urge to spend an ungodly amount of money to connect to the internet and check my email. I almost had myself convinced to do it, on the premise that I could upload all of my entries that I have been saving on my laptop over the last two days, and that I could check to see if I had heard from David Jenkins on the Titus Andronicus auditions. Then I woke the hell up and realized that $5 for the first five minutes and $.65 for each additional minute was just far too high of a price to pay for me to do something that wasn’t really important.

I’ve had a revelation sitting here, though. I really, really do not like being in contact with someone. I feel very odd about it. Even if I’m not talking with a person, to have them in the same house is a comfort to me. It’s why I love big cities so much – there are people everywhere. I’m always in the presence of another individual. Now, I realize that at the moment I’m surrounded by people at the terminal, so I’m not having some kind of hermit-induced panic attack, but I really want to be talking to someone right now.

I guess the upside to this situation is that I have lots of stuff to write about here in my journal, no?

I was actually thinking that I would do the same thing with my journaling next week while I’m at Dragon Con, but I’m not going to have a laptop that weekend and I will be surrounded by my friends, so I’m thinking the possibilities of me actually finding the time to write will be next to none. I am going to try, though.

This morning Uncle Mike made a comment to me that really made me wish that I wasn’t leaving. We were talking about my plane leaving this morning, and he said that he didn’t want me to miss it, but that “it sure wouldn’t bother me if you did.” He and Maureen both bemoaned the brevity of my visit on several occasions, and it’s making the fact that I’m heading home much harder. It doesn’t help that I feel so comfortable here already, and that I met a really cool person who lives right near my Uncle either. Oh yeah, I actually COULD move here if I wanted to as well. Bill already has a job with a Seattle based company, so if I told them I wanted to move to the Northwest they would actually be ecstatic about it (the facts that she would be FAR away from her parents and near mountains is more than enough to get Jody to move). I have thought about doing this before, but I never really put much effort into seeing if I could actually find a job. Maybe I should do that now. I don’t feel at home in Florida anymore. I love it there, and I love all of my friends, but I don’t have occasions where I just look around at my surroundings and feel content.

This could all very well fade the minute I start looking at the reality of the situation, but it’s nice to dream about it for now.

I just called and talked to Alex for a few minutes. In the midst of all of my travels I’m not getting to see a lot of my son. I’ll have him tomorrow night and Tuesday night, but then he’s back at Jody’s from Wednesday on until I get back from Dragon Con. I think I’ll go ahead and have him go to Lu’s house on Wednesday as well. That way I can have dinner with him and see him for a few hours on Wednesday night, then drop him off at Jody’s. I’ll have to see where I stand on getting ready to leave on Thursday, though. If I’m not packed up I might have to put that plan off.

I’m thrilled about the notion of going to Dragon Con, but I’m very anxious about it as well. I’ve spent a very small amount of money being here this weekend, all things considered. Right under two hundred and twenty dollars, and a large part of that was the car rental. Ironically, I really didn’t need the car rental. I’m sure Uncle Mike would have picked me up at the airport after I dropped off Brian and George, and other than going back and forth between his place and the airport I didn’t use the car at all. This leaves me with about 100 bucks to take to Dragon Con next weekend. Top that off with the fact that my next paycheck will be two days short because of Dragon Con, AND they’ll be taking 200 dollars out of it for my new insurance policy, and I’m not exactly sure if I’ll have the money to pay the mortgage that is supposed to be paid by next Monday. And the money bullshit continues. I need to talk to Brian and see if he’ll hold off and getting back the rest of my advance until the end of October. We will be getting three paychecks in October, which means that we’ll only have the insurance money taken out of the first two. If he’s going to take the $300 that I still owe AND insurance from the next check, I’m basically screwed.

Yeah, I could probably ask Karen for the money, and she would most likely give it to me, but I really don’t want to do that. She is already spending way more than she originally thought she would when she moved into the house. The arrangement is different from the one she had previously, though, and I think her willingness to spend that money is based on that fact. It really is her house too. I’ve given her free reign to do what she wants as far as decorating, and I think that is partially why she has decided she wants to stay with me for the long haul.

That reminds me…Uncle Mike had an incredibly hard time understanding my arrangement with Karen. I told him several times that there was nothing romantically between us. That we were two people who lived together, and loved each other very much, but had no kind of ties between us. He just didn’t see how that was possible. I guess most men wouldn’t, but that’s what has always made me the odd man out among my male friends. They don’t understand how women can be so comfortable with me, especially when I make no bones about how sexually focused I am. I can’t really explain it either, except to say that while I do think about sex a lot, I do not base my relationships with women on whether or not they are giving it to me. I think a lot of men put women into two categories ; Women I’m fucking or want to fuck, and women I cannot, should not, or will not fuck. I certainly have female friends that fall into some of those categories, but I do not let that fact stop me from being their friend.

They are getting ready to start boarding the plane, so I’m going to end this for now.

Another fantastic day under my belt. I’m really bummed out that I have to go back home tomorrow. I’ve been having such a wonderful time up here. Then again, I did last time as well. Maybe it’s just the vacation factor, but Seattle really seems to call to me. Not as much as New York did, but I definitely feel at ease here.

Uncle Mike and I went over to Tacoma this morning to walk around on the waterfront. We went to a restaurant called The Ram and had coffee and appetizers shortly before noon. The view from the deck of this restaurant was breathtaking. And it was cold! Ok, maybe a Washington native wouldn’t say it was cold, but it was cold to me, and I loved it. We walked up the shore for a while, and then we went to a place called Johnny’s Seafood to pick up some Salmon for the barbecue we were having later that day. The man who runs the store recommended the white salmon, which I had never seen or tasted before (and Uncle Mike doesn’t eat fish). We took the suggestion and figured it was worth the risk because it cost less than the regular kind. I also got a small cup of Clam Chowder there that was one of the best bowls of chowder that I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling. When Uncle Mike went to pay for the salmon, he realized that he had left his credit card at the restaurant. Fortunately, when he went back, the waiter had the credit card and everything turned out ok. Uncle Mike has apparently had his credit card stolen and used twice before, so he was obviously a bit distressed at the possibility of it happening again.

Shortly after we got back home, Talulabelle from the Bad Girl Swirl called me and we arranged a meeting for that afternoon. She came and picked me up at Uncle Mike’s house and then took me back to Tacoma for a tour of the town that she loves so much. And she really does! It was interesting to see her talk with such passion about her home town. I don’t get nearly that excited about St. Petersburg. She showed me where she works, the Glass Museum, the downtown theater district, and this really cool shop called “What?” where she bought me a 45 dollar Spider-Man shirt. I couldn’t believe it! I had a wonderful time with her, and we were both sad that my stay was so short because she kept thinking of cool things she could show me in the area (including the Troll that Ms. Communication insisted that I should see). Uncle Mike had invited her to stay for dinner with us that night, but she was understandably awkward around a whole bunch of people she did not know, and bowed out of the meal. I can’t say I was thrilled to see her go, but I certainly understood it. She’s coming down here in October to go to Disney World, and if she can get away for a day I’m thinking of seeing if Pandora would like to pick her up and bring her over to St. Petersburg and we can have a party or something. Because you know I’ll use any excuse for a party.

After Talulabelle left, we had a really nice barbecue with my cousins Jennifer and Justin, Jennifer’s husband Craig and her daughter Clarissa. I really don’t know my cousins all that well, but it was a lot of fun hanging out and talking with them. Jennifer insists that I’m a male counterpart to her sister Julie, so I’m really interested in meeting her some time. It would be strange to see how I would have come out in female form.

After the rest of the family left, Uncle Mike and I went to another waterfront tavern called Salty’s and had a few irish coffees. While we were there drinking, we got to see some divers swimming under the docks with their flashlights searching the surface of the sound for something. I’m not sure what they were looking for a 11:00 PM on a Saturday night, but it was very pretty to watch them do so.

The only real disappointment that I have this time around was not getting to see Athena. Athena was Aunt Marueen’s foster child for a brief period when she was quite young. We got along really well during my visit last year, and I was kind of looking forward to seeing her and catching up. She has, apparently, gotten back into drugs (for the umpteenth time) and the McGreevy’s here aren’t very fond of her at the moment. She did call once (they apparently still babysit her daughter Jasmine on a regular basis), but Uncle Mike specifically did not tell her that I was here. He knows she would have been over here and all about spending time with me, and he did not want that. As I say, I’m a little disappointed in that (I really thought she was a cool person, and I was sad to hear she was using again), but I understand his feelings. They’ve done a lot for Athena, and she seems to continually piss on their good intentions. I guess I’d get a little burned over that as well.

Ok, it’s off to bed. I’m flying home tomorrow. Unfortunately.

After a night of absolutely blissful sleep I am getting ready to face yet another grueling day here in Seattle. Yes, I say that with tongue completely in cheek just to piss off all of you who are reading my little chronicle and absolutely hating me. After I woke up this morning, I wandered up stairs and found a pot of coffee brewed and ready for me on the counter. Uncle Mike and Aunt Maureen had left to go for a walk, so I made myself a cup and wandered outside for a bit. The weather is gorgeous this morning. I would estimate the temperature to be in the high sixties to low seventies. I’ve seen several squirrels and a whole lot of birds already this morning. Uncle Mike has the place surrounded by feeders. I’ll try and get some exterior shots of his house before I leave tomorrow morning.

Spoke on the phone for a bit with Karen and Holly earlier. Holly rolled into town on Wednesday night for her Grandmother’s 99th birthday party, so we just missed each other. I’m kinda bummed about that, but I’ll get to see her next weekend at Dragon Con so I’m not totally going to miss out. Karen had a bit of a shindig last night, and when she called everyone was up and eating waffles. It actually made me want to be there a little. But only just a little.

I’m actually going to go see if I can jump on Uncle Mike’s computer so I can check my email, but only because I need to send my itinerary to Karen. Then it’s off to play.

As I write this, I am laying on the water bed in the basement of my Uncle’s house in Milton, Washington. Uncle Mike has a dial up internet connection in his house, but I have decided not to ask if I can use it for the rest of the weekend. I spent far too much time playing with my boss’ wireless internet connection on his lap top in the last two days. The rest of this trip needs to be an actual vacation, not sitting around on a computer and chatting with people online. I’m actually starting to wonder if I don’t spend too much time online in general. Have I become one of those statistics? Do I spend so much time surfing the web that I am losing my grip on reality?

I spent the last few hours hanging out with Uncle Mike and Aunt Maureen. We sat on their porch and talked over Diet Cokes for a few hours, then we traveled over to Des Moines for drinks, chips and salsa. After sitting there for a while, we took a walk up the pier. I”m amazed at how clear the water is here. All along the pier, you could look down into the a water and see straight through to the bottom. That is practically unheard of in the Tampa Bay area. I remember hearing the “old timers” say that the water used to be that clear, but never in my lifetime.

I will be meeting Talulabelle from the Bad Girl Swirl tomorrow. I’ll try and get some pictures of the two of us together. I really don’t know much about her, so it should be an interesting meeting. She has a considerable number of posts on the swirl, but I don’t remember that many direct exchanges between the two of us. I’m still excited about it, though. We’ve talked a bit over the last week and she sounds like a really neat person. I’m not exactly sure what we are going to do, mind you, but she still sounds like fun. Uncle Mike said it was cool to invite her to the cookout he is planning for tomorrow night, and I just may do that.

I’m sitting in a bar called the Viking Tavern in Ballard County, Washington. The place is owned by George’s brother Tim. He has opened up an absolutely fabulous bottle of wine from Marietta Cellars. I believe the wine we are drinking is the Red Lot # 29. It’s truly one of the best glasses of red wine I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. It’s a very homey type of tavern, and I am sitting in the corner of the bar. I’m taking a picture of it right now to post here when I get home. Picture taken. God, am I really that much of a geek? I’m sitting in Seattle and taking pictures and writing about it for my online journal.

Madness.

The meeting went very well today, I think, but there really wasn’t much of a need for me to be there. The guys in this particular meeting didn’t really want to hear much of the tech talk, so I pretty much sat there for the bulk of the meeting twiddling my thumbs. In fact, I kept checking my email and hitting the swirl. Fun stuff to do while in a business meeting, no? After the meeting we went back to the hotel to check out then hit downtown Seattle. Of course, the place we hit was Pike Place. God, how I love that district. So many people. The noise, the smells, the sights. Flowers for 5 bucks. If I lived here none of my female friends would ever be without flowers. I got some clams for Eve and picked up a pound of salmon for Karen and I. Of course, I got a Venti coffee from Starbucks, we picked up some souvenirs, and then we headed over here to hang out at the Tavern.

So now Brian and George are playing table top shuffle board, and I’m updating my journal. I’m hoping to hook up with Talulabella from the swirl tonight or tomorrow, and Uncle Mike said something about driving over to Yakima tomorrow to see a dirt bike race. Not so sure how keen I am on the dirt bike race, but the drive is supposed to be gorgeous. And I’ll be able to spend time with Uncle Mike, so it really doesn’t matter what we do.

Ok, it is official. I am obsessed with updating my live journal thoughout the course of this trip. We are currently at the Spring Hill Suites Hotel in Bothell, Washington. It is 1:15 AM Pacific Standard Time, which means it is 4:15 AM back home and I have been up for over 22 hours now. I’m waiting for my boss to finish up on his laptop so I can use it to get online and type these entries all over again and into my live journal. I wanted to get right on and type my last post, but instead I’m wrigint more while I wait for him to wrap up what he is doing. Yep, definitely obsessed.

George just made the comment that it’s 4 AM, and we are getting our second winds. He’s right. We’re up talking about business, and our personal lives, and various other topics that three men who have nothing in common come up with late at night in a hotel room.

We got to talking about our wives, for one. George has been married to his current wife for twenty years. He was married to his first wife for 10 years. I was only with Jody for a total over seven years, and most of it seems like an unreal blur to me at this point. Isn’t that odd? I’m not saying that it is a bad memory that I’ve wiped out. Quite the contrary. I have many wonderful memories of my time with her (AND many bad ones, as any marriage will). It’s just that the whole experience just seems like another life. Another person. An existence that doesn’t quite belong to me. I remember certain key events. I remember when we started dating, the night of my 21st birthday party. How I had almost blown the whole thing by joking calling her a “fucking bitch” that night. I remember the nervousness in her voice when she told me that that people in the theater company were already talking about us. I remember watching “Hellraiser” at her apartment and how much it freaked her out. I remember driving back to Winter Haven from St. Petersburg one day and playing with each other during the whole two hour trip. I remember how we used to make out for as long as we possibly could in the parking lot of the Polk Community College theater, and how I was usually late for work as a result. I remember reading poetry to her on our first Valentines Day together. I remember asking her to marry me a few days after that at Epcot. I remember the night Alex was conceived. I remember a lot of nights when he could have been. I remember lying next to her while she was pregnant, and feeling Alex kick my back through her belly.

I remember all of these things and more. The list could go on and on. But they don’t feel like my memories any more. They feel like they belong to someone else, and I’m just borrowing them.

I need to go to sleep. I’m being wayyyy to thoughtful for my own good.

According to my battery indicator, I have about sixteen minutes of time left before this laptop dies. I’m going to try and get all of my thoughts down in that period. Of course, I’m in the mood to write and I could probably do so for much longer than the measly amount of time I have been afforded.

It’s currently 12:26 AM Eastern Standard Time. I have no idea what time zone I am in at this point. I think we’re less than an hour from Seattle, so I would assume we are in the Pacific Time zone now. I’m not updating this live. Not only is the wireless modem in my boss’s computer, it doesn’t seem to work from the sky. Guess the technology isn’t quite there yet.

The in-flight movie just ended. Spider-Man. God, how I love that movie. It seems silly how much joy it brings to me, as I sit here and write about it. It’s the honest to God truth, though. I get misty eyed at several points during the film. It was everything I expected it to be and more. Not just because it was a good movie. Not just because it was about a super hero. Because it fulfilled all of my childhood dreams. Because, from the time I was twelve, I could see in my mind what it would look like to see Spider-Man swinging through the streets of New York City, and that I saw in that movie was straight from my mind’s eye. Because Spider-Man is supposed to save babies from burning buildings. Because J. Jonah Jameson is supposed to be an intolerable bastard that shows a heart when the chips are down. Because Ben Parker is supposed to be the kind of man you could fall in love with the minute you hear him utter his first line. Because of all these factors and more. Yes, as I’ve said before, there were things in the movie that I could pick apart if I choose to do so. I do not. The movie was a dream come true, and there will always be a small part of me that thanks Sam Raimi for not pissing on my dreams (as if I didn’t love him enough for the Evil Dead movies).

Oh boy! My boss just noticed the battery power indicators on my laptop and gave me fresh batteries. According to the power level indicators I have almost 4 hours of time left to play. This could turn into a very large entry indeed!

I love to fly. I always have. When I was a child, it meant going to see my father. After my dad left, I would spend a month of so every summer in Mississippi with him. Every year, I got to fly there all by myself. Mom and Dad split when I was very young, so it was a pretty big deal. I think I flew Delta a lot back them. I remember that my first cup of coffee was had on a plane while flying back from seeing my father. It was a very late flight, maybe even a red eye, and I so desperately did not want to fall asleep. I asked the stewardess for a cup of coffee, and even though I think it was pretty obvious that I had never had a cup of coffee in my life (I think I was all of 11 at the time) she brought me one with plenty of cream and sugar. All of which, of course, went into the cup. Plus a bit extra that I had her bring to me. What a horribly disgusting experience. I really don’t recall many other times in my life that I drank something that tasted quite so bad. I drank the whole cup, though.

I am enjoying a cup right now, as a matter of fact. I appreciate coffee much more these days, of course. I have been drinking a lot more of it in the past few months when compared to the amount that I was drinking when I first started losing weight in January of last year. I suppose that, as I’m getting closer to my goal weight, I want to scale back just a little and not be so strict with myself. I’m very comfortable with creeping up on my target weight. It has taken me 29 years to get where I am now, so I think I can deal with a few more months. And I love coffee. Love it. I’m going to drink so much coffee while I’m here in Seattle that I’ll have to walk around with a catheter in so I can actually see something other than the inside of a bathroom. I’m going to swim in coffee. Mmm. A Starbuck’s on every corner. Paradise. Absolute paradise.

Coffee. I remember why I started drinking coffee (that’s right kids, it’s one of those type of entries. Stream of thought consciousness. Deal with it) on a regular basis. Really, the only cup of coffee I had ever drank in my life up until I was in the 12th grade is the one I mentioned above. When I was a senior in high school, however, I started drinking coffee on a regular basis for one of the silliest reasons in the whole world. That’s right, kids, I started drinking coffee because of a girl. Sherry Ellen Kupersmith. She worked at the Barnies in Tyrone Square Mall and absolutely loved coffee. I think it was part of the whole Pinellas County Center for the Arts Bohemian scene of the time. Everyone was drinking coffee and reading classic literature. We were all SO cool. I read Les Miserables that year. I suffered through all of the thousands of pages of that abysmally long book just so I could say I read it. But I digress (gee, there is a shocker). I started drinking coffee because it was an excuse to go to the coffee shop. We were also in an Advanced Placement Literature class together that year. The teacher, Mr. Lamore, was cool enough to buy us a coffee maker after we pooled the money together for it. Sherry would supply the coffee from Barnies, and it was my job to actually make the coffee before class. For some reason, I made coffee better than the girl who worked in the coffee shop. Go figure. I’ll always associate coffee with my crush on Sherry, and I am reminded of her almost every time I have a cup. Ironically, coffee isn’t the only “bad” habit that I started because of her. After she refused to return my affections (not that I ever actually said anything to her to give her a chance to do so…except for asking her once if she wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex…god, I was a slick son of a bitch back then, wasn’t I?) I decided to take up smoking. Why? Because Sherry loathed smoking. So that was how I was going to show her. I was going to smoke and give myself cancer and die a horrible death. Just to show her what happens when she spurns me. Ha!

I thought it was a good point, don’t you?

I still carry a torch for Sherry. Isn’t that funny? Eve pointed that little fact out to me the other day. She said she couldn’t understand why. I really can’t explain it myself. I guess it was because she was the first person I ever envisioned myself having children with. That was the extent of my fantasy life with her!! I actually had visions of us in the delivery room. Of her drenched in sweat and crushing my hands and cursing my name. I had visions of our children and what we would do for a living (both professional actors of course). I saw it all. None of it came to pass, of course. I never even kissed her. It was still a very potent vision at the time, and part of me will always hold on to the beauty of that dream.

Ah, speaking of smoking, the quitting campaign is going very well. I haven’t gone anywhere near a smoke since Saturday, and I’m feeling really good about it. I’m still coughing a lot – more so than when I was smoking, actually! I have to get all that crap out of my lungs somehow, so I don’t really mind the process.

I’m looking over the wing of the plane into almost absolute darkness. I can see one star out the window, and that is it. It looks like a little faerie out there floating in the darkness. I really wish that I had one of my friends with me right now. Someone I could hold hands with and talk about all of these random thoughts that are streaming through my head. My boss and I have been talking quite a bit, but of course he wants to talk about work stuff. That is our frame of reference. I’m not going to tell him stories of my childhood or my insecurities, and I don’t think I want to hear his either. He has talked to me a lot about the business, though. Given me the inside scoop on some of his business dealings. He’s even made the offer to help me in my efforts outside of the company. I haven’t hid the fact that I have been doing design on the side, and he has expressed a willingness to be part of those endeavors. I’m not sure how to take that offer at this point. It seems to be a good offer, but I really wanted to strike out on my own a bit with this. It’s hard to pass up the ability to offer a complete solution (hosting on up) to my clients, however. I have to see how my partners would feel about it. Considering that one of those partners left my boss several years ago and have a fairly bitter taste in his mouth over it at times, however, makes me not so certain that this particular suggestion would fly with him.

Twenty minutes now until we land in Seattle. That means it is now 10:28 Pacific Standard Time. We are making our final approach, so I suppose I should shut this down and get myself ready to land. I’ll upload this when I can.