I haven't been feeling too well the last few days. I think it began last Tuesday when I went to Gaydies Night and stayed out waaay too late for an old fart like myself. (Now is the point where everyone is supposed to laugh uproariously at defining myself as "old".) The days since then I felt sluggish at best, and then really sick on Thursday and Friday. Wouldn't you know it, Thursday was an after-work happy hour with the gang, and then on Friday it was a lunch celebration of KL's birthday. When I showed up, I was the only guy among her "girlfriends", and it was at one of those theme chain restaurants that proliferate around the Dayton mall. Their only purpose, it seems, is to allow everyone to drive their super-sized SUV's from their nearby job to have an overpriced meal. Since I rarely go, I'm usually not so bothered by them -- it's a personal choice to support these. But I was bothered on Friday: Sitting in over-air-conditioned "comfort", looking at carefully-planned and reproduction junk artwork, listening to mexican music in keeping with the theme -- I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else. I even wanted to be back at work, of all things! But KL is an old friend.

We have different viewpoints in life. She's very much into suburbia, and I'm proud of her because she's been on a diet ("the points") whatever that is -- Weight Watchers? -- since the beginning of the year, and she's stuck with it. I hope she stays with it, because I would say there's a lot of hellishly, morbidly overweight -- and I would also say correspondingly miserable -- women (and men!) at work. (I know because they all like to plant themselves on my committees for the sole purposes of looking grumpy and to complain.) She's been looking foxy great! She's a tough old thing (well, not really "old" -- she's 45!), who wears nail polish and lots of gold jewelry. She wants love, and she's been dating up a storm, but with no luck just yet.

KL loves Dayton. (And she hated Colorado.) She bought a condo fairly near our work. When we talk about Dayton, she helps me out a lot, and I'll be glad that she'll be around when I move back. She also *sometimes* gives me perspective at work. I say *sometimes*, because sometimes she really pisses me off with her office gossip. But on the other hand, the office gossip and her experiences (she's worked in BIPC for about 15 years) also help with the perspective-thang. We have a lot of good laughs.

I slept for about twelve hours to try and break the fever. It mostly worked, and in time to go to my landlord's (and friend's) Open House for his new business. I took C, and we had a good time, even though I was feeling kinda out of it. Like my eyes couldn't focus just right. It's a beautiful fall day, as we drove down into the Kentucky countryside, to this ultra-modern office in the middle of an old tobacco field. The office is also his business partner's home -- and had an incredible shower and bathroom as well as an immense clothing closet, complete with triple mirrors, at least three racks of hanging clothes and a floor-to-ceiling shoe rack. C and I chatted with a few of the folks that hang with my landlord, and whom I like. I had seen a couple of them at Gaydies Night, and had laughed with them there, too.

But here's the thing: There were a few of those slashers there, too! And it was the same ole same ole. The guy who hosted the AIDS Fundraiser was there, as was the Proposition Whatever-it-is guy. They didn't appear to open to chatting with anyone they didn't already know, which at this party, wasn't too many people (it seemed to be, oddly enough, mostly older couples with young kids). As we walked to a decayed tobacco barn and then on to the field that was the parking lot, I complained (again) to C that it seemed like they were all very cute but also high-maintenance and that wasn't something I wanted.

Oh well, I'm glad I went. Tonight, it seems my laptop suddenly works! I don't know why. So, after jotting out this entry, I think I'm going to take a hot bubble-bath and then curl up with a book. I'm trying to finish Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto". D and a couple of people at work really liked it. And while I'm not hating it, I'm having difficulty getting past the middle of it.

Tomorrow I'm going to help B with plastering her stairhall ceilings and walls. Hope it doesn't take all afternoon, because the weather has been incredible, and it seems like the summer went by too fast...

A quick note to vent: Just came from a committee meeting that I'm supposed to be facilitating on the impacts of errors to our customers. The group has met for about 18 months, and moves excrutiatingly slow. Everything we have already done is revisited again and again. Nobody agrees, or everyone agrees bregrudgingly -- and not just on error categories, but questioning correct phrase-ology, and the underlying premise -- It is constant. I always come from those meetings feeling as if I've spent an hour being kicked in the balls. I need to:

• Review resume
• Check internal job postings
• Set up appointment with my sales contacts to discuss what working in sales is like
• Research other companies
• Review (again) finances for debt consolidation and pay-off planning

And...I told my tenants I could not renew their lease, they need to move. The idea of moving back ... ycch... but I need to get out of this place, and that's what I've got to do to get there. Two steps back in order to move forward.

When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything...
I had quite a weekend! I confiscated a spiral notebook purchased to be a handwritten journal to scribble out a script. Once I started, I couldn't stop! (I can't wait until the end of today, when I'm going to start transcribing the long-hand to a Word doc.) My idea and premise -- the woman who abandons her kid at Wendy's -- Screech! -- has gone a new way!

Although I'm new to Blogging, I'd worried about putting some of my ideas out here -- what if someone read it and "borrowed" them? (Like that evil bitch Ms. Ciccone, for example.) That's a chance I'll take. After writing for several hours, the direction that initial premise has taken is so different that even if someone snagged the idea (which has already been done anyway), it doesn't matter because my short (and now larger) story goes in a different direction, and ... I'm jazzed because maybe, toot toot my horn, it will have something to say!

I'm used to writing how characters feel and think, but if you follow the "rule" that someone (E the tutor?) told me that "one page equals one minute of dialog", then I have a feature length in the making! Anyhow, part of the challenge will be "showing, not telling" that will come from creating dialog. (And I don't want a full-length, I want to do a short film. No sense in intimidating Hollywood *just* yet. hee hee.)

I also have to make the dialog less stereotypical. (Details, details.) The story -- at present :^) -- takes place in a certain state where some of the characters like to say "honey" and "y'all". That's fine for while I'm building the general dialog/theme/scenes, but it should be more subtle. Even if I'm totally off, and this is all a bunch of crap, it doesn't matter: I'm doing something. And it's fun.

I can't help falling in love, I fall deeper and deeper the further I go...
On a lighter note, I attended a work wedding over the weekend -- Meaning, the Bride and Groom both worked for the same company I do. I missed the ceremony, but showed up for the reception.

I haven't been to too many weddings; this one pushed a few buttons. Working with the groom before he met his bride-to-be, I saw how he mellowed out and becoming visibly happier once he began dating. The bride, who I don't know as well, is smart, pretty, funny. And, she was absolutely beautiful. When her father got up to give the first toast, it was tough for me not to break out bawling. The way everyone treated each other, this marriage should stick; it would be awful if it doesn't. I've been to a few where folks just went through the motions. This one pushed every sentimental button I have.

Embarrassingly, I was yanked out of the audience for the Garter Belt ceremony. And, even worse, no one made any attempt to grab it as the groom tossed it back -- isn't it disrespectful to allow it to drop to the floor? So I grabbed it and froze in the spotlight, horrified -- the father of the groom came towards me with the microphone, which they stuck in my face. I had no idea what to say, and he had to finish some sentences for me. It was some banter about single women in the room and stuff. (*shudder*).

I figure for those folks I don't specifically tell, the obvious and the gossip mill will fill in the blanks. I don't believe I'm at all closeted, I believe my flapping wrists precede me on that, but neither do I believe in boardroom proclamations. It's not professional. I don't know how, but I see that I may have to have a little chat with the groom and have him smell the coffee.

Here's a bummer; I didn't even get to keep that garter. For a fleeting moment, I thought it would make a nice campy addition to my rearview-mirror. But... turns out it was the "something borrowed". ho ho ho.

Round and round and round you go...
While blogsurfing, a lot of folks say what they're listening to. Like reading books, you can never listen to enough music -- there's no way I could listen to everything. And me, I'm also compulsive: If I find a track I like, I will listen to it over (and over and over) again. I'm listening to two such songs at present and which I think illustrate my present frame of mind. For what it's worth, here they are:

From a CD-Sampler given out at the wedding: Nat King Cole singing Stardust Melodies.

From the CD-Sampler I picked up from the closing night art gallery a few weeks ago: Something by Belle et Sebastien (?), french and trance-y, with violins in a minor key, a sampling of over-dubbed drum beats and an androgynous voice repeating what sounds like "My man". (If it's french, maybe it's "the Hand" -- les mains. OOooh that Belle et Sebastien.)

Deeper and deeper, sweeter and sweeter...