Bill's Notes

Great fete. One of the best ever. Thanks, JCV.

More here.

... a chapter of my novel from my hard drive at home. It was the only chapter. Now I regret it. Now I think it must be the best thing I ever wrote.

But that's how you always feel about the stuff that gets lost, right?

It was pretty good though :)

About a week ago I came home and found some uninvited guests to my house. They had the television on, the stereo blasting, the refrigerator door open and they were eating the house. I'm exaggerating.

But it felt out of control. Carpenter ants. Hundreds of 'em. Attacking. Swarming. Under foot. In the bathtub. In the sink. Coming in under the sliding glass doors.

The Horror, The Horror, I thought. Exterminate the brutes.

So I made the call to the local Jedi master.

"Kill them," I said. "Kill them all. Every last one. Let none live to tell the others. Let none live to pass on its genes. Exterminate them down to the last ant and bleach the ground they inhabited so that none may pass this way again."

"No problem," said the representative. "We'll right out."

And now the uninvited guests are DEAD! They were routed in a fierce battle Thursday. They fought well, as honorable adversaries, but they eventually fleed the scene of battle. Every last one was put to the sword. Now they have gone to the netherworld.

This post found via ZombyBoy may be the most sarcastic thing I've read. Anyone who makes fun of the Supreme Court's torturing of the Commerce clause in the medical marijuana case through the use of Schroedinger's Cat, nature shows and Zen Buddhism and is a genius. As they say, read the whole thing.

The comments in the below post were helpful. Dumping some of this stuff seemed to improve my mood; hope it didn't negatively affect yours. I appreciate the suggestions and I'll give them a shot.

And yes, I praised God today and thanked him, despite that earlier this morning I was ungrateful and critical.

Have a good night all.

After two months of staying off the ex's Web site completely, today I got curious and stopped by briefly, breaking my own commitment to myself to stay off her blog in order to protect myself emotionally. I read one entry — one in which my own glittering prose was quoted, so I suppose it's okay :)

Don't really have too much to say about the experience ... it didn't hurt like two months ago, but I know I'd like to continue to stay away because I'm getting some emotional distance from the relationship and that's a good thing. Not reading the Web site is a crucial part of letting go, or at least putting it down. While I've thought a lot ... way too much ... about J. in the past two months, I still feel I'm on the right path in getting past this. Distance and seeing her as she is now, and not through the lens of the relationship, are the keys.

So I'll commit to staying away for another two months, at the very least. By then, I hope to have pretty much forgotten ole what's-her-name.

UPDATE: Ugh. This morning I feel crappy. There's this sense that she was right in our last conversation, that we have nothing in common. And that makes me feel cold, alone and stupid. Only someone stupid spends five years with someone they don't have anything in common with. You know, the romantic side of me has been holding on, and saying, hey, we always had Paris. But we didn't really have that, either. [...]

UPDATE 2: [...] Have a better day than I am having.

UPDATE 3: Okay, having pushed through to this extreme of self-loathing, my sense of humor has returned. But I'll leave it all up for the time being. I can't swear I won't delete this entry, but I promise to leave the comments no matter what.

UPDATE 4: Thanks for the comment.

[...]

UPDATE 5, the next day: Jebus I was in a dark mood. I shouldn't get up so early. Thanks again for the suggestions. Much, much better today — just normal, but compared to where I was, whew!

UPDATE 6: Post redacted.

So I'm in a local convenient store (the Exxon station if you must know) and I'm paying for my goods when a woman walks in and is obviously friends with the cashier. The woman blurts out to the cashier, "That's it. It's over. My boyfriend and I are splits, for good."

So I turn to her and say, "Okay, great. So you're on the market."

She says, "Well, what do you do for a living?"

"I'm a writer," I tell her.

"I'm looking for a doctor," she said. "Or a lawyer. I'm either going to law school or getting a Ph.D. and I want someone I can talk to."

And she walks past me.

So I follow her a few steps and say, "Lawyer? Wait a second. I'm a Ph.D. dropout. I have a good job ... I'm sure I've got as much education ..."

She stops and looks at me and interrupts, "How old are you?"

"41," I said.

"That's too old," she said. "I'm 24. But you made a good effort. Thanks."

And that was that.

Three things I learned this weekend:

1. How to change my oil on my new Subaru. Yep, it has 3,000 miles on it already. It's pretty easy, once I figured out how to open the hood.

A friend talked me through it. "There's a bolt on the oil pan. Just hand screw it out. Oh, don't let the bolt drop into the waste-oil pan." Plop! Otherwise, there were no problems. Next time: I let the car sit for an hour so the oil isn't quite so hot.

2. How to field strip my new Glock. I was having trouble getting the gun apart, but this weekend I finally mastered the trick of it. That's good because I've shot about 500-800 rounds through it already and barrel needed a fresh cleaning. I didn't shoot as well as last week, except for one exact bulls-eye.

3. The meaning of the word 'captious.'How did I miss this great word all these years?

Left this morning at 6:05 hoping for a nice quiet drive and get to work 7:15, 7:30 at the latest. Ha. I got stuck in a 10 mile backup. We were parked for an hour, solid, I timed it, on the Turnpike. An hour. I got to work at 8:45. I don't get up at 5 to get to work at 8:45.

I hate life.

As you readers know, I do a lot of reminiscing on this site. In the past two years I've written about many people who used to be in my life, including at least a half dozen ex-girlfriends who go back at least 20 years. I write these pieces to order my own understanding of the past and pass on my experiences. My hope is that other people will either praise God for their present circumstances or identify with the struggle and know they're not alone.

I recently wrote a post in which I tried to discuss the kinds of moments where you know that whichever way you choose, you're going to have to pay a price. Perhaps I didn't pull off — I was just trying to capture a moment. Simple as that. It was similar to posts I've tried to do 50 others times on this blog in the past two years. And I got a comment, "It's important to let go." Well,yes. Thanks. I'll take that under advisement.

I've deleted the post in question, mostly out of pique.

That's all. No hard feelings. Have a nice day.