I had a great weekend, but tonight I'm feeling a little "blah."

Friday after work I went to Shane and Cathy's, where Shana met us so we could all go for dinner. We didn't really have a destination in mind, so we started walking and quickly found the new P.F. Chang's downtown. There was a big clapboard outside that said "Training in Progress" and we thought it would be pretty cool to be served dinner by new waitstaff. We went in and asked if they were open to the public. The response was to explain that this was a training night and it's usually just for friends and family of the staff -- but they had some tables open to the public, so she'd check if they could sqeeze us in. As luck would have it, they could, so they said they could seat us -- they also explained that dinner and up to two drinks per person was free. FREE!

We had an excellent meal, complete with drinks, appetizers, entrees, and dessert -- all for a generous tip. There were a couple of screw-ups, like when the busboy spilled a nearly-full sauce dish on me (mmmm, warm and sticky!) and the same busboy also had the annoying tendancy to clear dishes without asking if we were done, so we lost a couple of bites of food that people wanted. Ah, well, it was free. We all figured it was karmic payback for all the crap that's been going on in our lives lately. Shane feels like he was short-shrifted; he gets sent back to South Africa for three months and all he gets is a free meal?

After dinner we watched part of American Splendor at Shane and Cathy's. It's still an excellent movie. I didn't leave until after midnight, which was a mistake since I had to get up at 5:30 to make it to Katie, Kate, and Beth's by 6:30 so we could go up to Orcas.

Anyway, I got about four and a half hours of sleep, got up, made it to the girls' house on time, and then drove up to Anacortes to catch the ferry over to Orcas.

We spent the day being really lazy. That's about all I have to say. Walked around town a little and looked at some shops. We watched movies. Ate. Drank. Talked. Read. Napped. And that was about all. Really, it was pretty nice.

I have to say that it was a little odd to be up there with three women that I really haven't known that long, but really, that's just . . . insecurity at how close we are? Surprise at the level of trust they show me? Concern over the fact that they don't consider me a "threat"? I dunno, but I don't really care either. It was nice and fun and I appreciated that they invited me along.

Sunday morning we sat around some more and then Kate and I caught the ferry back at around noon, then drove back to Seattle. After I dropped Kate at her place I drove downtown and met Shane for some comic-buying and talk about what he and Cathy'd been up to over the weekend. Then I made my way home to do laundry, have dinner, and go to work for a while.

Going to work was really an attempt to do something to distract me from thinking. I didn't get a heck of a lot done, though, because I talked on the phone with Shana for a while -- and just as we started talking I noticed Jen was online, so I started chatting with her. That was nice. I miss seeing her.

Oh, right, I mentioned distracting myself from thinking; I was feeling . . . tired of being alone. I know Jen and I just split up a little over a week ago, but to be with someone and then not be with someone makes being alone that much more jarring. And it still bothers me. I don't like coming home to an empty apartment. To the same crap every day. It only serves to illustrate how static my life is. Stuck in neutral. Running to stand still. Whatever you want to say. I know in some ways I'm always making progress, but my personal life -- no, sorry -- my dating life is a constant source of frustration for me. I love my family and my friends and my work and my hobbies, but I'm still missing an important bit and I just can't seem to get it right.

So this was the stuff I was thinking about tonight. This is the stuff I was trying to distract myself from by doing some work. Work didn't really help, but sitting here typing about it seems to. Like it's draining out my fingers as I write about it.

Maybe I need to lower my standards. Nah, if I can find someone like Kelly or Becca or Karen or Kim or Jen every couple of years, I guess that's worthwhile. In their own ways they've all been amazing. I need that spark that I've been lucky enough to have with each of them in order for it to be real. I miss that. I miss them.