Something

I feel like I should write something, but at the same time I feel like I don't have anything that I really want to talk about. That's not to say this hasn't been a fun weekend, it has. I actually had a great weekend. I just feel kind of blah. Some things are bubbling around in my head and they're making me feel kinda odd. Maybe I'll come back around to that later in the post. First I'll do the obligatory recap of the last few days.

Friday I left work and went to the gym. I'm really, honestly trying to do things right again. I've changed what I'm eating (yes, again) and getting more exercise -- even if it means I can't be as social or play as many games. After the gym I went to Shane and Cathy's for an evening of chatting with them, Seth, Shana, Jen, and Hays, oh, and Shana's dog, Bing. It was great. Very relaxing and fun.

Saturday I had brunch with Kevin, Kim, Matt, and Seth, then went for comics, hit the gym, and did things around the house. In the evening I picked up a friend from work to go play poker. It was a good time, but it was very hard to play the game, because many of the guys there weren't too familiar with Hold'Em, so they were crazy-random (and not in a good poker playing sort of way, but rather in the I'm going to play this Ace high until the very end, no matter what it costs kind of way). Anyway, it was fun and they were a great bunch of guys.

Sunday I hod my car's oil changed, washed the car, and met Shana, Jen, and Hays for brunch at a place called May's on (or Mae's?) on Phinney Ridge. It turns out May (Mae?) moved here from Madison 25 years ago, so we chatted about some places around town. Nice lady.

We finished lunch and Shane and Cathy showed up (with some gifts from their trip), then we drove to Woodinville for a winery tour and wine tasting. Yeah, crazy, eh? We tried one winery, but there was a Robery Plant concert going on in the evening, so the place was overrun with overage Led Zepplin fans, so we went across the street to a different winery. Apparently wineries are the industry in Woodinville, so there's plenty there. Anyway, we had a tour of the facility, then tried some wine.

Here's the thing; I've always wanted to like wine more. To be able to appreciate it more. But it's never quite lived up to it's hype for me. I don't like the dry, acidic aftertaste is leaves in my mouth. Maybe I drink cheap wine? Nope. One of the glasses I tried at the winery was actually decently priced, but it was drier and more acidic than some of the less expensive wines. So, I tried (and even purchased) some of the sweeter wines. They're much more to my liking. Overall, it was a good day and I managed to develop a bit more of an appreciation for wine. Heck, I'd even enjoy doing another wine tasting thingy sometime. Oh, and 2005 Washington state wines are supposed to be very good vintages, so mark your calendar to pick some up in, say, three to five years. (The reason for this is because the "cold" weather didn't start until later this year so the grapes were able to be left on the vine longer which allowed them to absorb lots more sun -- a very good thing for ripening grapes -- so there you go.)

I went to the gym around seven o'clock. And since then I've been working on researching some stories and noting more ideas for them.

That's all very good (and this has to do with the things bubbling around in my head that I mentioned earlier), but doing this is making me feel like I've let myself down somehow. I have all these great ideas and I haven't done anything with them. In some cases I have ideas that have been floating around for 15 years, but I've never executed on them. I don't have kids, I don't have a wife, I don't have a girlfriend, I don't have a house to take care of, I don't have a lot of things that suck up time from all the people out there in the world, but I still haven't managed to sit down and write -- which is really what I've always wanted to do; be a writer. How easy is that? I know I can do it, I've just let all this other crap fill my life -- maybe to distract me from that long list of things I don't have? The thing is, I have some great stuff that I want to get on paper.

I'll get it done. No excuses.

All that aside, I'm also feeling weird because I'm feeling a bit lonely. Yep, I have some great friends, but...

I don't know what to do about it. There's no point in "settling" just to have someone, there's no point in becoming bitter, there's no point in wallowing, but lemme tell ya, it really sucks to have to think about this every day. I know people say "when you finally give up on looking you'll find someone." Personally, I call bull on that. I didn't look for years and years. Nothing. And now that I've been looking -- pretty damn actively despite the fact that I haven't written about it here -- I keep running into the same thing, "you're a great guy, just not my type." Nothing I can do about that, so it's just frustrating. Maybe this whole gym thing will help. Even so, it feels like one of those deep, dark hole things that you can't get out of even though you know other people have done it. Grrrr and blah, blah, blah. (Hey, that's not a bad paraphrasing of "...sound and fury signifying nothing.")

So, yeah, that's where my head is right now. Fun, eh?