tonight, strange shit:

* i spent two hours after work with cute-boy-from-work. we smoked, drank some beer, and listened to music, and talked about all sorts of things. and i know that no matter what, i want to be his friend. i can totally switch off being attracted to him because i want to mentor this kid. he has so much fucking potential and i really like the way he thinks. so. i can do my best not to care about him, and i will keep my feelings supressed. i am self-disciplined.

* i am also extremely fucked up right now. tonight i went out with the girl i am training at work. around 10:30 pm, after i got done with [see above]. and so, hey, tonight i met someone who killed someone. in a car wreck. it wasn't even drunk driving, it was this guy being late for work and driving recklessly. and we sat in my car and drank beer and talked about his five years in prison and i just kept thinking that i couldn't even believe i was having that conversation. this time at home is being a real eye-opener for me. i overhear CNAs on their cigarette breaks, talking about their sons' drunk driving arrests and whatever else, their tanning beds or some such shit, and i can't even believe it. oh well. so i should go to bed now or something. let me proofread this first.

proof i shed *everywhere*: i just found one of my hairs in the freezer.

a nursing home moment: during a fire alarm, a particularly stately elder lady decides to entertain us during our wait by playing a tune on her harmonica, whisked from some secret pocket.

tomorrow night's plans: going to the garden for sonyl's birthday. drunken dancing. gayboys. breakfast afterwards. yay!

oops: i am going on a "dessert train" ride with my parents after being out all night. bad me.

liking: work, just saying 'no' to the small-town lifestyle, veggie burgers, protein in general, anderson erickson old fashioned cottage cheese (trust me, i grew up eating it and i will eat no other cottage cheese -- or not happily, anyway).

not liking: a feeling of space that must be filled, of time which must be blurred; a feeling of nothing much to do but just earn some money and wait. feeling so far from K in every possible way, and knowing that's not what he feels. he thinks everything is fine, i guess.

by the way, timmy...you get second prize. you would have gotten a first if you had substituted "watch iron chef" for "soak in the tub." :)

two saturdays, two parades. yes, i have been in two parades in the past two weeks. it's a good way to see people and be seen without all the awkward conversation--although one old pal from high school found me and chatted. it was okay. he was really nice but now, like everyone else, he's got a baby and still lives in the old hometown and all. kind of boring. although!!! proof that good things come in threes: two summers ago i saw my old best best best best best friend in the world, jennie, at the garden. a month ago my amazing friend ben from high school called and we're going to see each other soon. and, just yesterday, a long-lost friend from 8th grade's father came into my mom's shop and said tammy is coming to visit later this summer. rockin'. i am reconnecting in so many ways this summer. i stayed away for six years, but i think i'm sort of ready to do the home thing now. i guess i used to feel above it, or outside of it, whichever.

anyway, in last week's parade i got to throw tootsie rolls at my boss. that was cool. this week was just 78-degree full sun and lots of black vinyl under me. sweaty.

work today. hmmm. that andrew boy. many of you may recall my secret lust for phil collins. well, today andrew displayed a song-by-song knowledge of some very old school phil collins. wow. also he kept pushing me and stuff. what a silly little boy. and he invoked TMBG, although his only knowledge of Them was from tiny toon adventures. and he "used to snowboard" to the violent femmes. so i lent him one of my CDs.

i need to find a chiropractor again. my back has finally reverted to its pre-nicola state. (nicola is my fucking amazing chiro in the UK.) it's hard to even sit.

i like my job. yay!

angel lets these 13-year-old boys come over and wrestle her and smoke with us and have sips of beer, and tonight a couple of us told her it was inappropriate, so i think she's going to tell them to stay away. i hope so. too goddamn young. i mean, i may be embracing the ghetto-fabulous thing this year (really, i drink budweiser tallboys--not even 40s--out of paper bags) but that is just not right, to be exciting those young hormones by wrasslin' and talking about sex and drugs all the time. i don't want her to corrupt me, let along the young people. our leaders of tomorrow!

i haven't had a weekend like that in a while. i think it was good for me--except that i'm starting monday morning with a serious sleep deficit.

friday night was a local ethnic heritage festival. angel and i were going to meet a bunch of our friends down at the park, maybe go to the beer garden and all. i guess we took so long to get there that people kept stopping by the house to try to entice us outside. finally we got there and the cops said it was closed. then we had an epic walk back to her house. i peed in the swimming pool parking lot, in a porta-pottie, with the door open because it was so dark in there. i lost my cell phone in someone's car when they took us for a ride in the country. in short, not sure how i managed any of it. andrew came over for a while. that was...amusing.

saturday i landscaped part of our yard at home. very proud of the fruit of my labours. that night my ames-friends and i went clubbing. the night before the pride march and the club was packed full of people. matty_n and i got a bit liquored up. we went to perkins. i had no money to eat, so i wandered around a lot. played DJ on the ride home. yay for designated drivers!

sunday woke up feeling sore from digging and planting and dancing. had a good chinese lunch. slept all afternoon. made a light supper and watched "rat race" with my parents. a nice time. seriously, if that movie doesn't make you laugh, there might be something wrong with you.

monday morning. oof. i think i will go back outside and sit in the sun some more. it seems to wake me up.

here's what i was just thinking: i put so much of myself into my former blog, the one that i was --politely requested-- to remove from the internet, that i don't want it to just exist in my own computer anymore. if anyone would like entries from my former blog regarding a person, place, event, topic...just email me (or sign my guestbook) and ask. i think some people have a right to it, including those i've written about.

i may edit. but probably my conscience won't let me. hmmm.

so, on to other things...i had a nice two days' break off work. tuesday angel and i hung out in a taco joint parking lot, cruised campustown with her dog, ate ice cream, picked up some stuff from a guy at a pizza place, and thereafter promptly ran into my uncle's wife and her problem children. oooooops. the night just got weirder from there. left a note on andrew's car to come over to angel's house, then she and i got really wacky at her apartment. he came over, thought we were a bit out of control, and left. er. i went home a couple hours later. wednesday i went to the library, shopped at the organic grocers, and then got a phone call from andrew. wanting to get something from me. at work. so i picked him up and we went driving around, and all of a sudden he's confiding in me about girl troubles, and i told him to write a letter to her, and he said he already had one written, and had me read it to see what i thought! i had no idea he thought of me as that kind of a friend. this is an 18-year-old boy who is fairly introverted, except for his party side. anyway, i gave him my best advice, and i believed this would stop me feeling anything for him.

i think it maybe hasn't worked like that so far, but i'm hoping. we hang around a lot together at work, and i think the other high school boys are giving him shit about me. oh well. most of them are starting to warm up to me as well. it's funny that the little bad things i do make some people respect me more. they're young. they don't know a lot of people, or a lot of different types of people, yet.

i am getting too profound for myself. who can guess what all i've been up to tonight? seriously, let's make a bet. see who knows me best. it's a saturday night and i chose to stay home and do.....what? there's a prize in store for the lucky winner.

i am so full of toxins. timmy the toxin, salut!