well, at work i have developed the strategy of having minimal, professional yet friendly contact with amy. the high school boys are terrific, of course, and i shall have them there all weekend. fun times. bryon called in sick today so i made a little more money as head cook than i would have at a lesser position i was planning to work.

now that i have found a terrific person to "see" while i am seeing other people (he likes indie/foreign films and we have a good time together but i'm not into him or anything the way i was with andy) i find myself suddenly split on the issue. missing K incredibly, and having lovely conversations with him. i feel confident now, but will i fall apart again when i get to england? (i could also wonder if i will fall apart again in three weeks, the way things seem to go.) i always just wonder if i would get along better with K if i had a stronger personality, or if i myself were stronger, or even if i simply had stronger faith in myself.

i seem to be making more friends at work now. casual friends, yet i have hung out with a couple of them once or twice. amy thinks i am devil spawn, i'm sure, when one girl comes to the kitchen to visit me. a. knows it probably has something to do with something that might possibly be illegal. in this country. ah well.

my court date was this week. i got the usual. fines and two evenings at her majesty's pleasure. ;) still in a muddle about the DOT end of things, but hopefully my brief can sort me out.

i have no idea why i used so much british slang in that last paragraph.

but i think i may go watch last saturday's "eastenders" so i can tape this week's tomorrow on the same tape. i don't keep them or anything. i'm not as obsessive as i used to be, say about "my so-called life" or "animaniacs." ahem. nerd power!

***

oh wait! i never said anything about the night i went out with amy for drinks. i had a couple drinks and sat around while she finished getting ready. we decided to kidnap bryon from work (they hadn't been getting along and i thought it might help) and take him to one of the small-town bars for a quick drink before he drove back to his home. (here begins the ghettofab adventure once again, wherever i had left off with it...) we had two quick drinks, then he left, then a. and i got bored and headed to our destination. the american legion. oh yeah.

bought our beer tickets, were not carded by these fine veterans (although we are both of age), and headed downstairs. listened to a mix tape or something playing while the DJ took a break and kept on drinkin'. it turned into a girltalk. rather emotional. she is almost embarrassingly honest with me. anyway, i did my drunken advice bit that i always do, and then while we were talking she spotted matt. from work. and from my high school. he is, in a word, gi-normous. so that's how come she could see him. anyway, i ran upstairs and tracked him down and hauled him back downstairs with us. giant matt and i had more drinks, as did amy, and we talked about high school. except that he is the most sensitive guy in the world, and i'm sort of angry about the whole thing and he really has gotten over it. i guess. so then we went upstairs. and we danced. and drank. and then suddenly i was Dancing with matt to this band playing covers of soul collective or one of those other bands with the word soul in its title, and there were little girls from high school and i hugged them and told them how beautiful they were and then i guess i met some people that a. thinks i should remember and then......um........i don't know.

i heard i was kicked out of the american legion, but no one knows for certain if this is true, and amy doesn't remember anything like that happening. until later.

so then we went to a kegger in someone's garage and i made friends and i couldn't point the beer nozzle in the right direction and then i met girls from work and we exclaimed and laughed and then two of my high school boys called me and i told them where the party was and i think i was still drinking and i have no idea what i may have talked about with them when they got there but i do remember falling flat on my ass for no reason, so then i went to get some water and i'm not sure. but then the girl whose house it was told me that i had to leave. so i did get kicked out of somewhere.

i guess she thought i was hitting on her husband. that's what i heard. the rest of it is all hearsay and only one other bad thing happened but i don't want to talk about it. then i was hungover for two days and right now i am still telling myself never again. well. anyway. that's the end of this chapter of my small-town adventure. the moral of the story is: don't drink with people from work.