the navel times and observer

And your damn television show.

So I will I admit I started very late but I've been on insane LOST benders each of the past four nights, staying up until 5 a.m. just to catch another episode because there's another cliff hanger and I just can't put it down.

I'm almost through with the second season. Thank God I've only got one more available to me and then I can give my poor body and mind a break. I love this show. I'm sorry I wasn't in on this sooner.

Hope, while loaded with momentary thrills, is simultaneously exceptionally successful at letting you down.

So in the last two nights I had two different dreams, in each dream I was dating a different girl.

Now one of those, the first if it's any matter, is someone I never had any relationship with beyond friendship and is, in fact, today a married woman. Thus it was ridiculously easy to determine that this was, in fact a dream.

Unfortunately, last night's dream was different in the fact that I was with the girl I had been dating two months ago until, as I've mentioned before, she unloaded me via an extremely irritating e-mail. It was enough that I had actually dated this girl that led me to really enjoy this dream, which involved nothing more than talking with her and, at an airport, a neon orange posterboard sign underneath a cupboard at an airport that had the top 10 numbers of days the airport had gone in a row without discovering a dead cat inside that cupboard (in retrospect, it should have been a lot easier at that point to realize I was in a dream, I guess happiness went and fucked up reason again, how many points does that make for happiness?).

And, having had time to digest that dream, brain, I think Schrodinger wants his cat back (whether it's alive or dead is a question already answered).

So anyway, this only left me waking up grumpy because despite a few (at least in dream world) hours of happiness I hadn't felt in months I still woke up as frustratingly single as I was when I went to bed.

It's not so much that I wish I had her back. As has been correctly distilled by close friends and myself the biggest thing is that for a little while I was happy, was dating someone, and now I'm just a little more miffed because while before I didn't know a difference, now I do.

Now I'm still looking, and as I suspected nothing solid has come up. But for the meanwhile I've decided the time I would be spending pondering this fact that I am depressingly single should be taken up by other pleasurable activities. I hope to do as much of this this weekend and every free hour that I can.

I'm sick of this, I really am. If anyone wants, and I may be wrong in my judgment of myself here, a fairly decent guy to date, my line is open and my inbox is clear. Until then I hope my brain will leave me alone so I can work on something else.

I've been meaning to say this for the better part of the last two months, but I think the biggest reason I'm unhappy since getting dumped in March was, for six weeks, having actually felt fully satisfied with life.

Now that doesn't mean I'm not generally happy. My job is going reasonably well, assuming that life persists along the path it has for the overwhelming majority of my life I won't have to worry about finding someone to spend the rest of my life with (after all, it doesn't seem likely to happen) and I shouldn't have trouble following my longish-term goal of returning to Missouri eventually.

But for a little while I actually felt satisfied. All feelings are I'm sure fleeting but for a little while I couldn't honestly imagine needing more out of life because I felt like the thing I had wanted for so long, someone to spend my days with.

Sadly that's gone, and it's not even so much that person but just the knowledge that when I lost that (granted by no action or inaction of my own) I probably lost my last opportunity for that for a long time. That is assuming that my life will follow the same trend as it has. SIGH...

I just hope I can find something to fill my time otherwise, it's weekend to weekend.

So it's getting to be foolish to say I keep a blog for as often as I update it, but it's also been an exceptionally busy weekend.

Pro: Lately my bathroom scale has been hovering right around 200 pounds, about 40 pounds short of where I was when I left Lebanon last August. And today I pulled out a pair of 38 waist pants from my closet and they fit just fine as far as I can tell. This is as opposed to a 42 or a 40-size waist.

Con: It would have been a pro, but sadly that changed. I dated someone for about six weeks until this weekend when I got an e-mail from her, an e-mail no less, to say she couldn't see me anymore. God it sucks, back on the unfortunate "hunt" I go.

- That's right, from the Corn' Mo song, somehow you've heard of it

Tonight I got drunker than I've been in a long time, in fact, I really discovered the benefit of living within stumbling distance from a party. Really, no substitute, I ended up in the bathtub tonight after relieving myself.

Really freaking drunk.

I had a hot 23-year old's rear end in my face and did nothing about it, oh how the company's judgment regarding it's sexual harrasment policy haunts me. Alcohol is wonderful.

Because for the first time in a while I feel good about my job.

That's because for really the first time since starting here and one of the first times in the weekends I spent designing the LDR I was out before deadline ... actually out before deadline, and even on the night I was in charge of the Sports section front and two additional pages. None of them were particularly hard to do, but this was the first time I was able to pull three out in that time.

This also marks the first time I really felt confident about my probation period ending at the end of November. I'm not so much concerned about whether I'll still want to be here at the end of November (the answer being a resounding "hell yes") as to whether or not I will have improved enough at the job for it to be worth their time to keep me, pay me benefits, possibly deem me worthy of meriting me a merit-based salary increase (not that the money I make now isn't enough for me to live on, but it's the thought that a raise is actually a possibility).

Now regarding other parts of my life:

Relationships
Yeah, sadly this hasn't moved an inch further in the course of the last, oh, maybe 6 months being generous. Yes, there are single people in the newsroom and one in particular who I've been getting to know pretty well.

Unfortunately, as has come both to me and to other people who care for me who have advised me in much the same way, even so much as asking out someone in the newsroom, particularly one who works nights almost as often as I do (and often more often, which is somewhat frightening because I'm not in the least bit on the dayside), could very possibly make that awkward.

On the other hand, were it not for those circumstances I think I have reason to believe within a reasonable doubt that I might have the off chance of getting a date. After all, and as often I can remind myself of this the better, I don't think I'm all that bad of a guy.

To rectify that situation, I think I'm going to give the online dating another shot, why not? I certainly know, especially after just introducing myself to a bunch of new people just a few weeks ago, that meeting people face to face is definitely not going to be the way I get a date. I feel like I could capture someone's interest about as well as a houseplant can that way.

So there's online, which at least introduced me to new people who I know are interested in dating and I get to introduce myself in a way other than the slow-to-act organs inhibiting my communication that I call my lips.

Cat
For those who don't know, I now have a cat, Crowley, who I believe is about seven months old and shares a few of the traits of the Good Omens character for which he is named. He also despises the collar I just put on him tonight, despite the fact that it could ensure his safe return to regular food, water and a litter box.

I have tried to explain this to him, but he seems to fail to grasp the concept. In the meanwhile, he jingles and tries to manipulate around the license tag now very involuntarily hanging from his neck.