Back to the real world…

Fate has a sense of humor.

It’s a sick, malicious, meanspirited sense of humor, but it’s a sense of humor nonetheless.

The first day of my Christmas vacation. I started getting sick. By Christmas eve I was miserable–stuffy head, sore throat, you name it.

Christmas eve I slept crooked. Christmas day, i woke up with such a serious muscle spasm in my neck and shoulder that both were effectively paralyzed.

At least I’ve recovered from both conditions just in time to go into the office tomorrow…

At any rate, I really shouldn’t be complaining. I had a good time nonetheless. My old friend Thumper and his wife, who moved to Boston about five years ago, spent most of the week with us; it was great. I had almost forgotten how wonderful it is to spend time with old friends.

Thumper oficially forfeitted his bet with me. In 1992, we each made a bet that the other would be the first to have children. The bet ran like this: We put twenty-five cents in the pot, with the understanding that the first person to have a child would forefeit the pot to the other. Each year,t he pot doubles–twenty-five cents, fifty cents, a dollar, two dollars, four dollars, and so on. He was sure my wife and I would have kids.

Well, now his wife is expecting, and I’ve had a “proceedure” that ensures I’ll never be a father, so he gracefully acknowledged I’d won. Twenty-five cents doubled every year since 1992 is now worth $128. 🙂

We had a party yesterday evening, with some new friends and some old. One of my oldest friends, who I met in high school (and, truth be told, had something of an intense crush on back when I was fifteen) was there; she’d disappeared from my life about twelve years ago, and reappeared just as abruptly after looking me up on the Internet. Even after all this time, we still get along beautifully.

We played drinking games and talked and laughed and played Mao, a very strange card game where the players (other than the dealer) aren’t allowed to know the rules when the game stats, and are penalized for not knowing the rules…much fun.

I’ve come to the conclusion that L. just might be even more creative than I am. I am in awe of her devious, kinky imagination. I’ve had more practice than she, though, so I may yet be able to hold my own. 🙂

I’m leaving for San Francisco in six days! MacWorld, here I come!

Some Thoughts on Christmas Eve

About eighteen years ago, I knew a woman named Heidi Hoffman. I didn’t know her altogether well; our lives took separate courses about six months after we met. But I still remember her very well, and many of the things she said have remained with me.

Heidi had a pet iguana. Every so often, she would take it out of its cage to play with it. Whenever she reached into its cage, the lizard would strike at her, and she would jump back; then she’d reach into its cage again and it would sit there calmly and allow her to take it out.

One day, after they had played out this little ritual and she had jumped back, she turned to me and said “I wish it would hit me, just once, so I would know what it feels like, and I wouldn’t be afraid of it any more.”

That has always remained one of the most interesting things anyone has ever said to me, and in the years since then, some element of that idea has become a part of my personal philosophy. Knowing a thing–even a painful thing–tends to chase fear of that thing away.

She also loaned me a book to read. The book was called “Flood,” and I don’t remember very much about it save for the fact that I enjoyed reading it. Every so often, I’ve made an attempt to find it again, if only to see if it was as good as I remember it being, half a lifetime ago.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. There are about a zillion books called “Flood,” both in and out of print. But I finally located it yesterday. It’s a novel by Andrew H. Vachss, and Amazon had one copy in stock.

Now they have no copies in stock. 🙂 It will be interesting to see if the novel is as good I dimly remember it.

Bad days…

URL of the Day: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in stop-motion Lego animation.

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I’m sick. It sucks. Woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat, and by Saturday evening it was a full-blown “stuffy fuzzy head” thing.

The second girlfriend stopped by last night, and I wasn’t even feeling up to spending any time with her…

In any event, it occurs to me that I’ve been more excited about my upcoming trip to MacWorld San Fransisco in early January than I am about Christmas. Yes, I knowm, I know…what can I say?

Off to bed…*sniff*

Random thoughts on Friday afternoon

Bumper sticker of the day: “Keep Music Evil!”
URL of the day: No Such File.

Yesterday, I got a Christmas package from L. A little something for everything; something to feel, something to taste, something to see… Very, very cool. It included some elements that my wife can enjoy, as well.

Going to be a busy couple of weeks. My parents will be visiting for Christmas, as will our friends Thumper and Sara. We’ll likely be seeing the secondary girlfriend for some part of the upcoming week, as well. At least this time we don’t have to hide the whips and chains or otherwise “parent-proof” the house!

I won’t say that my parents have always been perfect or flawless, or that they have in all things been without error of any kind. But I am thankful that I’ve never had to conceal anything from them.

Maybe that has made me impatient with people who have families that are not so understanding. I deeply resent having to go through the house whenever my wife’s parents are in town, hiding anything that might disturb them; and I think it’s unfortunate we can’t really be who we are in front of them. But then, it’s an imperfect world.

Some Thoughts on the Magical Arts

Amusing bumper sticker of the day: “Make Him Beg!”

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If you are searching for one more useless than you in the kitchen, you need look no farther than me.

I rarely venture into the kitchen, save for finding something to drink from teh refrigerator, and when I do, I feel as though I am adrift and lost in a hostile and threatening land.

I can not cook. Anything. At all. I can’t prepare macaroni and cheese. To me, cooking is akin to sorcery–strange rituals are performed over fire, using many bizarre ingredients unrecognizable by me, and the result, magically, is food.

I don’t know what lies in our kitchen, and I don’t care to. I can often not even recognize objects of food before they are prepared, and I am mystified by their application. All my friends know better than to ask me if we have this or that ingredient on hand; in fact, most of my friends have a far better knowledge of the contents of our refrigerator and our pantry than do I. My incompetence in the kitchen is widely known and talked about–the stuff of legends and myths.

Fortunately, I have a Sicilian wife who loves to cook, and takes great pleasure in her skill at the culinary arts. Were that not so, I would eat nothing save for what is offered on the menu at McDonald’s.

I wonder, is that a vice?

Things and Stuff

First of all: My primary girlfriend has decided to start her own LiveJournal, so a big welcome to feorlen!

A number of friends and I have already purchased advanced tickets to the Wednesday screening of The Fellowship of the Ring. I can’t wait.

Spent most of the evening last night having a highly philosophical discussion with my wife and my primary girlfriend about the nature of love. We were up until after two o’clock in the morning, and I’ve been moving through a sleepy haze all day today. I believe…well, I believe many things about the nature of love,and some of those things are completely counterintuitive. Perhaps that will be the subject of a different posting later.

Friday night I set aside several hours for L., who had wanted to arrange an “online date” of sorts, which soon turned to the phone. I was very, very, very evil, and introduced her to the concept of the “zip strip.”

In case you’re not familiar with zip strips, they’re made by taking a number of clothespins (say, twelve or so) and tying them together in aline with a piece of twine, so that each clothespin is several inches from the one after it. The clothespins are clamped onto one’s body in a line, see, along certain key places–for example, in a line starting from the inner thigh just above the knee up along the thigh, up the belly, under the breast, and finally to the nipple. At the appropriate time, you pull the string, and the clothespins go flying off–pop! pop! pop!

It’s very…er, intense. Who says you can’t touch someone directly over the phone? 🙂

Don’t know yet where the thing with L. is going. You’d think I would have my hands full already, and i’ve never before attempted anything like a long-distance relationship, or at least anything that’s started that way; feorlen lives in Atlanta now, but she was local when we first started dating.

And yet…and yet…

I dunno.

The Reappearance of Old Friends

This has, it seems, been the year of reacquaintanceship.

Early this year, I spoke for the first time in almost two decades with a very old, and at one time very dear, friend and lover. She had been my first lover, in fact, but time and tide carried us in different directions, and we both went out to meet our lives, and lost track of one another.

It was a happy, but not long-lasting, reunion; it seems her current lover doesn’t approve of her associating with me. Old flames are dangerous things, and all that.

Anyway, shortly after, I received a surprise phone call from another very old friend, a person who was my best friend in our high-school days, and with whom I had not spoken for some twelve years. She had been married, and had gone on to I didn’t know where, and we had fallen out of touch.

Turns out she was living not far down the road from me. We’d both moved many times in the intervening decade, but not so far as all that; we have since renewed our friendship, and have had great fun talking about our younger and more foolish selves.

Midweek, my wife received a phone call from yet another old friend, a person we last saw in 1992, some eleven years ago. He had at that time been part of a close circle of friends my wife and I held in common, which is now scattered (and with some animosity; some things happened, many of which were quite ugly and all of which were completely avoidable had we all taken more care).

“So,” he said, “I had just got to thinking about you…”

The saying goes that with clothes, new are best, and with friends, old are best. I don’t know that that’s always true; there are some people come recently in my life that I would not necessarily put below those I have known for years. Nevertheless, I think a toast to old friends is in order.

Some Thoughts on Conspiracy

So I’ve been continuing to talk to L., who calls me her “Internet boy-toy” and introduced me to the wonders of phone sex–two minds and two voices and the power of imagination.

Today we talked about my relationship with my wife. My wife, of course, has always known about my dealings (or whatever one wishes to call them) with L., and L. broached the idea of talking to my wife directly–something she had never done.

She seemed a little unsure at first; if you are not accustomed to this sort of thing, what do you say to your lover’s spouse, even if your “lover” is only virtual?

She need not have bee concerned, of course. My wife is a genuinely warm and wonderful person, and she has no thought of care or dismay at the prospect of sharing my attentions, provided she is sharing them with the right person. The three of us were soon talking easily.

A bit too easily, I fear. For it soon came to pass that L. had some evil and devious ideas to share with my wife, and wished to do this thing without my eavesdropping.

L. is possessed of one of the finest and most imaginatively evil and cruel minds I have encountered in many years. Her creativity and her delicious evil are things to be marvelled at: “Now take a rubber band and two raw eggs…”

The two are conspiring even as I speak. Occasionally, I hear my wife laughing in the room upstairs.

I am very, very afraid.

Once more into the breech

One very long, hard week down; one very long, hard week to go. It’s been crazy…I’ve been working so much this past week I’ve barely had time to do anything else at all (including such basic things as reading my email), and now, anther long week is looming ahead. Perhaps things will start to slow down later in the week, but for now, I’m still trying to figure out how to survive…

In any event, it’s been a somewhat dreary day. Didn’t get to see the secondary girlfriend this week, as she has a cold, and didn’t get to do the photo shoot I had scheduled today either, as the model ended up with last-minute family commitments.

Oh, well. Maybe the next week will be a bit better.