Inbox blues.

Portions of this post originally appeared in an e-mail to Mark

OK, something's wrong.

I just checked my inbox, and I got all excited because it said I had THREE new messages. And that's, like, more than I've had at one time all day, which is annoying because I figure that, in a week when I've written a reunion soap episode and kept the blog fun, I should be getting all praise from people.

But, I looked at the messages, and, um, they were all from me.

Self-sent spam resulting from the maintenance I did on the reunion soap site earlier today.

So instead of getting to be all happy, I was, like, "Oh, I'm my own best friend."

And, considering what I wrote on the blog last night, that's just too telling.

Of course, Lupo just wrote me that my "14 roommates" detail is more embarassing than my "nocturnal activities."

It's all good.

Random thoughts at the end of a good evening

I get paid the next time I go to work. Both jobs. So I'll get my usual sum from the publishing company. And maybe I'll get enough from the bookstore to fund popcorn and a Diet Coke at the movies.

***

I'm listening to Liz Phair music from her sexy bitch period and a geek-rock song called "Reconstruction Site" that was on a free CD. It's by this band called the Weakerthans, a band I've never heard of before but, for some reason, this song is so nuts that it's like my theme song. More my theme song than Ben Folds' "There's Always Someone Cooler than You." A temporary replacement for my usual theme song, Josh Joplin Group's "I Am Not the Only Cowboy."

I wish I had my own TV show sometimes.

My life would be way more interesting if I had a staff of writers.

***

One time, when I was walking through the Gwinnett Place Parisian with my friend Vic, I pulled her into an impromptu swing dance routine in Men's Wear. On one of the more complicated twirls, I accidentally tripped her, and she fell in the middle of the aisle. I felt bad, but I couldn't express my regret to her because I was laughing entirely too hard.

***

Weezer's song "The World Has Turned and Left Me" reminds me of my two-week affair with Welsh Guy. It's my official travel theme song.

Wait, no, it's not.

It's the song that makes me think of the best lover I ever had.

Damn it. Where is he?

***

It's late, but I'm wired. I had coffee with fellow bloggers Kurt and Mark tonight, whose kickass personalities were nothing like my own, and it was a lot of fun.

I was, surprisingly, relatively quiet through the whole thing.

I did stand up at one point and tell the story of my redneck stepfather's appearance on the 6 o' clock news - true story - when I was in the eighth grade.

He and my mother had witnessed a fatal helicopter crash at Lake Lanier, which isn't actually funny.

But my stepfather's eyewitness account of it, which is burned into my memory, is hilarious.

Seeing my account of the incident, Mark told me that I needed to take it on tour. I think he was being sarcastic. Maybe.

Kurt told me I reminded him of David Sedaris. Ah, flattery.

***



I'm listening to "If You Leave." Jenipher says it's one of the few songs you can actually do the "Molly Ringwald" to.

The Molly Ringwald is that kick dance that its namesake did on the library steps in that scene of THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

Jenipher can do it.

I want to do the Snoopy Dance.

***

I met Sedaris once. Lupo and I went to a reading, and he signed a book I got my hetero friend Doug, another blogger, as a gift.

He signed it,

"To Doug:

Everyone thinks you're gay.

David Sedaris"

Dougie was very happy about that. He showed it to his mom.

***

Ric Ocasek is considered geek rock, right? I'm making a RealPlayer playlist.

In the '80s, I actually wondered if my family was related to The Cars. I was 6.

***

In my three-and-a-half years of college, I had 14 roommates. (Get me drunk, and I can name all of them, even the Korean ones.)

One of the best ones was named Tommy. He was nice. He stayed on the top bunk and only once complained to me about how often I jacked off, even though it shook him awake all the time. (OK, that was too much information, but, whatever, it's late. And, in my defense, how else was I gonna get to sleep?)

Tommy's the one who got me hooked on DAYS OF OUR LIVES in college, even though I was trying to break away from its evil influence and mature. Tommy would record it and reruns of THE GOLDEN GIRLS everyday and force me to watch it before we went to sleep. (OK, maybe "force" is the wrong word.)

That was when DAYS had Marlena possessed by the devil, an illusion accomplished through bad special effects and having Deidre Hall wear green contact lenses.



So, for those of you who think I'm way too melodramatic, blame my family. And blame Tommy.

"It's all good" is what he used to tell me every time I freaked out, which was often. By the end of the quarter, I had more than a small crush on him, even though he told me he wasn't gay - which I'm not sure I believe in retrospect. (Come on, reruns of THE GOLDEN GIRLS??? How straight can he be???)

I wonder whatever happened to him, even though I'm afraid of what he must've told people about my sleeping habits.

***

I feel better than I did earlier this week.

***

I'm listening to Ben Folds now. I love Ben Folds.

My name is "Riley," and ... I'm a soapaholic.

Every day this week, the beloved Dr. Marlena Evans Black has been sitting up in her hospital bed, confessing to the brutal murders of nine of her friends and family.

Those at her bedside, anxious to hear why she'd slit her ex-husband's throat on his wedding day or why she'd stab a girl and stuff her in a Thanksgiving turkey pinata, have been outraged at each subsequent confession. Marlena, under the influence of a truth serum, has been telling all about the murders to gathered loved ones, giggling and laughing while regaling in tales of death.

You might think me sick or perverse, but her laughing and making jokes while talking about savagely beating her alcoholic best friend to death with a liquor bottle was HILARIOUS.

The only thing she has yet to explain is why she did it.

It makes absolutely no sense for her saintly, immensely popular character to do this sort of thing, which is why she long went unsuspected of the crimes.

And it's absolutely great, campy TV.

Two or three weeks from now, "Days of Our Lives" has planned another shocking twist in the tale, and you better believe that I can't wait to hear what it is.

The writers say the murderer is not Marlena's evil twin. (She had one ... but that one was murdered onscreen in the '80s.) It's not someone who had plastic surgery to look like her. (In a hilarious twist, that character came back a couple weeks ago only to confess that she had nothing to do with it.) And Marlena's not possessed by the devil. (She was possessed by the devil in the early '90s, and they went through all the flashbacks of that a couple weeks ago to prove that wasn't it.) It's not some brain-implanted microchip making her do this. (They did a head scan of her a couple days ago to prove that she wasn't under outside control.)

At this point, it looks like Marlena's just a killer, which is maybe the best twist of all.

As a result of this increasingly preposterous yet self-aware story, I've become, after long periods of trying to stay away from the show I started watching when I was 11, addicted to it once again.

I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not ashamed that I've started going to lunch at the Blimpie near my office every day at 1 p.m. because they play it on TV. (Heck, I think the Pakistani family who runs that Blimpie learned to speak English by watching Marlena's shenanigans. And, hey, if Julia Roberts can admit to watching it on "Oprah," then I think it's OK to confess my addiction.)

For some reason, DAYS, while remaining more than a little bit stupid, has gotten me involved in it again.

Damn it.

Belittle me.

Today, when I was sending out the news of my job transfer to the Buckhead store to the majority of my friends, I concluded the note with this line:

To me, this is a big deal. Is that weird?

Most people wrote me back to let me know that it wasn't weird, that it was a big deal and that it's a pretty wonderful thing to move outside of your comfort zone and take risks.

But, talking with Black tonight about why I phrased it that way, I told him this, "Even though it matters to me, I know that it's just a bookstore job and that it's essentially the same job I'm already doing. And I thought, not to sound strange, that my life would be bigger than this."

I told him that, as soon as I found out I had the job and got excited about it, the first thing I did was think of it in comparison to former colleagues of mine. I thought of the fact that I'd probably end up waiting on some of them at one point. I thought about the other work that some Red & Black alumni are doing, working for the AP or what-not.

It reminded me of how, when some customer asks me where I went to college, I'm quick to assure them that my University of Georgia journalism degree didn't land me at Barnes & Noble - but that I choose to work there for fun, away from my "real" job at McGraw-Hill.

When I started at Barnes & Noble, I assured myself that I'd only really be there or need to be there for a couple weeks until my temp job went permanent or I got something real. It's been four years, and I'm still there.

And though my life now is better than it was when I worked at CNN or the Augusta Chronicle and that I'm more mature and happier and handle things better, I sometimes look at the scope of my life - what it is versus what I thought it would be - and get disappointed.

Black told me that was a natural impulse, yet he also told me that it was defeatist and wrong to do.

"The greatest poets and novelists in the world have all had jobs they had to take in order to get by," Black said. "And they worried about the humdrum and the minutae in their lives, just like the rest of us. When we study them, we don't study that. But everybody has small things to deal with. So, if something happens to you in your life and you feel good about it, don't question that or think of it in terms of what more you think you should be doing or say to yourself that it's just a bookstore or you're just doing the same job in a dfferent place. Just feel happy about it."

"If it's a big deal to you, that's OK," he concluded.

He told me that it was admirable that I'm doing well in my small jobs. He said it was even more admirable that I continued to believe that something better and bigger was going to come my way.

I think I owe myself an apology.

Into the depths of "Hello."

Jenipher used to get mad at me when I called her. Now, Lupo's starting to wonder if I have no sense of phone etiquette. Larry says each phone call from me is a treat because I cut through all the crap and just launch into whatever the hell it is I intended to talk about.

I don't say "Hello" when I call people. And, consequently, I don't say "Goodbye" usually either.

A couple days ago, this got on Lupo's nerves. I was calling him, I think, to talk about the momentary disaster area that was my office building after a breaker exploded and forced us to stop working.

I was so excited and such that I didn't even bother to say hello.

Today, I was calling, wondering about an e-mail that he sent me, and I started in on the question and then remembered, "What was the? ... Uh, hello..."

He cut me off, sounding frustrated ... probably because I didn't say hello. Then, he told me to hold. Then I heard some commotion. Then he told me to hold again.

Then, he was telling me to call back, then he put me on hold again.

So I hung up the phone, figuring I could call him back since he was in the middle of telling me to call him back anyway when he was called away from the phone.

Things are weird. And I'm a rude jackass on the phone.

If you get a phone message from me, usually I launch into some diatribe about whatever situation I'm stuck in themiddle of, rather than just requesting a callback or, I guess, even bothering to be nice and polite.

When calling Jonathan the Bartender once, I left him a message talking about how I wanted to get something to eat and have sex with somebody. When he called back the next day, he told me that the message made him laugh hysterically on his way to work.

I'm not setting precedent here. On "The X-Files," they never said "Hello." At my house, my redneck stepfather answers the phone with his trademark, two-syllable utterance of "Yeah???"

Still, I need lessons in phone etiquette.

Sorry, guys.

Big news.

I spoke with Maureen, a manager at Barnes & Noble Buckhead, just a few minutes ago, and she let me know that they had heard great things about the work that I do and that I'd try to fit me into their employee schedule in a couple weeks!

This means that, ahem, I'm the new part-time employee in their music department.

After four years, I will no longer work at the Mall of Georgia in Buford.

I will now get to work in the store 10 minutes from my apartment! The store where the protestor in the photo above stood during the Hillary Rodham Clinton book signing last year!!!

And, because it's a far busier store, I'll probably get to work more often, sleep less, get paid more and get harassed by customers from a higher tax bracket!!! And I'll get to kick homeless people out of the handicapped bathroom stall in the men's room!!!

Additionally, since it's one of our higher profile stores in the region, I may get to work during other celebrity book signings. So I could meet more protestors!

I'm actually really happy about this. It'll get me more involved in the community where I live. I'll get to deal with a larger volume of customers and learn how to work with a different set of people. And I'll get to figure out how to fit in with a new set of co-workers, rather than being one of the longest-working employees in the store.

So wish me luck.

Connecting Point A and Point B.

I just sent an e-mail to Doug and Black, reasoning that these two friends of mine should become friends.

Here's what I wrote.

Doug, this is Black.

Black, this is Doug.

You both live in Birmingham now. You're both opinionated. You're both political. You're both smart. You're both friends of mine. You're both single. You're both heterosexual. You both went to UGA. You both like movies. You both like to read. You both know Miss Gibson. You both like to drink.

So you should know each other.

Write each other.

Make me proud.

I hope they actually get together and get along. I think it'd be cool if all my friends knew each other, thus furthering my efforts to turn my life into a giant, contained ensemble sitcom.

I think my logic here is sound.

Since they both live in Birmingham, they can share the miseries of Alabama.

Marley's moving ...

My friend, my Valentine and my personal-favorite moviegoing companion Marley begins her relocation to Los Angeles this weekend. So she's been doing all the stuff you apparently need to do to move cross-country.

Reading her blog's taught me several things, interestingly, including how to actually go about holding a proper "Moving Sale" and how to apply for a job outside of your region.

Beyond just missing her pre- and post-movie conversation, I think I'm going to miss a lot of the "lessons" she tried to give me, like about the etiquette of visiting someone's house or how to better tell when I behave like a loudmouthed jackass in a movie line.

I'm sure there was a lot more to learn. But she's leaving to go to a better place, a place she'll probably enjoy more than the city she dubbed "Craplanta," which she said is too cold for her and nowhere near a good beach.

So she's going to California.

Yowza.

Sometime between yesterday and today, the hit counter hit #12,000.

That's sorta cool, I guess.

Mark suggested to me a couple days ago that I should maybe add feedback to the blog, a move I have opposed for the longest time because - I don't know - I don't want to write some horrid post about incest and have some random stranger crack obscene jokes about it on a comment board.

I figure that if people want to comment, they can just e-mail me.

I've not really gotten many requests to add feedback. But the #12,000 count makes me pretty sure that my original six readers aren't just reloading the site over and over.

Trivia team update.

Though I bowed out last night, Debi didn't know for certain whether I'd be there.

Since the last thing I wrote her about yesterday was having to pay to park, she wrote me this morning to ask me if I had spent the night driving around the restaurant, looking for free parking.

So I told her about my shift at the bookstore.

She told me the team came in third last night, a better showing than last time (when I was there). She said it all hinged on the bonus question.

Apparently, the team also won a drawing last night, which got them $10 in house cash.

I didn't ask her if they salted anyone else's drink in my absence.

Oh, happy day!

Meanwhile ...

Gabe and Jenipher of the Chicago-based "Gabe and Jenipher Are Better Than You" website married today when their cruise ship docked in St. Thomas!

Though I wasn't able to attend, I must wish them both my heartfelt congratulations.

Jenipher, who spelled her name that way when I met her, is one of my oldest, dearest friends, and I'm very, very happy for her and Gabe.

OK, forgive that last post.

I shouldn't write something that conclusively depressing on here.

I had decided not to go to trivia tonight, and now I have a good reason for not going. The bookstore has called me up and asked me if I wanted to pull a shift in the music department at 7 p.m.

So I'm working there more than one day this week. Yay.

The paper says that men are less likely to discuss depression.

Can we talk about life in a way that makes it sound as happy as it is sad? Can we understand how finances work well enough to know that there will be bad times and be good times? Can I be spoken to like I'm a competent adult when it comes to how I'm managing my own life?

I want a place where there's promise. Where I don't feel, more or less, forced into seeking another job.

I'm tired of my parents talking to me about how life is depressing, how much it sucks, how working sucks, how your future is naturally going to disappoint you.

This is what they've been talking to me about ... my parents.

They essentially have said, "Life is awful and terminal and depressing ... and you can't win. Get used to it."

This, on top of financial troubles that have gone on longer than they thought they would, has been discouraging. Reading articles about depression in the newspaper, in addition to this, has been bad. Not filling my prescription for the medicine I need to heal my leg because I can't even really afford the small amount that it would likely cost to fill it ... has been impossible.

Tough month.

You believe the best about yourself.

You start the month in London, wondering what it would be like to live there and thinking that you can find your way to a better way of living.

You end up broke, borrowing money from your mother, with a leg injury and the feeling that your life is going nowhere and that you're going to have to find a new job as quickly as possible.

You hate everything about your existence except your apartment and your friends. You invite your parents out to lunch because they'll take you to better restaurants and pay for it. The staff at the Blimpie near your office asks you why you haven't been by all week.

You get uncontrollably ill in your apartment, and you have to throw out your clothes. And you're embarassed about that.

And you start to believe the worst about yourself.

The quick and easy plan.

Larry told me tonight that, in order to save myself from financial difficulty, all I needed to do was write a bestseller.

"Yeah," I thought. "I'll get right on that."

Actually, he later clarified that I just needed to devote my time to doing work that I truly care about, like writing.

But it's not like I'm broke, so I come up with the basis for a hit novel to make everything better.

Planning that sounds like the aquarium escape plan in "Finding Nemo," where the fish agonize over getting out of the tank ... yet they breeze past going out the window, dropping five floors, getting across a four-lane intersection and going off the dock.

Maybe that's how I should think of my big goal, though. Maybe if I just get myself to the hard part, where I have time to come up with a book, write it, get it marketed around, get an agent, get a publisher, hope it generates notice, write another book, get it published, hope it doesn't exhibit a sophomore slump, go on a book tour, then write another book and go up for the National Book Award.

Piece of cake.

Of course, the other option is not trying. Or, worse, continuing to write and yet not publishing anything, leaving my work to people in my will so that they'll have to do all the hard work of getting me published.

Why does this seem so daunting?

Why can't I just find another job? Or two other jobs?

Because I want to do this right. And cautiously. And yet, I want it done now.

Talking to myself.

If this were the beginning, how would I introduce myself?

Hello, and welcome to the show known as my life. This journal functions as a sort of "Doogie Howser," end-of-the-episode commentary, except it sometimes makes less sense than Doogie's did. I don't have any one story to tell. And if I could or if I believed that I could tell a story effectively, I believe I'd be considered good at it. But, as of yet, I've not been able to tell any one story, not even my own. There are layers upon layers of me, and I talk about different layers pretty much every day. I sometimes think that no one will ever get me or want to get me, and that scares me. But then, I comfort myself by realizing that some friends already do see me for who I am, and that gives me hope.

So then, this is like some sort of "Sex and the City" thing, what with the themes and the writing and the how-I-cope-with-modern-personalities-and-romance schtick.

I don't think it's schtick. It's funny sometimes. Sometimes, in the case of some of these essays, it's pointless or depressing. I don't really write so much about other people's lives, and I guess mine is interesting enough, even when nothing happens. I wish this were more about romance. I wish I knew more about dating. I wish I knew how to stop the comedy when it comes to my own dating life sometimes. And sometimes I find it comforting that I can, when it's bad, find something to laugh about.

Why are you writing this in the middle of the night?

Because my mind goes screwy in the middle of the night when I've had more caffiene than anti-depressants, and I have ideas that just pop into my head, making me curious about the potential for these ideas. So I write them down and see where they go. And soon a half-hour of writing here becomes two hours, and I realize that I have to work in the morning and haven't yet gone to bed, even though my eyelids were heavy when I started writing this.

Where did you see yourself in five years five years ago?

Four years ago, I interviewed with the bookstore, and I told them that, within five years, I wanted to have a book on their shelves and time to focus and work on it. Though I've tried and failed to find "my medium," mostly because I was either too busy or too lazy to realize that it wouldn't just happen and that I had to work at it, the closest I've come to writing a book is working on this blog, which I guess is longer than a book at this point.

When it comes to my professional life, I think I'm a failure because I don't really like the work that I do and know that I should find something else. Yet I'm still a little bit scared to try and do something I might enjoy more or be better at. And I feel comfortable enough where I am to sit sedately in a cube for months on end, doing a not-good-yet-not-bad job. At this point, I think I'm qualified to do absolutely nothing. My copy editing skills are out of date, and I hated the hours at that job anyway. My reporting skills, though still good, are also only as good as the next kid just out of journalism school, and I make more money now than I did as a reporter, anyway. And now I get to live in Atlanta, as opposed to Augusta.

And I do date more now than I did then. But I haven't really had a boyfriend since Augusta five years ago. But I didn't really like the boyfriend I had when I was in Augusta. So there's that, whatever that is.

What are your goals in your personal and romantic life?

I don't know. I really don't know. I'm here typing this partly because I realized that I haven't had good sex, really, since April 1996. It's been THAT LONG since I felt comfortable with a guy, that long since I enjoyed a guy or enjoyed who I was with a guy. I have the weird, haunting feeling that I'd be bad in bed now, were I to actuallly have sex again. Weirder feelings involve that I feel like I've never really been good at sex, except when I felt comfortable with the people I was having sex with. And that happened maybe with two people ever. Maybe that's why I don't have sex now. Maybe that's why my brain and my body disagree about the sort of guys I should be having sex with. Maybe my time is yet-to-come. Maybe I'm supposed to learn more, get lessons or something. Maybe everybody has these feelings, and it's just insecurity. Maybe I need to feel comfortable with someone again.

Maybe it has to do with romance, comfort, familiarity, joy, celebration and truly wanting to do something to make someone else happy. Maybe it bugs me that sex has for too long meant nothing to me or not enough to me. Maybe I should have more sex or less sex. Maybe I should have relationships. Or work my way through life with the friendships I have, hoping to learn from them.

Or maybe I'm goddamn great in bed, and I've just been with some lousy damn people.

Maybe my past and my present add up in just such a way that this is where I'm supposed to be and how I'm supposed to feel right now.

Life isn't through handing me experiences to learn from, and maybe I just need to risk and challenge more to grow into who I am.

Maybe that will involve someone else. Someone who wants to be there. Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe I just need to be happier. Or just wait. Or just work on myself some more. Or concentrate on myself less. Or work on myself some more while concentrating on myself less, if that makes any sense. (OK, that sounds schizo.)

I can't think about it less. I process. I'm a processor. I get anxious while processing. I want to be in control. I can't be in control.

OK, you just sounded "Sex and the City" there, until the part where your writing disintegrated into psychobabble jibberish.

Yeah, except "Sex and the City" had a coherent theme-per-episode. In the episodes of my life lately, there is no sense.

Since I've come back from London, and I know I keep talking about how great London was, I feel like I'm sleepwalking through things here. My own humdrum life annoys the ever-loving-hell out of me.

I want stuff that's different, like days at the park, moments with new friends ... I want time with people who know me as someone with potential, not look at me like I'm someone stuck in the same place.

Why is it, I guess, that it'd be easier for me to change my attitude if everyone else changes their attitude about me first? Waiting for that seems like a way to misplace some of the blame once you've failed.

Because then you'd have to take risks.

And I'd have to take more charge of my own life. And I'd have to defy expectations.

And that's scary as hell.

Life doesn't neatly fit into episodes.

It can. If you think about it in terms of conflicts resolved, lessons learned and commonality-of-situations, there are beginnings and endings in "episodes" of life. If you think about it like that, it feels more like a set pattern than random chaos.

Still, you're growing and progressing and moving forward.

So now that you've decided you want to move in another direction with your life, which direction do you choose?

I don't know.

Fairies in Piedmont Park.

So I was lying in my bedroom about noon today, watching my old VHS copy of "Broadcast News" and wondering if I was more like Holly Hunter or Albert Brooks in it, when Kacoon called me up.

"What are you doing?" she asked me.

"Uhh ... nothing," I said, half-awake and ashamed to realize that I was more like Albert Brooks.

"So do you have to work today?" Kacoon asked.

"No."

"Do you have plans?" she continued.

"No."

"OK, Benji and I just drove by your exit," she said. "And I realized you should join us for lunch."

"Um ... OK," I said.

"So where can you meet us?" she asked.

I considered a shower. I considered what dirty, wrinkled clothes I could throw on and still look presentable in.

Then, I realized that entertaining her four-year-old is, like, one of my favorite pasttimes.

"Um, we could go to the park," I said, looking toward the drawn blinds in my bedroom. "How's the weather today?"

"It's beautiful today," she said.

I've always wanted an excuse to go to the park. I live 10 minutes from it, so I know I don't technically need an excuse to go. But, hey, I don't go.

"When can you meet us?" she asked.

"Um, half an hour," I said.

Surprisingly, 50 minutes later, I was standing in the parking lot two blocks from the park, and Kacoon was pulling Midget's toys out of her trunk.

Given a choice for lunch, Midget picked Einstein's, and soon his cute face and happy demeanor were charming the staff, which included a number of cute guys that Kacoon and I both eyed.

Of course, waiters looking at me with Kacoon and her son did mental math and came up, naturally, with the wrong answer. And, to the staff of cute guys my age, I became "Sir," a decently cute hetero with a young son.

"Will you need a highchair, sir?" the tattooed, hair-gelled masses of tanned, black T-shirt-clad waiters asked. "We'll get you a kids' menu, sir."

Kacoon found that sorta funny, for she has seen the mildly flirty way that gay waiters usually treat me. As an apparent hetero, I became invisible, which was kinda cool because then I couldn't go about making a fool of myself. With the boy there, it couldn't be about me. So, yay. I needed that today.

All smiles went, of course, to the adorable four-year-old boy and his collection of rubber lizards and spiders.

"Look, mommy, that guy doesn't have a shirt on!" he yelled, eyeing a muscled jogger running past the patio.

"Yeah, he sure doesn't," I said.

Kacoon smirked at me.

Later, we went to the store and bought ourselves a whiffle ball and some scoops.

Kacoon vetoed my suggestion that we take her son into Outwrite Bookstore to see if hilarity ensued, and we hit the park.

We walked along the paths, and Kacoon reminded me of why I liked her so much when she said that the scenery was nice but that the "scenery" during Pride was better.

She wasn't dressed for the park. She was wearing jeans and a black shirt, and she said she hadn't even shaved her legs.

"We were going to the movies when I left the house," she said.

"Well, I like this better," I said. "I should come here more often."

We took Midget to see the lake. He sat on the dock, watched for small fish and tried to summon pigeons to come talk to us. He complained about the lack of skipping stones, and I told him that next time we'll have to gather them on the way.

"Like 'Amelie,'" Kacoon said. (Immediately, I knew I should put this all in the blog, for Lupo hates when I reference "Amelie.")

We sat on the edge of the dock for a bit, me skimming the bottom of my sandal along the surface of the lake.

"I love today," I said to Kacoon. "Thank you."

At the playground, Midget made friends with some older kids, and they started to challenge one another.

That's how we ended up at the big slide, where Midget's determination to climb the highest ladder left Kacoon, projecting her own fear of heights, in a near panic attack.

"He's going to fall," she whispered to me when he got about four feet off the ground. "Sweetie, do you wanna come down???"

Other kids about his size climbed past him, urging him on.

"He's fine," I said.

"He's gonna fall," she whispered again. "Oh my God ... Don't look down."

Midget looked at her, confused. He wasn't sure what to do. He's still 3-feet-tall at this point, even though he's 4.

I looked at him and prepared to climb up there, even though he was at our eye level.

"Look ahead of you and look behind you," I said. "There are less steps to the top than there are behind you. Just go a little further. It's almost over."

I reached toward another ladder, and Kacoon said to me, "No, get behind him, so if he falls ..."

So I told Midget to go up two more rungs, then pull himself to the top of the slide. Then, I got to the top next to him.

And we held hands and went down the slide, which wasn't very slippery. At one point, I was still at the top, and Midget was midway down, telling me to let go of his hand.

So I did. And down he went.

Then, I came down after him.

And he went to the smaller slide, while Kacoon, relieved, berated herself for projecting her fears.

"It's OK," I said to Midget. "You had fun, right?"

"Um," he said. "The smaller slide is faster."

"Well, now that you've climbed something that high, then you know you can do it ... whether or not you want to again," I said, realizing that I'd somehow become my father for a second.

We left the playground shortly after that, to save Midget from potential dangers or save Kacoon from further panic attacks. Maybe both.

We played ball on a field for a couple minutes, then Kacoon and I abandoned that because we were hot and tired. We spent time looking at the clouds, the cityscape and shirtless guys playing football in the sports field.

Midget pulled up dandelions and blew all their seeds off.

On the way back, Kacoon pointed out mushrooms to Midget, telling him that fairies were living underneath them and hiding in their shade.

He crouched close to the ground and tried to look at them.

"Don't get too close to them," she said. "They get scared around people."

"Why?" Midget asked her.

"Because they don't want to be sold in pet stores," Kacoon told her son.

"Oh," he said.

We walked away from the mushroom, down the path.

I snickered at her and said, "So you're saying there are fairies here in the park?"

"Yep," she said, looking at me. "And I'm with one of them."

Later, as she continued talking about how much the fairies in the park like mushrooms, she began laughing at herself, saying, "That just sounds so wrong when we're here."

When we walked past Einstein's on the way to the car, Midget waved at the wait staff on the patio, and they all cracked up.

Before saying goodbye, we capped off everything by having ice cream.

Midget and I both mixed Oreo cookies and chocolate ice cream, though mine was a milkshake.

And I need to go to the park more often.

The movie I forgot to mention.

In the midst of all that I've had going on - or in today's case, the whole lotta nothing I have going on, I forgot to mention that the movie I was leaving on Friday night when I suddenly found that I couldn't walk was "Connie and Carla."

Well, I didn't really so much neglect to mention it. There's just not much to say about it.

It's one of those not-funny-enough, not-distinguished-enough gay comedies that doesn't really pay enough mind to their gay characters to make them into distinguishable individuals.

It's a cross-dressing movie about girls who could never actually exist in real life that spend their time singing showtunes.

If I could've walked away from the theater any faster, I would have.

Between my screenings of "Kill Bill, Vol. 2," "Laws of Attraction" and "13 Going On 30" and momentarily losing my ability to move, I completely forgot that I'd even watched "Connie and Carla."

So there.

Out of the ordinary.

Lunch with Dad today was unfortunately tedious. He brought me a gift certificate to AMC Theatres that he received from his company for his birthday, and he told me to use it because he wouldn't.

We went to our usual restaurant, ordered our usual food from our usual waitress and sat, mostly in silence, not talking about much.

So I turned the talk to politics early, thinking that might spur him to chat. And it did, a little. But he didn't want to voice disagreement with me, and I didn't want to sound like I was deliberately antagonizing him.

So then we talked about sports. And we watched a baseball mid-game fistfight on ESPN. And a piece on CNN about an NFL player killed while serving in Iraq.

And then talk turned back to politics.

Until we stopped talking again. And he watched golf on one TV, and I watched the beginning of "All My Children" on another.

He asked me where I planned to take my next trip. I talked about meeting up with Miss Gibson again and heading with her to Paris, an idea I came up with while visiting the Waterloo Station a couple weeks ago that I haven't mentioned to anybody yet.

He told me he was going to Key West in August. And he told me that I should come see his new dog soon.

We were talking in these disjointed statements that led nowhere. It was a little depressing, I guess, but it's one of those days where I'm talking even though I don't really have a damn thing to say.

Last night, talking with Black, I spoke of how it's sometimes healthy if you go against your norm and attempt to shake up your own life.

Yesterday, I told people that, for some reason, I had the urge to go to an amusement park and behave like a 14-year-old. People told me that sounded like fun.

Sometimes, I really miss fun.

Trivia team update, Kacoon update and a blow to my self-esteem.

Even though I was there with the team last night - and we moved our group out to the Joe's patio to enjoy the warmer weather, we lost. We lost because I forgot Ronald Reagan's middle name. We lost because I can't rank the Great Lakes by order of size. We lost because I got the Fathers of the A-Bomb and H-Bomb confused. We lost.

But, funnily enough, it didn't matter because I had a great time last night. Kacoon had come with me, and she got along like gangbusters with Debi and everyone at the table.

One of the first things Kacoon heard was that Debi found out that her future husband was circumcised when they first met ... but she didn't find out his last name.

We were having such a good time the whole night, in fact, that we ended up talking long after we would've usually gone home. We did vagina impressions. We told parents-having-sex stories, sick-drunk stories and all that sort. Because I wasn't drinking cider and being obnoxious this time around, Michael the Artist doused my sweet tea with salt this time around.

That incident led me to putting a dash of salt in my hand and throwing it over my shoulder for luck, which would've been fine if there hadn't been people sitting right behind me.

The funniest moment of the night, though, came early.

For some reason, I was talking with Kacoon about the sheer number of cute guys that always manage to be at Joe's during trivia. Or something like that.

And it led me to randomly compliment myself on my post-London attitude.

"I've been feeling really good-looking lately," I said to Kacoon earnestly.

Midway through my self-aggrandizing statement, Debi burst into a fit of uncontrolled, high-pitched, lingering giggles.

I think my face turned red. Then, I started laughing.

"What was that?" I asked Debi. "Am I not good looking?"

She just kept laughing. And Kacoon started laughing.

People with permanent confidence, I imagine, don't say those kinds of things randomly.

Throughout the night, whenever talk would turn to me, the statement, "... who feels really good looking," would be added.

To concede, I offered to worsen my limp and regain the 15 pounds I'd lost, but Debi just told me that it was the joke-of-the-week regarding me, "like last time with the cider." So, apparently, this is a running thing.

Debi's son Ian saw fit to point out Jeff the Waiter several times to Kacoon, so she'd know the one I always flirt with or hit on, even though he acts completely retarded and talks like a pullstring kewpie doll.

"Jessika ... Jessika ... THIS IS JEFF," Ian kept saying to Kacoon, while Jeff was STANDING THERE, TAKING OUR PLATES. "Jessika ... this is the one he hits on ..."

My eyes almost fell out of their sockets, swear to God.

So, to not be completely embarassed, I introduced Jeff to Kacoon. And then, after he left, Kacoon proved that she did the best impression of his intentionally squeaky, slow-talking voice.

Later, I mocked Ian's behavior, calling him a "son of a bitch" in front of his mother.

Yeah, we're a fun group. The fact that I'm the target of most of the pranks and mockery, I think, is a good thing.

Next week, Nick the Cute Waiter is supposed to join us, which should prove to be even more fun.

Hmm ... I wonder if Nick will help me play a prank on Ian.

Disappearing, reappearing gay men.

I don't appear to have arthritis, first of all.

My left hip was X-rayed yesterday (after I waited in line with the hottest guy I've ever seen in my entire life and we compared our charts), and it appears that I don't have any bone damage. It's likely just muscle strain. The doctor is set to call me in a couple days with a full explanation after the photos are analyzed by a radiologist. But things look good.

So that's good.

American Express is going to send over a large man named Guido to my apartment if I don't get them a sufficient sum of money by the end of the week. So I had to talk to my mother about it, which was as emasculating as Guido could be, I guess.

On the plus side, I'm playing trivia tonight.

And two gay friends - for lack of a better term - that I knew a long time ago managed to find their way back onto my radar yesterday.

The first one was Snapshot, the almost-sorta friend I first met last July and remained in contact with until we had a falling out around August. He saw me online yesterday and said hello, asking me if I remembered who he was. I was blunt as I showed him that I did recall him. But, from that, we actually had a bit of a conversation. The next time I see him online, I will say hello ... something I would not have done before yesterday. So I guess that's progress.

The other guy I ran into yesterday was this cute guy named Jason McFall. He was at the Kroger near my house buying groceries. I was picking up some Bite-Sized Frosted Mini Wheats.

Jason and I go back about four years, sorta. A couple weeks before I left CNN, I met him at Phipps Plaza. (He said last night that I "cruised him" at the Doubleday Bookstore, and that's how we met. I most certainly did not. I do not "cruise.")

Jason and I have been through a long series of amusing, up-and-down, near-miss dates. I suppose we're friends, but, truth be told, I just kept passively persisting whenever I ran into him - at a mall, on an escalator, via returned phone call - because he never actually went on the date with me that he and I arranged four years ago. And, when I see him, I feel like there's a spark there. (Not sure if it's so much of a spark at this point, but it was fun to revisit that last night. I got his number for I've not called in a year and a half... and he's single once again, but to actually go on a date now just seems sorta ridiculous.)

So, anyway, it was funny to run across - more or less - some old friends.