gah. i am such a putz. i have no game whatsoever. none.

the girl here at work that i've got a crush on was out having a cigarette break when me and my buddies were out there, and when she left she left her lighter and smokes where she was sitting. my group manager picked 'em up and brought 'em to me. stuck 'em in my pocket and basically told me that it was up to me to return them to her. he said that she "left them on purpose."

so, what do i do when i find her, i walk up to her with the cigarettes held in front of me like a shield. her response, "oh, did i leave those? i guess i was in a hurry to get out of here." i think i paused for a half-second after she said "thank you," and i'd said "you're welcome." then i turned around and walked back up the stairs. so much for that opportunity.

guess i'll have to locate those balls i seem to have misplaced. i know they're around here somewhere.

meanwhile, thousands of miles away from the hall of justice, our hero's gentle chiding seems to have paid off. the lovely sharon has posted not once, but twice. and, she's also gotten a comments feature set up as well. s'funny cause just the other night, brian was telling me "hey, we should try to put dotcomments or blogvoices or something on our site" (which, of course, doesn't mean we at all, but me). well, it's an interesting idea, perhaps i'll get to it when i have a spare moment.

oh, and my sister has officially laid claim to all my "cool" stuff in the event of my death. hate to tell ya sis, but i don't think paul's going to be able to kill me with a little weekly run. now, if he tried to make me run for two hours straight, then yeah, we might have a problem. but i think i'm doing pretty well, considering i haven't exercised on any kind of regular basis since like '92.

well, another day goes by without revealing myself to my crush. of course, my manager also revealed some information he'd dug up unbeknownst to me, but on my behalf. she apparently "has a boyfriend," but would "be interested" to hear that i'm interested in her. what exactly the hell all this means, i don't know. the big question would be, do i have a shot, or not. why the hell would i even approach a girl who has a boyfriend? do i want another female friend? no, not necessarily. i'm quite happy with the friends i have, and they're hard enough to manage (that's in a good way, guys). i don't need another. i'm definitely looking for more than a friend.

ah well, i'll work up the courage eventually. i hope.

hump day again, folks, and today it really is comics day. (last week's was postponed 24 hours on account of easter).

for some reason, it seems like the weeks have just been flying by lately… there's no break, no pause. perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that i keep myself busy doing meaningless stuff on the computer or hanging out with friends. i really need to get out of the house more. at the very least, i'm hoping to start taking my laptop with its freshly charged batteries out on the back deck and doing some writing when i get home from work in the evenings.

BTW, thank the great oogly-moogly for bartelby.com.

so, this weekend was pretty fun, except for the fact that the instigator of the supposedly two-day affair bailed out by calling the Wicked Witch of the West (his bitch girlfriend) around midnight or so and leaving with her. i swear if she didn't owe him almost 2 grand, i'd kick her ass to the curb myself and lock him in his room without his phone for a week.

but, nevertheless, while people where there, the party was pretty damned fun, me happily prepping and grilling the food, and later climbing up on top of the garage with everyone else, me with a half-glass of whiskey in my hand that brian insisted i drink (since he was kind enough to bring the bottle with him when he came), and all of us hooting and hollering at what was at best an average fireworks display.

having finished yet another accelerated development project here at work, i've had a little time today to get back to reading some of my favorite blogs. puffin-a-go-go's a given since we spend and obscene amount of time together (y'know, being buddies and all), and there's also sharon (who hasn't updated in a couple days… much like yours truly), and my favorite sister whose most recent post has a long and funny story tacked onto the end. sara (my sister) has been trying really hard to keep a daily routine going with her blog, despite being horribly overworked. but, y'know, as i like to explain it, she may be horribly overworked, but she's horribly overworked in FRANCE. and finally, a post from a few days ago on murmur where tim serves up what is a really great metaphor in general, and really great for the way i myself have been feeling for a while now… except i'm still stuck in the "lost my keys" stage.

oh, and on Sunday, i went through the whole ordeal of reinstalling windows yet again, in an attempt to stabilize my system, which really can never work since i'm running on windows. perhaps i should just say screw it and learn me some linux.

the good: tomorrow is the day the puffin and i go up to st. louis for my much anticipated Amiga convention… amazingly enough, the first i'll ever have attended. i've always wanted to go to the st. louis con, but never seemed to be able to afford it. well, now i'm in a little better place financially, though i still seem to have a non-paying roommate on my hands. so anyway, big announcements are expected, but mainly i'm going up there to have a little fun and maybe get some new computer equipment to finally fix up that Amiga 1200 i was bragging about a few months ago. i'm not sure if we'll have net access up in the hotel up there, but if we do, we'll try to keep you posted on our blood/alcohol level.

oh, and as paul mentioned in his blog, he's burned an MP3 cd for our trip, so i've basically got a 10 hour puffin mixed tape to look forward to hearing. i've never known him to build a bad mix tape.

the bad: well, it's official. she's moved in. we got home from dinner tonight and lo and behold there's a moving van out front of the house of the formerly ugly orange doors. we had the pleasure of seeing "idiot jerk" walk out of the house to the moving van… er, well, brian and paul had that pleasure. i was trying to just kind of ignore the whole thing, lest i do something rash. brian however, took great pleasure in glaring menacingly at "idiot jerk" until we got the front door open. i'm pretty certain that without any of us doing anything outright, the guy will certainly know that he's not welcome in my neighborhood.

but, as i said, i'm trying not to think about it, and though i did feel that little pang of… i don't know… maybe jealousy… or something, and though i do know that at some point, i am most certainly going to freak out about this, i'm doing fine right now.

brian asked me the other day if i was "freaking out" because of her return. my response was that, no, i'm not freaking out right now, but i will most likely be freaking out in a big way if/when she moves in next door and i'm forced to see her (or even just her car) on a regular basis. i already find myself glancing up to the porch of that house, or glancing toward the windows to see if there're any lights on inside. thankfully, i've noticed no moving van outside, and haven't seen her car yet. plus, she hasn't called me back, so the possibility exists that she may not have actually signed the lease, and may not be moving in. we can only hope.

this past weekend was actually a fun one for me. a friend from my old job (hawley-cooke, whose web site i created and maintained for almost a year before they kicked me off the project and let it go to complete and utter shit by hiring someone who has no clue what he's doing) came by on Saturday evening, i guess around 6pm to drag me out up and down bardstown road, and into various drinking establishments. we walked up and back (probably 2 miles or so), then stopped in at a little bar near my house and had appetizers and microbrewed beer (probably one too many). then we set out again, walked even farther down bardstown road ('til it turned into baxter ave.) then turned around and walked part of the way back until we got to another bar, where we went in to warm up and… drink more beer.

at this point, she was pretty drunk, and i wasn't exactly straight sober either. we walked back to the house (mind you, this is like 6 hours later) hoping to find paul and brian still awake so that we could all make the traditional saturday drunkfest trip to the twig. fortunately for us, we showed up just as paul was getting ready to go home, and he happily obliged us by driving (even though he complained that we only wanted him for his soberness and ability to drive). needless to say, we were all having a grand time (despite the fact that ms. nicole seemed about to die from hypothermia), and the louisville paul brown (that's the food-stuff, not the person) never seemed so satisfying.

after the twig, we decided to extend the evening at paul's house (since nicole still had to sober up enough to drive home) and paul stopped for some spirits in hopes of joining us in our altered state. we all gathered in the upstairs living room and talked and carried on for a while with nicole falling asleep after about an hour. paul & i continued our normal drunken philosophizing and meandering conversation until she finally woke up and paul decided it was time to send us on our way.

all in all, it was a very nice, enjoyable evening spent with friends.

then sunday was laundry day. mmm, clean clothes.

she's back. again.

what do i see when i get home from work and check the caller id but "idiot jerk"'s name. i still haven't checked to see if she left a message, but she unfortunately called again just as i was finishing dinner. apparently, she's been apartment hunting, in my neighborhood. she was just calling to let me know that she was possibly signing a lease tomorrow for an apartment in the house next door to mine. the conversation was merely polite, i didn't offer anything more than answers to her questions even though the tone in her voice suggested she wouldn't mind a more in depth chat.

now, if only may would hurry up and get here.

this will be hell.

where to begin?

the last week at work has been rather… interesting, to say the least. the roosters are crowing while the little chicks and hens are just kind of nervously clucking and hopping about. top that off with my aforementioned bout with near-deathly illness (that being a rather nasty head-cold), by the time friday rolled around, i was ready to just kind of kick back and enjoy the weekend. i got an invitation from some co-workers to go out and wind down with a little drinkage after the workday, and, for once, had actually agreed (if somewhat reluctantly) to go. so, 10 minutes before i'm getting ready to head out, brian finally pops up on AIM, and i tried to find out if he and paul had any immediate plans for the evening of which i should be made aware. in other words, if they were actually planning on going out and doing something fun, i was going to ditch my work buddies and tag along with my homies. if, on the other hand, it was friday business-as-usual–no defined plans, except just taking the night as it comes–i'd go ahead and get my drink on with the corvus crowd.

so, here i am, wanting only one thing — a definitive answer as to whether or not he and paul had anything planned. what i got was some half-baked crap about "having something good planned" for me specifically, and that i would "definitely like it." i'm not sure if they could tell by my snappy responses, but i was actually getting very frustrated at them for being so damned evasive. i got this vague idea in the back of my head that maybe this had something to do with sharon, as i vaguely recalled some conversation we'd had almost a month ago about the possibility of her coming through town in the near future. and also, i figured that both brian and paul know how much she means to me, and that she'd pretty much be the only person for whom i'd consider changing my plans. their mutual assertions that it would be "worth it," and paul's "trust me," pretty much cinched it for me. (of course, i think that until they read this, they're still under the impression that i was completely hoodwinked.)

and sure enough, moments after i got home (having noticed that the front door was suspiciously unlocked), who should come up the stairs but sharon herself, in all her radiant beauty. i don't know how many of you have ever actually had a "frown turned upside down" in the space of two heartbeats, but i can authoritatively say that it does happen. we spent the next few hours just hanging out and talking, having a good time. i finally got to meet the boyfriend that i've heard so much about, and having met him and gotten to know him a little, i have to grudgingly give him my approval. well, you know, not that that really matters. but it's like i told him as they were leaving… "you better take good care of her, 'cause i don't want to have to hurt you."

sharon and i shared a couple whiskey shots, chased with some really flat coke (which, i realized, is one way that i can actually do whiskey shots, lord help us) and chatted briefly down in the kitchen, before rejoining the rest of the boys upstairs. all in all, it was a low-key visit, but a very welcomed one. i'm always happy to talk to sharon, and obviously so much happier to actually get to see and spend time with her. but i'm greedy, i wish she (yes, and grant as well) could have stayed a little longer, hung out, maybe had a big crazy night drinking, bowling, and carrying on. maybe we'll be able to do that when i go visit them in sunny cali. we'll go show those little hollywood bums how to really party.

wow, is it that time already? time for the weekly post from matt? oh, how far i've fallen.

thankfully though, it's nice to see that my sister, my best friend, my partner ( over there my favorite girl are all better at this than i am. despite my sister's newly overbearing workload (and the fact that she doesn't have access to the net from her home in the suburbs of Paris) she still manages to post on a regular basis. paul, despite his new computer and subsequent addictions to OmniComics and instant messaging, is still managing to post almost every day. brian, despite numerous hours doing those things that brian does, posts practically every day. and sharon (who's name i can now use, with her blessing, since she's decided to forgo the whole anonymity/hiding behind a persona thing), despite her apparently constant need to change her site's design and where she's hosting it, is also posting on a more frequent basis than yours truly. and she's also baking me brownies. did i mention that i'm still completely in love with this girl?

but it seems like, between busy times at work, fights with webcams, system wipes & reinstalls, and extended hold-out-until-my-eyes-dry-up-from-lack-of-sleep battles with House Ordos and House Harkonnen, i should be able to find some time, somewhere, to update this blog. it seems like it, but it's apparently not true. "we try to resist keptin… he put creatures… into our bodies… makes us do tings." but not "tings" like updating a blog.

i'm not exactly sure why that star trek reference is relevant, but i've not made one in years, and somehow felt it would fit. so sue me.

anyway, so i did finally manage to reinstall windows on my machine at home, get it back up and running, and "glory be!" the webcam seems like it may actually work correctly this time. i hope. of course, i forgot to take it to work with me today, so you don't get to see my practically immobile self sitting in my cube for 8 hours today.

and finally, today is the official last day of the redesign bipolar before we do! contest, so if you're working on an entry, you've got until 12:00 AM tonight to get it in. we've got a couple entries so far, and they're both pretty durn good. i can't wait to show 'em to ya. i think we'll have a few bugs to work out before we get the things up (after judging is done), but barring unforeseen circumstances or acts of god, we should at least have screenshots of all the entries up by the "no later than" winner announcement deadline of 9:00 PM on Monday evening.

12:00 AM tonight, Friday night, the 23rd. remember. and if you've got an idea but haven't even started on it yet, no problem, we're accepting any entry, from the most fully developed online bipolar "portal" site to the most hastily-drawn badly-scanned concept sketch you can come up with. so do it. 12:00 AM. that's midnight. Friday. don't forget. 12:00AM. twelve-o'clock. when the big hand and the little hand are both pointing up (for you analog people) and the sky is dark. that's the deadline.

well, this past week has been a big pile of crap. i still haven't managed to get my sleeping schedule into any kind of reasonable order, and my entire life seems to have been suffering. i can barely stay awake at work, my productivity level has dropped considerably, and i've just generally felt horrible the entire time. why do i always do this to myself… i mean, it's not like i've never treated myself this way before. it's cyclical… i'll do well for a while but always eventually end up running myself into the ground.

to top it all off, brian bought Dune 2000 last weekend in hopes that he & paul & i could play some networked games, and the damn thing has sucked out my will to live. for the last four nights, this game has contributed significantly to my loss of sleep. combined with the fact that the nice new web cam i bought has been fucking up since Tuesday night and i've been spending several hours almost every day since trying to get it working again. hopefully i'll be able to spend some time on it tomorrow so that you can all watch the exciting events a casa de bipolar.

speaking self-referentially of bipolar as i was, i should now point out that we now have our first official entry into the redesign bipolar before we do! contest. i've sworn to both paul and brian that our first contestant (who's apparently in the process of moving her site again) will not get preferential treatment from me. but it looks really nice, so anybody else planning to enter better have their shit together.

argh. thank god the weekend's finally here. i've been so damned tired all day today. i could barely keep my eyes open at work, and i think i was grumpy and uncooperative occasionally. sleeping 4 – 6 hours a night just doesn't cut it, and i seem to do the same damn thing every week–get home from work, and have the best intentions of getting into bed and asleep at a decent time. but, like i said in my last post, i have been making great strides with personal projects, so i guess it's not as bad as it could be. though really, i'd be much more accepting of my inability to get to sleep at a decent hour if a female was involved…

which, at least on thursday night, was almost true. i got a call from mi amor and we had a wonderful long conversation. it was so nice to hear her voice again… she and i have been away from each other for many many years, after i went off to college, then she went to college in a different state, and now… she's moved all the way over to the (as brian likes to say) "left coast." needless to say, it's a rare treat for me to actually get to talk to her. and the sound of her voice and her laughter still resonates within and lifts my spirits.

my sister has been so busy with her new duties at work that we've hardly had a chance to IM each other over the past couple weeks, and she's apparently had very little time to update multiliterate as well. i'd kind of gotten used to being able to talk to my sister across the ocean, and to read about her interesting experiences in the city of love, i really miss it now. well, here's hoping that she hits her stride with the new job and manages to wrangle some time to update.

in contest news, paul has answered the "redesign bipolar before we do" challenge. he hasn't told us his ideas yet, but i'm sure they're going to be good. but don't let that sway you from entering… paul may be one of my bestest friends in the world, but that don't mean his redesign's going to get any slack from me come judgement day. and we're even talking about the possibility of setting up multiple versions of bipolar… if we get enough good designs, we may eventually set it up so you can choose your favorite. rest assured, we will declare a winner even if we have to drag a wino in off the streets to break a tie.
so… enter the contest damn you.

oh, and i've added a "judging" section and a parenthetical statement to "rule" #1 on the contest page. if you're planning to enter, or are already working on a design, you might want to check the additions… they aren't changes, just clarifications.

well, just got back from dinner with my father. he picked the Irish Rover, which was great for me, since it's probably my absolute favorite restaurant of all those on the list. overall, it was a good dinner (the food was excellent, as usual), even though we did get the evil waitress from hell. to be honest, i'm surprised she's still working there, she obviously hates it. she was much better this time out, but then again, how could she have been any worse? needless to say, we got out of there before the whole paying the bill / leaving a tip thing came up. but i did get a particular pleasure out of relating the entire story (minus the fact of paul & brian's drunkenness during the events) to my dad, since it at least gave us something to talk about… which leads me to my next observation…

i am too much like my father. i think, all these years, i've blamed my almost morbid quietude in social situations on the fact that the majority of my friends in high school were people who loved to hear themselves talk. i was the kid who could almost never get a word in edgewise. but now, after hanging with my dad this evening, i'm beginning to think it may simply be paternal emulation. getting a conversation started with my dad tonight was like pulling teeth.

me:  "uh. so, uh. how's things?"

how's things!? what the hell kind of question is that to ask your father? and, of course, my father's response:

him: "oh… good. y'know." (or something along those lines)

me:  "… … cool."

<< side note: paul just called me out last night on the phone. he pointed out that i almost always answer any statement or question with just one word — "cool." (in a kind of dull monotone) > >

well, after several false starts, we did hit a few almost good conversations in there, the main one being when he informed me that, when i was four and the family was planning to move to Kentucky, my primary apprehension about the move was… indians. yep, indians, i was apparently afraid that Kentucky, that vague forest-land was teeming with wild, violent, Daniel Boone, Bill Custer at Little Big Horn type indians. and really, i think this is possibly the most important thing my father has ever told me since i moved out of the house and went to college, because, get this, my earliest memory of a childhood dream was about indians attacking our house and the little old lady who gave my sister and i milk and cookies.

well, now i think i understand that dream a little better. obviously it was some kind of anxiety dream about moving to Kentucky.

another conversation we got on was the life decisions issue. it kind of saddened me to hear that there are several things in my dad's life that he sometimes wishes he'd done differently. the only one he specifically mentioned was moving to Princeton. i can't help but wonder if some of the others have anything to do with me. as i've told several of my friends when we've gotten on similar topics, there is only one thing i really regret in my life–the horrible way i mishandled the breakup with the girl who i seem to be mentioning quite a bit lately. that whole situation is probably the only thing i'd go back and change if given a chance.

altogether, i guess it was one of the better father/son hang-out sessions we've had, despite the absurd conversational difficulties. probably the best part was that i got to take him to dinner. normally, he pays for dinner, then slips me a twenty before he leaves. this time, i paid for dinner, and he didn't slip me the twenty… it was liberating, and it just felt good.

in other family news, my sister has been so completely enthralled by the wondrous adventure that is bipolar, she had to go and start her own little weblog. at this point, i've given her a couple days to get into the groove, so go check it out. she's currently living in france, so perhaps she'll be able to expose us all to a little culture… or at least teach us how to say dirty words in french. oh, and that's multi – literate, not mult – illiterate or some such. she's quite the intellectual.

damn. two longish posts in one day… what's up with that?