Don't tell me that part of the story

Rode hard and put up wet, I ain't down but I can't get up yet It's a long ride back to the way I want to feel

Sun down across the plain, I've been sore before I'll be sore again No place to hide to keep from runnin'

Happy birthday to thechuck_2112 and my brother, The Hot Dog Man. AIM him birthday wishes @ THEgianthotdog.

Monday mornings are when we pick up the scattered pieces of a long weekend. My weekend, well, let's say there's a lot of pieces in a lot of places, and it's gonna make for a whole lot of sweeping. First off, to the individual I was text-messaging last night: what I was trying to say is that when I get into my neighborhood, I lose mobile signal and my calls get forwarded to my home phone, so to call me when you got home. So I didn't get your last three messages until this morning when I went to work. Thus I didn't call, and I pretty much ended passing out on the sofa by 10:00. I hope your last message was just cutesy-angry and not actually being pissed, but if you were/are, I'm really sorry and will call you tonight.

That having been said, is there anything hotter than flirting via text message? Or just flirting in general. I'd forgotten what that was like.

So, yeah, the problem with spending 72 hours in an alcoholic haze is not necessarily the lost memories, but the removal of location and time context from the event memories. So while it was only 36 hours ago that I was giving someone my phone number, it might as well have been months. Did Dave and I actually get lost driving back to the Hangout? That was Saturday? This pizza in my fridge... when did I make it? Also, apparently, the deejay on 93.3 (the popular music station in this town) was talking about me this weekend. Some of my students heard it. I guess he saw the show, and was talking about my being the funniest part? Seriously, if anyone else heard this, tell me. They weren't very descriptive about whatever the deejay was talking about -- or is it the dude who deejays the Hangout? Does he know me? Everything is such a blur.

In any case, I'm fortunate to have friends that love me so much as to throw that much booze at me -- but I'm unfortunate to have lost the sense of personal responsibility to say "no" occasionally. Somehow, I spent the years of 20-25 in pretty mature behavior patterns. The minute I got to Florida, I regressed. I'm not going to say that I'm just "making up for lost years" because there's nothing that can justify my irresponsibility. But, then, I'm supposed to learn from my Mondays, picking up those pieces of the night.

Yet I'm sore and exhausted and even ten hours of sleep time resulted in little more than a bizarre dream punctuated by waking up every 20 minutes or so... the dream came in chunks and spaces but the details are somewhat along these lines:

I am upstairs in my house. It's raining. There are people there, but I don't know them. Except Darrell, the guy who plays Joseph in my show. He's there. And the USF game is about to begin, but I don't know why I'm not going to the game. My parents are there, and they're cooking. Something. They have a celing fan with about 40 settings and I'm baffled as to how to turn it off. The switches fold back and in and amongst themselves. My house has an open courtyard, then, and Darrell is trying to find our downspouts, but we don't really have any. Water just pours off our roof.

We're off to a train station, where they have complimentary sodas, but it's all cherry or grape or orange soda. I have 1/4-full bottle of Svedka vodka in my hand, and I'm seeking orange soda to make the drink that I'll forever refer to as an "Eb's Basement." We're on the train, now, but I'm with different people, and it's an hour ride to wherever we're going.

But now I'm riding in a car, in some exotic island locale. And we're taking these roads behind businesses or houses that have tall, thin, dark men standing sentry outside them. And now we're on a boat, heading to a secret island, though it's one I'm well-familiar with. It's some famous island that doesn't belong to any country-- but we're coming up on this gleaming institution that is, apparently, some Chinese governmental building. And my friends and I, well, we're agents, of some sort, secret agents except I'm not a secret agent. We need picture ID to enter the building, and I have my old prison ID. But another member of my group, and all of a sudden it's Jeanine (kinky_carpet's mom) but she doesn't have any ID on her for some reason. So they give us these gift bags, and I'm sitting there with someone else, eating these little cookies and crackers and peanut butter. Everyone else goes into the building to see whatever secret hoopla the Chinese have going on. So while I'm eating, crazy shiat goes down, and I escape, and I jump into the ocean, or South China Sea, wherever we are. and now I'm driving back on that highway, and there's a LION in the road, and I swerve to avoid the Lion, and now I have to decide whether or not to go back to that Chinese place, or ...

and now I'm in someone else's apartment, and this guy has a gun, but it's not a gun, but, yes, it is a gun. And I pretend to be one of the secret agents I was with, but terrified because I know no hand-to-hand combat. So I use this guy's bathroom and I can't control my pee, it's going all over the place, and it's brown. So the real secret agents are on the other side of the door, waiting to kill me, but I just came in here to get my cell phone back.