An Anniversary of Sorts.

 
    Egads! 

    I am in one hell of a grumpy, sort of mood today, and as far as I can tell, it most likely has to do with a sociopath ex-girlfriend who has an odd way of making the holidays considerably more annoying than they really have to be.  Part of me misses her like crazy, and part of me is damn happy she's gone. 

    She's the kind of woman who, in order to figure out, it would require the same level of mental gymnastics and blazing acumen required for solving Einstein's Unified Field theory. 

    However, if I could bend time and space, I'd go back to that night almost seven years ago where I stood at her door with a bottle of Auslese in one hand and a finger hovering over the doorbell.  And, had I known then what I know now, I'd have left a note saying: "Sorry, honey.   I have a pretty good notion that you are utterly bat-shit crazy.  I do hope you understand."   Then, I'd have turned around and headed home to drink my bottle of wine and enjoy writing novels in my bachelorhood rather than enter into a relationship which was about as stable as a drunken monkey with a machine gun.

    Unfortunately, seven years ago I rang that bell, fell in love, and since then my life has been a swirling emotional maelstrom at the hands of this free-range female lunatic. 

    Anyway, the first go-'round with this crazy lady lasted about six months before she left me for a thirty-year-old, overweight, underachieving law-student (ick) who, as it turns out, had more fun playing Dungeons & Dragons with his buddies than he did spending time with her (eeeesh!). 

    I mean, seriously.  That's just wrong.  As crazy as the woman is, she still has much more to offer than some swarthy tart of a 15th level cleric --even a swarthy tart of a cleric with a +5 to save against Ogres (if you're into that sort of thing).  Even though she was as nutty as a box of squirrel turds, she was brilliant and beautiful to the point of making my retinas sizzle every time I saw her smile. 

    Nonetheless, at that time, I figured I'd step as far out of her life as I could.  However, six months later, she was back complaining and unloading the unbearable minutiae of her miserable life with the guy she left me for. 

    Fair?  Not really. 

    But, I did my best to be a kind and compassionate friend because, deep down, she could be a very nice person, and even though she's utterly bonkers, she and I had a certain inexplicable chemistry that just kept pulling us together. 

    Needless to say, the story only goes downhill from there with her getting married to her dungeon master, divorcing said geek, and taking up with me again only to once again dump me for the same damn knucklehead she dumped me for six and a half years ago. 

    Yup.  It's a real "Mr. Forehead meet Mr. Wall," sort of thing, don't you think?
  
    Will she be back?  It's very hard to say no.  But, I'm thinking I may just nudge back time a bit to seven years ago, and not push that doorbell should the opportunity present itself. 

    Then again, I have to admit, it certainly wasn't a tedious or boring relationship.  I mean, if those things are like work, what I had seems to be not entirely unlike a nice, precarious position in the bomb disposal unit.  Still though, the occasional thought of that maniac running through my mind is still enough to gum up my emotional wheels and cogs. 
   
-DP

Arrrgh!

    Hmmm...  It would seem that I spent some time writing a nice, long, pretty damn funny entry, and AOL ate it.  Way to go, folks! 

    Reminder:  Always hit Ctrl+a and Ctrl+c before hitting Save. 

Carry on, Citizens!

I Blame Canada For This...

    Good God, man!

    I suppose, on the plus side, it "feels like" a balmy minus three degrees, and not, say, minus six.  Yes.  Minus six would be too damn cold.  But, minus three?  I can handle that.  That's almost beach weather. 

    As you can see, the conditions are considered "fair."  In other words, they could be worse.  Of course, that doesn't help.  After all, waking up to this cold is a pretty good reason to start drinking whiskey for breakfast. 

    Moreover, I live in the "South."  Sure, it may be South Milwaukee, but it's at least south of something, and in my world, things are always warmer in the South.  After all, this isn't North Dakota where people step outside screaming and explode like saplings in the cold. 
   
    Oh well...  At least I can see ten miles.  And, I figure ten miles south of here, it probably feels like zero degrees --in other words, it feels like nothing.  I would like that.  It's not too hot; it's not too cold.  It's nothing. 

    Ack!  It's going to be a long winter...

-DP

"i thought you are work for aol."

    Apparently, my name is splattered all over the place to the point that I am now being confused for someone who actually works for AOL.  I don't.  And, I really don't envy those folks like Editor Jeff and Manager Stephanie who do work for AOL and get smacked around like a piñata every time something around here breaks (although, I will admit to occasionally having the fantasy of beating Jeff with a stick in the hopes of making candy come out, but that's another story). 

    Anyway, when I signed on this morning, I was greeted with the usual barrage of instant messages for me to ignore.  Usually, the spammers and MySpace trolls IM twice and go away, and, if someone IMs me more than three or four times, I'll open it up and see what it's all about.  And, one of the instant messages contained the line that is the title of this entry: "i saw your name online and i thought you are work for aol." 
   
    Obviously, I loved this person's odd choice of words and fractured grammar.  I really do want to be a total chore.

Tags: AOL Journals, Magic Smoke, StephanieBamBam, Instant Messages

Ahhh... Heat.

    DeafCat's not quite right.  She sleeps on top of her head on the hardwood floor in front of the heat.  I don't know how she can stand it, and when I try to pick her up, I almost need potholders to handle her. 

    In other cat news, DogCat seems to have gone missing.  He went out Thursday night before the blizzard, and I've not seen him since.  I did see some footprints in the snow, and it's not really unusual for him to disappear for a couple of days at a time.  But, I suppose I will have to call the animal lock-up to see if he's there if he doesn't show up by this afternoon. 

-DP

*update 11:40 am*    As I was lugging a bag of garbage out, a chattering black and white blur shot by me in the deep show, completely avoiding the shoveled sidewalk on his way to the back door of the house, and once inside, DogCat devoured everything in sight and went to bed without so much as a word as to where he'd been for the past two days. 

Some Snowy Pictures.

    Well, I finally got my new camera; unfortunately, I think it's going to take me a while to figure it all out. 

    Since I'm not a super-great photographer like Dorn (who takes awesome pictures, by the way), I just ordered a nifty little point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot.  It's kind of tiny, and light-years away from the utter coolness of my brother's new Nikon digital SLR.  But, I think it'll do the job and then some. 

    Anyway, since the camera didn't arrive until a couple of hours after sunset, and since there were the remnants of a blizzard which I wanted to snap some pictures of, I decided to take my beat-up little, old camera into the woods to snap some shots while I was out doing donuts in my Jeep (big fun, that).

    The city of Milwaukee wound up picking up about sixteen inches of a pretty, new snow, and so long as one stayed indoors, the forty-mile-per-hour wind wasn't an issue.  Outside, however, it was an exfoliation from hell with icy, little needles blasting my face. 

    On the plus side, not too far from my house is a good sized park with all sorts of perks.  Chiefly, it's a county park, and because of that, the roads are always kept tidy with hourly plowing and a copious seasoning of rock salt.  The city streets were essentially impassable, but, once in the park, it was as though it snowed a couple of days ago. 

   I think one of the things I really like about big snowstorms is how the snow piles upon the limbs and branches of the trees to create a wildly intricate lattice of a bright white silhouette where the trees once stood.

    The real bummer was that I couldn't drive down to the beach since they close it off.  However, one year, after a snowstorm, they did tinker with trying to plow it out, but, sadly, the dump-truck got to the bottom of the hill, and couldn't get back up.  Then, plans were made, and a rescue attempt was launched to retrieve the stranded hunk of city equipment.  The city bravely sent down another dump truck with its plow scraping the snow from the road, and when two city workers lumbered their way up the hill on foot from the beach, it became clear that not only would it be a little more difficult plowing the snow from now on, but those trucks were probably going to be parked down there until spring.  

    Anyway, it's been a long day of shoveling, shoveling, and let's see...  more shoveling.  But, before I call it a night, here's what will probably be the last picture I take with my poor old Olympus (which is good because it started to get a little wonky by this time):

-DP

Hmm...

    We've got a lot of snow here.  Anyone want it?  It's free, and all you have to do is come and get it.  You can turn your entire town into a winter wonderland for Christmas.  The children will thank you, and they won't grow up to be criminals. 

    On the plus side, apparently my camera is on a truck and headed this way --somehow. 

    Oy!  What a mess...

-DP