And the dates continue

Happy 8th year anniversary at the Bar to me! This is one of those dates you wish you could forget as well just like my former good friend's birthday.

But I am good with dates, even dates that shouldn't mean a thing. I just grasp them. I sometimes try to remember the last time I thought my life was a good idea. That abandoning everything I knew and choosing to grasp the wind was a good idea. I always get so pensive this time of the year.
This month is filled with pensive anniversaries that I should try to forget.

First KR, my former good friend, and now my call-to-Bar anniversary.

Funk Continues

Funk continues. I am once again in a funk today. It's been a so-so week. Another week where I try to do maintain some effort as if I understand what the heck I am doing, hoping no one would notice. It's been working so far. However, my week last week was not so great, especially my weekend.

My brother and his wife came over to spend the week with me. My brother used to be so much fun, so lively, so funny, until he hooked up with this woman. Now it's like he is someone I don't know. Not necessarily someone I am too fond of. His habits have changed to her habits and her habits are not so great and he doesn't even try to talk her out of the bad habits.

It's a long story trying to summarize these habits, but for example I shall put in my weekend. On Friday night we went out, met up with a couple of my friends who I always hang out with for drinks just like we do every couple of weeks when we get paid. Particularly my friend T, whom I have met up with a couple of times, had dinner with her, enjoyed good food, good conversation and good wine with her and have always had a blast, even in the worst restaurants. But on this night it wasn't that great. One person, being my sister in law was sitting at the end of the table, squeezing her face all evening. So much so, my friends started to ask her if she was having fun. She responded that she was, but you know she was lying. I don't know if she was feeling threatened by all these beautiful ladies, or she was just being anti-social. She just sat there and ate some of the food, rejected the wine and frowned her face all through. I was just so pissed. The evening cost me $75, which you know I don't have, and one person had to be the sour puss all through. It was just irritating. I should have just left her at home.

We ended up attempting a couple of places, and we had the worst luck trying to recreate the fun I have often had with my friend T. The last place we attempted to try and stir up some last minute fun, was just bad news from the moment we walked in. They gave us an out of reach table, poured us half a glass of wine and gave us bad pizza. We turned back the wine even after speaking to the manager but the pizza I had to pay for and it was just annoying. I just couldn't have fun at all. I had more fun drinking martinis by myself on my birthday than I had that night. We drove home and drank some of my stale Chardonnay and called it an evening. I know if it was just my brother and I along with my friends, we would have had more fun, he would have been up for a good time, but he had to cater to her needs, her disgruntled, self-absorbed needs and it just put a damper on my evening.

To top it off (you think I would have learned my lesson, right?) we went to enjoy a nice Italian dinner on Saturday and she just sat there, shaking her head at how much she hates Italian. She ate the starter loaf of bread with the sauce and that was it and rejected the classic Rigatoni Chicken. Not because it was fattening or sickening, just a personal taste. My brother asked me why I didn't take them to Cheesecake Factory like I did last time, and I told him point blank it was too expensive. I was not in the mood to spend another $75 -still recovering from the one from last night which I failed to enjoy, No thank you to your wife.

I keep sitting here thinking of all the things I could have used that money for, I could have put it to better use. But instead I tried to entertain someone who cannot be entertained, she just wants to spend her whole life cuddled up with my brother and not have to deal with the outside world. God I hope I don't get like that with Mr. Right.

Birthday Memories

Today is one of my oldest friend's birthday. I say that even knowing that we are no longer friends. We are not enemies. We just have not spoken to each other in a long time. She is married and has a daughter (possibly 2) now and so our paths have gone in opposite directions, so much so, I do not know her new last name. She never told me. She also never told me her daughter's name. But I still remember her birthday. How is that? I bet you she remembers mine, and still refuses to call.

Women cannot essentially remain friends unless they have a common ground: single, married, married with kids, vacation together, work together, in the same profession, pursuing the same profession, etc. There has to be that common thread unless the friendship cannot be sustained. and once one of them leaves that common ground and moves into another, she starts to attract friends from the new interest and the friends from her old interest or status quo just quickly fade away. That's what happened to my friendship with this girl. And then you remember little things, like your birthdays, and graduation days (which we had in common because we both got called to Bar at the same time) and sometimes phone numbers. And pretty much nothing else. Slowly, it becomes a figment of your imagination, something that dwells in the past.

Why would you say?

I am just in a funk today. I partially know why. Family issues, melodrama with people you love and trust acting like helping you is killing them. But on another note, we had an office potluck breakfast. The attorneys brought in breakfast food to thank us for putting in so much work last month. I had no idea we did all that. It just seems like every time we have events in my office I am just irritated. I try to like the people I work with, but I cannot seem to. Maybe it's the job-hopping that has left me without regard for the people I work with knowing that in a little bit I will be leaving them. But the funny thing is I didn't feel this way about the people at my old job. But the one before that, I had pretty much the same irkiness about them. So I don't know what it is.

So I feast on the sweets to try and get me out of this mood.

Plays vs. Concerts

I went to see The Women of Brewster Place on Friday at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. It was good. I hoped it would be good and it did not disappoint. It was a very minimal production. No fancy stage sets or special effects, the costumes were about the only really expensive thing about the production. There wasn't a star among the actors (Jenifer Lewis?!), but yet they each brought in their own piece to give the play the cultural impact it needed. The only criticism is with the ending. 

From what I remember of the movie, they brought down that wall in the end, in the play not so much, and as I haven't read the book, I cannot judge that. I just wish it ended with as much Ooomph! as it had when it ended the first half. The first half had so much of an impact, than the 2nd half which throughly switched gears and focused on the two lesbian lovers and not as much continuation of the plot lines that it had so carefully exposed in the first half. But that song that closed the first half, almost had me in tears, and you know I don't cry at movies. So that was my Friday night. Then, I went out with my girlfriend and this gentleman bought us a huge shot of Patron and was wasted m0re than I care to remember. I never stagger. but this time I did. Good thing I was walking home as opposed to driving in a moving vehicle. With all that excitement on Friday, plus I finally got my DSL cable, internet and phone installed at home, I did nothing exceptional for the rest of the weekend. I had kinda outspent myself. Just sat home, watched the overblown and hugely disappointing Britney Spears performance, and roasted some chicken.

But this play is going to be the last one until next year. I have used plays to suppress my concerts this year. I can't tell which one is more expensive. Concerts cost $50 upwards, and you may or may not pay for parking and the concert is always good. If nothing more, the high power energy of the crowd just gets you off your seat and screaming. But plays cost $25 upwards, less would be lousy seats. You always pay for parking (even though I somehow managed for the first time to get out of it this Friday) and the play may or may not be good. I've had 3 out of 5. (I saw Mama Mia in Vegas)

I was hoping to go for an opera type event this year, something Shakespearean, so if the price is right with those I may squeeze that in before the end of the year. I have only been to an opera once, and it was good.

The 43rd Year

I've been wanting to write. But I don't know what to say. It's not like I don't feel anything, or I have stopped thinking about him. I have not. Thankfully. I think about him more just before his birthday and on the day of. I cannot wean myself off this man. Not at all. It's more of a reserved, words cannot express what it is I feel composure that comes over me, and for the 43rd year, I still feel the same. Even in my quiet today I have wondered, what is he doing, is he having fun, dining alone, with loved ones, having sex, laughing his head off, or just sitting wondering, smoking, taking in the day, and thinking softly, "What do I do, what can I do?" It's the 43rd year of his life, and I still feel the same. There are times when I feel maybe my love will take a break, take a breather, and I won't feel the same, then I remember the gentle feeling that cuts through me when I see him, when he speaks, when I hear the mere mention of his name, and then I think this is not going to stop. Do I want it to stop? This is what I am and it remains with me.

Hey you, if you love when you love, hope she is something like me, even if it's just a little. It will make me feel better about this unrequited love that has stayed with me longer than I've known, it's made me compare the real ones to you and how they fail to come close. Hope she comes close. And if you stop to wonder today, who am I and wonder if anyone ever really remembers that it's my birthday today, or what is my mission, or all those useless things that our minds cause us to wonder on our birthday, just stop and think, there's someone out of your reach, thinking simply, just thinking, wondering, why for the 43rd year, she can't seem to quit you.

It's the 43rd year. Do you know where your crush is? Mine is 43 today and to that I say Happy Birthday KR? For that which you are, you will always remain, an obsession to me, so much so.