sappy post for the year - phantom kiss

<SAPPINESS> ok, so last night, i had a strange, if not short, dream. i was with someone of the female persuasion, and i can think of no reason why it was her. we were at the wimbledon tennis competitions at some sort of log cabin-ish thing. the dream was very to the point. i was holding her, we were about to kiss, she asked "why?", i said "just for fun" (i'm such a salesman, even in my dreams). she said "what if it's more than fun?" to which i replied "no worries, that doesn't happen to me", and we kissed. then we noticed my mom and he mom walking up the steps to the cabin so we bolted in separate directions... and i woke up. here's the sappy part.

i've not been lucky enough to kiss someone in a long time, but even that dream kiss cheered me up. it was fun. blah blah blah, yeah i know. so, what i'm saying to you is, if you are lucky enough to have someone around to kiss romantically, next time you see your sig fig, take a little extra time to enjoy it. i fear it becomes a bit too standard. a kiss while you're running out the door or a peck before going to bed. your heart isn't REALLY into it, it's just part of the daily routine. the next few times, before it becomes routine again, just take a few extra seconds and put some feeling into it, make it a little more special. for those of you who aren't so lucky, i wish i could help you, you can join my "hating on couples" support group every day at beer-thirty. j/k.

</SAPPINESS>

the storm

again, with my goofy metaphors. i'm still so tired. work is hectic, the schedule is pushed beyond it's breaking point, and some of us are as well. yesterday, i told our friends/colleagues onsite that jules and i have broken up. it was tough, but jules wanted it to be done. i didn't really care one way or the other. i didn't get into the details, just that we ran in to a problem we couldn't resolve. they're supportive, offering even to find me a filipino girlfriend. hah. we are doing this in a strange manner, but it's being done as professionally as possible in relation to our work relationships.

in other news, i'm still adjusting to my hair. it does some CRAZY things all by itself. i'll have to get a pic when it's wet. maybe i'll turn this blog into a new haircut modeling blog. jeez.

so... now i can see the storm, it's not very far off at all. later tonight and tomorrow, it will hit. my one main switch is taking it's time getting in position, but i'm confident it will in time. i can feel it moving, and it has to, that's what this is all about. tonight, i'm going out with TheMech and TheSiteLead to blow off some steam. we have to work tomorrow so it can't be insane, but substantial. i was thinking of staying home and just catching up on sleep, but i know it wouldn't come so easily without some help, so i guess you could say i'm being proactive. 4.5 hours before i get to leave and deal with the storm head on. i'm anxious, scared, sick, and mildly accepting of this task.

i'm done writing for now. check here and ZUMEL for the updates.

happy birthday to my friends, TheEJ (a day late) and TheJaneAnn (today).

support

thanks to everyone for the support, advise, calling me a dumbass... i need it, keep it up. i'm hearing you, i'm just not sure i'm listening.

as much as i can't be motivated to do anything extraneous lately, i have an R&R coming up. jules and i pushed it out originally to the end of october. she thinks i need to get away, she needs some room too. my head hates the idea since she's been gone over a month already, but maybe i need to do something. i'll talk to the site lead about moving i up a bit, if possible. TheJay and his wife were thinking about going to ireland for the labor day weekend. it may be too late for me to try that, and i haven't heard confirmation of whether they're going or not. TheSwedishChefDave invited me to france for a bit, a good college friend invited me to ATL, but i can't go to the states right now, getting my federal income tax refund is more important than mental health right now. any other ideas? anyone wanting to meet me in europe or egypt in the next few weeks? come on, i know SOMEONE wants to. let me know.

treading water

i'm doing things lately that i need to do in order to get by, and in the morning, i hate that i did them. the time wasted on them was inordinate. not enough hours in the day, and i waste so many. not enough days in this life we have, and i waste so many. i need to replace that which i do to get by, but i can't think of a suitable replacement. it wasn't supposed to be like this.

cliff's notes for just about every heartbreak poem ever

right now i want to:
          go home, go to sleep
          walk away
          kiss her
          hold her
          kill him
          scream at her
          fix her
          get fucked up
          get REALLY fucked up
          beat something
          cut something
          make her understand
          talk to her about everything she hasn't
          take a few days off with her
          make love to her, make her forget
          show her how good it is, how good we are
          see her smile, make her laugh
          feel her love again
          make him disappear
          make it all... go... away
          not be aimless
          not feel so alone, empty
          scare her, really fucking scare her
          make her cry
          make her love me again
          have more hours in the day to do it
          have more days on this job to do it
          take her out, show her a good time, on a date again
          make her believe in miracles, in us
          give her the ring and ask her anyways
          show it to her and throw that fucking ring in the river
          to not change us for the other, but to improve ourselves, together, for us
          us to talk, about it all
          that one sweet, slow deep kiss
          to be bitten again
          her to want me
          her to bleed for me like i do for her
          her to have hope
          to feel her breath on my neck again
          to hear her heart flutter, her breath catch when i graze her skin
          that cuddled sleep-sigh of hers, content to be close to me, to be mine
          to make her see gods and cry out to them

how many of those will happen? i dare not guess or dream.

my life, to date, has been good

but right now, i am, to date, pretty much at rock bottom, but it's like rock bottom with a view... of the pool... foundation... or something.

i wish i could talk to you about this

but right now, i don't know what to say. i sound so emo. things are crumbling around me, and in the process, building me a fairly comfortable castle of rubble. a toe is stubbed on occasion, sore back from a few nights on the rocks, bleary eyes, dust and tears, and an indeterminate countdown exploding second-by-second in my brain.

does that help explain? yeah, i didn't think so, but if you need a soundtrack, grab pretty much any "blue october" CD. that's what's been on for me.

postcard from the depths

depending on my wildly variable state of mind lately, i go from "this feels good, fun, it's what i need, things will work out for the best... whatever that is" to "holy what the FUKK am i doing! i'm an idiot, this really, really, REALLY sucks, and i just want to go to sleep". mind you, my mind-state varies pretty much minute-to-minute. it is really exhausting, horribly frustrating, and generally makes me pretty easy to read due to fatigue. that sucks when people ask questions i don't want to answer.

rockstar lifestyle

last thursday was crazy. thursday is typically our half day, but we are coming into the lube oil flush now which usually means, no days off, 12 hour days, but before i go there, i need to back up a few hours before getting to work. i normally get out of bed around 5:30AM to leave at 6:00AM. i got a call around 4:00AM from TheElectrical, who'd been sick off and on. he called asking if we had anything to break a fever, and if i could walk it down to his apartment about 4-5 blocks away. being the nice guy that i am, i stumbled out of bed, found some generic aspirin, and dragged myself down the street towards his apartment. he'd left his apartment door open, so i knocked and walked in and found him in his bed. i gave him the medicine, wished him well, told him to call if he needed anything, and went back to my bed for another hour or so.

we went to work for the "half day", but things looked like they were going to run long. we compromised (you don't need two TAs for a lube oil flush) that he would leave at noon, and i'd stay until 7PM at the latest, and he would come in on friday, and i'd have that off. by around 4:30PM, we found out there was an electrical issue (and our guy was sick), so i made my way home and let TheMech know that he had friday off as well. i got home and showered, then jules and i went the TheMech's house to go to dinner. we'd invited him and his fiancee to the "buddha bar" in downtown cairo at the sofitel gezira. his fiancee was getting her hair done and was running late so we went ahead to make the 9:00PM reservation, and he was going to follow once she arrived. when we walked up to the restaurant, they wouldn't let me in because i was wearing shorts, despite having reservations. they said we could eat in the restaurant but not the lounge. sadly, this, combined with a lingering exhaustion, put me in an irritable mood for most of the night. TheMech and his fiancee arrived shortly after, and we had a very nice meal.

after dinner, we made our way to the nile hilton's rooftop bar, "el mojito", where we went after jules' birthday dinner. TheMech and i were both stopped at the door... they don't allow shorts after 7PM. FUKK!!! this didn't help my mood even further. i got into several non-productive debates-turned-arguments over the stupidity of not allowing people who wear shorts into your establishment. we ended up going to the "tavern" bar downstairs for a few drinks. TheMechsFiancee wanted to go her regular haunt, "far east", back in maadi, so we hopped a cab for the 30 minute drive back toward our part of town. far east was fun. same ol', same ol'. a few beers, some people playing pool, lots of sudanese women of the night lurking about. far east closed at 3AM, and TheMechsFiancee was jonesin' for a disco, so we tagged along.

we found a more-than-happy-to-oblige-us taxi driver who would take us the, again, 30 minute drive back to downtown cairo to coma disco. coma was decent. my mood started to pick up at far east and was getting better by the minute. we danced and danced and danced a fool at coma until they turned on the lights and opened the door at 7AM. again, we taxi'd (yup, 30 minutes) in the blazing morning sunlight back to TheMech's place in maadi. after not too much convincing, jules and i found ourselves in borrowed bathing suits enjoying a beautifully refreshing swim at TheMech's 7th floor rooftop pool. after clearing our bleary eyes a bit, relaxing, and finally having our 4th or 5th wind catch up to us, we dried off, quickly changed, and walked down to road 9 to a nice breakfast place called lucille's. we had eggs and hash browns and (beef) sausage. it was a nice way to end my, by the time i went to bed around 10AM, 31 hours awake.

ah, how i miss college.

SO NOT FUKKING FUNNY!!!

ok, this turning 30 things sucks. i'm never sick, then i got what, i assume, was a cold (cough, sore throat) just before coming to egypt, and yesterday i had to call off work for what, i'm guessing, was the flu (chills, fever, body aches). so flashback 2 days ago, tuesday, work is work... slow, and i'm starting to get strange chills, i think i might have a fever, but can't tell for sure. on the way home, i'm still chilled and feverish, so i pass on eating dinner at TheMech's place, cooked by his new housekeeper. instead, i go to the hotel, shower, put on my new steeler jammies (long sleeve shirt and long pants), and order dinner. i tried to eat some spaghetti but wasn't very hungry, so i crawled into bed at 8:15PM. i had the heater turned up and was buried under the blankets to try to sweat it out. well, tuesday night sucked. i tossed and turned and SWEATED MY ASS off. when my alarm rang wednesday morning, i knew the unthinkable was going to have to happen. i was going to have to call in sick. in 7 years with TheGeneral, i've only taken 1/2 a sick day in india. wednesday, the total went up to 1.5 sick days with my company. i called TheSiteLead, told him the situation, and he was cool with it. then i crawled under the blankets to sweat it out some more. i slept for another 15 hours or so until TheSiteLead called at 5:00PM to see if i was alive. i decided to pour myself out of bed and try to eat. i cleaned up a bit and tried to eat some lasagna at the italian restaurant downstairs. i only had a few bites of that and a bowl of minestrone. i went back upstairs, watched a bit of TV, read one of my books, and was back in bed at 10PM. i woke up this morning feeling good. i think i sweated out the fever, my stomach is at 80%, and i'm doing pretty well.

oh, but hell, i got away from the title of the post, and THAT is the important thing. tuesday, while i was still feeling sick, i saw TheSecretary in the hallway, and she beckoned me to come to her. i like being beckoned, so i obliged.

TheSecretary: sir, you have to go...
ME: huh?
TS: yes sir, you have to go...
ME: what do you mean?
TS: (makes a jabbing motion at her wrist)
ME: ??? wtf?
TS: sir, your test... you are positive, you have to go
ME: (shites my pants) you're joking, right?
TS: no sir, no joke, you have to go

i was already feeling ill, and that certainly didn't help. i was a zombie the rest of the day. granted, she was saying all this with a slight smirk, but she insisted she was not joking, she'd heard from the other assistant who had gone to cairo to get my results. if by some stretch of some crazy imagination it turned out i was HIV+, the assistant who went to cairo was going to get his face punched to a meaty pulp for sharing that news to people who didn't need to know (it wouldn't have been too much more trouble since rumor has it, if i'd've come back positive, the ARMY comes and escorts me to my hotel to get my stuff, and takes me directly to the airport to get me out of country. civil rights, my ass). i was petrified, completely useless. i knew she was joking, she had to be, but she wouldn't let it go, avoiding me like the plague, no pun intended. i was pissed, part of me was scared, and i was sick... BITCH!!! just before i left work that day, the assistant came in and told me i was negative. i asked for a copy of the test for my own records. that circled word (i looked it up) IS arabic for "negative".

today was a waste

seriously. my schedule is messed up anyways trying to get back on a dayshift schedule, and today didn't make it any better. i went to bed around 1AM sunday morning and woke up around 5AM, not tired. bought some books online, ran some errands, goofed around, played some halo3, and went to bed around 1 AM again. before i went to bed, i got some bad news from jules, i wasn't in a good mood so i decided to sleep on it. i woke up today around 11AM still pissed about the bad news.

you see, jules and i had been planning on meeting up in columbus this weekend. we haven't seen each other in 2 months or so because of work. we are getting things back together and miss each other, and it seemed things were going to work out. she was supposed to be coming back from qatar on friday, and she was going to come to columbus to see me before i flew out to egypt on tuesday. the customer she is working for decided they want to keep her there until 17-december. that SO sucks!!! that means by the time she gets to egypt, we won't have seen each other for almost 5 months. it's so not right. i don't know why we work for this company anymore. the company really doesn't fight for us at all. we provide a valuable service to the customer, but our company doesn't compensate us enough and acts like we are machines that don't need time at home, time with family, want to use our vacation how we see fit rather than what fits their schedule. i'm just pissed. we were both looking forward to getting to see each other for a few days, and it's all down the tubes like that. now we have 2-3 more months before we get to see each other. FUKK!!!

anyways, that led to my useless day. like i said, i woke up at 11AM, TheNephew stayed home from school because he was sick, and i stayed in my room playing halo3 most of the day... literally. from 11AM to 8PM, with a few bathroom breaks and maybe a few TV breaks when i was frustrated, i played a video game. i should've cleaned, i should've at least left the house, i should've read or packed. i'm just really down because of this shitty decision by the customer in qatar.

tomorrow i can't do the same. TheMom is going for a consult for an addition to her tattoo, i believe TheOlderSister is going as well, i have to hang xmas lights, and then TheMom, TheOlderSister and i are probably going to bw3 for wing night. i think TheNephew is staying home again tomorrow, so he'll probably lay on the couch watching cartoons while we are working. i really do need to clean my room. since i'm leaving for maybe a year or more in a week, shouldn't leave it in this state while i'm away. plus, there might be things in here i want to take with me.

i'm not tired, it's 1:30AM, and i'm pissed about not seeing jules, but i'm going to try to go to sleep. we'll see how well that works.

is this a nervous breakdown?

i seriously doubt it, but i can't get the strangest songs out of my head:

• luke bryan - all my friends say


• spice girls - 2 become 1


• robert palmer - addicted to love


• the killers - bones

AND, i'm seriously concerned about that britney boy. are kids nowadays really that crazy, especially over pop stars? i mean she's no elvis presley, or the beatles (but i didn't see all the woo-hoo about them either). i'm hoping he's just a really good actor trying to use youtube as an audition for crazy-person roles. still, i shouldn't be concerned. i need to sleep. i think i have the insomnia again. damn nightshift.

i don't know...

why...

i've never broken up with a girl.

maybe i've been afraid of being alone

maybe i've been happy no matter the situation

maybe i'm a pushover, or i could figure out what was wrong and dealt with it.

i don't know.

again, tonight, i was with the stars, i LOST orion, but i had the cigs. a bad deal but a sufficient substitute.

maybe...

i know what i want, and it doesn't want me...

back from belize

well, i'm back from belize, i'm staying the night at TheJay's since we got back kinda late. gonna head back to bellaire tomorrow morning. belize was great. i'll try to write about that tomorrow, i still have to tell you about salt lake city. oh the backlog!

i'm not at all tired, but need to try to sleep. congrats the BTVJGJHo and TheSteadman who tied the knot last week and spent the weekend at Put-In-Bay. more later.

weekend vacation

i was going to go to columbus, the regular vacation spot. i have nothing to do so i visit my friends and try to drag them out to a bar or three. then i figured, i haven't talked to TheJay in a while, maybe i'll visit him in cleveland.

then, as i was driving down to TheFBar for wednesday night jitterbug (i don't jitterbug, the oldies have taken over the dance floor for practice on W night), i get a voicemail from TheJay to call him.

i call him, as i'm parking, he wants to know if i want to go to belize!!! hmmm, nothing to do, no work, sure why not. his wife works for an airline and they get the BOMB-DIGGITY hook up. at one time, i thought that either jules and i could quit TheGeneral, and the other could get a job at an airline, and we'd be set. one of us gets the jobs, the other gets the cheap global vacation trips, but things ended before they could begin there. anyways, tomorrow i'm driving to cleve-town, then friday we fly to belize, i feel bad about being a 3rd wheel, but 1) he invited me and 2) i'm good at playing dead when people are having sex next to me or in the bed next to me, so all is good. maybe i'll meet a hot central american, hah hah hahahahahahhhaha.

anyways, that's what i'll be up to until my company screws it up tomorrow. we'll see what happens.

i looked at the stars tonight, they were OVERWHELMING, seriously. we have property "up on the hill" and i wish i was in a state to go up there, pitch a tent, and savor them. stars are so god damned beautiful.

please, go out tonight, try your best to get the bright lights outof your line of sight, and embrace the stars. i want a truck, i want a house, but i want a kick-ass telescope so much more. jules and i went shopping once in columbus, and i saw one i wanted... she said i needed a house first to use it at.

grrrrr.... kinda like needing experience to get a job, but needing a job to get experience. you just can't win. goodnight hank c., thanks for the fingers.

oh yeah, i have a bad habit when talking to people as i get out of the car. i called TheJay, and locked my keys in the car. i didn't realize it until i was leaving to go home. luckily TheYoungerSister answered the phone and brought me my spare keys. as much as we don't get along, i have to thank her. "Thanks". going to bed now. b

yup, it's started, no... actually, it's here.

the insomnia... it's 3:15AM, and i'm not tired in the slightest. stuck watching B-movies, books aren't helping, this sucks. such is my single life.

i'm working on the SLC post. it's tough, plus i want it to be right. i'm guessing in the next few days. hope to update you soon.