muted

t-minus 1 day?

with today being halloween and me being me, i can't help but think back to last halloween which absolutely sucks. of the four people with whom i strolled through a nyc haunted house, there's only one with whom i speak anymore (hi kim!). two of the remaining three would later team up to make me feel like the world's biggest asshole. happy halloween!!!!

in better news, yesterday i was asked by a colleague to take part in his fantasy basketball league. i've never played any fantasy sports before because, honestly, i find them pretty stupid (sorry, mark). i'd rather just root for my favorite team in the sports that i follow than for a bunch of players scattered across teams that don't really matter to me. but i thought it'd be a good opportunity to interact socially here at work and since basketball seems like the least time-consuming of the fantasy sports, i accepted the offer.

since the league was put together so late (the real nba season kicked off last night), keith (colleague/league commisioner) had to set the draft up to run automatically which meant we'd have no say regarding who landed on our teams. when we got into work this morning, keith, jon (another colleague in the league) and i logged on to see how things shook out. before i could access my own team, jon yelled to me "damn, you got kevin garnett!" i was pretty excited about that. however, when i finally was able to look at my team, kevin garnett was no longer the most exciting part of it.

sitting there, on my roster, was none other than manu freakin' ginobili!!!!

i shit you not.

how about them mets, yo?

the ticker that was a dunce

i'm still having trouble focusing at work which means i spend way too much time on the internet. it's probably only a matter of time before i get caught and then fired for the second time since 2005. as part of my time-wasting routine, i check out usa today's "pop candy" blog. today there's a mention of a new trailer for an indie documentary called "my heart is an idiot" and when i read that title, my brain cries. if i had to summarize the last two years of my life, i know now that all i'd need is five words.

i don't feel comfortable watching the trailer because that'd make it too obvious that i'm misusing my time (hell, i write these posts in outlook before copying and pasting them into blogger to disguise what i'm doing). i throw my new favorite phrase into yahoo and start clicking on results. the movie actually doesn't sound as good as its title but damn, what a title. through the course of my phrase investigation, i see a mention of another movie called "four eyed monsters." i go back to yahoo and replace the nfp. this movie sounds quite intriguing and is apparently on youtube in its entirety. it's a true story about love. which reminds me...

national write a novel month starts on thursday and i've toyed with the idea of giving it a whirl. the goal is to write quantity (50,000 words over 30 days), not quality. i've thought about buying a laptop before thursday since i can't see myself attempting a novel in a notebook and there's no privacy at the family computer (plus i'd have a place to manage my pictures). but i really don't have the money for that. i mean, i guess i could buy one, but then i'd be stuck in that basement indefinitely. on top of that, the only idea i have for a novel is to try to turn the last few years of my life into a story that someone who doesn't know me would want to read. through the course of writing it, if i changed some things, even better.

i guess there's a part of me that feels like if i can turn my failed new york experiment into something else (in this case, a bad novel), maybe it won't break my heart as consistently.

maybe i'd find some closure.

nice dream, dude.

monday night (my mind's not right)

my request last night to have the rest of my life transferred to someone dying who really wants and deserves to live has gone unfulfilled so the post-vermont depression stretches across its second monday. it's nearly impossible to focus on work. i read emails from this year that i definitely should not be reading. when i've had enough of those, i read this year's blog posts. i discover that i've been frighteningly all over the map which serves no present use in trying to make sense of the mush my mind has become. i want so badly to get up from my desk and scream "i can't fake this anymore!!" but i have just enough sense to keep staring at my monitor.

mark texted me a couple times this weekend asking to borrow the second season of arrested development but i didn't feel well enough to respond. maybe i should take advantage of the severe reduction in distance between our residences and drop it off tonight. i could really use the distraction. i call him twice from work but get his voicemail each time. i realize that i don't feel comfortable talking personally in cubicleworld so i leave no message. when five o'clock mercifully hits, i see that he's texted me again. i call him. we speak. "i'm coming over." "ok."

i pull into the visitor parking spot just before 7pm. before i can turn my car off, i see that someone has pulled up perpendicularly to it. it's adam. we each exit our hondas. he tells me that he's going to pick up some chinese food and asks if i'd like to join him. i decline. he says that it's good to see me. i throw that right back at him. then he says that this is a nice surprise and asks to what do they owe the pleasure of a monday night visit.

i want to collapse against my car and tell him about my heavy heart and my messy mind...i want to tell him how it feels as if everything between new year's eve on the farmhouse porch and this moment amongst the hondas has happened so quickly that i'm dizzy and lacking oxygen...i want to tell him how i desperately wish he was just a character in the choose-your-own-adventure book that i'd soon be flipping back to page 24.

instead i shrug my shoulders and smile.

"well, i'm glad you're here, man."

thanks for the distraction, guys.

(mental)forecast for forseeable future.

comprehensive

through the handbookviolatin' use of my work computer, i was able to make an album of the vermont pictures.

if you want to peruse all 276 photos (including the ones i already posted below), go here.

you don't have to log in to view them. just click on the two-headed martha.

what now?

the excitement leading up to vermont and the awesomeness that became vermont have passed and i feel lost again. i'm not sure what there is to look forward to now.

before vermont, i thought that visiting drew and maybe stopping by the old apartment on the way back to massachusetts would make for a cool weekend. kim said i could take the computer that we shared since she has a laptop now but there was no room for it in the car when i moved. i could definitely use that computer in canton right now. plus it would be good to laugh with them again.

but after vermont...

seeing kim was great. i cannot stress that enough. a few minutes after i arrived, it already felt like old times with all the laughing and joking. what a relief.

but saying goodbye again...damn.

on sunday, we shared a moment after everyone left that i'll never forget. i hopped into the good ol' passenger seat of the versa (missed ya, buddy!) and we drove to the tractors we had passed on the way to the stone quarry one day earlier. when we arrived, we got out, walked around and i took some pictures. then we got in the car to return to the house. that's when the sadness i was already feeling due to the weekend wind-down started to multiply. "usually i'd snooze off and on in this very seat on the way back to ny but now i have to get out, get into my own car and drive home alone." i was going to tell kim how i was feeling but i decided not to because my sadness has had enough of a negative impact on her life already. so i kept it to myself…until now, i guess. sorry.

when i got into my car to begin the drive home, the sadness was suffocating. the end of a vermont trip is always a little sad, but this was different. i thought i had seen waters in kim's eyes when we hugged goodbye but i wasn't positive. there were certainly waters in mine. i thought about how out of everyone who visited vermont, kim and i were the only ones who drove alone. thinking about her driving back to ny by herself was too much to take...but then i had a mini-epiphany.

"it's not as sad as it all seems to you right now if she is happier than she used to be."

i don't know if she is happier than she used to be, but i hope that she is because she truly deserves to be.

and if she is, that's all that really matters.

but i don't think i'm ready to visit ny just yet.