There's a tear. In my beer. 'Cause I'm crying for you dear.

Hello hello! Sorry for the long stretch between postings. Now that I'm working every day, you would think I'd be able to post something at least twice a week. You would think. It was easier at Apple because I really hated my job and I needed some kind of creative outlet to offset the mindlessness of it. Here I'm using my brain pretty regularly, so when lunchtime rolls around, I usually just read about sports. I guess I need a certain percentage of my day to be completely mindless. At Apple that happened to make up 80% of my workday. Here, I have to make time for it. But anyway.

Another reason I haven't been writing as much is that things with the girlfriend have been weighing heavily on my mind as of late. I would say "we've hit a rough patch," but I know it's much more than that. We've gotten to where we're fighting a lot more, and I think all the uncertainty is beginning to pull us apart. She's not planning to move to Houston after she graduates, nor would I expect her to. So we're trying to figure out what the point of the whole thing is. You could say, "just have fun with it. If it ends, no big deal. You had a good time." That was a great philosophy three months ago, but now there are feelings. Feely feelings. So it screws that nice little approach right up.

Basically we both know that things are going to end, but neither of us has the strength to just do it. Because we still love each other and there hasn't been any recent defining event that makes you say, "okay, that's enough. The end." So I'm a bit of a mess right now. She's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and I'm constantly being reminded of her (I never realized how often New Orleans-related things popped up in day-to-day news/sports until this happened). But! Things will get better when I find my groove in Houston. I'm still trying to discover how I fit in here, but it'll happen with time.

Anyway, not too much to report. This past weekend was just like the hundreds of weekends before it. Drank too much, spent too much money. I've always wondered how the US stacks up against other countries when it comes to drunken baffoonery. Are we the only culture that so openly accepts weekend alcoholism? I know, I know, the Irish. But still, is this happening everywhere? You know, some Sunday mornings you look at yourself in the mirror, eyes red and cracked, unsightly stubble, mouth tasting like cat anus, and you wonder, "do I have a drinking problem? Why is that Monday through Thursday I'm Dilbert, but Friday and Saturday I'm Andy Capp?! If I didn't have to get up for work in the mornings, would I be drinking seven nights a week?!"

The problem isn't that there are no alternatives (though suggestions are welcome). The problem is that the alternatives are so damn boring. Coffee shop? Snooze. Movie? Meh. I think drinking your weekend away gets ingrained in your head during college, and it's hard to kick the habit. One day after a particularly unmemorable bar night in NYC, Dave and I kicked around the idea of starting some kind of non-drinking social club. A group of people in their mid-twenties could get together and find ways to spend the weekend without getting drunk. There would be no religious or spiritual pretense, and if you wanted to splinter off and go get drinks, so be it. The problem is this: say the group is out bowling, and at some point, invariably, someone wants a beer (it is the bowler's Gatorade, after all). How does this sit with the rest of the group? Do they silently judge you? Does the group break off into cliques of the "just want an enjoyable night away from the bars" variety and the "recovering alcoholic/drinking is wrong" set? At what point does the group just say "fuck it" and turn the night into a boozy romp? How many trips to the coffee shop can you make before you're bored to tears? Are these the words of an alkie?! Anyway, I don't know the answer. I'm assuming once I settle down once and for all, the drunk weekends will taper off. But for now, I'll stick to what I'm doing, and will accept that fact that some nights will be better than others. Besides, I still have a lot of fun getting beers with my friends. And the occasional all-day Beer-B-Q can't be topped if the weather is right.