failure weblog

…the only thing i forgot to do was gamble. 🙂 but seriously, tonight i headed to blanco’s to listen to the always enjoyable honky tonk sounds of dale watson. a lady asked me to dance, but i said i didn’t really dance. i ended up playing pool with her, hanging out and talking, then dancing to a couple of songs. which is difficult and surprising since i don’t know how to dance, and rather firmly resist requests to dance (not that i get asked very often…but then by societal standards i’m supposed to be doing the asking). the first time was just the shuffling, no-pattern dancing…the second time it was an attempt at two-stepping. i had an enjoyable evening, which in these days and times is a Good Thing [tm].

well, the second wedding has come and gone. i had originally been hoping to ride the motorcycle, but the weather didn’t look like it’d be good for it, so i didn’t. which i’m glad of, because both there and back it was wet and/or raining for a decent portion of the trip. it did provide me the opportunity to listen to a fair amount of music in the element on the road.
i actually went to the ceremony this time, which was honestly pretty difficult for me to sit through. the vows, my marriage, meant so much to me, it was difficult to hear someone talk about what they mean and how things are supposed to go, and to watch two people smiling and making these beautiful and meaningful vows and know what i’ve gone through with mine. i ended up going off by myself and smoking a cigar for about 30 minutes or more until i could sort of regain my composure and get up the energy to do social interaction.
that said, it was great to see several college friends that i hadn’t seen in 7 or more years. they all surprisingly looked about the same, which i didn’t expect. i think i look a fair bit older and worse for the wear, myself. (but i looked like a 12 year old when i got to college, so hopefully i’ve got some spare youthful looks to burn through.) i hope i can manage to keep in some kind of contact with them. i’m not too good at that, but they were all good friends and it’d be a shame to never see/interact with them.
it was kind of nice that my friend i was staying with didn’t have a date, as it gave me someone to hang out with and not have to think as much about being alone (since everyone else i knew there had a wife or a date). not that i wish singleness on him or anything. but it was convenient for me in this instance.
my friend moose (a college nickname with a great origin story) had been very helpful at my wedding, so we’d bought him one of my groom’s men’s presents (a knife), but i’d never given it to him. this was the first time i’d seen him since my wedding, so i took the knife and gave it to him. it seems like i should have something clever to say about having the knife and giving it to him for helping at my wedding but not until after my marriage was over…but i can’t think of anything.

ph34r m1cr0s0ft!!1!!!111!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx
now that all of our l33t h4x0r language has been disseminated to the masses, what is a l33t ph3ll4 to do? (an advance warning — speaking any fictional language based on books or movies is NOT l33t. dork.)
can the imminent death of the net [tm] be far behind?

i went to a co-worker’s wedding in dallas this weekend. i ended up going by myself. which would have been more depressing if it hadn’t been on my motorcycle. (a motorcycle makes everything better.) i decided to not cheap out so i stayed at the wyndham. it wasn’t that great. nicer towels, bedding, pillows, and soaps are good. most of the rest of it…whatever. it was nice sitting with my feet up on the 10th floor window, looking out at the sky while drinking some coffee. i don’t know that it’s $50 more good though. plus much of the time i was wishing i had someone to share the experience with. i actually didn’t go to the wedding, just the reception. just as well, i suppose. i’ll be heading back up to dallas the weekend after next for another wedding.
i decided to drive to brady to see the familia instead of heading straight back to houston. spent sunday with the parents. we watched the fireworks in brady that night, which was nice. plus the sky there after dark is so incredible…so many stars. which is another nice thing to share with someone else. monday i spent with the parents and my grandmother, then i headed back to houston. i also picked up a kel-tec .380 from my dad’s store. and i discussed a walther ppk/s, and perhaps a bushmaster. my brother was occupied in austin, so i didn’t stop to see him. i did stop by my grandparents’ graves and the house at art. hopefully my parents will start things rolling with getting the house fixed up soon. it really needs some serious attention, but it could be such a great house.
riding back into houston monday night around 10:30pm, there were fireworks going off everywhere. it was pretty crazy. in addition to the random citizens illegally shooting off stuff, you could see a fair number of big displays put on by businesses or subdivisions or towns or whatever. which also explains the cops and fire engines flying around everywhere.
i put almost 1000 miles on my bike over the weekend. and man was it hot. i had to stop fairly often to drink water because i was sweating away everything. but i made it in one piece. not much longer and the divorce will be final and then it won’t matter if i stay in one piece or not.

in a freak incident, i was looking at an email from match.com last night (i get lists from a few places now and then…mostly it just makes me realize how few women i think i’d be both compatible with and interested in) and one of the women (who wasn’t even in the “close match” section but in the “random women who live in houston” section) who i decided wasn’t really my type had some pics, and in one thumbnail i thought “wait…that girl with her looks pretty good”… so i clicked on it just to see her better and the bigger pic came up and i’m almost positive the other girl is tamara. jeebus! wtf?! on my birthday, of all days. i’m telling you, G-d has got a wicked sense of humour/timing.
i much preferred the presents from my parents, and jamie’s valiant efforts to bring some humor and cheer into my day.

ah, yes. another wonderful year. i have a feeling things can only get better this coming year. i’m not sure i could handle it if things got worse.

from eternal sunshine of the spotless mind:
joel: if only i could meet someone new. i guess my chances of that happening are somewhat diminished, seeing that i’m incapable of making eye contact with a woman i don’t know.
that’s such a great line. or at least i understand it. but half the time i don’t feel like i deserve to meet anyone and have anything good happen in my life. (the other half i hope like hell otherwise.) tamara had an affair and left me. and we had our problems in our marriage. there were times where i felt like i didn’t know how to make things better, and what we could possibly do. but sometimes our marriage seemed okay, sometimes good. sometimes i am so angry at her for having an affair, then getting me to go through counseling while she kept backing away and having the affair. obviously it wasn’t right for her to do that.
but i’m not one to pass on an opportunity to beat myself up over something repeatedly, and my failings at dealing with some of the infertility stuff and especially the miscarriage sometimes completely overwhelm me and tear my heart in two. not that i didn’t do good and positive things during this time as well, it’s just that mistakes i made seem so different than the person i like to think i am. things were screwy and there was so much hanging in the air during all those times, it’s easier to sit back now and concentrate on the stuff from this distance. but i tend to remove myself emotionally when i’m confused or hurt or angry, and a lot of times i had no idea how to deal with the things that were going on in our life. so i can look back now with horror on what a thoughtless, heartless, evil person i appeared to be from this one isolated perspective, during certain times. i can’t believe how i behaved (or more accurately, didn’t behave) during some of this stuff. but like i said, this is from a more detached perspective. in the midst of it, it seemed to make sense to me. but when i think about how poorly at times i handled my wife that i really did love and was given to me by G-d, it makes me think i should never be given that much again. i don’t think the events that played out afterward needed to happen — i don’t think tamara choosing to turn on G-d and me (in her words…i still don’t understand exactly what happened and why) and have an affair was a fair response. i never wanted to make her feel abandoned, i never didn’t care about her or what happened to her, i never tried to hurt her emotionally. but there were times where obviously i failed in doing the right things for her emotionally, and some part of that played a role in the current status of things, where as far as i can tell she prefers to believe both i and everything we were and had never existed. this all is so far from anything i ever wanted for her or my life.
sometimes i think this world, this life, is too much for me to bear.

life is such a complex thing. and unfortunately, i suppose, my mind seems to have problems dealing with that complexity. i don’t think i’m mentally ill, but perhaps my personality and traits make it difficult for me to face life as well as others. better than some, i suppose. i am very much an idealist, and i believe in absolutes, but i believe the world is much more complex than most people are willing to admit to themselves. not only a near infinite number of shades of grey between black and white, but also a full spectrum of colour. and there is truth and beauty that is lost by those who try to simplify it to all black and white. unfortunately, the inherent messiness and complexity of life make it rather difficult to be much of an idealist. which makes being a realist seem much more palatable. even more unfortunately, trying to be a realist while really being an idealist turns one into a pessimist. or at least it does me. so there i am.
there is a scene in true romance where clarence stops an elevator and pulls a gun on elliot blitzer (a weak, whiny, annoying character everyone loves to hate) and has elliot on his knees while clarence is yelling he’s going to blow his brains out if elliot doesn’t tell him what is waiting for them in the room they’re headed to. clarence’s wife alabama and friend are not aware of clarence’s intention, so they are freaking out and screaming for him to stop and not kill him and to be reasonable. elliot has secretly been wired by the cops and they told him he’d be safe, and he can’t take it any more. he breaks down and starts saying how he doesn’t want to be there anymore and he doesn’t want to do this and he wishes someone would come and take him away and someone would come and rescue him. he’s crying and begging for his life and wishing this weren’t real and he were somewhere else.
that’s how i feel about my life right now. i’m elliot, the world is clarence, and clarence’s friends are my friends. i guess that would make G-d the cops.
in a similar vein, from eternal sunshine of the spotless mind:
joel: can you hear me? i don’t want this anymore! i want to call it off!
everyone should watch eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. whether you come away feeling positive or negative (and i think both are equally possible, even for the same person depending on the day), it’s almost guaranteed to make you feel something deep (assuming you can get past the complexity of the timeline and the quirkiness of the main characters and suspend belief long enough to accept the premise. and some of the situations/language, for you moral puritans).

went to the doctor today and got my general physical results. not much of a surprise…i’m overweight and have high cholesterol. guess that means i’ll have to learn how to spell that word now… cho lester ol. ahh, lester. everything else was okay. my numbers: “bad” (LDL or “low density lipids”): 150, “good” (HDL or “high density lipids”): 39, grand total on the toteboard of cholesterol luv: 216. if only i were at a point in life where i felt like i should care. well, honestly, if i had cared in the past i would already have known what my levels were and would have been trying to do something about it. it’s just that at this point in my life i feel like i have even less reason to care.

well, the mediation occurred on tuesday afternoon. it didn’t go as badly as it could have, but it wasn’t far from it. tamara and her attorney basically got her half of everything, because everyone was telling me i’d get no better in court…and very likely lose even more. the legal system doesn’t care and isn’t concerned about justice or the fairness of an individual situation. it’s just trying to churn through cases, and only affected by the most heinous of cases. maybe i almost prefer the brutal insensitivity of that to the mediation process, where the parties involved act like they care. but they don’t know the situation, they have no vested interest…they make their money, they say some stuff, they smile and wish you well, then they go home. it seemed everyone involved acknowledged i was getting the shaft, but legally the shaft was what i should get, so that’s what was going to happen. they were wrangling to get me pennies when i was losing thousands. i’m going to have to sell the house because tamara and her attorney wanted to say it was worth hcad appraised value if i wanted to keep it. there’s no way it’s worth much beyond what is owed on it (if it’s worth that). nevermind the fact that i’ve been paying on it and everything else for over a year and a half since she left me. that my job has been putting money in my retirment. that she got two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree while with me. that she hasn’t contributed a penny to anything i’ve made or paid for over the last 18 or so months. she still got half of everything. at least they were willing to say the $11k of credit card debt she’s managed to run up wasn’t community debt. i could hardly stay seated in the room and watch as the things i’d spent years working for and such were divied up with unemotional abandon by people who could really care less about me. for good or bad, everything was enhanced by the fact that tamara and her attorney were in another room, so i never actually saw them. the mediator would just go between rooms bringing offers and rebuttals. at the end, tamara’s attorney came in to talk to mine. let’s just say the intense feeling of pain and helplessness in this situation has led me to understand how someone could get so angry they’d find a weapon and start killing everyone who is putting them through it. i never thought i’d ever be able to identify with johnny paycheck’s “pardon me (i’ve got someone to kill)” in my life either, but i’ve been right there on a number of occasions.
i was really freaked out after it was over…numb and hurt and confused and intensely angry…it was all overwhelming. i guess not as bad as the months right after i found out tamara was having an affair, but pretty bad. i went and looked at pistols. which isn’t as scary as it sounds, once you understand i already have a .45acp charles daly 1911 at home with 4 clips and almost 500 rounds of ammo. i didn’t buy anything though. then i went home and drank one third of a bottle of jack daniels. i drank the first third of that bottle the day johnny cash died (the first time i’ve ever actually been really drunk). this was the second third. i’ve got a third left.