Crazy Again

I'm at a dance party but I'm not dancing, which isn't really anything new. I've been all responsible and productive since New Years. Hitting the books, as it were. A Spanish Textbook, two Computer Science books, and a novel. Today I was playing Magic cards with some friends all day. I'm a little out of it and don't feel much up for flirting or making new friends. Besides, as I tell my friend Wil, "K--- and I hung out the other day and it felt really great. I'm going to just bask in the illusion that there could be something between us again for a while."

*

I'm in K---'s car outside my house arguing about whether I'm a pig for not for wanting her to sleep in my bed fully clothed or she's a pig for wanting to sleep in my bed fully clothed. We earlier had a sushi and then cocktails date that she's just explained to me was not a date in the romantic sense. She doesn't elaborate on whether the sex and caring words from the last time we hung out should be construed in a romantic sense. I'm feeling hurt and angry and my "no more cuddling" decision came out more like a "get naked" decree. Thus the argument. After "I shouldn't lead you on" for the twelfth time I follow my dignity out the door and up the steps to my house. I'm coming down with a cold. Turns out I'm low on toothpaste too.

*

I'm hungover and sick and waiting for my morning standup meeting to end so I can tell my manager I've been offered another job and I think I'm going to quit. He keeps asking if anything else came up while he was away on vacation, as if he can sense disaster looming. I don't really want to announce it to all my coworkers. It's white collar torture.

A software architect I work with who's more senior than me but not really my boss has joined our meeting with the hopes of talking me up about an old abstract-meta-platform-lexiconically-challenging project I used to work on that he's trying to breathe life back into again. Instead when the meeting ends my manager and I go find a corner for me to quit in. He tries to talk me out of it. I agree to meet with my boss's boss's boss the following day before I make my decision.

I'm deathly ill and curled up in a ball on my couch watching corny movies on Netflix. 47 Ronin is ridiculous but seems the logical next step for a Theodore Logan who now takes himself way too seriously. Divergent is actually cool and fun and makes me wish I were a teenage girl. I learned my lesson with the Hunger Games trilogy though - no way I'm picking up those books.

*

I'm still sick, sitting in a meeting with my manager and a seniorish woman whom I adore but whose job title escapes me, plus a bunch of British guys. It's a proposition meeting. We're discussing this new project which suddenly now that I'm quitting we're finally going to start. It's not blog-exciting but the timetable is ambitious and I'm curious to work with these Brits who by all accounts are extremely anal in code reviews but keep a tidy codebase. I ask a couple clarifying questions towards the end of the allotted hour and then leave to go decide my immediate future.

"As long as I have you here, what is your job called? I just know you as my boss's boss's boss." I'm at the bar with my boss's boss's boss. They matched my other offer and I decided to stay. Now that there's work to do I'm less anxious to leave a bunch of coworkers I enjoy for a bunch of new ones I don't know. This guy's quite a drinker. I beat him here by half an hour but he's already finished two pints and a martini and I'm still on my third pint.

"I'm fucked up!" This in reference to my repeatedly putting myself in positions to get hurt by the same woman and then continuing to hold her on a pedestal unreachable by mortal women. My explanation is that I have an ego which tells me I should be able to take it, and I am reluctant to take self-protective measures in most cases. Occurs to me that not all this subtext might be making it through the martinis and the pale ales, and trying to convince my boss's boss's boss who just gave me a raise that I'm "fucked up" is at the very least probably not a great career move. He's into death metal apparently.

*

I'm at a DIY warehouse space for a Scaphe / Miami Dolphins show. I came here on a coin flip. I'd been planning on the False / Zebulon Pike show at Icehouse, but my roommate offered me a ride. The coin landed tails. Now I'm talking to a woman for whom I have all kinds of crushes and respect. She's apparently a fan of me too, though I have no idea why. This is the first time we've ever had an extended conversation and from what I can tell she's into the exact opposite of me. At least she avoids computers (I'm a computer programmer by trade) and dedicates her life to DIY punk pursuits (I'm in no bands and writing no zines). I mention Bedlam's going to do a short play I wrote, since that seems like the most DIY thing I've done recently, and she's very supportive. The conversation ends awkwardly. I feel like I should get her phone number or something, so I give her my home address (?) and say "I might follow you to the bathroom" before leaving to get another beer. Oh man, even for me...

It's 4am and I'm drunk and watching the Australian Open final between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Many long ago I blogged about a Serena Williams run through the U.S. Open that will forever remind me of breaking up with K----. So this could probably be considered self-destructive. It's a good match but not a classic. Sharapova saves match point in the second set to force a tie break but loses said tiebreak 7-5. There's only one Serena.

*

It's noon on a Saturday and I'm downtown at 1-on-1 signing up for the Stupor Bowl. This is a terrible idea on so many fronts. I haven't biked hard or over any kind of distance in the four years since my first knee surgery. I haven't ridden my bike at all since Monday. I'm sick. I was up until 5am last night drinking and watching tennis. I ride a no-frills one-speed that's the veteran of several car-on-bike incidents and has not much in the way of brakes. But my roommate texted me last night that he and his coworker were riding this year and I'm pretty low on fucks to give, so why not? I run into a few people I haven't seen in forever and tell them all I have zero chance of finishing this race. It's like 40 miles and you're required to drink an alcoholic drink on each of 11 stops.

My roommate and his friend never showed up so I'm racing on my own, which is pretty alright actually. The race starts at the bottom of a hill, and my second stop is in deep NE at the top of an even taller hill. There I start chatting with a friendly guy who turns out is also a software developer. I tell him I never ran this race back when I actually did bicycle delivery, because I was always broke and Saturday was my best money shift. Instead of making $100 I had to pay $75 (race fee + bar drinks) and it was always too big a swing for me. We run into each other a couple stops later and end up biking from the Bryn Mawr stop to Lee's. From Lee's to the C.C Club I follow him on a winding bike trail that goes up a steep hill. I dismount and walk up the hill.

I would have just biked down Hennepin along the freeway, which is more dangerous but probably 10 minutes faster. I'm a little salty about that. So at the C.C. Club instead of hanging out with the friendly software developer I find my roommate who was late to the race and his coworker. They buy me a beer. I'm getting pretty drunk now.

Four stops later I'm at the Midtown Exchange and I'm really drunk now. The stop's at some new bar in the Global Market but I don't know where it is. I grab some random black guy and ask him if he knows where all the bikers are going. "Buncha white people in bike helmets." I haven't seen this many white guys with beards since the Wild were in the playoffs. He's real helpful and leads me to some bar. He asks if I can get him a drink and that's no problem. Says he wants a Heineken. I try ordering two Heinekens from the bar and you'd think I farted at a funeral. "This is a brewery." The hip white girl is embarrassed on my behalf. Okay, well two beers of whatever I guess. Shit, I only have one stop left!

My last stop is in St. Paul at the top of a hill. I have an hour to get there and back to the Nomad before they stop stamping manifests. It takes me about half an hour to get there. I'm pretty fucking beat. Takes me a couple minutes to drink my 11th beer. I just know I'm going to get back to the Nomad 5 minutes late. That would be perfect for this fucking week. There's a lot of swears sloshing around my head right now. I throw my bike on the ground hard. Now my handlebars are crooked. I announce that I'll never make it back in time. "Yeah, impossible," hip guy says. He's mocking me. Well I have to fucking try! Other hip guy's excited by me and says I embody the spirit of the race. Of course the ride back is downhill and much faster. I make it with 10 minutes to spare. Holy shitballs I finished!

I'm at the Hexagon shooting phenomenal fucking pool. I just came from the after-race awards ceremony at the Nomad. I got all bitter about not getting last place. The guy who did is some popular bike messenger who apparently finished early and then waited and turned in his manifest at the last second. I'm too fucked up to be gracious in not-quite defeat. I'm also crashing at a rapid pace. I catch about 5 minutes of the first 48-hour band before I decide I can't stand up much longer and I need to bike home.

Back at home my emotions are nose-diving like a motherfucker. I was unprepared for the exodus of all that sustained adrenaline. I'm on Facebook commenting on my worthlessness. I really need to go to bed and eventually I do. When I wake up I'm out of toothpaste and that seems significant. It's not.

*

It's Superbowl Sunday. My hamstring's a little tight, but all things considered I'm feeling pretty good. I'm not even all that hungover. Turns out I did an incredible job routing the race yesterday. A friend of mine shared his route online and it was 44 miles total. I punch my route into an app and it's 34 miles. That's kind of cool. Cooler is that my surgically repaired knee isn't swollen. I'm still hacking up nastiness, but the worst of my sickness seems to have left too. I head out to buy some toothpaste.

I'm at a Super Bowl party. People are drunk and yelling stupidities, but I'm not one of them. No drinking for this guy today. I play a game of Settlers of Catan and then several games of Magic cards. The football game and Katy Perry are fairly entertaining. Super Bowl Sunday for me is uneventful. Could be I'm done with crazy for a while. Then again, could be I'm just getting started.