I have a jam-packed weekend in front of of me. Tonight is the Company Holiday Party. Its being held down around the Harbor which is cool for me, because it is relatively close to home and I can walk if I really want to. It'll be especially nice after I'm three sheets to the wind and can't find my wallet. Then I can just stumble home instead of trying to convince a cabbie that I really will go up to the apt and come back with their cash.

But really, I joke about being loaded at the party..ok well maybe it'll be more accurate than not. Some of the people I like, but most of them are hard enough to work around - tonight I have to pretend that I like to socialize with them too. I was going to skip it altogether, but then my boss had to go an do something incredibly decent. He gave me a much-more-than-fair raise. (That's what I was celebrating last night!) Seriously, if I had know this was coming, I wouldn't have spent the last 7 months complaining about my miserable salary. (OK, I still would have complained, but not at such a high volume.) I think he is starting to suspect that I do too good a job for what I had been paid and there was a real dnger of me leaving. So he and the prez (of the company, not Dubya) gave me a meager merit raise and a whopping "market increase" which is essentially like saying "Shhh....don't tell accounting that we really want to bribe you into staying here." Anyway, point is that the boss and the prez and various others who know about my raise and such will be there and it will look pretty damn unappreciative if I don't go. So I will. I'll even be fake and witty and charming and may even dance with some ladies when I'm asked, but my heart won't be in it. My heart will be with my real friends in whatever shady bar they're calling home tonight.

My buddy J. is coming to town this weekend. It'll be good to see him, because things are finally returning to normal after a little tiff he and I had been having. It is an incredible long, boring story and I don't want to write it all here because I'd wear my fingers down to little nubbins. If you really are interested, shoot me an email and I'll fill you in. Basically J. and I are both friends with this girl A. When A. and J. started seeing eachother, they did their best to hide it from me. They didn't want to hurt me, b/c I had professed feelings for A. Well long story short, I got pissed at both of them and we all stopped talking. Then I realized that I was in danger of losing both A. and J. as friends so I sucked it up and reconciled us all and now I just want it all behind us. I don't have to be happy about how the situation was handled, but if they are both my friends, I can accept their relationship and we can all move on. That's why I'm excited to see J., so we can hang out and both see that out frienship is stronger than any disagreements.

I refuse to watch football on sunday. I am far enough down in my fantasy football rankings to ensure that I won't win any prizes, so I flat out don't care anymore. Curtis Martin and Tyrone Weatley and the rest of my awful team can all sit the bench this week - makes no difference to me. In protest, I don't want to be anywhere near a TV on sunday. Maybe I'll get the gang together and go see a movie at the new Egyptian Tomb/Movie Theater that just opened. We'll see.

Maybe I'll do some Christmas shopping this weekend, but probably not. I'll just wait until Mom comes to town on monday and let her pick out the stuff I give to others...much easier that way. (I just re-read that. That sounds HORRIBLE. Totally against the ideal of Christmas. I will think of some thoughtful gifts to give people and I will give from the heart! Hell Yeah!)

Ok - you're probably tired of reading by this point, but I'll leave you with this: Randomly wandering around big bookstores. I recommend it. Highly. I was in a funk last night so I just got in the car and drove. I wound up at one of our huge bookstores and proceeded to get lost in the stacks. I never intended to buy anything, but I read alot of jackets and left feeling much more at ease that I had been earlier. I treated myself to some tortellini rose' at the italian joint next door. Something about bookstores and italian food - they quiet the soul.

Well I probably won't post anything this weekend. Weekends are for sleeping and acting like a child. Monday's iffy too - that's Mom-and-Mike-Bonding-Day and I'm sure she has it scheduled down to the minute. I will post something early next week though.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend.

'Till next time,

Mike