have been feeling nostalgic lately, wishing i could track down people from the past. wondering what things would have been like if different choices had been made- studies instead of parties, east instead of west, west instead of east. recalling those who were once the closest of friends but now the remotest of acquaintances. realizing that i've coasted through large chunks of time without stopping to pay attention and soak up the now. acknowledging that life has sped up and spread out.

eh, this thought has no conclusion.

cute: Rumsfeld's Fighting Technique is Unstoppable

somehow most of my friends showed up at my house tonight. the regular D&D group, plus Oliver and Egg (and Elly). big party, ordered out for Indian food, listened to krautrock. surrounded by SF expat love!

also ran into an old frat buddy from ten years ago on the street in front of my house. i spent just about every day of the summer before senior year learning HTML at his apartment- and he didn't even remember my name! sheesh.

i'm sure fully half or more of the bloggers across the world are saying the same thing- i hate Valentine's Day. nothing particular happened, but when you're sitting home alone in the dark after your DVD is over, and it's 10pm and there's nobody to hang with cos they're all spending time with their other halves, and the only people on chat are also loners, feeling grumpy just like you, it's easy to let the frustration overwhelm you. i'm glad i don't keep booze in the house.

i played D&D at Neutral Ground in Manhattan yesterday. later i went to Johnny Macks for dinner, where literally a dozen gorgeous girls were working or hanging out, all at once. none of them looked at me, except when they had to serve me. i think they could smell the D&D on me.

i am fully aware of the fact that i both complained about being alone on Valentine's Day and confessed to playing D&D on Valentine's Day. no need to point this out to me. it's a vicious cycle.

yesterday was my 30th birthday, and we (Pete and the visiting-from-SF Greg and Summer) celebrated by dining at Aunt Sallie's, swinging by the Great Lakes for a couple drinks and a meetup with Nick, and then heading into Manhattan to Bulgaria. this last place is i think the Bulgarian community center or some such. it was filled with beautiful sweaty people dancing to a band playing what seemed to my uneducated ears to be traditional music, but really might have been eastern European top 40 for all i know. i got home around 3.30am, headed upstairs to boot heartily, then went back down to finish off the birthday cake Elly brought home for me from Two Little Red Hens.

rested and recuperated all of today. discovered that Naidre's TBLT is way better than the breakfast sandwich. headed over to Pete's around 9 for homemade pizza and DVDs (Hedwig and Hard Boiled). Zach (visiting from LA) showed up a little after i did, and we went out after midnight. first tried Loki on 5th ave which has a nice dark comfortable interior but was filled with meatheads and girls with back fat oozing over their painted-on jeans. leaving half-filled drinks on the table, we headed back up the road to the Great Lakes and hung out there for the rest of the night, after which we headed down to the diner at 9th st and 5th ave for drunken late night grease feeding.

tomorrow is the big birthday bash at the Three of Cups. if you are in NYC, feel free to join us from 8 to 11 or so, after which we'll probably move on to other bars.

once this week of self-punishment is over, i'm starting Atkins again and getting a gym membership. i've consumed way too much nicotine and sugar over the last couple months. somehow i've still managed to lose 15# since Xmas. i think i might be slowly fading away.

things have been slowly settling down since i got back from New Jersey this weekend. i enjoy traveling, but returning is always a welcome relief. there's a sort of stress that goes along with leaving one's home place, which falls away when carrying luggage up the front steps and back into the house. especially now that my landlady's finally left for Florida; i can get some cable/Tivo action going again. now i just have to figure out how to make the dishwasher not leave hardened coats of soap on my plates and bowls.

since coming home i've read plenty of comics and magazines and am about to settle in for the evening to finish Gene Wolf's The Knight. have begun the first season of Stargate SG-1 and am awaiting the first episodes of Band of Brothers (thanks Netflix!) also work has been eating my balls to the tune of 10 hours a day. to top it all off, it's a week of birthdays: Pete's yesterday and mine tomorrow; dinners and bars each of those nights, plus a party on Saturday (complete with visitors from San Francisco). so yeah, i guess it's not the laziest of times, but it's real life, the kind where you go to bed at night satisfied that the day was well spent. can't complain about that.

from the can't-turn-it-off dept: Lords of the Rhymes. can you guess the tune?

Orcs all gathered in their masses
Legolas will kick their asses
In my pipe old Toby's burning
Sauron's war machine keeps turning
Oh lord yeah

ps: Elly moved in this weekend. nice to have somebody else in the house, even if her cat did pee on my couch.