It’s noon, and I’m hot, tired, and hungry, sitting in the bucks of stars near where I used to live, having dropped Doolies and Jennifer off at Fifth Avenue for a shopping extravaganza (that’s what I’m trying to convince myself of after abandoning them to the mean streets of NYC). My phone is in easy reach if they need me, or want to meet up earlier.

I promised myself an attempt at writing a story today, perhaps moving toward that elusive 10k story goal (small-g). While waiting for Doolies to shower this morning, I watched the biography of Anne Rice on Biography Channel (look at all the high quality of shows I’m missing with NEQID). Anne Rice averaged one book a year for 30 years (I think I’m exaggerating that number, since she only has around 15 or 20 books to her name), but that seems like a doable goal. With my newfound ability to dump copious amounts of crap on the page, I should be able to write that much (as long as I don’t bother to edit or say anything meaningful or interesting). But enough procrastinating for now. On to that story (something I still don’t have many concrete ideas for).

Instead of writing, I got stage fright, and I’m now browsing the web, terribly disappointed in myself, but hopeful after I suck all the distracts from the internets, I’ll return to this page newly refreshed and ready to say something that isn’t about my exciting life (this might be one of the first times that people probably want to live vicariously through me).

It should be clear from the above (or below, depending if I decide to separate them) that I failed in my writing today. Part of it was Doolies’s fault: after I finished typing the above, I called Doolies to find out if she wanted to get lunch. She did. And after we ate lunch, I decided to head back to the hotel room instead of back to the bucks of stars. Once comfortably situated in the hotel room, I did the thinkable: I stayed in bed and watched television. I told Doolies I would nap, and then write (I was a bit tired from walking in the terrible heat). As I said, I failed. My mother always asks me why I don’t get cable, why don’t I have the will power to have cable and not watch it (she says this, and not an hour later at dinner, she can’t resist a second large piece of cake during dessert—even after I put it out of reach). As I proved yet again today, if there is a television, I will watch it instead of almost anything else. This is similar to the rodents who will, when experimented upon (I think that if they weren’t experimented upon things might be different—like the cat in the box), choose the drugs over the food until they die. While I don’t think I’ll be dying any time soon from too much television, my soul, in a way, will squivel (quivel, quiver, roll into a ball—damn, my alcohol-laden brain is not working properly tonight) up until there is nothing left but a broken Davids with no ambitions and no memory of NEQID.

After my nap, Doolies, Jennifer, and I met my mother near our hotel, and walked to a restaurant to meet Doolies’s father for dinner at a seafood place recommended by the hotel. I asked for a pre-show restaurant, and while the restaurant they chose was rather good, the location was not. It was ten blocks away from the hotel, which is only a block and a half away from the show. I even indicated that we were going to a show and needed a “pre-show” restaurant. To me, that would have meant somewhere close by to the shows—but to them, it meant whoever paid the largest kickback, or at least that was what was making me angry as we walked the twelve blocks from the hotel to the restaurant in the terrible heat.

Much complaining tonight. I’m tired and still a bit hot from today, and the alcohol (a beer at a pizza/bar place Doolies and I found after the show—I was on a mission to find a place to eat with “triangular food.” I now believe that there is a perfect food in this world, and that perfect food is triangular. Think: grilled cheeses, properly cut; pizza, regular slice; etc. (I used etcetera because I couldn’t think of another perfectly triangular food), which is quickly causing me to fall into a depression. This is why I avoid drinking unless I plan to do it in excess. I reach a point after a beer (or any single shot), where the alcohol leaves me feeling empty. This also usually leaves me tired, which is a good thing, since that feeling allows me to go to sleep and avoid the worst parts of the depression. My other choice, drinking to excess, allows me to stay drunk long enough to hit the depression while I sleep or, on particularly bad bouts, in the morning, with a side of terrible hangover. (That’s only true if I wake up soon after I would have woken up drunk—i.e., at the latter part of the drinking phase. If I wake up drunk, that’s almost a sure sign that I will have avoided the hangover.) With all the drinking I’ve managed over the last few days, it’s amazing that I’ve avoided all hangovers. It must be the copious amounts of water that I keep drinking. (Pause to drink more water.)

My mother treated Doolies and me to the Broadway show: “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which is based on the movie (and perhaps a book or play before that). Having seen the movie, the play was interesting (there’s my favorite word again) and highly entertaining, but a bit boring. John Lithgow, who was one of the leads in the show, was absent for the showing. We learned earlier from Jennifer that he was speaking at Harvard’s graduation in Boston. While we thought he’d be able to make it back for the show, it was clear he didn’t (want to or couldn’t, not sure which). As shows go, it was entertaining, I just find it more difficult to watch light comedies and find meaning. I guess I’m jaded and old and want to think too deeply too often.

I’m running out of things to say and I still have too many words remaining. I could bitch and complain about not writing today, but that doesn’t seem worth the effort. I’ll get to it when I get to it. For now, I’ll hit my Goal and move on with my life, knowing that I will find better things to do when I find them.

We only have two more days in the city before we head to our respective homes. On Saturday before we leave, I will confiscate Doolies’s ring to have it remade in her size. I don’t think I conveyed this in my overly long and poorly detailed engagement musing (as it turned out, some of the details I gave, especially relating to the words I used when I worked up the nerve to ask Doolies, were terribly wrong. The words Doolies told me I said are actually much more romantic, and for that reason—and because she has a doctor’s memory, while I only have an open-book-exam lawyer’s memory—I like and will believe her rendition of the events. When she gets back, she’s going to redraft that paragraph, and I’ll post it along with my version, so you can get a better idea of what transpired. I’m just happy I’m more romantic than “Do you like Davids?”). The ring I bought for Doolies was sized at five and a half (that does feel familiar—maybe from writing it in mails before the big event—did I mention how hard it was to keep my worries, consternations, and fears out of my musings, to keep it from the off-chance Doolies would read a revealing paragraph?), when her finger is more of a four or four and a half.

When I return to Seattle, I will bring the ring back to the store I bought it, and they will remake the ring to fit her slender finger. The process should take between four and six weeks, a lifetime for Doolies, who will have to use camera-phone pictures to prove to her colleagues that she is indeed engaged. (Being a guy, I don’t have to worry about that since guys wouldn’t lie about something like that; if anything, guys would lie about the opposite. Talk about Venus and other unrelated planets that have nothing to do with gender.) Doolies should get the ring back in about a month, after which she will have plenty of opportunities to wear it. Before dinner tonight, she placed a bandage around the back of the ring for it to fit her ring finger. While it’s not an ideal solution (especially since she’s covering up some of the sparklies on the inside of the band), it beats her wearing it on her index finger as she had been doing since I gave it to her.

I seemed to have wasted my whole triangular foods bit. I was practicing it on Doolies while at the bar/pizza place, and it seems wasteful to have used it in a parenthetical above, especially as I’m now desperate for words to close out this musing. My fingers are hurting a bit from either all my typing, or more likely, my sitting in bucks of stars not typing.

Dinner with my mother and Doolies’s father went well, by the way. We still need to have the larger families get together (Doolies’s mom and middle sister, and my two sisters and respective monsters), but it was a good first step, even if we had to walk too far in the heat thanks to the Muse’s “special arrangement” with the restaurant. They supplied us with a free glass of cheap champagne as a consolation prize, which was enough for me to open up and become more witty/outgoing during dinner. I really should start drinking more to increase my charm factor.

I’m leaning toward not including a word count in my entries any more. I was using it as more of a training exercise to prove that the writing was greater than 2,000 words. While I’ll still have the Goal, I don’t think I need to share if I made it or not. The assumption (and reality, if all goes well) is that I make it every day: i.e., if I write something, it’s the Goal. If I fail to meet it, I’m sure you’ll hear from me. The caffeination part I may or may not include. Today was a coke at lunch and a few sips of mocha at the bucks, since I left before finishing it (the terrible heat didn’t help me want to drink a warm drink—damn, my sentence structure is gone). Luckily, that pushed me over the edge for tonight. Hopefully I’ll be back in better form tomorrow.