Thurs­day morn­ing. Brian and Suzan's garage.

Piles and piles of suit­cases, cool­ers, PCs, food bins, gro­cery bags and other equip­ment stacked up along the walls of the garage for as far as my tired eyes could see. Now add to that eight peo­ple to trans­port from Hou­s­eXP in Loganville to down­town Atlanta. We had attempted to arrange the pack­ing as well as pos­si­ble the nite before, but it just didn't turn out right. We needed to re-pack before we left, but how the hell were we going to fit all of that stuff in the cars? I don't know how we man­aged it, but we did and were soon off to ATL. Ames and I in one car, Jeff and Jake in another, Jason and Kat in yet another, plus Brian and Suzan.

I've learned that it's quite hard to play nav­i­ga­tor out of blood­shot eyes with half-scribbled direc­tions and bags of stuff in my lap. But with the iPod crank­ing in the Jetta and our cell phones armed and ready, we were finally on our way to down­town Atlanta, and dragon*con 2004.

We had left later than Kat & Jason but some­how ended at the Hyatt before them. Once there, we unloaded the Jetta and had most of our stuff put in Har­ris. It had rained quite a bit the night before, so it was a cool sky for most of the day.…which my lungs quite appreciated

Our first order of busi­ness was to set up liq­uid refresh­ments for the peo­ple at Cen­ten­nial load-in. It was pre-made Gatorade, but it works in a pinch. Then I was on my way to the Mar­riott to check-in the equip­ment there and start set­ting up the Troma booth in the exhi­bi­tion hall. Once Jake came over there, we got through that set-up fairly quickly. The exhib hall didn't even open until the next day, but every­thing needed to be ready — it was just bet­ter to get it out of the way while we had the time.

The rest of the day was some­what laid back, as most of us knew that events the next day (the "offi­cial" start of the con­ven­tion) didn't start imme­di­ately in the morn­ing, which meant that we could take our time.

By now, time was a pre­cious commodity.

I wanted to leave the house between 2:30 and 3pm, just to be safe. Our flight was at 6:45pm, and I wanted to be there as early as pos­si­ble to avoid any prob­lems. Jake told me that it wasn't nec­es­sary, so we ended up leav­ing around 4 or so.

When we got onto I-25, the drive to DIA started out fine. Once we got to about 35 miles out­side of Den­ver, the traf­fic seemed to slow to a crawl, then just stopped altogether.

Jake was start­ing to get antsy, and I really couldn't blame him. I was con­vinced that it was just some­thing small, and that we would get going soon enough, so I wasn't ter­ri­bly wor­ried — at least until about a dozen state troop­ers on cycles were dis­pensed out to some­thing far out in front of us.

Twenty min­utes later, we were both start­ing to get pissed off. I kept look­ing at the clock on my phone and telling myself that we'd get mov­ing here in just a minute, just a minute. Mean­while, my brain was cal­cu­lat­ing poten­tial arrival times at the air­port if we were able to move in the next 5, 10, 15 min­utes. It was incred­i­bly nerve-wracking, but we finally got moving.

Once we arrived at the air­port, all of our fears were put to rest. There were absolutely no peo­ple wait­ing at the Fron­tier counter when we got there. We weren't check­ing any bag­gage, so we printed our board­ing passes and took off for the terminal.

A train ride and a short walk later found us at the gate where Kitty Kitty News Babe (known in another life as Kat Mor­rill, but for­ever to us as KKNB) was wait­ing for us. Kat had taken a con­nect­ing flight in from Phoenix to Den­ver to get to ATL. Upon hear­ing this, I had no choice but to book the same flight. (How could I resist pes­ter­ing KKNB for almost three hours where she would have no chance of escape? Ha!)

We arrived in Atlanta just shy of mid­night (EST) and found Amy wait­ing for us. Then began the 45-minute or so drive down to Loganville to see Hou­s­eXP, Brian and Suzan's newly-finished house (and our quar­ters for the night).

It started rain­ing decently hard after we arrived in Loganville. We still had to re-pack Amy's Jetta with the food sup­plies as well as lug­gage and PCs, so we did as much as we could in the rain and then moved the car into the the garage. Once all that was done, we broke out the alco­hol and pro­ceeded to catch up with peo­ple and talk con prepa­ra­tion. After some chat­ting, I needed sleep. So I found my way into the guest room, checked e-mail, pulled out the mat­tress and slipped into dark­ness for a few hours.

I really was quite excited to finally be at con. Amy had been work­ing very hard for sev­eral months on dragon*con TV, and to a much lesser extent, I had also been doing some small things for that as well as man­ag­ing web­stuffs for techops. I know that we were both just ready to go, and here we were, just hours away…

I quite enjoyed the sleep, prob­a­bly because I knew that that was going to be the most rest I'd get on the whole trip — so I needed to make it count. After all, the count­down to the mad­ness was now in sin­gle digits.

First of all, thanks to you well-wishers about the birth­day. I appre­ci­ate it. And you know what, I even thank those of you who didn't say any­thing — I'll save some money on Christ­mas cards this way.

There always seems to be an arbi­trary ques­tion that some­one (usu­ally a fam­ily mem­ber) will ask you on the anniver­sary of your birth, and that is, "Do you feel a year older?"

What the hell does that even mean? *shrug* I don't know.

I believe I'm in a much bet­ter place than I was a year ago. And I get very intro­spec­tive every year around the time of my birth­day because I think to myself, "Okay, great. What's dif­fer­ent now?"

I really fuck­ing hate that ques­tion, but it's not because I don't pos­sess the abil­ity. That's not true. I'm quite good at ana­lyz­ing peo­ple and pick­ing apart at their attrib­utes — and as with any­one who does that on a reg­u­lar basis (many of whom are my friends) can tell you, everything's fine until we have to do it to our­selves. Hav­ing my ana­lyt­i­cal beam turned inward almost hurts a bit.

And yet it hap­pens every year. The real rea­son I've been quiet here lately is that this hits me like clock­work. And even though I was taught to read a cal­en­dar sev­eral years ago, it some­how comes as a sur­prise and just throws me for a loop every damn time.

So I've decided to just keep a list and update it as time goes on. It may not be the best way to do this, but it sure as hell is the eas­i­est. I can't spend as much time as I'd like to write about this, because 1) I've already spent too much time just think­ing about it, 2) prep for dragon*con is com­ing up fast and furi­ous, and 3) I've got more entries to write in the next few days. So there.

The Life To-Do List^™: Ver­sion 22

• I real­ize that I can again enjoy a job with a set struc­ture. Not to say that it doesn't have its prob­lems, but as a friend recently pointed out, it's actu­ally help­ful to be able to pay the bills and such. (For those of you who might be won­der­ing, there are rea­sons why there haven't been posts doc­u­ment­ing the insan­ity over at the T-Journal. Trust me, there are good rea­sons for this. I may delve into that after dragon*con.)
• My prob­lems with rela­tion­ships are get­ting eas­ier to deal with. I took a hit around just this time last year with H.S., and it's taken a while to bounce back. But you know what? I've done just that. (Although I think that by this point, Super­ball should be pay­ing me to be their spokesperson.)
• Many of my friends have caught the getting-in-shape bug. Mean­while, in the last year, I've gained two waist sizes. I really just need to get off my ass and stop mak­ing excuses for why I don't exer­cise. See also: I need to eat a lit­tle bit more healthy. I know that I have the power to do both of these eas­ily, it's just time to fark­ing do it. I really want to kick this in after we return from dragon*con.
• Slightly related to #1, there are some out­stand­ing finan­cial com­mit­ments that I need to take care of. These have been loom­ing over my head for some time now, and like the exer­cise thing, it's some­thing that needs to just get done. I'll be rest­ing much eas­ier when I can check these off my list.
• The Big Red Machine (read: my '91 Pon­tiac Grand Am) is really on its last legs. Some type of sen­sor needs to be replaced on the car, and it's decently expen­sive. I would have fixed this months ago, but I have a reser­va­tion about it. In short, the mechanic who diag­nosed the prob­lem told me that even if this part is replaced, that may not fix the prob­lem. So I'm stuck with either a) pur­chas­ing the replace­ment part and cross­ing my fin­gers, or b) div­ing back into the waters of leas­ing a newer car. I still haven't made up my mind. I'll fig­ure it out at some point.

Okay, so it seems like a rather short list. But they'll keep me busy for a while. As for now, it's back to dragon*con planning.

Glo­ri­ous life, isn't it?

I was clean­ing out one of my e-mail boxes the other day and ran across some­thing that a friend/colleague for­warded to me. Nor­mally, I don't even read these, much less think about post­ing them. But this stuff was just too funny not to share with my beloved fan base.

I really need to get this book, oh yes. As such, it's been added to my ama­zon wish­list.

Did I hap­pen to men­tion that my birth­day is next Tues­day?

I haven't writ­ten any­thing lately. I know it. Every­one knows it. I'd say that I don't have the time, but that's not really accu­rate. I've always made time before. Things have been busy, and they will con­tinue to be, espe­cially because Dragon*Con is com­ing up rather soon.

I have a few entries in the pipeline that I hope to have fin­ished by the time we leave for Atlanta. Just need to make time is all.

Mean­while, I have been fid­dling around with site designs — go fig­ure, eh?

This lat­est ver­sion is a trib­ute to my favorite super­hero of all time: Bat­man. I recently (after much search­ing, mind you) picked up Bat­man: The Ani­mated Series — Vol­ume 1 and re-discovered my favorite car­toon of all time.

It's every­thing I remem­ber it being. The show is dark, styl­ishly drawn, and fea­tures supe­rior voice act­ing and sto­ry­telling. I've found myself watch­ing at least an episode per day because it's just so damn cool. Get­ting this set was def­i­nitely worth the wait.

So any­way — yes­ter­day, in a moment of inspi­ra­tion, I decided to make a rather sim­ple style devoted to ol' Bats. Enjoy.

You may have also noticed a new wid­get in the side­bar of the site that allows you to select a style. I'm sys­tem­at­i­cally going back into the older site designs to make them com­pat­i­ble with this, which sets a yummy cookie on your machine and loads the design of your choice.

I guess I just decided that some of them were actu­ally worth sav­ing. I sup­pose it was actu­ally worth it, as I'm already receiv­ing praise for bring­ing back V.10. *shrug*

But yeah, writ­ings are forth­com­ing. In the mean time, feel free to check out the new design for the 2005 Tro­maDance Film Fes­ti­val, which I'm now appar­ently in co-charge of.

Because I guess I needed more respon­si­bil­ity.

Sam and I have been going round and round in cir­cles for quite some time now. I'd hes­i­tate to say that it's get­ting old, because that's really not the prob­lem. I like how things have been with us. I sup­pose I just find myself won­der­ing where things will go from here.

Wondering.…and scared.

I'm ter­ri­fied of get­ting hurt again, of doing the wrong thing and end­ing up exactly where I was two years ago — with a bat­tered, bruised and bro­ken heart.

Fear begats more of itself, which in turn begats very stu­pid choices. Part of me knows that by sab­o­tag­ing this rela­tion­ship, I will save myself any fur­ther pain. And for the past week or so, that's what I've been doing. I need to get myself out of that way of think­ing, oth­er­wise I'll end up sav­ing myself any fur­ther hap­pi­ness, too.

Prob­lem one is that our respec­tive sched­ules do not com­pli­ment each other at all. With the new job, I actu­ally have a fairly struc­tured sched­ule to adhere to where I'm happy to have week­ends free. But her new job requires mostly week­end hours, so our time spent together as of recent has been spo­radic at best.

Prob­lem two is that from the start, our rela­tion­ship has been pri­mar­ily phys­i­cal. Because of this, both of us have needed to remem­ber to stop for awhile and just, well, talk. This has been a prob­lem off and on for as long as we've known each other, but we're try­ing to work with it and not against it, which I think is the key.

But how the hell would I know? I've tried this before, and it wasn't exactly a resound­ing success.

Last Spring — March 5, to be exact — I remem­ber check­ing the e-mail. Not an uncom­mon occur­rence, that. The usual smor­gas­bord of mes­sages pro­claim­ing scream­ing orgasms, breast enlarge­ment, penile enhance­ment and Cialis were wait­ing for me as they always are. Among the selec­tions, how­ever, was some­thing I wouldn't have expected if I'd lived to be 100.

A mes­sage from a girl — once a very dear friend who had shared some of my dark­est moments, and yet some­one who since had become only a dis­tant mem­ory. At the time, it had been almost two years since we'd spoken.

We had one of those rela­tion­ships. A trust of deep alle­giance, and yet always had an under­ly­ing layer of innu­endo and mys­tery to it — a layer that was never acknowl­edged or explored. That was, of course, until our junior year.

It was a fling. Nei­ther of us knew it at the time, but I started to real­ize that I wasn't will­ing to put forth the effort required to make it some­thing more. I don't know if I regret that, per se. But oh, do I regret the aftermath.

Our friend­ship with­ered and died a hor­ri­ble death by the time we grad­u­ated from high school. I was never really sure how to apol­o­gize — or even at that point, what to apol­o­gize for. Time passed, and we went our sep­a­rate ways.

It took her almost two years, but she for­gave me — and in time, I learned to for­give myself. We were young and stu­pid at the time. I'm still young and stu­pid — it's just about dif­fer­ent things now.

We met shortly there­after and sparks began to fly. Our rela­tion­ship was like a breath of fresh air, espe­cially after hav­ing spent the pre­vi­ous year pin­ing for Megan. This time, it didn't feel like a dis­trac­tion, but some­thing new — some­thing with potential.

I was seri­ous this time, but hes­i­tant. As much as I wanted to be — as much as I really wanted this, I just wasn't ready for all of it yet. I wasn't pin­ing any­more, but nei­ther was I ready to start again. The pain was still there, lin­ger­ing. Some of it still is.

Not all scars are vis­i­ble to the eye. Not all wounds heal.

I don't know if let­ting Ash­ley go was the right deci­sion. At the time, I was sure it was — not only for my peace of mind, but I thought I was being the hum­ble per­son by spar­ing her feel­ings. Now, I'm not so sure. I really wish I'd given her more of an oppor­tu­nity instead of just shut­ting her out. She under­stood bet­ter than any­one ever had, and I didn't give her any­thing close to the chance she deserved.

We used to talk every day. As sched­ules and life sit­u­a­tions have changed, that doesn't hap­pen so much any­more. If any­thing, we chat about once a month, but it's noth­ing more than surface-talk. I sup­pose I don't blame her. She's done what's right by her — there's noth­ing wrong with that.

I still won­der if, given the chance, we could do bet­ter if we tried now. It's all moot, though. The best thing I can take away from that whole expe­ri­ence is the hope that I won't do the same thing again with Sam.

I'm still afraid. I'd like to think that I've made strides in the past year. Fuck it, I know I have — espe­cially in the last few months. But how does one actu­ally gauge any of this? There's just not an easy way to do it. Since H.S., I feel just as gun-shy as ever. I need to break out of that box, and I know that. And still, after all this time, I just don't know how to do it.

Just don't make the same mis­take again. Don't.