I will see you again in a place where no shadows fall

And by "we're gonna hang out", I mean, "we're not gonna hang out". I got in my car and started heading over, but he called and let me know he didn't have his PS2 with him. I was gonna show him Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, so I asked him if he wanted to come over here. That sounded cool, so I headed home. He called back a little later and let me know that he was slightly intoxicated, and that he wouldn't feel comfortable heading over.

Odd, but okay.

So I played Ogre Battle 64 for about 10 minutes, then fell asleep. Woke up this morning, feeling like shit. I have a terrible headache, my nose is stuffed up,

(She just logged on.)

my throat burns like a bitch whenever I try to swallow anything (and I can't really get any liquids down), I feel nauseous, and whenever I stand up or move around a little, I get really dizzy.

What's even better is that as I was lying here, cataloging my ails, my ankle started throbbing. Not terribly bad, just a little reminder of the two times I've bashed my ankle on the bar doing Afronova Primevil on doubles/heavy. It's like when you have a cartoon character carrying a really heavy load across a bridge, and a butterfly lands on it and breaks it.

I have to go to work at 5, and it's not gonna be a terribly fun shift. I've got Johnson and Patterson fountaining. I don't like Adam, though Jess and I get along fairly well now. I think it's Lacy and Kenny carhopping. Eh. And Freddie and Frank in the kitchen, with Frank off early. So yeah, that'll be fun.

So back to Thursday night. I woke up and called Javi, and found out that Rudy was going to stay for Dennis, and I didn't need to come in. Checked my messages, and Cullen had called about going to do something this evening, perhaps even play DDR. That sounded great - I could definitely use the chance to work out a lot of negative emotion that's been building up. I've been depressed for a couple weeks now - probably about a week and a half to two weeks before Lilie and I broke up. So we agreed to head out 'bout 9 or so.

Picked him up, and we were off. Half an hour later, we were at Le Fun, dancing our asses off. Well, not really dancing per se, but stepping on a metal pad with plastic squares with colorful arrows in time to some music, and matching the arrows on the screen. Or something like that. Overall, we had a great time. It was just us for a bit, then other people started showing up. I mean, there were other people playing DDR. I haven't seen that in a while. It's always good to see other people playing - it's popularity has definitely waned, but it's still going strong. There was this one little posse of Mexicans. Now, I don't have any problems with people of any given race, just because they're of that race. It's just unfortunate that I tend to run into a lot of bad examples of Mexican people. I knew a lot of great ones back in high school, but ever since... anyway. It was just one guy playing with the other like five people watching, while I was playing Raiden Fighters, which is a great game. Eventually, I got up and did Exotic Ethnic, My Summer Love, and Healing Vision (Angelic Mix). Cullen had left to go to the bathroom, and I went to see if he was back between my second and third songs. Extreme has a 80 second timer between songs, so I had plenty of time. Of course, one of the guys in the posse tried to jack my game while I was away. Got that straightened out easily enough. They gave me a wide berth after that. Felt good - I hadn't smacked down anyone in a while, since Diversions.

Later, there was a group of five - not in a single group, but just five other people playing. There were these two girls, some random guy, and a couple. The two girls were okay - low Medium type stuff; the guy was okay too. He was having problems with the 7th mix pad sticking, and came over to me while I was chilling on the left pad on the 5th mix machine while Cullen was doing his thing on the right pad, and asked me, "How do you get the pad to acknowledge that you're stepping on it?" I explained to him about the pads sticking. It was weird, though, because at first, I thought it was Cullen asking me, and I was kinda confused.

So they all left, except for the weird guy who kept playing on the Max 2 machine. A decent crowd gathered around the 5th mix machine - which definitely has the best pads. There were these two Asian guys, but only one of them was playing; the other guy seemed to be... moral support? There was a blonde guy wearing a bracelet, and his friend; again, only the blonde guy was playing. He was really good, too - he could definitely kick my ass at PA, though I'd like to see who'd win in a doubles face-off. There was a group of three - two girls and a guy; again, the guy wasn't playing. Then, there was Cullen and me. None of us really talked to each other beyond "Hey, who's next?" It was nice - haven't really played with a crowd since Diversions, though this one didn't have quite the same socializing, which would have been nice. It's always good to see a lot of people playing, though - DDR's popularity has waned lately, so these groups give me hope.

The two girls were really good - they were playing on Manic, and passing just about everything they tried. They didn't really do anything terribly hard - mainly 7 footers and lower, but, well... it was nice to watch. They both had decent racks, and DDR, with the sprinting-like motion and jumping up and down tends to... amplify (?) female attributes. (People tend to think that because I'm so timid about sex, and never really make moves on girls, nor really try to intensify physical relationships, that I'm also unaware of sexual attributes of females around me. They're wrong.)

It made me sad, though - by the time it was my turn and I was going to do doubles, they weren't really there anymore. I'm such an attention whore, and I was going to try Afronova Primevil, which I still haven't been able to pass on doubles/heavy. By the time I got to my third song, though, some of them were back. So, I went for it - it probably didn't help that Drop Out was my first song. I got further then I have before, but didn't manage to pass. I was on the last 8th note run, though. Close. So, it went back down to just Cullen and I as time went on. I was starting to get kinda tired, and he hadn't played in a month or so, since he hurt his back or something. The evening started winding down, when we had one final player - some chick with some really weird hair - the lower end was this really, really blue color, and the upper half was... white? She was telling the guy she was with how she used to play DDR. I went for my last attempt at Afronova Primevil, but accidentally activated 'Little" mode as I was pacing during the pre-song countdown. "Little" mode is where there's only quarter notes - notes on the beat. It's a holdover from very early versions of DDR where, when playing with two players, they couldn't choose different difficulty levels. So that was fairly unimpressive. Hey, I passed it though. Tried again a little later, but couldn't pull it off. I think I was just tired, though. I think I'll be able to do it the next time I try.

So it was between 2 and 3 at this point, and I had to open on Friday, so we headed out. That, and we'd been playing DDR for something like 5 hours, give or take. It sucked, 'cause it was still fairly warm outside, and starting to get a little humid. It was New Year's Eve, and it was cooler inside the arcade than outside. Anyway. We had a blast on the way home, cracking each other up as we talked about a lot of things - Red vs Blue, Penny Arcade, Transformers, just the whole gamut of stuff. I dropped him off, and I was feeling great. The evening had definitely been a success at turning my mood around.

Of course, the higher the mountain, the harder the fall. I'd keep going, but it's past 4 o'clock (I've been going back and forth between writing a little and sleeping, as this sickness has left me feeling a little weak), and I've got to go do the dishes before heading in, *and* we're about to run out of myriad things - lettuce, tater tots, popcorn chicken, shredded cheese, ranch, etc., and I'm going to go get a case of popcorn chicken and half a case of ranch from Buda. So that'll be fun. I'll talk about that evening, New Year's Eve, and how I feel about Lilie later (hint: I miss her, 'cause we haven't talked at all since we broke up, nor have we seen each other. That, and I'm worried about her mental state of being. And that should be in reverse order, 'cause I'm more worried about her than I am about us. Or something like that.)