For a lonely soul, you're having such a nice time.

1) It's been a week, boys and girls. It's been a tough week. But here we are, on the other side. Friday night. Do a dance.

2) I've been here at the office until at least 8 p.m. for 4 out of the past 5 workdays. I'm tired of these late hours. Why so long? Because I've been stuck in first-gear here at work, all week long. And I just feel like I'm grinding my gears at this point. A coworker said it sounded like burn-out. I don't know. It may be. I may need to hit the road.

3) Today, I had some issues with an email sent by one of the doctors, in which my work performance was slandered a little bit. It took a supreme act of diplomacy to not open up a can of "whoop-um" (as they call it at CCCS) in my reply, but I tried to be clear and firm. I'm afraid that my best efforts, even supervisor-approved, will be thrown back in my face next Monday. Oh well, at least I'll be looking forward to leaving to go get a tooth pulled that afternoon.

4) Yeah, I've got a bad molar. It had a cavity, which I ignored (to my detriment). The tooth cracked on Wednesday. It doesn't hurt yet, which is good in the meantime, but means it was pretty well dead up to that point. Pretty gross. So now I have antibiotics and painkillers at the ready for Monday's fiasco. (Insanely-sensitive gag reflex + extraction of last bottom molar = double-plus-unfun.)

I learn things the hard way. Even when it comes to being vigilant about dental hygiene.

5) At the dentist, I learned that my blood pressure was not as bad as I thought it would be. It's not great by any stretch, but I'm a tad relieved. It's fixable without meds, I think. Good news.

6) My plans for the next 36 hours are some combination of the following: watching movies, doing laundry, cleaning my house, sleeping, afternoon-napping, Bible study lesson final-prep (i.e. writing it all down), 2-3 Playstation baseball games, 1 valiant attempt at the "Hard" setting on "Guitar Hero," hanging out with Will Sr. (if possible), and ignoring the calls of all but two people, if I can help it.

7) I wanna be loved.

8) I'm still struck by crippling self-consciousness whenever an attractive girl crosses my path. I'm struck dumb, I feel awkward. I can't just go up and introduce myself. I fear that she'll be repulsed by yet another cheesy guy hitting on her. For me, being "repulsive" is almost worse than being "rejected." I don't like making people feel uncomfortable. I'm not assertive enough to not care.

I saw her walk up and stand in line at the restaurant with her friend. I actually invited them to go ahead of us while we waited on our party, but I had to tell the friend, not her--I couldn't speak to her. She was lovely. Semi-professionally dressed, for what could be a job as restaurant hostess or executive assistant. She had a nice smile. She spoke to her friend, laughed. I tried not to glance at her too often. My lunchmate said, "You ought to just go right up and kiss her, man." I shook my head. I couldn't do that. I'd think about it for a moment, but there's no way I could. I'm not that guy. I don't think I really want to be. But I at least want to be the guy who goes up and introduces myself. Who asks if I can join them for lunch. Who makes small talk. I've lost the art of making small talk with beautiful women. (I say "lost" as if I ever had it.) And when she sat at the other end of the dining area, I wrote it off in my head as hopeless. And when she left, I wrote it off as yet another coulda-woulda-shoulda.

9) While sitting in the dentist's chair, "waiting for the man to come around" (so to speak), I watched the flat-screen TV a few feet in front of me. (My dentist is very posh, and has all the nicest toys, including flat-screen monitors to entertain the patrons in his absence.) It was tuned to the country video network (GAC, not CMT--as if!), and I found it funny that I didn't mind. Five years ago, I would have begged for other options, but I'm slowly starting to at least appreciate some of the good things about country music. I'm not a fan yet; but I like some stuff.

So they started the broadcast of female country stars; apparently March is "women's history month." So the first video is Reba McIntyre's "Somebody." Followed by a commercial for eHarmony. Followed by Shania Twain's "Forever and for Always."

I wonder if Somebody's trying to tell me something.

10) Incidentally, I also saw the video of Loretta Lynn and Jack White singing "Portland, Oregon," which was pretty rockin. If I had YouTube access, I'd embed it here. Sadly, you'll just have to find it yourself. Good stuff, though.

11) Oops. Went past ten. Oh well. Have a good weekend, kids.