It was another one of those weekends laced with strange shit, goofiness and a dash of mundania.

On Friday I got out of work, headed home, packed for the evening I was going to spend at Heather and Jason's and swung through the store for smokes and Maker's Mark. This weekend marked the 5th anniversary of the death of my best friend from high school; so a proper Irish celebration was in order. Since David and I both came from Southern stock, I decided to forgo the traditional Jameson's and commemorate him with something more down home.

I had dinner with Ho-J (Heather and Jason), raised a toast to David and commenced the wake. I got soundly drunk; Ho and I reminisced and went for a walk in the rain. Then I came back and crashed out on the couch around 2 a.m.

Saturday I woke up around 8 a.m. feeling iffy. I watched a couple hours of cartoons and kids TV (Popular Mechanics for Kids, by the way, is really cool). Around 10 I decided I was actually going to have a hangover (this could be the sign of a trend I'm NOT prepared to deal with) and opted to go back to sleep. At 2:30 p.m. I woke up feeling fine, showered, went to breakfast with Ho and headed home.

That night I went to Zorro with Kristine. Fun flick. Afterward we went to Jupes, a quiet little neighborhood bar we hang at sometimes. Chris, the bartender, was in a rowdy mood and served Kristine VERY healthy drinks all night. I was just drinking Corona; so he couldn't screw with me too bad.

After about an hour, these two women walked in (here's the "There was this girl" section of the story). One of them was a hag in her late 30s-early 40s, rode hard and put up wet many, many times. The other girl... let me just say that if there were a god, and he took special orders as to the kind of girl I have hoped to run into in a neighborhood bar ever since I started going to them at age 8, this girl would be mighty close.

She was tall, exactly how tall was hard to judge because of her shoes. The hair was soft brown, cut in a modified pageboy. The face was so close to the face that I want on my pirate girl tattoo as to be scary. Very Renaissance, but without the big honkin' nose. I'm going to have to get a couple photos of her to give to my artist when I get the tattoo done. Amazing coincidence.

Speaking of which, she had a couple of really interesting tribal tats on her shoulder (I like a girl who can withstand the pain of shoulder tattoos), and her skin was dusted in glitter. She wore a lavender chiffon half top with a matching full length skirt slit on both sides.

Overhearing her conversation with the hag, I found out the hag owns the massage studio (legit) 2 doors down from the bar, and the girl is the new receptionist. Kristine and I were sitting at the bar, backs to the front wall. The women were sitting a couple stools down from us at the turn of the bar.

I should note that I was in full weekend casual mode (read - high mileage biker look - unshaven, black T-shirt with modified Harley logo reading "Shoot to Live, Live to Shoot", faded jeans and boots. Whatever it was about this look, it worked. Every time Kristine's head was turned so the girl was not in her peripheral vision, she was STARING at me, doing the full up/down eye rake lilting back up to hard eye contact and lopsided smile thing. It's been a long, long time since I've had that happen (too long, in fact).

Even though Kristine had no objection, I couldn't bring myself to hit on the girl with her there. I asked Chris if he'd ever seen them there before, and he said the hag came in a lot, but he thought the girl was new. This jibbed with what I'd overheard. I gave Chris my number and told him to call me the next time she was there. Unfortunately, with my friend Keith's schedule and my friend Charles still being in New York, I don't have a wingman at present to keep the hag distracted while I work on the girl. However, I don't think that will be too big a problem, judging from what I saw in her eyes Saturday. I'm tempted to get religion just so's I can pray for luck.

Sunday:

Woke up, had breakfast with Kristine, went climbing with Jon, went to dinner, came home, showered, snuggled up on the couch with Kristine, watched Philadelphia, went to bed, slept (believe it or not), and woke up cursing the alarm clock this morning.

That's about the it of it. Didn't suck. Didn't excel. It just was, and who knows; it may be again.

M_