Imaginary Conversations and Random Thoughts

You can catch up from the beginning here.

I told you you’d get your answer on day three, and here it is. I was hurting. Totally miserable. I ate part of a piece of dry toast for breakfast. My head hurt. Plus today had several workshops. I would be moving a lot. Of course, it didn’t help that my first session was being run by Big Cheese himself. Way to get on the boss’ good side, showing up to his presentation with a hangover. I pretty much just sat there. I managed to keep my eyes open pretty much the whole time. I willed my head not to explode, and it obeyed. Aside from the unexploded head, I didn’t get much out of this session.

Next session had co presenters. One of them asked me to chip in during the session, as the topic involved an area of my own expertise. Look I didn’t know if I would be up to it. Lucky for me, the other presenter went first and I had another half hour to recover. Amazingly enough, the recovery went well. By the time I had to talk, I only had the tiniest bit of a headache left. This is the sort of thing minor enough that I would normally wait to see if it got worse before actually taking something. I had nothing to take, and that was ok, because after feeling so crappy before, I was feeling super great by comparison.

I’ve never been to a shrink. But I was feeling so good, I started to wonder if I might be having a manic episode. But I don’t think I was so depressed before. Which made me wonder if I had just been depressed so long that I didn’t even recognize being in that state. I mean I have not felt so noticeably good in a very long time. I was practically giddy. I chipped in on the second half of the presentation, and when I left for the next session, I was practically flying.

My feet seemed to barely touch the ground. I was bouncy and full of energy. But I still had to go to the rest of the sessions. And they just flew by, baby! Now it’s all about the gambling at the local tribal type house of taking my money.

Someone, who shall remain nameless, if by nameless, you mean Mr. Texas, gave us some bum directions, and it took us about twice as long to get there as necessary. We finally made it and several of us played Black Jack. Let’s see. Mr. Truck sat at one end, then Miss Lola, then Princess Wolfie, then me, then Drinking Buddy.

I am sort of a conservative guy. I like traditions. And when it comes to gambling, my tradition is of losing. Far be it from me to break a tradition. I lost again. But I like to think of it as a service to my fellow players. You see, all of them won. The bastards should have been tipping me for pulling all the bad luck onto myself. I could have made two house payments with the money they won. But the nice thing about losing all the time is that you get used to it. But it’s kind of like haircuts. The conclusion is predestined, and it’s just a matter of the quality of the experience. It was a blast, and I only lost about a third of the money I had set aside for gambling. For me, that is winning.

Princess Wolfie had ridden in a separate car earlier, but she rode back with Drinking Buddy and I in the back seat of Mr. Truck’s truck. Lots of Star Trek references, a few from other movies and other TV shows. Princess Wolfie just totally rocks.

I didn’t want to risk alcohol tonight. Why push my luck? Even so, a good time was had by all.

Plus, when we got back, we discovered that Big Cheese and a number of other executives had gotten way more drunk than I did the night before. So I didn’t feel as guilty anymore.