November 5, 2007 - Bloated pt. One

To say the least, this was a very weird weekend. On top of it all, I ate out three times, which is the most I have eaten out consecutive days in a very long time (sans weekends out of town). After the first few weeks back on my pretty strict diet, I felt like I could handle this sort of non-prepared by me food intake, but I was hoping that I wouldn't completely fly off the handle. I am fairly happy with how I did, outside of the fried goodness that I enjoyed yesterday during the game, but when I woke up this morning and my freshly laundered pants felt extremely tight, I was very much concerned. For now, I am going the denial route of thinking that it is just because pants are always a little snug after laundering. Yes, yes, indeed...that's the ticket. I really do need to watch it, or the name FitnessNerd is going to become more ironic than true.

On Friday, I left work early to run some much needed errands. Since it is the first of the month, I certainly had work that I could have done, but I really needed to go to the grocery store before my cat decided to start eating me in the middle of the night. She's 17 and a bit bitchy. So, knowing that I wasn't really going to have time to go to the store this weekend, I opted to end my professionally crappy week early, and set out to go to Target, Old Navy, Costco, and get my hair cut. To do this, I have to leave downtown and head to the north side, which for people who are not familiar with Indianapolis is pretty much the area where people fled when the downtown wasn't desirable to live in. It is traffic hell, with all the roads seemingly in constant need of expansion because the original infrastructure was not designed to handle it. Needless to say, for someone who lives a block from work and who generally does not like to drive, going to this side of town is tantamount to shoving an ice pick into my eye. Unfortunately, where the population goes, so goes all the great retail opportunities, and the north side is the only place to find a Costco in town. I opted for the easier to get to one, because really, the other one is in a retail corridor that is pretty much traffic hell on earth 24 hours a day. Anyway, when I got done at all of the stores and with my wallet much lighter, I ended up getting back home around the time I would normally if I had worked all day.

I was sort of tired, and I hemmed and hawed about going to the gym. I certainly needed to, but I also wanted to take a nap because I was meeting Romeo and Blanch out later for dinner. However, I fought the urge to sleep, and I got on my bike to ride down to the gym. Now, the weather has turned full bore into Fall, and even though the sun was out, it was still quite chilly, but I figured I was going to be on my bike, so shorts and a sporty jacket would be enough to keep me warm. WRONG! I was cold, and after I dropped off my rent check, I decided to just take the long way home and skip the gym. I at least got some physical activity in.

After primping and going to pick up Romeo at work (on the northside, GAH!!!), we met up with Blanch at a new restaurant on Mass Ave called the Chatham Tap. Chatham Arch is the neighborhood directly north of this location, and this is how they came up with the name. It was above average pub grub, and the atmosphere was nice. However, it was very crowded and quite loud. I would go back again, maybe after the newness wears off. We end up at the Metro at 9:30, which is WAY too early to start off our usual Friday night, two bar crawl. We find when we get there too early, we get too bored, and by the time we get to Greg's we're pretty much ready to go home. This was really the way the night was heading for us, but we soldiered on. HR decided to just go home after his football game, because he had a full day of marching band contest volunteering to do on Saturday. So, the three of us headed to Greg's for the usual pre-midnight exercise in making fun of the country line dancers.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the country line dancing, not that I ever do it, but it is just an extremely weird and surreal experience. First of all, the lights are on, which is just strange when you are used to the usual darkness, and plus, it is just plain jarring to see two men waltzing to some schmaltzy country tune. Additionally, I really just get the sneaking suspicion that line dancing was created so that big butch cowboys could do the Electric Slide without looking like a big gay man. How's that for further irony? Anyway, Blanch and I watch this for a while, and Romeo is off being the social butterfly. He says that he needs some fresh air, so I follow both of them out onto the patio, which we proceed to walk to the end of and go into another door into the pool table area. It is here that I walk smack dab into Tyler, for our second, post break up meeting. I do not know if I was just tired or just not drunk enough, but this meeting was much more stilted and bizarre than the last one. However, I finally got to meet his friend Hannah (not her real name, but I didn't get a chance to ask her how she wanted to be referred to in the blog...so if she wants something different, she better leave a comment). She was very fun, but again, I think my initial interactions with her were not as great as they should have been. When I finally caught my second wind and had a few drinks in me, I apologized to her for acting weird, and I told her Tyler and I are still having a hard time learning to interact. The unspoken, yet obvious thing here is that I am not over him. I'm pretty sure a blind person could sense this. I've had conversations at length about this to most of my friends, and with them knowing my side of the story, they certainly back me up. However, as I have stated in previous blogs, the highs of our relationship were so high, that it is hard to give those up even in light of how low the lows were. I am certainly processing it, slowly, but Tyler and I have a lot of issues to talk through before we are really comfortable being in the same room together. The conversation has started, but I will save that for another blog.

Anyway, finishing off this tangent, seeing Tyler really kind of put me down a shame spiral of knowing full well that I shouldn't continue to pine for him but wanting him all the more. This is only intensified since the decision was essentially mine to break it off, and knowing that all of my friends really didn't want me (and conversely them) to ride that merry-go-round. So, the cycle of thinking of him, shaming myself for it, and just generally not being in the mood to be at the bar lead to an intense case of the blahs. Thankfully, Romeo was finally ready to go, and we headed back to my place to crash.

I had a pretty low moment that night, and I started to drunkenly blog about it. Thank god my internal breathalysers finally kicked in, and I just shut down the computer and went to bed. I know a blog should be unvarnished and uncensored, but sometimes there are demons that even I do not want to expose to myself, let alone the rest of the world.

I am going to end part one here, and I will pick up the rest of the weekend either this afternoon or tonight.