I have a story to tell. Not much of a story, mind you, but a few words devoted entirely to me (as this blog is essentially my personal narrative).

Anyhow, I had spent this entire weekend feeling sorry for myself. I admit it. If I’d been a kid, I would have been crying in a corner, holding tight on my blanket, and sucking my thumb. As it was, I was just crying in the corner. Metaphorically, of course. You know how long weekends are fun because they’re, well, longer than normal? And because you have free time to do what you like? I took half of Thursday off, and all of Friday, essentially adding a day and a half to my weekend. The unfortunate thing is that I had the flu. So I spent those days in bed, drinking lots of fluids, and basically sleeping off the sickness (a strategy that, in retrospect, doesn’t seem to have done much good). But even the drugs didn’t help.

By the time Living Worship rolled around on Saturday night, I was grumpy as a bear, a condition you probably won’t be able to perceive unless you know me well, or I’ve just yelled at you for nothing at all and then apologised five minutes later. For some context, by the time I got to Living Worship, I was even grumpier, as I hate traffic, and some gomer had decided to go ahead and smash his car into a transport truck on the 403, making the 403/QEW combination resemble a Wal-Mart parking lot two days before Christmas. Did I mention I hate traffic? I really do.

I had just hopped out of the shower after my convalescent activities of the previous days, having done nothing more than check my email once. I hadn’t been on IM, I hadn’t checked my feeds, I hadn’t talked to anyone for about two and half days. Had I done those things, I might have been aware of the high-level talks going on between various parties the nights I had crawled into The Cave and hibernated. But such as it was, I was clueless and unaware, a lamb being led slowy and inexorably toward my soon-to-be-revealed slaughter.

After Living Worship most of the band plus me and a few other dignitaries went out for good food and some Guinness, during which time I devolved steadily into yet further depths of Oscar the Grouch’s garbage can of self-pity. It didn’t help that my neck had begun to ache again, and with it my head. At the end of the night I simply picked up from the middle of a conversation and left, such was my outlook at that point. I drove to Nick’s house and settled onto the floor of his bedroom where I spend a great deal of the night waking up from the pain in my neck. But through all this I suffered in silence (though you may ask Nick if I screamed in agony much during the night: he was a mere metre or so away from me).

In the morning, feeling better, I gulped down altogether too much coffee, and got into what I can only describe as a bowel movement with four wheels (Gus’s sub-woofer equipped Mazda), travelling with Nick and Gus to The Bridge where I was greeted with just the right sermon based on an extended metaphor about weeding and seeding and several other rhymes. Side note: you may not be much for visuals during sermons, but the picture of a Burdock root is with me still, probably one of the most context-appropriate visual metaphors I’ve ever been priviledged to have grace my eyes. In any case, I also had a chance to comandeer the drum kit for the last set, as the usual drummer had at that point gone AWOL. And you know me, I never give up a chance to play kit.

The day progressed in much the same monotony, with the exception of a game of Reversi which I tied with a first-time player of the game, to my chagrin. Let it be noted, however, that I’ve never tied that game before, and beat Nick and Laura handily later that evening.

We went to the evening service at Living Water, which was complete with a sermon that gave me some things to think about. I also purchased a paintball gun. Not at church, mind you, though that was where the verbal agreement took place.

A few other boring things happened - though the coffee that punctuated those boring this was (in the words of a certain faux-French female) tres delicious - and I had a bomb dropped on my head. Have you had a moment where the completely unexepected happened to you? Blind-sided you, even? Well, in light drizzle, with cigar breath, it happened. In the immortal words of Switchfoot, you finally lit the fuse that’s in my head.

The challenge of unexpected things is they don’t lend to making roadmaps; I’m something like a political analyst working on a politician’s campaign, in that I don’t really like things I can’t measure and understand and hedge and diagram.

I am so screwed. Last night, I didn’t get a wink of sleep. Today, I worked half a day; on top of being exhausted, I was also sick.

So here I am, writing this out, so I can remember it. I forget a lot of things, and I thank God for my brain’s unique seive-like abilities or lack thereof, but I thought it’d be best if my personal narrative included this entry.

You should understand that the language I’ve crouched this post in was conceived by a part of my psyche that like to play things close to the chest. I’m so screwed, yeah, but in a good way. Not that good way. The other good way. I’m excited.

Tags: honesty, opinions, personal