Chapter 1

I was born twenty-three years ago yesterday, making me a certified child of the internet era. I think (too much) about everything and although I usually say fairly little, when I get started I have a tendency to go on; I, like Jubal, am flawed in that way. I've been told I write well by people who are not my mother (although she is a professional writer and reader herself), and I figure at least one of those people was probably not full of shit. But despite all this, I have never had a blog. Today's the day.

The beginning is the hardest. At the beginning, everything is yet to be said, which makes everything critically important and completely banal at the same time. I feel like I ought to start with the Big Stuff, try to establish some kind of grounding to put all the future posts into context, but I suppose that has to just emerge on its own. For the moment, you'll have to be content with making ill-founded judgements about me based on the comments and anecdotes that arbitrarily end up in writing.

I went out drinking last night and was approached by a girl. I'll admit that I am of the very American bar-going mindset, in that I don't often talk to people at bars who I don't already know. I don't approach them, and they don't approach me. But this girl approached me, and she was stunning; that is to say, when we started talking, I was stunned. Within moments, I was overwhelmed by the powerful conviction that this was a girl I would not at all like to talk to. Something about her manner was just completely awful, and yet she persisted in being infuriatingly interested in everything I had to say without betraying any outward sign of real comprehension. Nonetheless, as uncomfortable as the whole interaction was, I found it strangely therapeutic to talk about my thoughts and plans with someone who neither understood nor particularly cared what I was saying. I found myself answering her probing questions and then suddenly realizing that what I'd just said was actually true. Maybe that's why I've started blogging.

It rained all day today, and when I got home from work I discovered that the power had gone out at some point. Then I tried to take a nap, and the power went out again, except this time it was followed by a number of short bursts of very worrisome humming noises, like a huge eletrical arc someplace very close. A fire truck and the electric company arrived shortly and parked a block away, but the power remained off, so Erica and I went out to dinner with some of her friends from work. I ate a positively ridiculous sized steak (which wasn't actually very good), drank my share of beer-in-a-boot, and had a grand ol' time. Now I'm home and the power's back, which is good because I need to set my alarm for tomorrow and go to sleeeeeeep......

Adieu.