Life, the Universe and DBing

[LearningPatience]

Full on journal mode here - just to warn you, this may get long, so keep that back button handy!

I'm going to start this weekend's story from the middle of Saturday. I was driving to Toronto (from mid Michigan) to see a concert. It felt like events were conspiring against me! It took 1h40 to cross into Canada, the service centre I was going to use for gas was closed, and I had to make a last second decision on how to get downtown when a freeway sign said the road was closed ahead. No GPS, large scale maps, fortunately, I chose correctly. In the past, I'd have freaked out about all of this, now I was just mildly annoyed.

One very hard part in all of this is that it will be 7 years next weekend that W and I took our first road trip to Toronto. It'll also be 7 years this Thursday that we first ML (yes, I'm a sucker for dates). We always talked about going back but never did. The drive really gave me a lot of time to think and I was pretty sad for a lot of the drive. Might explain the next paragraph.

I'm not proud of any of this and I know I deserve all of your 2x4s. Well, I look and feel like I already got them. I drank way too much Saturday night at the concert and after. A lot of the night is fuzzy. I do remember trying to pick up women at a few bars, which is a 180 but not really one I planned on. Because of the excessive drinking, I fell and scratched up several parts of my body, including scrapes on my face (attractive) and I may lose a fingernail (but nothing broken, I think). I think I knew this, but it really hit me that I've been self-medicating myself with alcohol lately and I have to stop. More than the physical pains, it hurts knowing what I'm doing to myself.

I woke up late the next day and drove to Montreal (somewhere I've always wanted to visit). Montreal is a big party town, but I had no desire for any of that. I did wander around a lot though. The International Jazz Festival was playing a block from my hotel, and I finally realized one small dream of mine by eating poutine in Quebec. Yes, I know that's sad I also thought to myself that W would have liked it there, but in a more detached way.

Drove home yesterday, it was long but uneventful. Border crossing was trivial compared to Saturday and I concentrated on driving and being one with the road instead of my sitch. Road trips do that for me.

OK, I like to end positively, so let's start with Saturday morning. I was supposed to be up to 9 miles running for my half-marathon training. I hadn't been running much due to being sick, so I didn't think I could do it. I actually ran 8 1/2 miles and it wasn't *too* hard. I also ran with a few other people and talked to them, which again is a 180 for me as I'm slow to open up and don't like smalltalk.

Oh, one last thing... I have black dress shoes still at W's house that I need to get for wedding this weekend. I'm trying to be as dark as I can with her, but I think I'll need to arrange picking them up. I don't think my brown shoes will go with grey pants Part of me wants to arrange with SD to pick them up, but realistically I need to man up and contact W myself. Ugh.