Lonely

So it's the day after my birthday.

I had intended to take off early from work yesterday and head to Fort Worth to have dinner with my mom and her family at one of those Japanese places where a show chef cooks the food right at your table.

I've never been to a restaurant like that, although I've wanted to my entire life. But I planned poorly, and mom was having dinner at 6, not 7 as I had thought. When I called her from the road and found out the bad news, she couldn't reschedule because it was a mass birthday party and several other people had already organized their schedules. I was running late because I stayed at work a little longer because of another mass birthday party, everybody sang a song for me and another guy at work and then we had cake. If I had left when I intended instead of lingering over cake, maybe I'd still have been able to make it on time. I dunno.

But instead I drove a half-hour towards Fort Worth until it was late enough that I was sure mom would be out of class. Then I called her to tell her I was coming, got the bad news, asked if it was worth it for me to show up 80 minutes into what would likely be a 90 minute dinner, just so I could turn around and come home the next morning, and we agreed that no, it probably wasn't worth it.

So I turned around and headed back home. Since it was my birthday, I decided to treat myself to a movie, so I went and saw King Kong (great film, by the way).

The first movie I ever saw by myself was that Will Ferrell movie, Bewitched. At the time it was a pretty depressing experience, but since then I've gone to several movies by myself and I thought the shame had worn off. But this time, perhaps since it was my birthday, it came back with a vengeance. Then I went home and watched TV until I was tired enough to fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed. Because I did NOT want to lay awake and think.

I kept telling myself that was all okay, because I was going to go ice skating tonight. I haven't been ice skating with my friends in ages, and I was really looking forward to it. I intended to take off from work at 5:30 and go to Aikido, and from there head to the mall next door and ice skate with my friends. But Randy dreamed up a new feature he wanted from the website and sprung it on me in the late afternoon. I thought I'd be able to finish in time, but 5:30 rolled by and it was too late to make it to Aikido class. Then 6:30 rolled by, and then 7:10. Well, I was going to be a little late for ice skating, but that's okay. I asked Randy to take a look and approve my changes. He wanted some large wording changes in several different files. On my way back to my desk, I got so frustrated that I kicked a wall and hurt my toe. I wasn't able to leave until 7:25. Oh well, I tore out in my car, drove a little fast, and got to the rink as quickly as I could.

But there was nobody there. Or rather, nobody I knew. I walked around the rink and decided I'd been abandoned, but then I ran in to Christina (one of my friday night group), and she said she was wondering the same things I was, where was everybody? She made a few phone calls, and, basically, nobody but us two could make it because of a bundle of different things. And Christina just came to take pictures of us skating, because she doesn't like to skate herself. So, she decided to just work on her Christmas shopping instead.

I'm starting to get seriously depressed here.