Oy vey. I'm an hour and a half into my shift and I don't really feel any better yet. Though measuring discomfort is a tricky thing. I won't say pain, though that too is notoriously tough to gauge, as pain would seem to lend a dignity to my current state that it is certainly unworthy of. However as I sit here typing and trying to ascertain the particular unpleasantness of my condition it seems that perhaps my head does hurt less than it did when I woke up this morning.
brief thesaurus interlude here: measure, gauge, ascertain, determine, assess, evaluate
I woke up because I needed to pee. Normally I can ignore that but once I was awake the pounding behind my temples kept me from going back to sleep and I slowly recalled why I felt so miserable. In addition to the dull, throbbing headache I felt like I needed to throw up and even as I write this the mere thought of vomiting makes me begin to salivate in anticipation of doing so. Oh alcohol you are a difficult friend. I did not throw up though there was some fire in the bottom land that seems to have abated only temporarily.
Despite my wretchedness I did manage to get to work on time. Early even, with a bagel in hand which is mostly uneaten at this point. The alarm from the emergency exit was activated once again. It isn't loud and not especially alarming. Annoying at best. But it continues to be a mystery. No one can figure out why it is going off. And it only gets set off in the middle of the night when no one is here. At first I thought that perhaps someone was hiding in the library after we closed then using the emergency exit to make their escape but I've searched every nook and cranny of the library after closing and no one was here. A mechanical failure of some sort seemed the most likely culprit but the maintenance folks have come out and replaced the alarm itself to no avail. Perhaps we have a ghost in the library. It's been so slow as of late that I have far too much time to sit around pondering this.
Some of the events from last night that I should recall: One young lass who shall remain nameless giving me a friendly flirty little kiss and telling me that if we weren't such buddies she'd be hitting on me hard. Now I had suspected as much but it was nice to have it confirmed. I believe that might have been my cue to further encourage her, and while I have thought about it, I know she's trouble and I think it wise to remain just buddies. I did ask a different gal to go out with me and thinking about it now I realize that I was none too subtle. After asking her, I went to the bar for another drink and her friend, who is a bar acquaintance of mine, told me that he'd put in a good word for me but she wasn't interested. Well, of course I had to hear it for myself so I asked her what she'd decided. This is where it gets strange. She says "ask me again in two weeks." Pardon? At which point I launch into what may have been a harangue (tirade, rant, diatribe, jeremiad) about how I would not be at all offended if she simply said no, there would be no hard feelings, I would not be embarrassed and nor should she and so forth. I'm not sure but I wonder if my tone did not imply, hell make explicit, my ongoing frustration with what I see as the depressing lack of honesty in human communication. Surely a topic best left for later. Despite my making it clear that "no" would be ok, she stuck to her guns and told me to ask again in two weeks. Now I'm left to wonder what difference two weeks is going to make and the possible significance of her saying this. If she really wasn't interested then why set herself up to be asked again? But if she was interested then why not just say yes? As I'm thinking about this now (after also sitting here pondering the difference between "ambivalent" and "ambiguous") I'm remembering that I might have also said something like "I'm not gonna be any better looking in two weeks." I cannot conclusively confirm that I said this but I have a suspicion that I did indeed unleash the drunken wit or lack thereof. It's probably best that I stop trying to remember this. In any case I expect I will ask again in two weeks if only to get to the bottom of this deep and confounding mystery. Though I do wonder what I'll do if I see her before then. Pretend it never happened until two weeks passes? Sarcastically indicate that I'm anxiously counting the minutes?
Had an interesting conversation with a bar gal pal who is mostly pal of a pal. I'd never sat and talked to her for that long. I wonder now if it was evident that I was drunk. There are degrees of drunkenness of course and I do well up to a certain point and despite my misery today I don't think I really did anything to embarrass myself. I hope so anyway. Oh alcohol you wiley rascal.
