I think to love is to make amends for wrongs you did not committ.

Today was my first day volunteering on the OB/GYN and PEDS wards. I forgot how work makes your back ache. One thing I noticed: oodles of hot, lady doctors.

Yup, hot, lady doctors.

Today I pulled up behind a Nissan Sentra with the bumper sticker: This is it. There is no other car. (I drive a Nissan Sentra.)

I'm going to have a sticker made that reads: If you've got two legs and four wheels, no bitching.

I am totally blaming The Devil and Daniel Johnston. First, what a God-awful piece of art faggery. In the Petard-i-verse, all documentaries about disintegrating products of too much time and too little need to feed oneself which inspire THAT TYPE of film critic/wanker-who-drinks-chai to start talking about "the boundary between art and insanity" are hereby banned. Banned, I say!

So...I emailed the Okie. Art faggery, what have you made me do?

Tonight, it was onion rings, red wine, and Trivial Pursuit with Sweet Potato, Mr. Potato, and Swims with Dolphins. (I am hereby changing her Indian name.) A good time was had by all, except Amy the cat, who threw up and then tried to eat it.

Well, who knows what a good time for a cat is anyway?

Vive le difference.

As I was walking past the meat section at Giant this evening, I had one of my increasingly rare, fortifying flashes of anger. How hard and strong I'd be if I could be angry. I'd destroy cities. Or get a lot of cleaning done.

Then later tonight, I thought about how no one can fight all the time. Not even soldiers. There are skirmishes, battles, incursions, but then there's traveling and waiting. Most of any given day is spent not fighting. Only boxers in training fight for hours on end. Which made me think of the Simon & Garfunkel song. On the corner there's a boxer, and a fighter by his trade/and on his face he carries a reminder of every blow that laid him down/or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame/I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains.

Remains not fighting. Most of the time.

Why he didn't call:

He didn't call because he knows something you don't. Simple as that. And you really don't want to know whatever it is that he knows and you don't. Really.

And now for the good news:

Guess who did call? Viktor Krum, the soccer mad, gainfully employed, world traveler with the wonderfully atmospheric Slavic accent.

You have to take the good with the bad.

Tonight was the first meeting of my drumming circle. The teacher didn't show, so I gathered the various and assorted hippies, non-conformists, and obligatory sweaty nut job/martial arts enthusiast into a circle, pilfered drums from a closet, and we improvised! Most ridiculous fun I've had all year.

As for eligible bachelors...it was a drumming circle. Best specimen was a 30 year old stock boy for a pool retailer. (Q: "How do you stock pools?" A: "Very carefully.") Most interestingly, he applied to several pool retailers before scoring his current gig. He actively pursued an ambition to become a pool boy a la Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigalo. Like I said, it was a drumming circle.

Oh, ladies of Baltimore, I have much to report. First, a challenge: coin a term for the female equivalent of a "sausage fest." You know, like the scene at the Latin Palace last night. Mucho mujeres; un poquito hombres. But...yours truly did just fine. My dear lady friends thrust two (count them, two) eligible bachelors in my general direction.

In one corner, Captain America, a wounded Iraq veteran who owned two (count them, two) Camaros and a Mustang as a wild young man. He was all muscle, right-wing politics, and the sweetest laugh...

In the other corner, the Flying Dutchman, a Germanic braniac who danced like no one was watching (as the cliche goes) and whom I discovered was sipping MOJITOS halfway through the evening. So innocent, those Europeans.

I danced, I flirted, but then the FD starting talking books and films. I was smitten. Swimming with Dolphins (the Indian name of a new lady friend) said, "So you'll pick a man just because he can talk books?" Yes! Oh, hell yes! Even if the talk is of German literature that I've never read nor heard of. Each of us has a path that wends straight to our hearts. It doesn't have to be a logical route.

But, loyal reader, you're looking for advice. Well, not to get too Alfred Marshall on your a**, but what we have here is basically the law of supply and demand. We've been told that the more we're in demand, the more we're valued. Maybe. But chew on this: the greater the supply, the less value we attach to any one good. Ah, the delicious freedom from want of being able to pick and choose! Billions of materialists couldn't be completely wrong.

I think it's funny that the instinct which best categorizes love is self-preservation. All's fair and all that.

One of the tenets of this Summer of Yes is to rethink all that conventional wisdom that's been dryrotting my mental fibers since I came of age. Item #1. The man pursues, the woman demurs then acquiesces, the world continues spinning happily on its tilted axis. You know, I've seen too much variety in the human experience to acquiesce to this particular piece of rot. It's downright anti-American to accept a tenet in which you're the loser from the starting gate. Bah humbug! I say. (This is all to waste time so I don't email the Okie. Or call the Okie. Can't stop daydreaming about the Okie...)

O'Bandteacher has sent me an e-minder for the e-vite to her Mary Kay "Girl's Night" party. Now, dear reader, this is a pig in a poke. Say it with me: shilling non-comedigenic face wipes is not a celebration; buying crap to put in your hair is not a reason to let your hair down and shake it like a polariod picture. This reminds me of Q's one-and-only experience at a gentleman's club. He was getting a lap dance, and reports thinking, "Hey! I know you don't really like me. I just saw you take my twenty." Which, upon reflection, is a great illustration of Q's astonishing ability to twist just about anything into an offense against his own tender self. Had she cost more, things would have been different...