A-Stock's birthday last night, in the old neighborhood, where on a Monday the most bang for your buck is a Buddy and a shot of old crow for a five-spot. What did I have, six? Slusarz and I got into it at the end, talking old times. Making a date for Friday night at the Palace. The old days. Yeah.

Back in September aught-two, I wrote the following:

After all this I helped Jeremy and his coworkers pack up (they were there to sell books for Shakespeare and Co) and get cleared out. Victoria (my English crush) was there, but I didn't really speak with her. It was actually kind of weird. I don't think I'll see her again before she returns to her home country, and this makes me sad. I was innocent, but confused. Fascinating to me the way soulful/intellectual attraction still induces palm-moistening nerves, tiny panics and hesitation, the deisre to take a charging dive at the bottle. Much more complex and difficult than the freewheeling zoot-suit character of lust and easy company, but in the end a mite bit more valuable and rare too. Mad at myself for apparently missing out on something that might have happened.

We talk about this girl for a while because it turns out that -- hey imagine that, beautiful witty tall chiquita with an accent -- we were both hooked at the time. It makes sense, seeing how Jeremy tried to wave me off that one time back sitting at that big round dark-wood bar. "Bad Josh," he said in that big-brotherly way he has from time to time. He had a girlfriend already, and a good one, and he's an honorable man, so he couldn't come out and say much more. But it makes sense peering through history. Those were interesting times.

And now to one of those good six-hour-drunk-sleep days of work. Time to rack up some billable hours before my skillset skips off to Bangalore.