I planned on sleeping like the dead on Sunday night (it's Tuesday night, now, at least here in Chicagoland), and was off to a good start at about 2 AM Monday morning. At 7:30 AM Monday morning, my boss called and said someone called in sick and asked if I could work for a few hours. Well, I have bills, and then a few more bills, so I said, "Yes."

After work, there was a free concert at what is called Millennium Park in downtown Chicago (http://www.millenniumpark.org/, if you want to see what it looks like). I'd been planning on going for a while, and was so flustered after working an extra day that I went. It was a lovely evening spent with family and friends of family, listening to classical Indian (as in: from India) music and eating sushi (vegetarian, of course) and chocolate.

However, when I finally returned home at 9:30 PM, I planned on watching the last half of a TV show, then hopping online and writing in here. Well, I watched so little of that show that I do not recall what it was. The next thing I remember was waking up at about 2AM, getting properly dressed for bed, and sleeping VERY MUCH like the dead.

It was a good night, actually. I have no real friends of my own living in this area, so being invited to spend time with family and their friends is a chance to be sociable I don't get every day. I keep thinking I need to do something about my lack of friends, but . . . well, I don't really know where to find them. I like some of the guys in my Wednesday night group therapy, but I'm the youngest in that group by a decade and we only understand each other so well, ya know?

I think I want to find a writer's group in the area. Find people I might have something in common with. This is something I'll have to think about. I live for my job, and come home and do my private writing and communicating with people thousands of miles away, or sometimes just watch TV and go to bed. I'm not a drinker of alcohol (it reacts a little funny with my medications), and almost all of my favorite pastimes are solitary. I watch movies. I read books and magazines. I write (or, more specifically, I stare at a blank screen on my computer while thinking I SHOULD write). This is how I enjoy spending my free time, except for one other thing: I like long, rambling discussions with interesting people.

Of course, if everything else I do leads to NOT meeting those interesting people, then I don't have anyone I can invite to long, rambling discussions.

So, I need to find something sociable to do to MEET people. I've said all of this, before, but fear and stagnation have kept me from doing anything more than TALK about it.

So, thanks for listening to me repeat myself. Oh, and I forgot to mention an amusing fact about myself the other day: I smoke. And, yes, that means I might be one of the only vegetarians who smoke on the planet. Weird, huh?

Peace, kats and kittens.