Nice Shot, Guvnah

Several of them, in fact.

Every Tuesday night I go to Brent's house and play pool with him. Tonight I did particularly well.

It all started at a combined young men's/young women's activity, which Brent was kind enough to host at his house. When I noticed there was a pool table to play on, I went to my car for my cue and then began playing with anyone who dared take the challenge.

Brent noticed some fancy things going on at his pool table, and invited me to come back and play with him regularly on the condition that I teach him as we play. Deal!

So tonight I called four separate shots that seemed impossible and sunk them all. It feels so good to do that. Oh, and I nearly ran a rack on him. I ran my seven balls and the botched an easy shot on the eight because of all the adrenaline.

While playing, we listened to Bob Seger, Paul Simon, and America. All good. I think that the music we listen to while we play really effects my game. We used to play more or less in silence. We'd just chat or his kids would watch a movie in the background. But lately, the classic rock's been going on, and that's when I feel good.

Eric posted a comment on the last post, and it's good to see he's still alive. I suspect he's still at least semi-honeymooning, so I won't ask anything of him just yet. Take it easy, man.

Crystal and I honeymooned on a cruise to Mexico. What a wonderful, funny, awkward time that was. It's been a good five years, and the awkwardness, at least, is all gone. We have our little conflicts now and then. I have a theory that couples need to fight a little every now and then. There's no way you always agree on everything, so if there are no fights, you're not really being open and honest with each other.

But maybe that's a crock of bull, designed to make me feel better about fuming over something stupid I say to Crystal and then get in trouble for. Whoops, was that too frank?

Anyway. Yes, I know that the "official" term for Brini would be a transgendered person, or transsexual, or transvestite. Any of the three can be abbreviated tranny.

The thing is, if you have a penis, I don't care enough about the subculture to call you anything other than a man. Sorry. Call me insensitive if you like. The terminology doesn't bear enough relevance in my life to make getting it right important.

J. Edgar Hoover, for example. Tranny? Quite possibly. But I just don't care. Eh.

So to me, Brini's a man, and there's my point. Whatever else you're going to call him/her/the-entity-known-to-you-puny-mortals-as-Brini, she's got a penis, man. Tranny terminology be damned.

On Friday, I'll be giving my final speech in my Public Speaking class. It's a ceremonial speech about my dog, who died two years ago. I miss her.

I've done fairly well in that class. My biggest problem has been that I talk about geeky things, and my classmates don't quite keep up. One of my speeches was on how hard drives, CDs and RAM work, but I lost a lot of people when didn't have time enough in the speech to further illuminate concepts like lasers shining light on an aluminum surface.

Then I spoke about the RIAA and the EFF, and the ongoing battle between music fans and thick-skulled music industry executives. I did better that time, but I still lost some people on the concept of voluntary collective licensing.

Good heck, it's 1 AM. I'm gonna regret this when I wake up in five hours for school.