And I can't help but notice how incredibly awkward my writing seems to be at the moment. I mean, even at its best my sentence construction would fall into the "unconventional" category. These days I'm just feeling downright clunky. Part of that is lack of practice -- you know, use or it lose it, as they say -- and part of it would be that I haven't surrounded myself with people who are quite particular about words of late. And that really does make a difference. Reading things that are well written and hearing language used well on a regular basis will tend to help how you express yourself ... conversely, being immersed in language that would be hard pressed to be clear about anything more complex than, "Food is good" will tend to dumb your diction down a bit.

Then again, maybe it's just that I've finally killed enough brain cells to have begun to become noticeably dumber. I still have gotten out to drink at least a couple nights a week, which off and on was one of the things CG and I argued about. The ironic thing is that half the time I felt like I should go have a few beers because of whatever she and I were arguing about. The other half, it was just because bars are my basic social scene, and being social is a healthy pursuit. We fought about that too, tho, because she didn't like any of the places that I liked, nor was she interested in meeting any of the people that I know. Which meant that when I went out without her, she got to be paranoid that I was just going out to meet other women.

Yeah, it was fun. Anyway, I was gonna say that while I have continued to allow myself to drink in recent months, I'd decided that I should not be doing anything else while I'm trying to find a real job. And by "anything else" I mean "smoke the green buddha". Which hasn't been tough, because I can't afford to waste money that way anyway. It's only the few people I know who are always trying to share that I've needed to watch out for, and I've done pretty good as far as that goes. Until last night, of course.

Long story short, I ended up getting pretty sick last night. And as I was sick, I couldn't help but think, "I would not be anywhere near so messed up if I hadn't smoked that." Which made me also think, "Of course, if I hadn't been so messed up, I would not have smoked that." Yes, quite a tangled skein.

Thing is, on my own I was at four beers and two shots of jag in about four and a half hours. Which didn't leave me exactly sober, but also didn't leave me exactly shitfaced. Then the loosely associated group I'm hanging with is joined by the one guy who always does his best to get everyone very fucked up, and I join them in doing two shots in about ten minutes. Allow me to say for the record: Fuck bar camraderie.

I actually do decide at this point that it's time to finish my beer and walk my drunk ass home, which is exactly what I try and do. And I say my goodbyes and make it halfway to the door before Mr. Free Shots waves me back to say, stick around just a few more minutes and smoke with us.

Once again, I become much more pliable when I'm very not sober. Have some shots with us? Okay. Smoke some bud with us? Eh, why not.

Because you very well may be drug tested for the job you just interviewed for, and even at best the most you will get out of it is to go to sleep stoned.

Yep, I've definitely gotten stupider.