Girls, beer and one hell of a shy brother

To say that the past few days have been rather interesting would be an understatement. The quickest way to sum it up would be the following: Lots of open conversation, a trip to the bar, a few nuisances, a brother with extreme social anxiety and a bunch of alcohol. However, that's not how I roll, so let's get on with it!

Over the course of the past few days, I've been conversing a whole lot with my non-Australian ex-girlfriend. We've been getting closer again and I admit that I've been flirtatious, but only harmlessly so and she knows it. I don't want to be with her and she's content not being in a relationship with me. It's a complete and honest two way street, but that's why our flirtation is so damn fun. We mean nothing by it and it makes for ridiculous conversation sometimes. That's not to say that I don't mean what I say, but I want nothing to do with her in a real sense. We're just friends and that's how it's going to be.

I've been talking to my best male friend over the course of the past few days and he's struggling to deal with some issues, but it seems as though he'll be fine. The real reason that I brought him up, though, is that I'm extremely happy to see him somewhat regularly again. All of the problems he had with my household have been resolved, after tons of reconditioning and help. He had no issues with me, but he was very annoyed by my family for absurd reasons. He even admitted that those reasons were stupid, but it's just how he is. He makes me proud, though. He's learning to cope with things and be a much better person. In due time, he'll be well on the road to happiness.

There's been an infection of sorts developing in my right ear. I think it's an infection, but it could just be a stupidly high amount of ear wax building up, in which case I'll need to take yet another trip to the doctor to get my ears checked out. They'll hand me antibiotics, eardrops and instructions on how to make the ear wax loose. It would be much simpler if they'd just use the ear cleaning water gun thing that I keep hearing about from other people, but they never do that for me, despite the fact that it takes two minutes and gets the job done instantly with minimal effort on both ends. Such is life, I guess.

The Xbox Live cable that came with my Tritton AX Pro headset has a very obvious short in it, so I'll need to contact Tritton sometime in the near future for a replacement. It's not the end of the world, though. It still works. It just shorts out randomly from time to time and makes crackling noises sometimes. A replacement cable would surely fix the issue, considering I've tested every other part and cable. There's not a single other problem with the headset, so it's all good. Tritton's customer support is widely known as one of the best and most servicable teams in the world.

My supposed best female friend is up to her usual games, ignoring me constantly. I don't have much else to say about that. I'm just done with her. I tried one last time to get her to hang out last night and she didn't respond to me until I called her out on ignoring me. When I did that, she responded almost immediately and said that she was out watching a movie. However, she couldn't have been out watching a movie all fucking week. I've been trying to contact her constantly, but she never replies and there's always an excuse for it when she does decide to respond. I'm done, though. From here on out, I wont talk to her unless she's physically nearby or makes the effort to contact me on her own. I also wont allow myself to be walked on anymore. I wont be going with her to the doctors or grocery shopping; none of that bullshit. If she wants to hang out, we're hanging out to have fun. I'm not going with her to do something that clearly only benefits her just because she doesn't want to be alone. It's a waste of my time and she always drops me off at home immediately afterwards. Most of the time, she doesn't even thank me for going with her. Go figure, right? Oh well. It still hurts, but I'm so used to it that it'll be easier just to forget about her and move on with life. If I really mean anything to her, she'll come around and realize what she's done.

I cracked open "Mass Effect" again and messed around with a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade games recently. Perhaps I'll play "Mass Effect" for more than two hours this time. We'll see, I suppose! Oh, also, I broke the 15,000 gamerscore mark! I'm finally making decent progress by simply playing the games I own that I've pushed aside for so long. I'm pretty sure that I'll easily break the 30,000 mark in due time. By the time I hit that mark, I'll be the third person on my friend's list in terms of gamerscore. Of those three, one is a cheap achievement booster, so I don't really count about half of his gamerscore because it's all dumb stuff, like the two minutes of work required for the achievements from "Avatar: The Burning Earth". He has every achievement in the "Hannah Montana Movie" game, for fuck's sake. Ah well. I guess there aren't many people who actually play games for fun these days. It's rather unfortunate!

With the general news out of the way, it's time to move on to bigger and better things. For starters, yesterday afternoon opened a door. This door was opened by sheer coincidence and I'm quite worried about the impact that it could have on my relationship with the girl I could potentially like. See, I was talking to the girl I could potentially like through text messages, as usual, but her best friend started texting me eventually instead. The girl I could potentially like was off with her mother preparing and cooking dinner, so her best friend was bored and decided to text random people on her phone. Apparently I caught her attention because we talked for quite some time and she asked some very random questions. One thing led to another and eventually, she had me listing all of the things I like about the girl I could potentially like and ultimately, I straight up admitted that I like her, but also that I don't know if she could be attracted to me in that sense. I also informed her that I was embarassed and that I didn't want that information to cause any problems or awkwardness between the girl I could potentially like and myself. She told me that she'd erase the messages and keep what she'd learned to herself, but I don't know what really happened. I was drunk by the time the girl I could potentially like came back and there wasn't much conversation going on. She fell asleep eventually, but I'm worried about this. What happens next? I don't know. I'll find out soon enough, though.

All of that was going on both before and during my night out with friends and my younger brother. My younger brother asked me if I wanted to go out drinking with him, which wound up happening. Long story short, he convinced me that we needed to go out and I eventually agreed. I asked a few of my friends if they felt like hanging out, but none of them wanted to go out because they're all a bunch of pansies who would rather sit inside every day of their lives. While I was talking to the girl I could potentially like, I prepared myself for the night, dressed properly, ate some pizza for dinner and listened to random music at an obnoxious volume.

Eventually, we left and headed out to meet up with the other people that my brother invited. Two of them are friends of ours, but the other two are a couple of friends that I wasn't very well-acquainted with. They're very nice people, though and I enjoyed hanging out with them.

When we arrived at the first stop of the night, we immediately started knocking back a few drinks. We all talked for a good while, shared a few laughs, rocked out with random music and just had an all around good time. After about an hour, a friend of the people I'd just met showed up. This girl was someone I'd never met in the past, but she looked quite familiar. I discovered why later; she's worked at my favorite pizza shop for a combined total of five years. At any rate, she kinda' kept to herself for a while, but the fun started after we moved to another bar.

We headed on out to "Memories", which was a terrible idea, but one of the girls knew somenoe who worked there, so that was pretty much the end of the discussion. Everyone else wanted to go to "Christina's", but I suppose that'll have to wait for another night. After we arrived, everyone, myself included, was trying to convince my brother to talk to the pizza shop girl. She's fairly attractive and seemed like quite a nice person. Apparently, half the reason she was invited in the first place was for the sake of meeting my brother. See, he has extreme social anxiety when it comes to meeting new girls. He doesn't know how to ask questions or be funny. He needs outside influence; lots of it. We essentially forced him into talking to her, although only briefly and I stepped in to get her phone number. By the time pizza shop girl went to bed, I was on her good side and well on my way to convincing her to give my brother another chance. Thanks to me, she'll be at the party we're both attending tonight and she knows the secret to my brother's anxiety. All she has to do is keep talking to him and ask him questions until he warms up to her. Hopefully it all works out! I'm hopeful, at least! Oh, just for the record: By the end of the night, no one wound up trashed, but I personally did get pretty damn drunk, given that I drank a shit load of Yuengling.

The moral of the story: Grow some fucking balls. Rejection is completely normal. No matter how talented, well-endowed, charming or attractive you may be, rejection is more common than acceptance. No one is everyone's type and if you think for one second that you'll go your entire life without being rejection, you've lost your fuckin' mind. If you have a fear of rejection, all I have to say is this: Get the fuck over it. It sounds heartless, but it's true. We've all been there and the only way that you'll ever meet that special someone is to plow through a bunch of rejections until you hit that one acceptance that changes your life forever. Rejection is normal. Deal with it. No, my brother wont ever see this, but he knows how I feel. It drives me nuts that he's so afraid of rejection, but whatever. I love the kid and one of these days, he'll learn.

Now that I've let all of that out of my system, it's time for me to go get ready. In a few hours, we're off to celebrate one of our friend's birthday. He's the husband of the girl I knew last night and we're going to their house for a simple, but long-lasting cookout with both casual and close friends. I'm excited, given that it's been a while since I've had such an eventful weekend. Thanks for reading. Steve out. Take care!

EDIT: I forgot to point out that my close female cousin almost went into labor. They made phone calls and told everyone that she was in labor, but they sent her home because she's not ready yet. She's only at 2cm. They need to stop jumping at it every chance they get. I'm also rather disappointed that they never called me. I had to ask her about it myself three hours later. I was supposedly high up on the call list. I guess not, though. Oh well. Her and I haven't talked much for the past two weeks, anyway. I don't know what's up with her, but maybe it's for the best, given how she treats me when I'm around.

-S