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So exhausted today... mentally and emotionally. I expect the clamor to die down soon, as the days pass and the nights get shorter. Rough couple of days though, besides the torpor of the office casting a hazy glare over everything else. Hard to think clearly, write clearly. And then there's pen pal.

Pen pal has a real name: Nicole Wojkiewicz. She and I met randomly one night at Corby's about a month and a half ago. Coley told me to go to where these two girls were standing at the jukebox and figure out if we needed to hijack their song selections with a boatload of play-nows. I went over and stood behind them for a second, feeling... well, a little buzzed to be sure, but confident besides. And then I saw that they were playing Bob Seger. Or trying to.

Jukeboxes are officially the easiest places to talk to a member of the fairer sex without seeming creepy. I mean, if you're creepy, you're just going to come across as creepy, but if you're not, then the jukebox's presence has a calming, decreeping effect on everyone. The interactiveness of it all, the choosing, the being forced to listen to what everyone else picks... it's a community event. Either way, I started talking to them, focusing on the one with her hand at the screen. Kind of cute...y'know, whatever. I told them Bob Seger sucked. Which he does. Night Moves? Against the Wind? Who pays a dollar to listen to that crap?

When the other girl said something about how the music we were listening to at the moment was suicidal and depressing (all songs that we had chosen as a group, and not depressing at all (unless you count flaming lips and basement jaxx as depressing)) and they wanted to put on some happy music, I turned to her to laugh. And she was beautiful, in a casual,offhand kind of way. Glasses, ponytail. I laughed anyway, and so did she, and I went to tell the boys about how our music was depressing, and maybe it might have been. Who knows? I get depressed by really happy stuff sometimes. Kittens. Love.

So anyway, I noticed that they didn't choose "play now" with the Seger track, and I felt kind of bad for interrupting and ruining their whole deal. I mean, you just do not hear your track if you put it on after eleven o'clock and don't press "play now." So, I put it on for them. The Seger song.

I know, I know. Sell out. But shit, the girl was cute. Later on, I made my way over to where she sat and somehow managed a conversation. It got better. She seemed interested, and gave me the strangest personality quiz ever. Favorite color, disney movie, do I eat jello with a fork or a spoon? All important, sure, but what? So, needless to elaborate on, I was intrigued. Even more so when I went to ask Nicole for her number at the end of the night, and before I could get the words out of my mouth, she said to me, "I'd give you my number, but I think it'd be more fun if you have to figure it out for yourself."

Riiight...