Memorial Day weekend.

Dear diary. I'm depressed.

At this point I think it's been 3 weeks and for me that's unusually long to be sad every day. It's Tuesday today. A work day. Yesterday was Memorial day so I had the day off. I had a somewhat relaxing weekend. Somewhat. It's been anti-social and revolved around being with family. But family doesn't help me with my particular problems. Anyway, here's a short account.

Friday evening I stayed out late at work. Until around 21:30. I had nowhere else to go. Alina and Chris (my roommates) asked if I wanted to go play pool. And we did. Went to a place where Gully and I went to a few years back. Gully was a guy I used to know from the beach. Bromance ended when I fell out with the rest of the beach crowd. Either way, we got to the place. I had a burrito because I was still hungry. I'd only snacked that evening. And I had a beer. The beer was a porter... which some asshole had put coffee into. I need to learn to send drinks back when I detest them. But in this case there wasn't another I wanted. So I just sucked it up. We played pool for a couple hours. Alina and Chris wanted to play on the same team. I don't know why we didn't play Cut-throat instead. But okay. So I got to shoot a lot. I won about half of the time. Chris was good at cutting and Alina was good at long-distance shots. If only they didn't do Round-Robin. Either way, we left there after 01:00. I wanted to keep playing. Loneliness and all.

Waking up was tough. I pulled my eyes open around 11:30 and started thinking about my day. It wasn't until 12:30 that I finally got out of bed and decided to proceed with my plan of skipping a morning hike and going straight to Rui's (one of my longest friends) wedding lunch. I still to pack for the weekend trip and I wanted to stop by Tempest to work off the disgustingness of the yesterday. Then I realized that I was already late. The lunch was starting at 13:00. I still needed to shower, get dressed, eat and drive there.. in 30 minutes. It was at a BBQ place... so I had to eat beforehand. I felt terrible, but I messaged letting them know I won't be making it and started trying to revise my schedule. Now I had time to pack etc. Long story short, I headed out at 14:30 and went to Tempest.

Because of the long weekend there was like nobody there. No girls. Wayo was there to try some things on the trampoline. I've finally got a chance to put all the mats by the trampoline so I could try doing flips off of it. That was fun. But again... it's a gym, so kind of lonely.

I still had 2 hours 30 minutes left go to meet up with my sisters in San Diego. Kind of far. I know there was a strawberry festival somewhere down South. Looked like it was on the way, so I stopped by. I got there around 18:00 and was there until 19:00. But I didn't do anything. Looked at people who all looked like they made less money than me. But I think it was only because the festival was on dirt.. so everything was dusty and dirty. As was I by the time I left. Haha. Well, I didn't go on any rides. Even the rides there were too extreme for me. So I gambled instead. Spent $35 trying to win a plush toy or something. I failed at raising the bottle. That one required keeping the rope aligned the with bottle, which I needed practice on. I failed at shoving the ball into a basket. That one required putting a good amount of top-spin on the ball, which my short fingers didn't do so well. And the last one, that I tried 3 times was shooting a start out of a target. With 100 pellets. I know I'm a pretty decent shot. But every time there was a tiny sliver left. So tiny. I was so close... Like 99% of the star was gone... each time. The pictures look good. But I still have no prize to show for it. Disappointed with myself, I bought a frame with a lame picture in it and left.

I got to SD at 21:00 and accompanied my family to the store. I got a Riesling since the store we went to didn't have vodka. That and I was just not happy with my day thus far. Good thing all they wanted was watch TV and have a glass of wine. I bestowed some knowledge on my nephews and then we went to bed.

Sleeping was tough for many reasons, but I was finally up by 11:00. It's Paradise Island. Summer in Southern California. I wanted to go for a swim. But the rest of the family had just pulled in and they wanted to hang out, eat lunch and move on with the day. Lucky for me they were struggling to find a place to eat, so I went to the pool with Tony (my nephew) in the mean time. The water was cold. I didn't want to stay long. The weather wasn't that good either way.

Then we went out to lunch. Long story short: great food, great prices, amazing service; got into a fight with one of my sisters when it was time to pay. It's always like that. Stingy bastards. I ended up paying for the lunch for the 8 of us and told them that whoever feels like giving me money back can do it.

After that we went kayaking. It was my first time. That was fun. I was paired up with Tony again. We weren't any good. We kept getting out of sync. And when we switched and Tony was steering he kept us going in zig-zags. At some point we started playing a game of fetch-the-water-bottle. Except one time Tony missed it and decided to do a quick 180. And we flipped. Hehe. That was fun. We had vests on and everything. I was excited to figure out how to climb on a boat from water. But the rest of the family swam to us and held the boat. Chance ruined.

And then there was nothing. Half the family went to get some food and they said they'll bring some back. I was with a half that waited. We didn't do anything for a few hours. Then at 22:00 the rest of the family came back. I had a sandwich and then 45 minutes later everyone left home or to their rooms. And we went to bed.

I wanted to head back early on Monday. I looked up the traffic and it would have taken me 2 hours to drive back. But I needed a ride to my car. I was told to wait. They were leaving, too, after all. They assured me that I wouldn't have to wait long. I said that if we wait until noon, the drive time will go up to 3 hours for me. Even more for them. While my sisters were packing, Tony and I went on a bike ride. We covered the whole island in 45 minutes. When we got back they were still packing. TL;DR; we didn't set out until after noon.

When I woke up I was thinking I could go for a hike, then go to the beach, or maybe go see someone. The way things panned out, I got home at 15:00, and after unpacking I only had time to quickly stop by the beach. I made plans with Chris and Alina to watch Game of Thrones in the evening. Beach it was! I took the rail. I was hoping to maybe have a conversation with a stranger on the train. But it didn't happen.

On the beach there was nobody there. Everyone had gone the day before. I got to say hello to Chris and Scott. The two local super-hero looking guys. That was nice. Otherwise I just spent the time breaking-in my new ring grips. When my hands were too sore I did some hand-stands. Still can't hold it. I did some Websters. Trying to do them every time I go to the beach now. Don't want to lose them. And then it got windy and I left.

I went for a long walk on the pier. Surrounded by people I still felt alone. I'm sure the expression on my face wasn't a happy one. I didn't use the "Free hugs" people who were standing all over the pier. I got to the end, pulled out my phone and swiped left and right on a couple of dating apps. Then I walked back.

I wanted to go watch a movie or something, but then I wouldn't have made it for the game of thrones night. So I just walked around 3rd street promenade in Santa Monica and got some food. I saw exactly one beautiful woman at the mall there. But she was dressed so well and looked so good that my inner voice managed to talk me out of coming up to her. Le sigh.

Determined to do something when I got home I signed up for e-Harmony and started filling out my profile and answering questions. All until I realized their site is broken. Half of the things I had put in didn't save. I bought a membership to try to see matches.... but I got 4 matches. Within 30 miles. That's..... pathetic. I want my money back. And out of the 4, 3 weren't my type and one has 3 dogs. And I hate dogs. C'est la vie.

Oh, and Chris and Alina didn't get home until 22:30 because they had scooter problems. So I didn't even get to watch Game of Thrones.

The song by System of a Down comes to mind... "What a lonely day. And it's mine. The most loneliest day of my life." And now that it's 11:00 maybe I'll get up and start my day.