My boss came in and lets me know that, "It's Donut Day!"  Of course, when I go down to check, it's all croissants and pastries and snoothy things like that.  Not a donut to be found.  What a tease.  <SIGH> I accepted the cruelty of it and took three of some sort of pastry anyway.  Yum.

Ah, the other highlights of my Vegas excursion included seeing childhood buddy Jeff, who if he puts on anymore weight will be the starting offensive guard for the UNLV Rebel football team next year, and smoking about a pack o' cigarettes a day.  Christ, so now I have to cut back on that as well.  It was so easy while I was there -- you can smoke anywhere!  I guess everywhere outside of California is like that.  NOW I appreciate those anti-tobacco laws here in Cali -- not for the sake of non-smokers, but for smokers' who need to save a little cash.  At $4 a pack, if you could smoke everywhere it'd get to be a super-expensive habit really fast.  As it was I bought three packs over the weekend, and am just finishing up the third one today.

Mmm, smoking.  I didn't even think about lighting up when I was in Vegas.  I just did it.  Gamble?  Light up.  Eat?  Light up.  Watch Niagara vs. Marist on the Jumboscreen b/c I lost all my money?  Light up.  If only it'd had been some bud -- that would have made this a fun weekend, wouldn't have mattered how much I lost.  Those buffets would have been cleaned out.  

The hardest part of the weekend wasn't losing the money, although that ranks a very close second.  It was just that I felt so goddamned lonely.  Ray decided to stay an extra day to win back his losings, and we moved over to Caeser's Palace, so after I was done donating my paycheck to the dealers, I walked around the Forum for the next two days.  Damn, that's a nice little mall there -- like Southcoast Plaza, but without any big department stores.  Anyhow, every cutie, I mean EVERY one, was with a man.  That was depressing.  Well, that and the fact that I couldn't buy anything to make me feel better.  So I'm thinking of a new resolution -- never to go back to LV unless I'm going back with a woman.  Of course, there' s a loophole in that statement that I could potentially exploit, but not anytime soon.

When it comes to other people and their well-being, I generally try not to worry about them, especially if something seems wrong -- like they're out of contact or whatever.  I've been blessed, I guess, in that no one close to me has ever died.  The downside of that is that there aren't many people close to me.  

Akiyo didn't show up for work this morning, and nobody had any idea of where she was.  Because she manages our firm's library in Century City, we knew about it and began to worry as to why she didn't call and where she was.  The receptionist down there didn't know, her roommate (who knows the receptionist) didn't know, NOBODY knew where she was.  I figured maybe she had some car trouble or a doctor's appointment - she had a little fainting spell recently, and she's seen her doctor regarding it.  

As time rolled past, I did start to worry.  I looked up her brother's phone number in college, but it was only for San Francisco.  I snuck away from my desk and called the area hospitals.  None of them had any word, which put my mind a little at ease.  Still, I stressed.  

After smoking three cigarettes in twenty minutes on my lunch break and running around to find a pay phone to try her again at home, I came back and read an e-mail from the receptionist saying she had called -- Akiyo did have a doctor's appointment, and she had e-mailed the Deej about it.  

So it's all the Deej's fault, even though she said she didn't have any idea where she was.

So, that was a non-emergency.  Still, I worried.  I didn't let anyone here know I panicked -- I kept my wits and tried to play it off like I wasn't interested or concerned.  One redeeming quality I've thought I had is that I keep a level head, externally, in crisis situations.  Screaming and shouting never did anyone any good.  ("When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!")

And what if something had gone wrong?  What if she's been hit by a train or her loser ex had murdered her or something?  Then what?  I'd have felt powerless.  That's horrible feeling, and it's something I feel about most things in my life anyway.  I was sucking up a storm during my lunch hour, coming up with all sorts of horrible scenarios and the fact that I couldn't do a damn thing about any of them.

Yeah, I know, I'm stressing about a bitch who isn't interested in me anyway, and I was just being a neurotic NGAS-ridden loser worrying about it.  But I can't help my feelings.  I got tons of emotion with no one or nowhere to shed them on.

So I cry them out here.