I love Thursday nights, when the plane finally touches down at EWR. There's work to be done on Friday, but Thursday nights, no matter the Air Traffic Control delays, I am home. I love standing outside the terminal and breathing the warm port air, I love the local car service in Hoboken that knows my voice on the phone and is always waiting to get me home.

And I love the city lights coming into view as we speed down the 1&9 towards the Holland Tunnel. That is the best part of my week.

I'm not ashamed to say I love getting into Hoboken and cruising the streets towards home, especially on those nights when we're not getting there too late. I love it for the same reason I've loved this crazy little town ever since I first moved here - you can not get home without seeing pretty girls who are also trying to get home, or to the next bar, or what have you. Its just nice living here with them.

But damn, do I hate Friday nights.

Most of them, at least lately, I've had to work late, and then I order in and fatigue takes over and all of a sudden its mid-Saturday morning. Before that, when I was slightly less crazy, I'd wrap up late in the afternoon and head into the city to plan Sunday's lesson with Cregan at the church offices. Then maybe I'd hit the movies with Dave or meet a friend out for dinner.

But every once in a while I get roped into something in Hoboken on a Friday night. Tonight it was Matt's wedding rehearsal and the ensuing dinner. Rehearsal went smooth, then we were down to the waterfront for a nice dinner, and then it happened. Snuck up on me without a forethought, it did - my first walk home through the streets of the Bo on a Friday night in months untold.

And every one of those pretty girls is out with her boy. No one is single in this town on Friday nights. Cute couples on the river walk. Drunk ones on the main strip. Trendy ones having dinner at the nice restaurants. Cancerous ones having smokes on their stoops. Walking out, walking home, going shopping, coming home from work, out for a run, hopping in the car, they are just freaking everywhere.

A million reminders of how. alone. you. really. are.

I don't doubt the existence of infinite love and grace. Its just sometimes I think God maybe is capable of hating me in some cosmically simultaneous way.

Wow. Last published on April 22nd? Seriously???

I used to write. Now I just check back in on this thing like some forgotten friend that you keep saying "man we really need to grab a beer sometime" when you run into him from time to time.

And I hate how I have to start every post like this these days, so next time I'm just not going to, regardless of how long it takes me to get to next time.

Church was interesting today - TK preaches a morning service on the west side and there was a bike race that shut down all of 5th Ave. thus preventing him from getting to the east side service in time for the sermon. So the scripture gets read, and Bisgrove gets up, adjusts the mic, and says "I got nothing." 3000 people laugh, somewhat awkwardly. He actually did a great job of ad-libbing it, got us all to sing Amazing Grace acapella (sans the actual words/music in front of us), and then decided to proceed with the communion that usually comes after the sermon on the first Sunday of the month. Communion complete, still no preacher. Bisgrove leads us in a prayers-of-the-people of sorts and then we start the final communion hymn one more time, planning to dismiss after that. TK shows up on the last line of the last verse and gives a great sermon from Esther, a book that does not make mention of God.

Last night was the membership dinner / meeting that I think is one of the best ideas the church ever had. They rent out the Metropolitan Plaza and combine our annual meeting to elect officers and such with a delightful hors d'oeuvers hour followed by a dinner, complete with an hysterical emcee (who happens to be the guy who's behind the mask in those creepy Burger King commercials). And that's followed by lots of presbyterians and wine and dancing all mixed up, if you can buy that one.

What else? Oh yeah, Robbie was in Chicago. We went to hear Michael Medved speak. The guy is good intentioned but he'll never really be ineffective because his big moral platform doesn't really have any bastions supporting it. I kind of thought that was the case so when Q&A came I gave him a pointed question to prove it. Which he did, in turn. Too bad.

We went out to Morton's and blew my whole week's per diem on one dinner, since I never get to see her, and that was just a blast. Hopefully put some meat on her tiny bones before sending her back off to Mexico. And then after dropping her off I got that ticket that I so deserved from the day before, 10 states away. I don't think I deserved this one so much though, so I'm gonna fight it. Go me.

The last few weeks have been a LOT of work, little sleep, and trying not to work much on the weekends. I got a pretty darn good performance appraisal, which was nice and I think perhaps somewhat deserving - I've worked hard with half the team I was supposed to have, and I'm still fairly close to delivering on schedule (ok, the last part is iffy). I don't like flying to Chicago every week but I'm still hoping that a role with ADP will crop up by mid summer and remedy that situation. If not, who knows?

I know I don't.