After eating dinner, unexpectedly the plans for the night suddenly included karaoke. It was happy hour in the nearby lounge so Yuki, Raien and I decided to take advantage. At $10 a head, it was well worth it. I hadn’t been to a karaoke place since I was in Japan so this was nice for me. It took me a while for the inhibitions to ease but once I started belting out the tunes I felt increasingly comfortable. I have got to work on not making too many weird faces though. Some pictures were taken and I’m trying to decide whether I like them enough to post them or not. On the one hand those pictures present a shameless part of me that doesn’t often make public appearances. On the other hand…they don’t seem all too flattering. Heh. Well, if anyone is interested, IM me or something. Anyway, the experience makes me wonder about why I’m shy about singing. I’m not all that great, but I think I’ve at least got some sense of tone. When I’m in the mood, I can rock things out. It’s just that it takes me so much effort to get to that point. It may be a factor of living in a house with a karaoke machine. I don’t want to sing too much at home only to have my parents call on me with increased frequency to “hear [my] singing voice.” Uh huh. Well whatever. Our time in the lounge was short-lived. Nonetheless, we enjoyed ourselves a great deal.

We all moved over to the nearby tea house to eat, drink, and chat. The topic inevitably moved to relationships. I think I summarized my last few months as just having more of the status quo. Back in 2005 I wrote a bit of a bitter/humorous entry about how V-day sucks and how relationships suck. I was going over that list a week or two again and I thought about how even though three years have passed a lot of it still applies to me today. Sure, there has been a failed relationship or two during that time span…but it’s not like it’s really given me so much more perspective. Nope. Last night the girls were really encouraging me to put myself out there more, but I know how I am. “More of the same” is the likely outcome. Of course, anything can happen. Who knows?

So yeah, that was my night. I’m glad they brought me out. It really helped keep my mind off things. During the night Yuki commented about how I looked tired. Apparently I had these dark bags under my eyes. Well, when I got home one of the first things I did was look in the mirror. Oh man, yeah, I did look like I was in rough shape. I didn’t notice before, but that was because I didn’t bother just looking, and I mean really looking. When I saw myself, I thought I sort of looked like Dr. House, except…without the vicodin-gauntness. That bad, eh. Well, it’s around 10pm now. I suppose the best thing I can do now is to get that extra hour or two of sleep. It’s all good.