And not in the usual, extra-fun way.

<div style="width: 320px; border: 1px solid gray; padding: 6px; font: normal 12px sans-serif; color: black; background-color: white;"><b style="color: black; font-size: 20px; display: block; margin-bottom: 8px;">You paid attention during 91% of high school!</b> <div style="width: 200px; background: white; border: 1px solid black; text-align: left;"><div style="width: 91%; background: red; font-size: 8px; line-height: 8px;"> </div></div><p style="margin: 10px; border: none; background: white; color: black;">85-100%  You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high!  Good show, old chap!<br><br><b><a href="http://www.gotoquiz.com/do_you_deserve_your_high_school_diploma" style="color: blue;">Do you deserve your high school diploma?</a><br><a href="http://www.gotoquiz.com/" style="color: blue;">Create a Quiz</a></b></p></div>

My phone exploded... long story.

My little sim card thing... was in the phone.

So I've lost every phone number I had. Considering the only phone number I could remember was my mom's (I've never dialed Dina's number- she called me and I saved it), I've got no numbers.

So if I had your number, could you either A) call me or B) email me your number?

Thanks!

I have a fantastic job- I have a comfortable chair, a lightning fast internet connection for web browsing, I get paid to take classes/tests (plus sizeable bonuses when I pass), and I can come and go at my leisure. My salary is embarrassingly large for being twenty four, and it's still growing. I've got an office while most of my friends are in cubicles, at best.

Plus, I get paid to break things. Software in particular. Someone else develops something, and I try as hard as I can to make it act i a way that it shouldn't, or make it break something else, or whatever. My job isn't to verify that the developer made something that works... it's to prove that it doesn't work. After I've done everything I can think of to break it- including things that no sane customer would even think of- I will grudgingly say that it is worthy of being packaged and delivered.

But there's a reason my job sounds so awesome... it's the only way to keep people on. The reason so many aspects of the job have to be awesome is there's one aspect that completely sucks... for about a month every quarter, we're completely swamped. There are four deadlines a year that actually matter... one every three months. For the month leading up to the deadline, a sixty hour work week is considered "light." Since we're all salaried, there is no overtime pay, no real benefit... except you finish your work, and you assure your future in the company.

During that month, though, there's one week that causes all the others to look fun and easy... the last week before the deadline. Right now, it's Thursday afternoon, and counting the eight hours I did on Sunday, my time for the week just crept over seventy hours. And I'm not done for today. Thankfully, I think this will be the only day (this release) I'm at work more than twenty hours. I should be able to limp across the finish line with twelve to fourteen hour days, fueled by a dozen or so cups of coffee and half a dozen Excedrin Migraine's.

So I picked the absolute worst possible time to try to return to writing, in other words.

Things will pick up a little next week... after the requisite two days of doing absolutely jack shit.

As a Red Sox fan, there was a lot that made the 2004 season completely and totally awesome.

The best part, though? Better than Jeter weeping, better than Schilling's variation of the red sock, better than Wakefield slamming thef door, better than never trailing in the World Series, better than Damon and company doing shots before each game...

Every time... EVERY SINGLE TIME... a team is down 3-0, the commentators have to mention the Red Sox achieving the greatest comeback of all time... and the Yankee's suffering the greatest collapse of all time.

And no, there isn't much argument about it being the greatest comeback of all time.

Well then.

First things first- Dina and I are doing better. Whatever issues we had have found a way to clear up, and our lives are infinitely better than they were a few weeks ago, so... that's great.

Second, I think it might be time to take up the pen again... figuratively, since I never write anything more than a sentence or two long by hand. I've got some time, I miss the cathartic experience, and I miss the fan letters (and pictures).

...

The last line isn't completely true- at the most popular I ever was, I'd get two or three emails/messages a week saying "Love the writing, keep it up." Although I do have a happy little folder filled with arousing pictures.

Arousing being the key word. See, I'm no longer single and having wild, passionate sex with random girls. Dina and I have a pretty mundane sex life... great, but not particularly interesting to outsiders. Do I still have stories I haven't told? Of course. Probably hundreds, of various degrees of sexiness.

But more importantly, I've got a full life going on. I'm thinking of expanding... giving all of you (the two people who still remember this site) a bit of an insight into how my brain works. I've got opinions on pretty much everything. I've had some good life moments that didn't involve sex, but maybe people would enjoy or learn from.

So we're starting over... with an introduction, and a bit of a discussion about where this all started.

Who am I? I'm Mike... better known as SmokingGun. I'm twenty four years old, male, and I live in the mid-west now, after twenty two years spent on the East Coast, the south in particular. In my life I've had a wide variety of jobs- pizza delivery, retail, bouncer at a regular bar, bouncer at a strip club, bartender, driver for an escort, and now Quality Assurance for a computer software company. I went from a geeky outsider with no self-esteem in elementary/middle school, someone who accepted the shit of the world on a regular basis and thought no girl would ever want him to something of a man-whore, who's had more than his share of relationships. This blog started, years ago, when I was a part of a group site (The Orgy), which had a phenomenal membership... ThatGirl, Maculate Deviant, Jonathon Quince, and a few other names that were rather big in the sex-blog sub community.

So it's a small group... but it provided a lot of great content.

This blog is changing and moving... I'm still going to write about sex. I'm still going to be incredibly politically incorrect, and you'll never be able to accuse me of pulling punches. But maybe, just maybe... you'll get to know me a little better than you did.

Here we go again.

So I'm a little depressed lately. Things with Dina... they're not good. Not at all. We're on two different paths, with me wanting one thing and her wanting another, and it's just... winding down. We fight about things we shouldn't fight about. We do things to hurt each other.

We're in a toxic relationship, in other words, but I'm unable/unwilling to get out.

Then there's the fact I've nailed her on a few lies... big ones. I don't know if I can/want to trust her anymore.

I love her. I believe she loves me.

That probably isn't enough.

I don't know if I feel like writing about sex right now. See, I'm hurting.

A few days ago, while cleaning off my AIM buddy list, I decided to unblock an ex-girlfriend. I figured it'd been over a year since we split, and hey... I doubt it'd hurt to talk to her now, and I do miss just talking to her.

Yeah, well, she's online right now. I checked her profile... there are lots of music lyrics dealing with love, and the words "I love you baby!"

Yeah, for some reason, I wasn't ready for that. I knew she was dating someone, had known it for a long time... but seeing it in her profile hurt. Don't ask why.

Oh well... life goes on.

After three wild weeks of nearly endless company, my house is my own again. I can walk around naked. I can burp loudly and proudly. I don't have to apologize when the dog thinks that you're being incredibly rude by sitting in his usual place. I can make dinner when Dina and I are hungry, and eat what we want, without conversations like:

"So what do you want?"

"I don't know, what do you want?"

"I don't know, what do you want?"

... for hours on end.

But mostly... I get to have loud, no-holds-barred, wild, passionate sex again. Excuse me while I do just that.

I want my fucking apartment back.

But because I'm trying to be nice to Dina... I'll be quite until Monday.

Goddamn, but pretentious artists make me want to puke.

Charter, my internet/cable company, finally came out and replaced my modem... it died Sunday night.

Every day, at 8:45 AM, they'd call to see if anyone was home. At 8:45 I'm in a meeting, every day but Friday, and I can't answer my cell phone, the only way to contact me and the number on the  account.

So Monday, realizing this, I told them to call Dina's number- she's home during the day, and she'd answer and let them in.

They kept calling me.

I'd call them back at 9:15, when the meeting was over, and they'd tell me "When you don't answer, we assume you're busy that day and push you to next week's calls." I'd inform them that is unacceptable, in my own inimitable way, and they'd agree to call the next day, on Dina's number.

Today, I ambushed them- I was waiting at 8:45. No call.

11:30. No call.

12:48. They call. Ten minutes later, they call again, because they can't find my apartment... the street it's on.

I am not helpful.

They finally find it, fix the problem (gee, it's EXACTLY WHAT I SAID IT WAS), and I'm online again by 3. Now I'm just catching up on shit.

Post tomorrow is highly likely. Looks like "Anal" is the winner.