Things have been killer busy, and people have been rather intensely annoying about what things they want or don't want at any given time. I'm tired, and have been much of the week. I'm out of the depression (thanks largely to Mason) but I'm sleeping very badly, which is to say not at night, but sometimes desperately being forced into a nap during the day.

Which may be problematic tonight, as Jon, called Van, will be in town, as he's interviewing at the Academy tomorrow. He'll get to see one of my classes too. We'll be out doing stuff much of the night, and therefore I won't get my little nap.

So, I may be able to sleep at night tonight, unless of course I suddenly pass out behind the wheel and we all die a horrible death in the grille of a Semi. Or something.

---

Mason and I went out to dinner at the Bugaboo Steak House in Portsmouth, last night. We did this because there was a thunderstorm so we didn't want to have the computers on at the apartment. It was not only raining, it was desperately humid -- to the point that Texas Native Mason remarked that it was "just too darn humid." I would have answered, but I had been walking outdoors and therefore drowned.

On the way, in my air conditioned car, we had to stop and dump change into a toll booth. Opening that window and sticking my hand out was like sticking my hand into a very light sponge chock full of warm water. It was creepy.

Which set the tone for the evening at the Bugaboo.

This is clearly an adult steak house, as the prices will kill small people. The steak is well made. The non-steak food is darned good. The desserts are huge.

But the furniture talks. There's a gigantic mounted buffalo head which occasionally randomly starts speaking, inevitably with the phrase "Let me tell you a story...." in a cheerful, Disneyeque style. There is a moose that does the same. There is a tree that talks to you on the way in. All of these things seem desperately wrong -- not the least of which the idea that some animal that was viciously killed, his head cut off, stuffed and mounted on the wall shouldn't be charitable enough to tell stories of his own free will. He should be pissed.

It was not, however, the worst of it.

The worst of it... was the fish.

They have a mounted fish up on the wall. Every so often... the fish will suddenly begin to thrash, opening and closing his mouth and contorting his body every which way, exactly as you would imagine a real, living fish would do when confronted with a lack of life giving water after being impaled to a plaque with a nail. It's rather well done, and therefore sets a tone of a Charnel House of Horrors inside the pleasant atmosphere where you consume animal flesh. It's not enough that you eat them there, oh no. You must also enjoy their torments, all around you.

I like to think of a truly special fish. An epochal Fish. A veritable Fish Messiah, capable of surviving the harsh air for long periods of time. Betrayed by one of his apostle fish, this Fish of Fish is carried out by the unbelievers, and crucified on a plaque. He is weak, but occasionally gathers his strength to fight. Fight for life, fight to pull himself out and then... just... find... the... water....

Eventually, his strength would be spent, and he would lie, looking up to the Heavens and saying Oh Bathysphere, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? And he would wait... wait for his strength to return, a little less now, and fight again. Fight for life.

I mentioned my growing terror of the fish to the waitress. She nodded solemnly. "Lots of people are creeped out by it," she said. "Kids especially. Some ages they love it. Other ages they just scream for a while."

On the way out, you pass by a wooden mountie that looks Mummified. It somehow completes the meal.

The Smashed Potatoes, however, are to die for.