"Me, I just want a nice girl, who can maybe cook."

Monday evening-- My cousin's fiancee's suprise birthday party is in two hours, Ely drove back to the mountains, and I entered into a dialogue with the slash mogul, Halrloprillalar. Nothing monumental. I thought about Blue some more, so I was spacey all day. La mia professoressa d'italiano had her wisdom teeth pulled.

Friday draws nigh. We all know what happens Friday, yah? I travel to Nashville-- leaving the UT campus at 12:30, driving 60 miles an hour, finding the Springhill Suites, somewhere . . I'll be meeting all of the fan-fiction Internet people I've been talking to for the last two years. Lise. Pebblin. KayJay. You name it, I'll be trying to live up to it.

My mind, my mind keeps coming up with all these horrendous scenarios. Like, I show up, and everyone is mean, and they make me spell "horrendous", which I can't do. Or I have one of those seizures where you start undressing yourself, and you run around screaming. Or something.

Or, maybe not. Maybe things will be fine. I don't know. I don't know how to be fine. I wish I were a Viking. I wish Dustin were going to be in town this weekend, so that he could show me how to be a Viking before I go and meet these people.

AND-- there's a RenFaire. I don't wanna go to the RenFaire. At the risk of sounding antithetical to everything I stand for: "I have simply nothing to wear." And I have no money, which means I'm going to be looking at all this incredibly neat stuff-- I mean, stuff that I spent my childhood dreaming about-- and slapping my own hand. "Down, Erin! Down!"

And. I don't know what these people are going to call me. I think they're going to call me Alestar. I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, "Alestar"-- it just doesn't lend itself to casual conversation. And there's another Erin there, and we're going to her house so she's the *dominant* Erin . . and regardless of what they end up calling me, there's still that moment where I have to go up to this group of people for the first time and say,

"Um, yes. Hello. I'm . . Alestar."

I can't say that.

Not without a facial tattoo.

. . I'm not coming off as neurotic, am I? Oh, god, that's the LAST thing I need.

You know, probably I'll just walk up to whoever and just stand there. And they'll say, "Hey." And I'll say, "Hey." And eventually they'll ask who I am, and I'll say "Alestar"-- and that won't be so bad.

Except that that leads to the age old question . .

Is it "al-uh-star" or "ayl-star"?

Gah. This is too complicated. We should do it like they did in the old days. You wander into town, and the first person who sees you names you, and that's your name for as long as you're in that place.

Was that ever a method for naming people? I don't know, but it should've been.

I don't know. I've been watching myself talking in the mirror, in preparation for this thing. And it seems amazing to me, really-- that people watch me talking every day. They know what I look like when I talk, and I don't. And, christ-- when I close my eyes. People know what I look like, just like I know what they look like.

No matter how much we know about ourselves, we'll never know what we look like with our eyes closed. And don't say photographs, because there's something lost in translation, and you know it.

It's an intimacy I'm afraid of, y'know? Them watching me talk. You never know just how you look through other people's eyes.

Anyway.

It doesn't matter. I'm going-- and there will be one of the following outcomes:

A) I will be uncomfortable, and they'll hate me.

B) I will be uncomfortable, and they'll like me.

C) I will be comfortable, and they'll hate me.

D) I will be comfortable, and they'll like me.

E) I'll seize, tear off all my clothes, run through the Irish pub screaming, and Lise will like me.

Anyone care to start the bidding?

Love, y'all.

-- Alestar,

however you chose to pronounce it. Except "all-star". Once had a girl try to get away with that-- I'm like, nuh-uh, sister.