I have the house to myself this week.  My fiancée, Jen, dipped off to the barren wasteland of Brainerd, Minnesota to attend a conference involving a bunch of drunken lawyers and some amateur sketch comedy.  Compared to that, I'm in paradise.  Instead of a mini-vacation, though, these days are filled with boredom, longing, and poor decision-making - though the "consequences" are trivial.

As little as three months ago, this situation would find me plastered on Hefeweizen, careening off the walls of our condo and blasting Grand Magus at near-retarded volumes.  Or I'd be knocking back overpriced PBRs in some faceless fuckswamp of a college bar, shooting cue balls into corner pockets and making a spectacle of myself.  But sobriety brings a calmer, more cerebral vibe to these bouts of pseudo-bachelorhood.  Ah, fuck it.  Cerebral my ass.  I'm chugging bottled water because the assbucket of KFC I foraged for dinner has sucked every bit of moisture from my body.  I'm wearing a pair of fucking Master of Puppets boxer shorts and a sleeveless Nailbomb shirt - the only thing missing from my ensemble are the stereotypical Cheeto fingers.  And I just spent the last two hours watching Stallone's latest Rambo flick.  This was such a waste of my time;  I likely would've felt less procrastinatory guilt by curling myself into a fetal position on the hardwood floor and masturbating really, really slowly for the entirety of the evening.

So yeah, without my life partner, shit just kinda falls apart.  I'm too lazy to cook a meal for one, so I've been eating nothing but garbage.  My level of motivation has plummeted to levels that border on obscenity.  And to add insult to the mundane nature of my current predicament, the Minnesota Vikings front office is apparently content to spend their week jamming their fingers in their collective asshole in a furious fashion.  Which would be fine, if they didn't keep shoving those empty-handed fingers in my face.

$32 million in cap space, and you lowball TJ Houshmanzadeh?  Eh. Whatever.  But Matt Birk?  Local hero?  Cornerstone of your offensive line (a line that laid the foundation for the NFL's best rushing attack)?  Madness.  I think it boils down to one thing: they didn't want to play for Brad Childress.  The back of my dingy white Nailbomb shirt reads, "Feels Good To Be A Punk Loser."  I think I'll mail it to Chili.  Maybe he can wear it to his mext meeting with Rick Spielman, where they'll salivate over the prospect of a sixth-round draft choice snapping the ball to Sage "My Overall Ranking in Madden 2005 was 43" Rosenfels.  Super Bowl, here we come.

Jen...hurry home.  I've got unwatched episodes of Dexter burning a hole in our coffee table.  I'm dyin' here.