i awoke unsure if the day's events would play a solemn dirge over the past year or if somehow i could manage to float past all of that and accept it for what it is. as suspected, the former was the case.

i rolled over only to realize that somehow during the night i had turned off my alarm.

panic set in for the few moments it took before i realized that i had wisely taken the day off to mourn and celebrate, and that i had spent the night with a beautiful woman, who was nowhere to be found.

several moments were spent in the half-conscious and non-awake stupor that surrounds nearly every "morning", but i made what i could out of it, clinging to the best of dreams for as long as was necessary to glean what little satisfaction was possible in the grand scheme of the day.

the restaraunt in which i eventually came to eat was a strange and terrible cocktail of self-service and vague hipster hot-spot, a place where i certainly did not fit in, let alone belong in such a weird surreal state. hurried waitstaff swung from my knees as i tried to make my way to the spread of uncooked food. i was bombarded on all sides with multiple forms of media, all of which were disconcerting and altogether unwelcome. music was pumped in through foghornish yawning loudspeakers at sickening levels.

my pulse raced in my temples and my tongue was dragging near my feet, slapping dryly against my knees.

equally dazed and slobbering patrons plodded up to the circular grill toting their bowls full of strange mixtures of anything that would not spill out and down their straining wrists.

a sauce that was on the verge of spontaneously combusting was thrown upon the section of grill where my morsels had been (under)cooking. had i not been so famished and eager to hurl mass-quantities of anything edible at or near my mouth this sauced-up, rocket-fuel-drenched food would have melted a hole straight through the plate, table, floor, basement, and well into the earth's crust.