I go to the pub, often, because I like going to the pub. Because I like Pilsner, and I like my bartenders, and I like reading my magazines, and I like these minutes of Me-ness. And, also, I like the game that one of my brewer pals and I play which involves being teenage boys and trying to scare the shit out of each other. Today I tried twice and failed. I had, I suppose, the perfect opportunity where he was busy in the back hosing down the floor, and I snuck through the brewery, slipped through the door and shouted “BOO!” all the while I was laughing. He didn’t flinch, not at all. Instead, he turned around, looked at me and laughed. We hug, and I leave, and the game continues.

Today I find myself sitting at the far end of the bar, where there are not a lot of people, and I can read my magazine and drink my beer and eat my steak tacos with little interruption or social interaction save for the juvenile banter my bartender and I throw back and forth. He is doing what he calls “around the world” where he is drinking a shot glass full of all the beers they have on tap, which amounts to a total of 16 beers, which amounts to a certain number of pints that I cannot remember.

I monitor his progress, and I comment, often, on his inability to get out of the Americas, out of North America. And finally, he hits China or Russia or India and this provides me with endless moments of entertainment. Later, people start talking to me, and I can tell they want to engage in an actual conversation versus passing commentary, and this is ok with me, sometimes, because I am fully aware of the idea that people don’t sit at the bar because they want to be alone—except for me.

Later, after I’ve eaten my tacos and talked to various people about life and home and design and relationships, I grab my growler from the backseat of my truck and stroll, casually, back into the pub. This is when I happen to notice a woman staring at me and very obviously talking to her friend about me. They are talking, I find out later, about the growler I have in my hands. And so I sit with them and we drink beer and laugh and talk and learn and discover, and when they leave, after they’ve hugged me goodbye, I smile and grin and understand just how awesome life is when you are able to stand open and engage in all the brilliance that life dishes up.

My growler, for whatever reason, is full of CO2 and it’s leaking beer onto the table and slowly dripping onto the seat next to me no matter how tight I twist the lid. This is funny to me, and to the women I am sitting with, and to the wait-staff and to the bartender. We laugh, all of us, and napkins are produced and cleaning takes place and later my growler still spills onto the table and I grin from ear to ear because this is too fucking funny.

At home, later, I talk to an old friend by way of text messaging, and I smile and I grin and I laugh. I knew her, way back in college, way back when I was a dumb-ass twenty-year-old who was just starting the never-ending-process of trying to figure out this awesomeness know as my life. There is forgiving and forgetting and moving forward and connection and that feeling like you’re coming home. And I think to myself: this life of mine, this crazy weird life of mine, is so fucking incredibly awesome.

And I am so incredibly thankful.