It's all ending again, as always, and I find my eyes taking snapshots of the last few moments. Another half a year or so of my career is soon to slip into memory, and as happens occasionally, it's going to be a damned fine memory. I am enjoying looking around the room at my team.

It's not exactly unusual for me to be overcome with love for my teammates near the end of a successful project. For better or for worse, I'm prone to that. What makes it particularly awkward this time around: all of my teammates this time are guys.

While there's a certain amount of disappointment implicit in that for me, I have to admit that, considered objectively, they are indeed lovable guys. It's fantastic fun to walk around downtown with them, and realize that all the girls are looking, and they're looking right past me. It stings a bit to walk into a place alone and have the only comment from the pretty girls be "where are the other guys?" - but hey, ya know, I get that. I mean, check these fuckers out:

- The Dealmaker. Calm eyes, smooth voice, shaven head, well maintained physique. Can wind up on the phone with anybody and really listen, can really understand what the problem is. Can speak convincingly of fortunes made, lost, and to be made again. Gets his position heard in every discussion, and always winds up with all the right pieces in place for things to go more or less his way. And everyone is just fine with that.

- The Percussionist. Spends his evenings in local bands of some note. When he sees the cover of the local free indie paper splashing the headline "The Sexiest Person In Town?" over a picture of a rather deserving lady, he says "Oh hey, Linda, yeah, she opened for us at our album release party." Never a detectable trace of stress, and capable of turning the most sincere eyes in town on you when saying "Well, I'd much rather spend time on my music than on moving forward in my career. What we're doing isn't really my priority."

- The Man-Child. Chosen spokesman for the group, he knows the name of, and two other facts about, every woman within a block after spending six months with us. The youngest of us, he is at the stage where he is regularly a member of a friend's wedding party, and the one who the bride warns, by name, not to let things get out of hand on her day. Permanently competing in a sport after hours, at a high level, when he's not simply at the gym. Famous for carrying a cell phone on which the number "6" has been broken for two years, and for responding to a classmate in his gym's yoga class, upon receiving an unsolicited offer of her phone number, with: "Does it have a six in it?" (Yep, she showered at his place.)

I don't mean, by these over-characterizations, to demean these fine gentlemen at all: they've all gone over and above the call in making this project go well. Nor do I mean to imply we've been without feminine guidance in achieving what we've achieved: the teammate who finished first was quite a lady. One of her most prophetic moments came the week that she left, when she dropped into one of our mysterious sudden silences the following remark: "You guys are going to turn this place into a frathouse when I leave, aren't you?" Having benefited so from her guidance to that point, how could we not?

So, yeah, it's been a fun one. I've been thinking of writing something along the lines of "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten", except entitled "All I Really Need To Know About Surviving Weekends I Learned From This Project". Our Monday discussions (generally held mid-morning, over coffee from a place you'd be upset that I frequent) have yielded many important notes for such a book. For example:

- When a group of guys are hassling the group of guys you're with outside a bar, watch everyone except the guy that's mouthing off in your face, because he's not the one that's going to hit you.

- If you hear gunfire in the strip club shortly before closing time, just lay calmly on the floor: they'll leave you alone, because they know all the money is in the register at that point in the night.

- The third time the bouncer has to tell you to put your shirt back on, you and all your friends will be ejected from the bar.

- When the bouncer will not let you into the bar because of the color of your shirt, they'll absolutely work with you if you walk four steps down the sidewalk, strip with your buddy and swap your shirt for his undershirt, and walk back with the same cover charge money in your hand.

- Cab fare from a prominent local strip joint to a small town about one hour out toward farm country is $95 these days.

- If you have the upper hand in a bar fight, it is perfectly permissible to tell the man who's losing that he's "your little bitch", right in his ear so he'll remember, seconds before the authorities break it up.

- If the shapely lady practicing choke holds on you, in front of everyone else in judo class, is doing all the moves properly, it is far more gentlemanly to go ahead and grey out than to make the natural move of biting her underboob. While you may regret it then, and periodically later, overall you'll feel better about yourself.

- It adds a lot to an evening to have an outgoing gentleman in the bar with you who is advertising his business by wearing his "MidgetMaleStripper.com" T-shirt. Even though he will walk up and chat with all the ladies you're with, and tell the one about "how do you make a woman's boobs look really big?" (Note: Of course I guessed the punchline to that one, but heard the story out regardless.)

And on and on. I would write the book, but it would be too confining to keep it to the clean ones like the ones above.

As I say, it's been a good time; and indeed it's coming to an end.

We could very well be finished with all our objectives by noon tomorrow; we've assured each other that if that's true, we'll go out on the town together, the first time we'll have done so. The Dealmaker, The Percussionist, and The Man-Child. And, heaven help us, me.

You, you, and you: this is your warning. Do not come downtown for any reason tomorrow night. Regardless of any attempts at persuasion.

You over there: use your own judgment.