Return from the Belly of the Machine

Still sober.
So I went to the club last night; I would say it was a tentative success. After about five minutes I was seriously jonesing for a drink, but I survived. Once again, I felt struck by envy, a serious desire to join in and share everyone else's good time. It's mostly the social aspect of quitting that's gotten me; I miss hanging out with people and getting smashed with them. Despite all the positives, I still feel left out when I go to the bar, I have this nagging sense that there's something I should be doing.
But there were positives; namely I was not struck by my usual blindness after a few hours. There were a lot of pretty girls there! One of them was my friend's coworker; we had a nice, coherent conversation towards the end of the night. Three weeks ago, speaking intelligently (or even intelligibly) would have been far beyond me by 1 am. So, that was nice. Also, I spent 3.00 the entire night, as opposed to my usual 60.00. That's okay, too.
At one point, a friend of mine (very drunk), made kind of an ass of himself in front of some girls by knocking a beer bottle onto one of them, and forgetting the punchline to a joke he was telling. I must admit I was kind of delighted at this; someone was making an ass of themselves, and it wasn't me!