Incrementing the Loop manually

I’ve got a mini-loop on my homepage.

It looks like this:

<?php
// Include WordPress
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('./blog/wp-blog-header.php');
query_posts('showposts=2');
?>

[Plenty of homepage content]

<?php while(have_posts()): the_post(); ?>
<br /><span class="blogtitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></span>
<span class="blogdate"><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></span>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<hr noshade style="margin-top:14px;margin-bottom:-4px;padding:0px;">
<?php endwhile; ?>

The Loop goes through two posts and after each one places a horizontal rule, just like it’s told to. This ends up looking silly, though, because after my second post, there is a horizontal rule, and then the very bottom of the website, nothing after it. I’d like to do away with this.

So, what I could do is something like this:

<?php while(have_posts()): the_post(); ?>
<br /><span class="blogtitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></span>
<span class="blogdate"><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></span>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<hr noshade style="margin-top:14px;margin-bottom:-4px;padding:0px;">

[manually increment the Loop to the next post, then paste the same code to display and format the post]

<br /><span class="blogtitle"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></span>
<span class="blogdate"><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></span>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Is there a function for this, to skip, continue, increment, or iterate the Loop? Thanks.