SeptSomber

Today is the International Day of Peace. Of course, conflicts are raging (or threatening to) in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, the South China Sea, and other parts of the world, and the United Nations, who designated the day, is fairly powerless to do much about it...

It's also the last day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere... and, additionally, the date on which Laura and I were supposed to have been married last year (which is just a few days after the date on which we first started dating). Yes, I can't help but remember things like that. A year ago today, instead of going to the Zeppelin Hall Biergarten for what we'd planned to be a fun and casual ceremony and reception, I found myself traveling alone, first to the New York Renaissance Faire, where my BulletHole Heart T-shirt made a little green fairy sad, and then to Lovers Leap State Park in Connecticut, where I had one long, hard think about dying as I gazed down at the Housatonic River from the cliff.

The leap

A year later, I'm more balanced, and... well, I wouldn't say I'm happier, exactly, but I suppose it'd be fair to say that I'm a bit less unhappy. Laura and I are on friendly terms again, and even got together for a fun day in New York City last month. Still, September's hard for me now, between those two anniversaries and my birthday. I never viewed September 29th with any trepidation, and age is still just a number to me, but I'd let myself get used to the idea of having someone to spend that day with from now on...

So I channeled some of my angst and ennui into finishing the lyrics to "The Discontent of My Winter" and writing the music and lyrics to "SeptSomber." I recorded a short demo of the latter a week ago:

and I finished recording the actual song with my Kona acoustic/electric... today. How's that for keeping busy? I've started working out the music to "Discontent" as well, and hopefully will get that song and another done before winter truly arrives. Of course, I'm keeping busy in other ways, too. My new iPhone 6 arrived on Friday, and since it'll be at least a few months before I get my hands on an Apple Watch, I decided to get a Jawbone UP24 band and start monitoring my activity again. In just under two weeks, I'll be running my first "normal" (non-obstacle) 5K in Bay Head; gotta hit the treadmill again later this evening... I went back to the Renaissance Faire two weeks ago; while the plan had been to get a group of people out there together, all but one of my friends (Barbara) ended up not making it. (Well, Judie, too, but she was going to be there regardless. ;) We had fun anyway, and I even got a picture with Judie and the Vixens En Garde.

Judie, Atalanta, Athena, me, and Calypso

Thanks to a friend who ordered concert tickets, then found out that she wasn't going to be able to go after all, I'll be seeing Paolo Nutini at the Apollo Theater on Tuesday night (still trying to find a likely lass to accompany me there), and Lydia Loveless and Xenia Sky at Webster Hall a week from tonight, hours before my birthday. October brings Within Temptation (a band Laura turned me on to) at Terminal 5, while I'll catch my first Bob Dylan concert at the NJPAC in November. With any luck, I'll manage to see my musician friends Mart Rivas and Goli in New York soonish, too. And, considering everything else I've accomplished this year, I'm going to take a real stab at NaNoWriMo again in November. If I focus, I can do it.

So, yeah, my life's not quite what I'd thought it would be, and I'm not quite the same person I was a year and a half ago, but I feel like I would like me if I met me. The struggle goes on.

FWIW

You may not understand, and you may not agree, but I hope you can accept.

365 days ago now, I was on a Megabus to New York from Pennsylvania, where I'd helped my ex-fiancée Laura move. My life then was not what I'd expected it to be a year prior, any more than my life today is what I expected it to be then. It's been a rough twelve months, and while I have had some fun and happy times, I've also endured some of the darkest moments of my life.

Laura's decision, several weeks after that, that it would be better for us not to stay in touch only ripped open the still-raw wound again, but after she picked up the last of her things in October, we both honored that decision. I was, therefore, very surprised to get a message from her a few weeks ago, a message that began with an apology.

We've agreed that we'd both like to try to become friends again, without things becoming too awkward or painful between us, and we've communicated a few times since. Yes, she did cause me a lot of pain, and I haven't forgotten that (nor can I)... but I do believe that she didn't do so maliciously, and that she truly is sorry for hurting me, and that working out exactly what happened and why can help us both to heal. She was my best friend for almost two years, and I can't forget that, either.

I struggled with the decision to publicize our cautious rapprochement. I know that some of the few people who care will disapprove, and all of them will warn me to be careful. I also know that I know Laura better than any of them do, even if I underestimated the challenges when we started our relationship almost three years ago. I don't intend to get hurt again, but if being friends to each other and talking can get us both past an emotional hurdle or two, then I'm all for it. Life's too short to spend carrying around anger, grief, sorrow, fear, regret, etc. for any appreciable length of time.

You may not understand, and you may not agree, but I hope you can accept. This sentence should be the basis of relations between any two people or groups of people... don'tcha think?

Nein-nein

Yesterday morning, I walked to the bagel shop, only to hear Tegan and Sara's "Closer" on the radio.  It of course made me think of Laura, especially since we used to sing it to each other, but now "Goodbye, Goodbye" or "Now I'm All Messed Up" would've been more appropriate choices off that latest album.

Yes, it's another 'blog post about my relationship with Laura, though it may well be the last one.  On Saturday afternoon, I received an E-mail from her stating that she felt "we should break off contact."  She suggested that she'd figured out that she could never be happy with me, for reasons I can neither rail against nor reluctantly acknowledge, because she didn't really explain them in any detail.  Sadly, this means that Slime, too, is coming to an untimely end.  She doesn't want to do it anymore, and I can't draw, so...

I kissed her every morning before leaving for work, whether or not she was awake, even as our relationship was ending.  I wrote her an E-mail every morning on my way to work.  Whenever either of us asked the other, "Do you have your keys?" we had to keess; it became a ritual.  While we were together, I don't think a day went by without at least half a dozen "I love yous" being passed between us, vocally or via E-mail or text message or IM.  By her own admission, I'd treated her better than anyone ever had before; I certainly tried my damnedest to do so.  I even helped her move out, when I wanted so badly for her to stay, because it was what she wanted.

There are so many moments burned into my heart and my soul from our time together: the traveling I did to see her on Staten Island before she'd moved in; the way she surprised me with a claddagh ring for my birthday, probably the most romantic gift I've ever been given (although I've given up wearing it, since the magic it possessed seems to be gone); the two of us sobbing as we buried Priscilla the chinchilla, Meggy's sister, in the park on a desolate Saturday morning; the look of panic and fear on Laura's face when she found me blacked out at the bottom of the shower; listening to the ducks muttering on the grass alongside the water in the evening while we strolled past; putting an ice pack to her forehead to try to bring her fever down; sitting on the beach at Spring Lake at night, keeping each other warm and just basking in love.  I can't hear "Mahna Mahna" or the cooing of mourning doves, or see sunflowers, without thinking of her.  I introduced her to Aimee Mann, Regina Spektor, and "Arrested Development," and she introduced me to Tegan and Sara, Within Temptation, and "Homestar Runner."  We liked each other's friends and families very much, and we'd planned to have them attend our wedding less than two weeks from today.  We wanted to try to have a child together, and get our own house, not necessarily in New Jersey.  I was always supportive, of her running, her diet changes, her stated desire to go back to school, of her and her wants and needs.  I told her she was the prettiest girl I know, and she still is.  She made me happy, and I know she was happy, too, at some point.

Fairly early on in the relationship, we'd decided that Lifehouse's "Everything" was 'our' song ("You are the light to my soul / You are my purpose, you're everything").  She really became everything to me.  I've done and seen a lot of things in my almost 43 years, and certainly I've had many great experiences even when I was single, but I've come to realize that life is better when you have someone with whom to share it.  Now I've again got no one to cuddle, to exchange work stories with, to make feel special.  Worse, now I know what I'm missing.  As I told Laura two months ago or so, it only recently hit me how lonely I'd been before she came into my life.  Now it looks like I go back to that, and I really don't want to.

Sorry, guess I'm rambling a bit.  I'm sure the three of you who actually read this don't want to hear all this, but I suppose I needed to say it, even if no one will listen or have anything to say about it.  I'm trying hard not to get sucked into the downward spiral.  Anyway... a few of the dates mentioned in my last 'blog post are not going to go down as originally envisioned.  Instead of going to Rhonda's surprise birthday party last Saturday, I ended up at my own, three weeks early.  I needed cheering up that night, so I'm glad Yesika put that together.  Sunday was my nephew Shawn's birthday party, which was fun, too.  This Saturday's guitar/bass flea market has been postponed, and I've decided not to run the 5K on Sunday after all.  I think I'd still like to try one in the near future, but I just don't think my head's in the right place for it just now.  I'm obviously not going to see Laura on what would've been our wedding day now, either.

On the plus side, the free time that opened up this weekend may allow me to finish recording my newest song.  I finished writing "So Much Further" over Labor Day weekend, and recorded some bass and guitar parts then, too.  Yeah, the lyrics aren't terribly happy, but the music's actually a bit bouncy, and I think I'm going to like this one a lot when it's done.

As my memory rests,
     But never forgets what I lost,

Wake me up when September ends...

Of Chinchillas and Men

The best-laid plans often do go awry.  I was supposed to get married two months from today, but as much as it pains me to relate this, as much as it pains me to experience this, we must offer apologies instead of invitations, as the engagement has been broken off and I've lost my happy.

Laura and I still love each other, and we're both upset over the plans we had together.  However, she has issues she needs to work through, and goals she wants to prove she can reach by herself (furthering her education being among them).  She is the perfect woman to me, but she feels she has to live on her own for a while and grow as a person before she can be an equal partner, and I can do naught but respect that, though it tears me up inside.

The timing could've been better, but such things don't generally pay attention to scheduling demands.  Laura will be moving away at the end of this month, and I will be helping her.  Of my three girls, two (Meggy the chinchilla and Preeti the cat) will be staying with me.  It won't be the same, but...  Slime will go on, although it will be odd to be working on it from separate locations.

I'm going to miss Laura's family and friends, and she's going to miss mine.  :-/  We are both hurt by this, and it's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but we still care about each other deeply and are, and will remain, close.  We may not be getting married on September 21st, but we've got a date for that day nonetheless.  I hope everyone will respect our feelings and our privacy.  Thanks for listening...

NaNoWriMo Failure

(...and yes, that's "failure" and not "fail."  I know it's trendy to use and misuse mono- and di-syllabic words these days, but I do my best to avoid that sort of thing without fail.  Snarky man is snarky.  Because snark.)  I'd fully intended to write a 50,000-word novel (at least) last month, but... things happened, and on the morning I'd intended to begin penning "They Might Be Roses," I found myself driving across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky instead.

As you may have heard, a bit of wind and rain called Hurricane Sandy (or "Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy" or "Superstorm Sandy") came ashore in the Garden State at the end of October, and while Laura and I only had to deal with a few hours without electricity and a day and a half without cable/Internet, the storm did end up causing our flight to Kentucky on November 1st to be cancelled. As we'd both already requested some time off for the trip, rescheduling wasn't a realistic option, and so I decided to rent a car and drive us 700 miles each way, and we left on Halloween evening instead of early Thursday afternoon.

We ended up getting there earlier than we were originally scheduled to depart from Newark Airport, but of course I was exhausted from driving all night, and I wasn't able to start writing while at the airport and on the plane like I'd planned. I never did any writing while we were in Kentucky, either, but we had a wonderful time with Laura's dad and his wife, and Laura's sister Amanda and her kids.

Amanda, Sofiah, and Silas

I thought that maybe I'd finally get going on Monday after a good night's sleep back in my own bed in Jersey... only we found ourselves going to the Bergen County Humane Society in town that day instead, and I was selected by a young tortoiseshell cat to bring her home. Three-month old "Fluff" was quickly renamed Preeti, and even more quickly became a part of our family (though her older sister Meggy, the chinchilla, doesn't like her much at all and has made it clear that she's not going to be intimidated).

It's Caturday!

Tuesday saw me going back to work... but because New Jersey Transit was still reeling from Sandy's damage, the Main Line train was still not operational, and I opted to work from home. On Wednesday, I felt out the buses, and while the commute was longer, it was doable. Unfortunately, I don't usually have the ability to take out my laptop and use it on the bus the way I do on the train... and anyway, I was stunned by a phone call from my mom telling me that there'd been a fire and she and my dad were at a neighbor's home because they weren't allowed back into theirs.

I was shaken, understandably I hope, as was my sister when I called her (to give her the news after wishing her a happy birthday). She and I met my parents at the house on Saturday and surveyed the damage, then mom and dad came home with me and spent the night with Laura, Meggy, Preeti, and me. At least they finally got a chance to sample my Big Easy shrimp (it went over well), and they would've stayed another night, but the insurance finally located a hotel for them.

I didn't get any writing done that weekend, either, although I'd been thinking that I could've gotten a few hours in (before the fire happened).  I did finally get over a thousand words written the following weekend, but the damage was already done, in my head at least.  Work was keeping me busy and stressed, I started reading Stephen King's "11/22/63" (great book, but bad idea for me to get invested in someone else's novel, and a big one at that), and then came Thanksgiving.  We visited my parents at my sister's house before heading to Laura's aunt's for the big turkey dinner.

My parents, sister, nephews, 'n me

We stayed away from the stores on Black Friday (well, other than the local Dollar Tree), and I suppose I could've done some writing that day, but instead we went to the park and fed the squirrels for a while.

Thanks for the nut!

Then came Laura's birthday, and the requisite sushi/sashimi dinner at Momoya in Bloomfield...

Sushi and sashimi

Before I knew it, the month was over.  Yes, I could have managed it, but it just would've been too hard with the lengthy delay in starting, and while I wanted to make it happen, there was too much going on in November already.  I still want to write the novel, though, and I will, but December is another crazy month, so although I'll hopefully get some writing done before the end of the year, I don't expect to finish "They Might Be Roses" before February or so at the earliest.  I intend to finish writing and recording the eponymous song as well.  There's that Web site overhaul to complete, too; I'd really like to get that done before 2013.  I think the resolution for the New Year is going to be better time management.  There's a lot I want to do: I haven't picked up a guitar in forever, I may start writing short stories again, Laura's teaching me to knit... but I have to set aside time for such things and actually use it.

Lastly, the holiday season is rapidly approaching, and while its lyrics certainly don't represent the way I feel anymore, my song "Christmas Lonely" is still a pretty good tune, or so I've been led to believe.  I'd appreciate it if you gave it a listen and maybe invited your friends to do the same.  Hey, ask your local college radio station to play it.  ;-)

Slime the Comic!

Slime, the Web comic that Laura and I came up with and are working on together, is now live!  The first strip was published this morning, and a new one will be added every Thursday.  We've been having a lot of fun creating this thing, and we hope you have as much fun reading it.  You can see Slime (and add an RSS feed if you're into that, and hey, even like our Facebook Page and give us a +1 on Google!) at http://www.slimethecomic.com

I've also been inspired to compose a short bit of new music, "Slime Theme," which you can listen to on the home page by clicking on the musical notes at the upper right, or on my various music sites/pages.  It wasn't originally going to have that Brazilian samba thing going on, but... that's how it turned out.  Hope you like it!

Stuff to Do

January's been a busy month, and it's just about over!  There's always a lot of cleaning up and catching up to do after the holidays, of course, and work tends to be busy this time of year as well.  Laura and I saw my parents last weekend for my mom's birthday, and finally caught up with Laura's mom this past Friday night, too.  There are still some Christmas gift exchanges to be made, though...

Why, yes, I have been losing weight; thanks for noticing.  Laura and I have both shed some pounds since starting on the South Beach diet at the beginning of the year, and I'm now at 141.6 lbs. as of this morning, which frankly seems to be on the low end of where I should be as a 5'9" 41-year old male.  While I'm glad to be able to fit into an old pair of jeans again (woo-hoo!), my goal was never to drop ten or twenty pounds, but to eat and feel healthier.  Now that I'm doing that, and planning on mostly sticking to phase three of the diet, I've decided that I want my weight to hover around 145.

Of course, the fact that my beloved Up by Jawbone band finally died on me has put a minor cramp in my style.  It was nice to be able to easily monitor how much sleep I was getting (and how deep a sleep it was), how much walking I did, and what I was eating and how it made me feel every day.  I'm not alone in having problems with my Up, but I believe in the product enough to have opted for a replacement rather than a credit or refund.  Hopefully, Jawbone will get the kinks worked out soon, because I still feel the band has great potential.

In other technology news, I finally got around to upgrading my beast of a MacBook Pro, Athena, to OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) today.  I'm also going to start utilizing the Time Capsule I got from Microwize Technology at Christmas to run automated backups wirelessly.  I've been better with backups lately than I used to be, but it's nice to have a solution that doesn't require me to plug in an external hard drive before it'll run.  I took the opportunity to jailbreak my iPhone 4S as well.  Maybe I'm not quite on the bleeding edge of technology these days, but the cutting edge is still shiny.

My andersensilva.com and joyinthenew.com Web sites both got 'blacked out' for the anti-SOPA/PIPA protests on January 18th, and while I'm sure that had much less impact than Wikipedia's and Google's and Reddit's (and others') blackouts, I still felt the need to do it.  Both bills have been temporarily thwarted, but neither is dead yet, and ACTA is at least as scary as SOPA and PIPA, and international to boot.  People need to be aware and pay attention to more important things than the Kardashians and "Jersey Shore."

Speaking of Web sites... I'm maintaining a new one!  Starting this Thursday, Laura and I are publishing our original Web comic, Slime, at slimethecomic.com.  There's nothing really going on at the site just yet; I'm waiting for Thursday to put everything up, and then a new strip will be published every Thursday.  We've been having a lot of fun putting it together (Laura does the art, we come up with story ideas together which I write, and I'll keep the Web site chugging along) and we hope you'll have just as much fun reading about our friends in the Field!  I even put together a short theme song for Slime.  I will be promoting the frak out of the Web comic.  Just wait and see...

Happy New Year, and Hello, 2012!

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve!  Laura and I had a fun time at a small get-together at Jon and Karin's last night, and finally got to meet baby Lydia.

December started with a stinging hurt: less than a week after bringing the chinchillas to Lyndhurst, we woke one Saturday morning to find Prissy had passed away.  She'd seemed seriously ill earlier in the week, but had apparently rebounded the following morning, and then slowly declined again.  Laura and I were both incredibly saddened by the loss, and buried Priscilla in one of the town's parks.  Fortunately, Meguilla is doing fine, and we've been showering our chinchild with love.

I got to take Laura out for Sunday brunch in New York, and we saw some of the Christmasy sights before taking in Cyndi Lauper's Home for the Holidays concert, which was a real blast.  We picked out a real Christmas tree, over five feet tall, perfect for the apartment; not only did we use some of her decorations and some of mine (and I got some mistletoe, one of my best purchases of the year), we made one of our own!  Using Sculpey polymer clay, we each fashioned a little penguin, then put them together on a base of 'snow' and attached a loop for hanging.  We had a lot of fun making the ornament and plan to create a new one every year.  :-)

Laura accompanied me to Microwize's holiday party and Christmas dinner at my parents', too, where she met most of my colleagues and the rest of my New Jersey-based relatives, respectively.  We still need to figure out when we're seeing her mom again, but it should be soon.

Resolutions?  Well, I was resolutely planning not to have any this year...  But I do intend to be healthier this year, which includes going for a physical, something I haven't done since... well, the Bush administration.  No, not Dubya, his dad.  I'm also going to do something perhaps even more shocking; today I started the South Beach diet with Laura.  I don't know that I'll stick with it long-term, or that I need to, but I 'd like to at least get through phase one with her, and hopefully spend some time on phase two as well.  No, I'm not particularly overweight (151.4 lbs. as per this morning's weigh-in), but I'm also not as fit as I could be.  Helping with that goal is the Up by Jawbone that Laura got me for Christmas; it's equal parts health-conscious and geeky, an electronic wristband that monitors my sleep and my walking and other things and makes it a little easier to get a better picture of how active I am, how certain foods affect me, etc.

Other than that, I plan on getting more serious about my music.  I'd really like to get my second album completed this year, and I can do it if I put the time into it.  There are songs I need to write and ideas I need to explore.  2012 will be the year that happens.

I hope this year will be one of joy and peace and prosperity for everyone.  Joy in the New Year!

Episode VII: A New Beginning

November has been a busy month.  Laura moved in with me, and the two of us are still adjusting to life together, and cooking together, and all the little and big things that change when one lives with someone else.  So far, however, so good.  Very good, even, and I'm not anticipating any major changes to that wholesome goodness.  Well, OK, "wholesome" is relative...

The day after moving in with me, Laura got to meet my parents and my sister and her family (including my two nephews) for the first time at my sister's birthday party.  My love was a bit nervous about it, but all turned out well, as I'd expected, and everyone had a nice time there.

A week after she moved in, I had to leave Laura home alone for several hours while I went to an Ani DiFranco concert with Jenn, Rhonda, and Amanda.  It was a great show, and I'm looking forward to Ani's new album next year, but it felt good to get back home after the show.

A few days after that was Thanksgiving, and Laura and I went to my parents' house for dinner and had a great, overstuffed meal, to which we brought mashed white sweet potatoes, apple pie, and wine.  Laura got to meet one additional family member, Degas the degu, and was quite pleased to meet him.  It was also Laura's birthday, and mom and dad had a cake and presents for her.  The next day, we were taken out for dinner by Laura's mom and had another nice time.

On Saturday, it was my turn to meet some furry faces, as we went to central Pennsylvania to pick up the rest of Laura's stuff and to bring home Priscilla and Meguilla, our "chinchildren." (I managed to bang up both of my calves during a chase scene involving a botched leap into the back of the U-Haul van after we'd gotten home, but otherwise everyone made the trip just fine.)  Yes, Laura and I have a family of chinchillas now, and the girls are so cute that I had to share: ChinchillaCam is at http://www.andersensilva.com/chincam.php if you're interested!

Prissy is the bolder of the two

A busy month, but a good'un.  Let's see what December has in store...  <#

So Much Happy

Laura and I had occasionally discussed the possibility of her moving in, probably not before the holidays, but neither of us wanted to rush it.  At first.  As the weeks went by, we started joking; "Well, Columbus Day is a holiday... we never really specified which holidays..."  While my business trip to Orlando this month was a bit rough on both of us, it also seemed to paradoxically bring us closer together, and this past Thursday, when the subject came up again, I remarked that, as far as I was concerned, she could really move in whenever she wanted...

...and so, this surprisingly snowy weekend at the tail end of October, Laura and I brought over half her stuff up the stairs to my apartment.  No, she's not completely moved in yet, and she's not living here until her two-week notice at work is up, but it's a done deal at this point, and we're both excited and happy about it.  I knew I held on to this three-bedroom apartment for a reason...  Heh!  "You know it's gonna make it that much better / when we can say 'good night' and stay together..."

We hadn't expected to see the year's first snowfall together before Halloween, but of course that's just what happened, and I couldn't help but sing "It's snowing, it's snowing! / God, I hate this weather..." from They Might Be Giants' "New York City" to her as we sloshed our way back from breakfast through the snow yesterday morning.  Luckily, I only seem to have lost power very briefly, while we were out at dinner, and the snow didn't wreak too much havoc around me, though there are numerous tree limbs and branches down in the area.

I'm lovin' my new iPhone 4S (though there are a few apps and tweaks I'll miss until there's a jailbreak for it) and getting a kick from playing with Siri a bit.  So far, she's understood everything I've said to her, and she's already aware that Laura is my girlfriend. ;-)  She's also apparently aware of where her towel is:

I also got Athena, my beast of a MacBook Pro, repaired (well, the display, as well as an issue on the logic board), and while I could've done without the added expense, it's wonderful to have her working at full capacity again.  Which reminds me, I'm overdue for a backup.  Talk to you later... <#

41 Today...

It's my birthday again. Seems to happen around this time every year... but I'm not tired of it. Not yet.

In fact, aside from the annoyance of being on-site in midtown east Manhattan for a frakked SQL database, rather than in my new office in Paramus, I'm feeling pretty good about this birthday. After having been diagnosed with a rare lymphocyte cancer in June, my dad is looking and feeling so much better, and his recent sixth chemotherapy session may turn out to be the last. I completed moving into a bigger office, with my own window to the outside, yesterday, though I need some art and photos to make it a bit homier. I finally dropped the MacBook Pro off at the Apple Store yesterday, and while it will be rough to be without it for a few days, it will be nice to again have a laptop that is completely operational, with all its circuits functioning perfectly.

Pam and I are together no longer, and the distance between us played a part in that. I have since found my world turned upside-down by a young woman named Laura from Staten Island, however, and we are dating quite happily. I'm even planning on putting a bit of her artwork and a photo or two of us into my new office (you can see said photos in the Gallery... of Death!), and we're celebrating my birthday tonight with some sushi. She likes to see and hear me play and is supportive of my music, and is inspiring me to create more. Laura makes me feel happier than I have in years, and that's just one of the reasons I love her.

So, while my birth certificate (which says that I was born in Paterson, NJ, and not Brazil or Kenya or anything like that) might show that I'm 41 today, inside I'm still much the giddy, goofy, and geeky 18-year old I've been for much of my life. Much as I did ten years ago, I rode the 32 bus into Manhattan today (though I got on in Lyndhurst today, not Nutley, and Alex, my Bus Buddy, no longer rides the DeCamp bus regularly, either), but my world is quite different than it was then. For my birthday, be happy for me. I am.