3 May 2004

Presiding Over the Changing of a Life

The long winter is over. Summer has finally come to the River City. I know this because I just heard the first thunderclap of the season, not one minute ago.

Let it not be said that I do not appreciate technology that works. This is being written on Horatio, my battered old notebook (to go along with his equally battered Scottish owner), because Nemesis, my less battered custom built desktop system, is currently occupied. I am running DreamWeaver on him and have him tasked with updating The Keep. This task seems to be sucking up sufficient horses to make him unusable otherwise, thus the use of Horatio.

I have been spending the last couple of days fooling around with evaluation copies of Macromedia DreamWeaver and Macromedia HomeSite in an effort to determine which one will become the editor of choice for managing The Keep, once I stop using FrontPage. Thus far DreamWeaver seems to be winning the contest on the basis of visual design tools, which HomeSite seems to lack entirely. More on that later.

Today was a very important day for me and mine here at The Keep. Today is the day that my adopted Little Sister, the much beloved Anna, stood before a Commissioner of Marriages and had herself manacled to her new husband, Chris.

Of course the two of them were little more than walking, talking bundles of nerves throughout the entire process. The other witnesses and I had been expecting this and went out of our way to try to lighten the situation for them. I am particularly proud of my own efforts in this regard. A couple of my puns almost broke the blushing bride.

The acquisition of the license and the location of a Commissioner of Marriages was painless enough. The ceremony was short, sweet, and to the point which was probably a good thing; any longer and nervous vomiting of the projectile variety would have commenced. The happy couple signed their license, the witnesses signed as well, and Big Brother stood back and tried not to get in the way, having just symbolically given the bride away.

The ceremony was followed by dinner at the Taipan Chinese restaurant in China Town. Wonderful food, hefty bill. Enough said. Suffice to say that I agree with Python in that I Like Chinese, Too. However, I maintain that they’re wrong and it is NOT fun to charter an accountant.

Today I presided over the changing of a life, and as I discharged my duty I could not help but reflect on the state of my own life and find certain aspects wanting.

I suppose that during times of great joy everyone is prone to this kind of introspection, so the simple fact that I am capable of doing it without diving head first into the kind of killing depression that has colored the last several years of my life should, I suppose, be considered a kind of progress. Indeed, this is how I’ve been looking at it, and on those grounds I find myself feeling a strong sense of pride in my accomplishments since the departure of the Mad Cow.

And yet, I still find myself wanting. I find myself focusing on a significant lack of female companionship in my life, a symbolic sort of void that exists within me because of it. I find myself feeling lonely, not for friendship, but for something else.

One the one hand I suppose that there is some ground for these kind of feelings, and I suppose that I should be proud of my newfound ability to consider them without giving in to the desire to crawl into a bottle and pull the cork in after me. On the other hand, I really have no excuse for these feelings at all, because, when you get down to it, there really isn’t a damn thing wring with my life. I have gone to great lengths to surround myself with friends of various sorts, all of whom contribute in ways great and small to the once herculean task of giving me reasons to stay alive. I have a job which, despite the fact that it sucks the life out of me, I am uniquely capable of doing. I am on the verge of embarking on what promises to be a stellar career as a professional writer.

On the gripping hand, I can only conclude that the reason behind these feelings is simple, astonishingly simple even: I am no more fucked up than any other individual on this planet. I am as normal as they come. For someone who has spent the vast majority of his life being a misfit, this is more than a little refreshing.

And yet, still I find myself lacking.

It doesn’t matter. Feelings will pass, as feelings are wont to do.

The important thing for today, is that we celebrate the marriage of two very important people. I think that I can safely say I have no problem with devoting my energies to this task.