My lesson for the year: Learn to keep my cool when plans change. I’m usually okay with plans changing because I plan for them to change. But things I thought were set changing on me bug the hell out of me if I don’t start the change.

But I’ve had a shower now, and a walk in the rain, and I am now much less likely to eat someone.

This morning, I took a flight with a customer of mine, under pretense of fixing his navigation computer. We flew from MTJ, over the Black Canyon, over the dam on the Gunnison, past Courthouse Mountain, then over his property in Pleasant Valley, then over Loghill Mesa back to MTJ. I shot about 300 pictures, and came out with a fair number of decent ones, considering that I’d never shot through a Cessna window before.

I can only say that I’m really happy.

left on her long-awaited trip to California today, wallet found and in tow. and are here, and delightful to watch. They’re both becoming even more fast friends than they were. I’ve slept more and ate more good food in the past couple days than I’d given myself in the prior few weeks, which is something I really should take care of. is back in just one town, and has been around a bit more of late, too.

I played Ultimate, including a few bone-wrenching, ground-meeting near-catches, and had a blast — with luck, it won’t be the last game of the season.

Maybe, just maybe, I shook myself out of my anticonversational rut today. Maybe.

After nearly a week of feeling like I have nothing to say, the weather report indicates a further mood of general uninterestingness, tinged with baking and cleaning.

Anyone who wants to have a good conversation with me and shake me out of my nonpostingness is more than welcome.

Awoken from a fitful but restful sleep by a friend with business call. I’m groggy and happy and wishing I had shopped for breakfast supplies yesterday.

Mmmmm.

So I’m skipping choir because I was too grumpy to not eat beforehand, and now it’s getting late and I’m too full to sing at all well.

I feel bad ditching everyone, but I will come next week and go home from work earlier to get dinner.

Sitting Phoenix for the weekend was fun but I am exhausted. I haven’t hung out with anyone pre-teenaged much at all recently — My world consists of adults, some legally still children, but in my mind very much adult.

I remember every year after sitting him why I don’t exactly want kids, really. I enjoy them, and with a partner who was really committed to giving a good, unique upbringing, I could really enjoy it. But I don’t want to play russian roulette with my life, where there’s a bullet reading “Has satellite TV, a station wagon and Mr. Clean under the sink” in the chamber. I do not want that life.

Phoenix’s parents are scarily the people most like my parents in town. They’re both mellow, natural-building, organic-food types. They both ended up with queer oldest children, and ended up owning a nice house in a pleasant rural town. They’re comfortable. And I don’t really want to be much like them.

In some ways, I want their ideals, not their reality. My parents now want a smaller house, and what I read into their saying that they want a simpler life is that they want something they don’t have to work so hard maintaining so they can travel and go do things more. I want that too.

I do not love you simply because you are different, you are not a novelty to admire and then to cast off. I love you because of your inner beauty, your inabilty to contain your true spirit despite all oppodition and your own fears.

My mother replied to my letter. She’s still thinking, writing a real response, but she answered. I think things will be fine, but I know I’m not going to get support from her any time soon.

Arvo Pärt’s Missa Sillabica, then Gabriel Fauré on at high volume, my meager dinner is vanishing. My soul feels overwrought with tension and emotion tonight. Time for some time alone with the cello, and some second dinner.

Phone conversations that end long after the tears stopped, long enough that they’re dried to the handset. Arvo Pärt on at full volume, harmonies, heavenly voices narrate the evening, a cacaphony of truth larger than anyone can comprehend. Pain, memories of pain, and ultimately that we are all nothing and that that truth is a beauty of its own.

Today rolled from mediocre to a wonderful climax.

Work was work. I had a meeting about money with the previous owner, which went well. My records pwn his records.

Last pizza night, possibly ever — the coffeeshop that holds the oven we use is closing, things changing. We’ll find another location, I hope. I’ll miss it. I finally un-tensed from the weekend and the past week after a couple beers and nearly a whole pizza to myself.

We hung out after everyone else left, waiting to let Christel into the radio station for her show. I didn’t realize she was still doing it, after the fight with her partner, but after the fight, the hurricane hit, and she grabbed recording equipment, pulled strings and got a press card, and got into the Astrodome and interviewed people. Most of the press was turned away.

The first part of the show was a live interview with a family from New Orleans, whose house was a block from the levee. They’re living here now, and the interview was great, and then they played forty-five minutes of interviews from Houston. Things are bad, there, folks. I’m going to get a recording tomorrow, I hope.

raijna called, and she is the most beautiful person tonight, having danced in the rain and swum in four-foot-deep floodwaters until the police chased her out. Don’t ever get sane, Jem. Not that kind of sane.

I’m grinning ear to ear, and random play has pulled up the Goo Goo Dolls.

Tonight, I ♥ life.

Please be okay, Caleb. Please.

All I can say is “Capiscum”. Yum.