So. It's been awhile. An entire summer and the back ass of spring, to be precise. I've rekindled some friendships, had a lot of fabulous weddings, got to do a couple more wedding videos and launched a website. I've gone back to temp work when times got rough and will lather rinse and repeat, when necessary. Ripley is fine and well behaved. She does not like Fabulous Husband and I working out of the house.

Many things have happened. Most recently it's the death of an old friend. Not old as in she was that old, she was not. She was maybe 63, which seemed terribly old when I was a teenager but as I approach 40, less so. We met in 1992, when I was young and stupid and she was mature and amused. She felt old, she hated her gray, her lines. Having laughed and worried much, she had plenty of both in great natural supply. In recent years I hadn't seen her very much at all, and the slap of her sudden absence has me thinking of reconnecting with more people, keeping track. Perhaps in descending order of wellness, I don't know. She was at Woodstock, she fled to Canada with a draft dodger husband. She held her own in conversation and was a teacher, always. She would point out life lessons if you seemed to be missing one in progress. She cared about people. She saw the best potential in the people around her, the truth of them and not a rose coloured fantasy. But she hated exercise and ate poorly, although never to excess. She seemed very healthy; here and now though she's the first person in my life, if the coroner is to be believed, to have been killed by a lifetime of smoking. Peacefully, in bed and in the middle of a book. Dea, I will miss your wit. I will try to remember what you taught. You were simply, elegantly, unintentionally magnificent. Flaws and all, magnificent.