After fewer than four hours of sleep, I was on the road again. I'd been shaken awake with a jolt, and I was dressed and charging headlong into Brian and Suzan's kitchen before I'd really awakened. We headed out, Jake and Chris and I, in the middle of one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever driven through. Brian and Suzan's road more closely resembled a moat, and getting to I-20 represented a difficult tightrope balance of caution and insanity.

It's either going to be the laughter, the narcoleptic dog, or the broken toilet cover. I don't know which, but I'm leaning toward making it all three. I didn't know her well, but somehow, I think she'd find the combination appropriate.Her name was Duffie. I met her once.

The progression was thus: Jeff invoked spousal rights, thus ensuring I went to his ten-year high school reunion, which I was absolutely certain I would hate. As luck, fate, and reunions would have it, we sat at the table with Samantha, one of Jeff's closer high school friends. As we sat at the back table, merrily snarking our way through the dinner, Jeff and Samantha flipped through the pages of the book to find out what had happened to everyone else.

I knew I'd officially been gone from home too long when this conversation transpired:

Amy: [snip] costume research while chicken cooks. hi.

Brian: hi

Brian: I am also cooking chicken

Amy: the stuff you had in the fridge?

Brian: yep

There was a time several years ago, here in Huntsville, when many of the names that appear now in my daily life had yet to appear in my life for the first time. It began, as these things are wont to do, with a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere over the coast of Thailand; two years later, it ended with me taking a web design job in a farm of fresh grey cubicles.

Two cubes down, there was someone about my age. Her name was Kat and she said, "I'm a wondergeek."

"What's a wondergeek?" I asked. She showed me the answer: her roommates. Powerpuff Girls, even: Heather the brunette, Jessica the blonde, Kat the long-haired redhead.

Somewhere along the way, she came to our house for the first time, and Jeff laughed and I laughed and she laughed and I began to suspect that there was something potentially okay about these Huntsville folk after all.

Two years, minus eight days, ago:

Comfort care, for the living, is the cell phone that rings at a random hour, with the voice of an old friend on the other end of the line who says, "Look, I know you're up. Walk out of the room and talk to me."
— 'Comfort care,' 18 March 2002

Somewhere between the second episode of The Muppet Show and my fourth orange-flavored drink, courtesy of Brian, I began to realize that this Thanksgiving holiday thing might have some merit, after all. Given another couple of episodes and another fizzy drink or two, I might even start singing the praises of this holiday.

Scratch that. Thanksgiving == good. A pity Thomas and Danielle fled before the evening got really amusing.