> H O M E

So I’m finally getting around to answering 3 weeks worth of e-mails from family and friends. I’m notoriously bad at the stuff, I will routinely let them pile up for weeks and then take a whole evening to craft lengthy replies as if to excuse the delay. My parents are about the only ones to get special treatment, with slightly more frequent, but somewhat shorter messages.
That all just made realize how much of an ******* I am… Apology. Apologies all around. (please note that despite the AD quote, I am being sincere. I would love to send out news and kind words more often, but it just doesn’t happen)

I start with one of my friends telling me of his recent experiences of what I call “AD moments” — those million things in everyday life that remind me/us of bits and pieces from the show. Glad to know I’m not the only one. He also pointed me to some AD paraphernalia being sold on eBay — GOB’s chicken beak. I think I could almost go for the Sword of Destiny or the seal’s yellow bowtie, if they ever become available.

I move on to answering an elementary school friend, who is mass-mailing a bunch of us old-timers. In there I learn that some have found jobs, gone back/are planning on going back to Tahiti, and last but not least, that one of us is getting married sometime this summer… my friend wants pictures. Of course he does, hell I want pictures too: I simply can’t believe it. The guy’s about a year older than me, and he’s getting married. Whew.

Another e-mail, from my cousin, who will enter High School next September. She’s about to take the Brevet, the first (and pretty much useless) mandatory exam on the path to university (I was about to write ‘college’, and realized it would only be confusing in that context…). Anyhoo, that made me realize that exactly 10 years ago, I was finishing Collège (in the French sense) and taking my own Brevet… and my only memory is that I had Looking for Satellites stuck in my head for the whole math exam. Amusingly, I was listening to the very album in the car on my way back this evening.
Ten years, dammit. And that would be the same newborn cousin I was holding more or less 15 years ago… she told me she’d send me a picture of her and her group. Well, at least I think that’s what she said — she writes using these botched spellings and intriguing shorthands, like young people do, so it always takes me a while to read her prose. Anyhow, I haven’t seen her for two years now, and I’m a little anxious to see how much she’s changed — I’m guessing a lot.

Aaah, screw this, I’m too old for that stuff. The others will have to wait, sorry guys.