Hard to believe it's been well over a year since my last post here. In that last post, I promised I'd tell my brother's story when the time was right, but now I'm not convinced there ever will be a right time. I had hoped to get Javan to write something for me, but he got a surprise opportunity to sail the high seas as a midshipman on a british frigate before I could gently pester him. In lieu of that, I'll fall back to a message that he posted two days after the terrible attacks at Virginia Tech.

On 16 April 2007, Cadet Matthew Joseph La Porte was fatally wounded while actively resisting an armed attacker. In an act of total selflessness and extreme valor, Cadet La Porte threw himself in the line of fire between the gunman and several endangered civilians, and began to fight the attacker hand-to-hand before being mortally wounded by handgun fire. La Porte died a hero, and indeed, showed us all the true meaning of "deeds not words."

As many of you know, Matt was my best friend on this campus. I was lucky enough to spend many hours with him on his last full day on this earth, and both of his last two meals, the two of us had together. His last meal was Burger King, a whopper, king-size fry, and king-size cherry lime slushie. He was still hungry afterwards.

A year later, and the wounds are still fresh. I don't want to take this post too far, because ultimately it's my brother's loss to deal with in his own way, but I did want to take a moment to honor his friend. I'm sure Javan's had enough of public platitudes, but I would appreciate, if you think of him, to send some mental goodwill his way.

Matt La Porte bio at New York Times.

Popularity: 2% [?]

wherein your humble narrator again laments the inevitability of social distance

the wife and i had the pleasure this evening of hanging out with a few old friends, one of whom has recently embarked on a new life adventure in LA la land. again i was reminded of why it is i've chosen these people as close friends, and again i've had some nostalgic pangs for the times when i could just walk into the next room to enjoy wit, share an anecdote, or request advice. i realize, of course, that i've traded up—for someone with whom i can share many of the same things (along with many other things besides–not all of them "dirty", you cretins)

now all my closest friends but one are married (and he's probably not far off), and that has a way of cramping the social style, especially when you get doctors, near-doctors, students, and parents in the mix. schedules are hard enough to work around when you're just you. when there're two of you to consider, well, it quickly spirals out of control. work time, me time, us time, we time… we time nearly always gets the shaft in that arrangement.

i know that there's not a lot that any of us can do about it, so until we're able to be more proactive about it, i'm just planning on enjoying the infrequent times i get with my friends, and looking forward to the times that i can be reminded why i liked them so much in the first place.

Technorati Tags: pleasure, life, time, wife, adventure, inevitability, evening, distance

Popularity: 19% [?]

Ahhh…the year-end wrap-up. Where to start? To be honest, most of the shit that happened to me I didn't post about. Why have I been maintaining radio silence? Who knows?

I finally joined the rest of the web-using world and started utilizing digg. I even dugg a post I posted here. Oh…I'm such a whore.

Today I'm bemoaning the fact that we're not a more regularly updated, noticed "blog." I mean…they could have sent us a couple of these, for fucksake.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time listening to Neil Young, lately. Mostly Crazy Horse material. It's speaking to the parts of the brain Brooksie and I have started activating for the new band. Speaking of the new band, it's tentatively titled "Birth Machine." We expect to rattle the foundation of a local venue this spring.

I guess the biggest news of the season is that i had to have Clyde put to sleep (the Thursday before Christmas; it made the holiday even more fun). Some of you long-time readers (if there's any left) will remember Clyde as my beloved cat of the past decade. She had a tumor on her chest that spread to her lungs. Toward the end she was having trouble breathing and would only eat fresh turkey and "catmilk" (speaking of which, I have two things of that stuff left, if anyone needs/wants it), which made us think it was all just some elaborate scam on her part. Regardless, we couldn't take it anymore and took her back to the vet. He gave us the dire news and we all endured a bit of pre-holiday heartbreak.
Needless to say, she's incredibly missed.

Clyde - 1996-2006

Popularity: 27% [?]

well, brian's hopped back in the saddle, while i've been slacking. i suppose that's about right.

my buddy paul finally got himself hitched to his wonderful lady and our former roommate allison. It was a very nice, simple ceremony, followed by a pretty kickin' reception. they had a live jazz band that was just superb, and paul and neil got up and serenaded the new bride in patented old man style. my wife and i managed to get several good shots, which i've put up in the gallery.

our summer of weddings is now over (a brief reprieve), and we've two more friends' weddings left this year (that I can remember), but i think they both fall on the same day, so we'll unfortunately most likely have to miss the one that sara's not a bridesmaid in.

the remaining major news is that i whipped together a site for my friends that i'm particularly proud of, for organizing a monthly movie night. i'd link to it, but it's really by invitation only, and there are currently no safeguards to prevent uninvited users from signing up. (scribbles on todo list) so, suffice to say, it's really cool, and i'll post a link to it in the future when i've got it somewhat protected.

oh, and my 1 year anniversary at work has just come and gone, and i'm still thrilled to be where i am. i only hope that sara gets a residency in town (or within reasonable commuting distance) so i don't have to test the loyalty of my company in a long-distance employment situation. i'm fairly certain we can work something out (the company and i), but i'd certainly prefer not to risk it.

Popularity: 10% [?]

it seems almost inconceivable, but today marks the sixth anniversary of the first post on bipolar. of course, that post was pretty much just a test post, but no matter. and it's also not to say that bipolar has enjoyed much life in the last year. out of the last 10 months, it seems i've only successfully posted in three of them. brian has fared a little better, posting in four out of the last 10 months.

i suppose this is one of the reasons why blogging has gone the way it's gone… the only people who can effectively keep it going are the ones who are getting paid for it.

nevertheless, brian and i are still here, still putting up stuff when we can find time to do it.

now, in honor of our anniversary, and anniversary posts past (which, on review, I've realized were fewer and farther between than I'd have hoped) here's a brief recap:

• 05/22/2000 :: bipolar launched
• 07/26/2000 :: embarked on my chosen career
• 10/03/2002 :: the winds of change: aka, i had met sara, my wife-to-be
• 10/05/2002 :: first trip to paris
• 12/23/2002 :: first direct mention of sara in a post, having attempted to avoid the blogger cliche' of writing about every aspect of your fledgling relationship.
• 03/17/2003 :: found out i was going to be an uncle
• 06/02/2003 :: my new girlfriend went with me to see my ex-girlfriend get married
• 07/03/2003 :: sara and i took our first vacation together, and didn't kill each other
• 08/08/2003 :: jess got married
• 08/31/2003 :: my first niece is born
• 05/18/2004 :: job lost, job gained, vacation planned
• 06/28/2004 :: went to paris again, this time brought back a fiancé
• 11/03/2004 :: the american public once again proved their stupidity
• 07/06/2005 :: sara and I got married, starting our new life together
• 11/05/2005 :: whereafter, i proceeded to drop off the face of the earth, or at least bipolar
• 04/17/2006 :: bipolar gets an organ transplant, and a facelift

a few things I didn't mention, or barely mentioned were the births of my goddaughter—sara's niece emma—and my first nephew, reuben. of course, now I have four nieces and a nephew, and they are all uniquely adorable.

sara's almost finished her third year of med school, and is looking forward to getting a greater concentration in her chosen field of pediatrics here in the upcoming fourth year.

lastly, a large chunk of my friends, those from the core murray group, are finally getting themselves married off. brax this past month, and nate and the puffin in very short order.

six years covers a lot of ground in the lives of 20 somethings to 30 somethings. i do wish i could have chronichled more of the last year, but i suppose it's better to live a life you've no time to write about, than to have tons of time to write about the life you wish you had. six years has seen me go from a time of insecurity (personally, financially, professionally), to the complete opposite. I've gone from waiting for my life to get started, to realizing that it already has. and even better than that, I'm happy.

Popularity: 8% [?]

things are starting to settle down now, but for a week or so there, i felt like i was living in an alternate reality.

sara and i took our little vacation to d.c. to visit my sister and her family. it was a good time, and it was awesome to finally meet reuben, even though he's still too little to do much more than cry, eat, smile, and look around a lot. of course, i spent most of my time trying to get him to smile. at least partly because if he was smiling, he wasn't crying. sara and i got to babysit a couple days, so it was nice to get that much time with him.

emma (2, and cute as a button) has day care, so we didn't get to spend as much time with her. of course, she's also more interactive, so our time with her was more fun. she sings random songs, sometimes real songs, sometimes made up. she speaks very well in complete sentences, but she sometimes goes off on a tangent in emmish. i sometimes wonder if she's not going to be totally screwed up because her mother speaks five languages (though obviously not all at once.)

it was awesome to get to spend so much time with them, and of course, to get a vacation from work, life, and all that jazz. we didn't do much sightseeing, but mainly hung around their house enjoying the fact that we didn't have to work.

things really took a turn to the surreal when, not 10 minutes after getting home after our flight back, we were driving to the car dealership to pick up sara's new car. it's a long story how we got to the decision to get her a new car, but suffice it to say we thought it the best option. so, we fly into town, buy her car, then spend the next several hours (of the same night) attempting to teach her how to drive a manual… well, that, and trying to assuage her fears about never being able to figure it out.

to really keep the financial chaos meter buried in the red, the next day i went in to sign the paperwork for a loan to buy out the lease on my car. combine these with some of the other financial goings-on, and i was really feeling there for a while that i was just dragging home fat sacks of cash and tossing them down a sinkhole in my backyard.

things have stabilized now, and i'm not feeling like some kind of body snatcher pod person; but man all this "real life" stuff gets to be a little much at times, doesn't it?

after all this, and since our friend lori's baby shower didn't quite come to fruition, we ended up going up to my parent's farm (formerly grandma's farm) in virginia. my grandma's feeling much better, and is back home again, though she has to get dialysis 3 times a week. it was really awesome to see her looking like her normal self again, and i was glad that we had the opportunity to visit now that she's feeling better. also, my sis and her family were all going to be there, so this was another good opportunity to see them one last time (most likely) before they fly off to the other side of the world.

it was a great visit. probably the most difficult thing was watching my grandma with reuben when they were about to leave. i can only imagine what she was thinking, but i know her hands were trembling and she was trying not to cry. i hope reuben gets the opportunity to see his great-grandma again, but if that's not possible, i hope some subconscious part of him remembers that moment.

as much as i might have rebelled against them, as much as i struggled for the independence and individual identity that i value without regrets, i love my family. even though i never see, and feel disconnected from my family on dad's side, i love them too. from my point of view, the three most important things in the world are family, friends, and self(-identity,-sufficiency,-responsibility,-worth). each of us is a nexus of those three things, fed by and providing for them.

well, i don't really want to get off on some philosophical tanget, so i'll just stop there. nevertheless, family = important.
also important is communication, which i think i've done just about enough of for this post. in closing, i'll just leave you with a link to the gallery with the latest photos concerning recent events.

Popularity: 4% [?]

so, now that all that boring relaunch related stuff is out of the way, it's high time I sit down for a real post—the obligatory "catch-up" post.

when we last spoke, i was hot in the middle of procrastinating on my novel for National Novel Writing Month, particularly by brushing down this old horse. now, we've gone all the way through winter and come out the other side, the spring storms are tearing at our shutters, and the grass is growing faster than I can push the lawn mower.

on the plus side, we've got central heat & air installed in our little home now, so I'm not going to have to drag out those loud obnoxious window units. of course, this just means that now we'll have to bicker about temperature more, since we no longer have room-by-room control—no big deal.

the next exciting thing on our schedule is a trip to DC—we'll be heading up there to visit our new nephew (and the rest of his family) for a few days. i've said this to a few people before, but i'll say it here again… it's so strange that little Reuben hardly seems real to me at this point. when Emma was born, my sister & bro-in-law took pictures of her daily, and sent digests weekly via email, so i was intimately connected—at least through pictures—with her growth and development. she seemed real to me even before I met her.

with Reuben, it's different. Sara and Andrew haven't been taking pictures daily, or at least not sending them out weekly if they have. maybe because they're now living in the states, they feel the need is lessened, but his family is still in NZ, so it'd still be important. maybe because they're both much busier than they were when Emma was born—both working, trying to raise two kids now instead of just one. but for whatever reason, lack of evidence, lack of contact, whatever, the new kid just seems more like an idea than an actual physical entity. this is, of course, why we're so excited that we get to go to DC to finally meet him.

and even more important, this could be our only chance to see him (and the rest of the family) for several years. with sis (and possibly bro-in-law) going into the foreign service, they might be out of the country pretty-much until they retire. obviously, they'll visit us and we'll visit them, but those opportunities will be few and far between.

i may have gotten used to seeing my sister (and her new family) only infrequently over the last 10 years or so, but that doesn't mean i have to like it.

Popularity: 4% [?]

as you might have guessed, there's been so much going on in my world of late, i can hardly keep my head on straight, much less figure out what to write about. first and most importantly, the wedding was awesome, and married life thus far has been challenging, interesting, enjoyable, and fun (not necessarily in that order). to read more about the wedding itself, check the last post on the wedding website.

after the honeymoon (which we both enjoyed the hell out of and wished never to return from), we've been busy trying to dig ourselves out from under all the crap that got piled into our house the following week–mainly wedding presents, but also all her stuff when we finally got her (almost completely) moved in. things are settling out, finding their places, and we're getting the house in order (have i typed/said this a million times already? it sure seems that way… oh well, i'm nothing if not consistent) i've been too busy and distracted the last few months and in the weeks since the wedding to even really think about getting a bunch of pictures online, but i did manage a few of the simpler smaller sets. wedding/honeymoon pics will follow as soon as i can get them whipped into shape.

one set i did manage to get online are the ones of our new kittens! artemis and apollo are about as cute as kittens can be, but ari was a bit sick the first few days… we're still having to give her some anti-biotics, but i think she's feeling much better. of course, they're both turning out to be little shits, running around like crazy, knocking stuff over, scratching the shower curtain… y'know being kittens, essentially. we're trying to "train" them, but as you'd expect, it's hard to control them when you're not home–they tend to do whatever they like, which usually involves something potentially destructive.

the other gallery i got up was some of the pics from my new phonecam.

generally, things are great, and we're gearing up for our first big party this weekend–something i've been itching for for quite some time.

Popularity: 5% [?]

the day is almost upon us. tomorrow +3 hours from now, i will be married and beginning the next phase of my life. it'll be weird to share a house with someone again, but i'm looking forward to having Sara there all the time.

amazingly enough, i haven't really been nervous or apprehensive about the whole thing until about… oh, 10 minutes ago. i think my nervousness mainly stems from the confluence of events and things that have to happen in the next 24 hours to pull this thing off. plus, we're taking a weeks vacation, and i always feel like i'm leaving something undone in the days/hours leading up to a departure. and there are so many things to leave undone. of course, none of them cannot be picked up when we return, but it's the reality of leaving things in a half-done state that is a bit nerve-wracking.

while we're gone, my laptop will be in the shop, the electrician will be roaming about the house bug-bombing the crawlspace and grounding all our outlets. seems like there should be more going on than that… amazing how the mind blows things out of proportion at the slightest provocation.

nevertheless, i'm trying to maintain my focus on Sara and enjoying the proceedings. tomorrow is all about me & her, so i want to make sure we're not losing perspective with all the other stuff going on.

and despite that selfish focus, i'm sincerely looking forward to being able to get all my friends and family, and new extended family under one roof, and to be able to see and talk to as many of them as possible, especially those i don't get to see very often (which is pretty much everybody, considering our social calendar of late).

so, i'm excited, i'm nervous, i'm anxious, and i'm focused (or trying to be) on the things about this next 30 hours that are the most meaningful. all-in-all i suppose i'm pretty much the typical husband-to-be.

wish us luck!

completely unrelated link: Technorati Profile

Popularity: 5% [?]

holy cow. i swore (to myself) i'd stop mentioning with every new post how long it's been since the last one, but jeeze louise, i'm making history here! a whole month gone by without a single post in it, and just over two months since my last post! it's a bipolar first folks (and hopefully a last). i'm going to have to fix the archive index script (see way below) to skip April 2005 for me… weird.

anyway. as you might have guessed by my last few posts, and by my (even for me) uncharacteristic silence, i have been bizz-eee… no, not even that, i've been extremely fucking BUSY for too damn long now. let's recap, shall we?

1) finally bought a house.
2) closed on the house and moved out of the old apartment
3) ITS ALL A BLUR
4) slowly began to see light again
5) started writing this post

i think somewhere in there around 3 and 4, Sara and i spent a bunch of money buying stuff for the house, she had a couple of bridal showers, so we got crap-loads of gifts, i've been doing honest-to-god yard-work, washing a crap-load of dishes (no dishwasher), trying to get my stuff organized and put away, trying to finish the wedding website, trying to finalize wedding plans, trying not to go insane.

we're getting a load of brick today… how incredibly surreal and weirdly pedestrian and adult-like is that? i spent 8 hours on sunday outside… my world is currently sitting directly on its head.

the work roller-coaster was barely noticed (by me, anyway… Sara would've been freaking out if she hadn't had to study so much for finals), in that my 1 year contract expires at the end of the month… but my newly minted boss finally managed to push the paperwork through for a 6 month extension, so i'm gainfully employed until… er… christmas time.

all this, and the wedding is only… 4 weeks away. i'm not consumed with fear or anxiety yet, so that's a good thing. and hell, i'm looking forward to being able to get away from all this recent hubbub for a week and just enjoy *life* (and being married) for a moment without having to deal with anyone or anything else.

but i'm glad my sis, a new foreign service initiate, is coming into town this weekend and bringing that cute niece of mine with her. and she'll actually be staying in the states most of the year as she does her FS training, so it's conceivable we could see her more than twice in the next six months. and then, of course, she'll ship off to some foreign land, and we'll be hard-pressed to even get to see her once a year.

and my darling has successfully completed her 2nd year of med school and is even now studying for her first set of boards. i think we'll have at most a week after we get back from the honeymoon before she has to start her first rotation. thankfully she managed to get it set up so she doesn't have to leave town to do a rotation for a while.

and last, but not least, after giving up my precious kitties to Paul and Allison, and having been in the house for a month and getting it mostly whipped into shape, Sara and I are looking for two little kitties of our own. we want babies, and we'd like them to be litter-mates, but we are a bit flexible on that last bit.

and thanks to everybody for their well-wishes and congratulations re: the house. we're hoping to have a house-warming party soon, and i'll make sure to mention it here unless anybody out in the wide world has an opportunity to make it down for a weekend (pre-wedding, i'm hoping)

oh, one more thing… i just launched the wedding website yesterday, so go check it out!

Popularity: 9% [?]