Andy

November 19, 2002. Evening.

What a weird time to be alive. As far as the world is
concerned, of course, but as far as my personal timeline
goes, as well.

Branum's brother killed himself on Saturday. I never met
him, but Branum and him were close. Someone called Katie at
work and told her, so she left in tears. I haven't talked
to her since then, and I don't know if I should call her.
Or what I would say. I hope she's alright...she hasn't been
too pleased with things as of late; I've touched on this.

I think she's been very influenced by Josh. Josh is a new
guy at work; a tightly-wound, belligerent intellectual. I
don't describe him in such a way to pass judgement, that's
just the way he is. I worked with him for the first time
the other day, so I got to talk to him. He's interesting.
What particularly struck me is a lot of what he was talking
about -- Minneapolis, moving around in your 20s, reading
Castaneda -- has been echoed by Katie lately. I think she's
being very influenced by him, which is interesting. I don't
quite know what to make if it, whether this is good or bad
or neither.

Sarah practiced with the band for the first time. She's
going to join, it looks like. This is a good thing; I
talked to her at length after practice, she called me up.
She's not really impressed with the band, I can tell -- or
she's not "really impressed" in the sense of being
completely blown away by our music. Ha ha. It's a good
situation, though. We'll see where things go. It's an
interesting lineup, lots of interesting personalities
intermingling-- Dan and his unreconstructed slacker-cum-
hippie worldview, mixed with Sarah's inscrutability, and my
own delsusions of grandeur. It'll be very interesting.

Jackie seems to be delighted with Matt. She spends an awful lot of
time yelling at her friends on the phone, though. You know, for
hours, it seems like. That simply can't be good. Can it?

I've been talking to Jessy a few times a week. I'm happy
with our little thing. I'll be seeing her over Thanksgiving.
Sometimes the conversations are great, sometimes they seem to me to
be a little strange -- I don't quite know how. Well, wait...that's
not true, I do know how: there is a certain frustration present
sometimes. To explain: with, I think, the exception of our
relationship, I can tell that she isn't really very happy with her
life -- if you will, frustrated. I love her very much, and care for
her very much, and I don't quite understand how I can help -- again,
if you will, frustrated. Ah ha! She seems very reluctant to open up
sometimes, and she has always been hard to read, even from the
beginning. But you know, it's been nearly six months, and I know I'm
getting better, haw haw. Good enough to be able to tell from the tone
in her voice, from the way she complains about little, seemingly
unrelated things, that she's not very happy with her situation at
present. I want to make her happy. I want to see her happy.

Am I happy? Mostly. The future seems promising, perhaps because it
hasn't been written. I catch glimpses of it sometimes.

I may go out tonight for a long dinner by myself.