So last night I lied; after I posted my main entry I didn’t do any drawing, even though that had been my intention.
Shortly after I finished posting I was to watch this new show on Fox, “The Inside,” which, so far, hasn’t been spectacular, but has at least been watchable (last night’s episode was really messed up), but just as I was getting ready to sit down and watch it, my phone rang.
I knew right away that it wasn’t my mom, Kathleen, or Scott, who are the only people likely to call me, and as it was a totally unfamiliar area code, I assumed that it was a wrong number.
It turned out to be my friend Eric, finally getting around to giving me a call, as per my request of a nearly two months ago, when I sent him a letter (followed up by an e-mail).
One of the main things I wanted to talk to him about, apart from just talking to him, as it’d been over a year since I’d last done so, was to see if he’d be interested in going with me to Wendy’s convention in September.
As I’ve mentioned before, I would kind of like to go, but I’m not terribly inclined to drive hundreds of miles to an unfamiliar place full of unfamiliar people by myself, so I’d hoped that Eric would be willing to accompany me.
Unfortunately, the convention is the same weekend as his wife’s birthday, so that’s not going to happen.
So that leaves the question of whether or not I’ll go up in the air. I feel as though I should, but, again, my natural inclination is not to go towards large gatherings of people…
It was nice to talk to Eric after an extended lack of meaningful contact (after he moved from MD to DE I lost his phone number, and he doesn’t own a computer, so I have to wait for him to go to a library to check his e-mail), though of course it was kind of strange, as pretty much everything is, I’ve decided, when you get to be my age.
I can’t really describe the exact manner in which everything is strange, but suffice to say that everything is, and that’s really all that can be said.
I suppose that age isn’t the only factor, though, as in the past five years my entire view of, and approach to, life has changed pretty dramatically, thanks to the fact that I’m sober.
The sobriety creates certain issues when it comes to interacting with people with whom I used to get drunk on a regular basis, and I’m not sure there’s anyone around with whom I got drunk on a more regular basis than Eric. Jeff or other members of my circle of friends from that particular period in my drinking career are contenders for that title, I suppose, but there are no “drinking buddies” around with whom I still have contact other than Eric.
It should be noted that Eric got rather a bad rap from my mother back in the day, as she sort of viewed him as a bad influence on me in regards to my drinking. Little did she realize (though she does now) that I was, in fact, the bad influence on him.
In that regard, at least.
Adding to the strangeness was the fact that during our conversation we exchanged recipes.
I suppose that’s not really so odd, considering my interest in cooking and the fact that Eric is actually an excellent cook himself, but even so, it felt a bit strange.
Certainly it wasn’t a conversation we would have had at any of the earlier stages of our fifteen-year friendship.
So as I say, strange.
He’s actually going home to the U.P. for an extended visit next month, and he mentioned that he’d be happy to move back there if he could do so and still make the sort of money he does where he is now (which is more or less an impossibility; the money just isn’t there to be made in the U.P.).
For my part, I have no interest in returning for anything more than a visit. If I could relocate myself, at present salary levels, anywhere, I’d probably go back to Tucson.
Sort of related to the notion of the homecoming, though, we talked about the difficulty that some people have in leaving “the nest,” and he talked about the “support system” that can be hard to leave behind.
It seemed to me, then, that I obviously don’t form any sort of deep attachments in any particular place, or at least not the sort that would prevent me from being able to move on.
After all, I’ve pulled up stakes and moved my entire life on more than one occasion.
That doesn’t mean I did so cavalierly or without qualms, or that I haven’t missed any of the people I left behind, but there are people for whom the prospect of missing people is just too daunting, and so they could never even consider moving on. Clearly, I’m not one of them.
I mentioned this to Eric, and in response to my comments about picking up my life an moving it, he said, “But why do you keep following me?”
After all, the first time I up and left town it was to move in with him in Minnesota, and of course I moved fairly near him when I left Tucson to come here.
I told him it should be obvious; I’m secretly in love with him. Or rather, I have a psychotic attachment to him, and it’s my hope that one day we’ll be one person, which I’ll accomplish through the fashioning of an authentic “Eric suit,” a la “Silence of the Lambs.”
Of course we were both joking, and in reference to our time in Minnesota, he said, “I liked living with you better than I liked living with my ex-wife.”
When I was getting close to home during my walk this morning (which, again, I took earlier than usual, thanks to a certain not-so-quiet youngster outside my window), I saw something that really made me wish I’d had my camera with me.
There’s a Chevy Chase Bank branch office across the street from me, and in the mostly cloudy skies there was a slight break in the cover, allowing a shaft of sunlight, which stood in stark contrast to the gray of the skies, to shine down upon the bank and made it look as if God Himself were making use of the ATM.
Chevy Chase currently has an ad campaign in which Benjamin Franklin endorses the bank, but the image I saw this morning, I think, would earn them a few more points with people…
I really didn’t accomplish much this week. After I got off the phone with Eric last night I sat down to watch “The Inside,” which I recorded on the DVR, then it was time for “The Daily Show,” and by the time that was over I didn’t feel like working on a picture, as had originally been my intention.
Ah well, it’s not as if it really matters one way or the other if I accomplish anything, though.
Next week I’m even less likely to accomplish much, as on Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be getting trained in HTML, which is a skill I’ve been meaning to pick up for the past ten years or so. Some things just take time, I guess.
In any case, that’s going to do it for this week. I hope you all have a good weekend.
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