Yeah, on my way to Austria again; leaving tomorrow afternoon. Long story that ends with a short notice business trip for ten days. This is my third working visit there, including a trip with Anita for two weeks in England and Austria (with me working five days of it).

Like most business trips this will be less fun than it sounds like. You don't want to waste your time on-site when your company (or even your customer -- as in this case) is paying for it, so there's little time for sight-seeing. Of course there is good beer and pretty damn fine food and the girls are pretty. But you can say the same thing about Seattle. Plus we have better coffee, even if Vienna is the place where the ghod's brew first became a part of western culture.

Still I have come to like Austria and its people. If I was more inclined to work on my sucky German I suppose I would enjoy it even more. Maybe I'm not quite ready to invest in a pair of leather shorts and learn to yodel, but I do want to see more of the country someday. And I would be looking forward to this trip if there had been more time to prepare.

If only I didn't have to spend so much time trapped in an aluminum can full of people in order to get there and back...

So there I was at Penguicon for three days. In that space of time I never touched a boob. (Not even my own as far as I can remember.) Nor did I see the infamous buttons. (Not that I knew to look for them.)

Yet that seems to be the only thing the entire blogosphere wants to talk about in relation to Penguicon ever since. I guess boobies always win out over Singing Tesla Coils; no matter which side of the argument you fall on.

Me? I'm all for personal freedom and for people being able to make choices. No means no. Yes means yes. The absence of either is a default no. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about touching a part of someone's body or eating a bite of their chocolate bar. Each person gets to define their own limits.

That includes the toucher as well as the touchee: Should I have known about this 'Open Source Boob Project' I wouldn't have participated. I know what boobs feel like and, while I do enjoy them greatly, it isn't something I want to reduce to groping strangers in a hallway. I'm not wired like that.

So I missed it. And, frankly, I'm glad I missed it. But then I didn't rub Vernor Vinge's bald head either. (Something that apparently was quite the rage there and something which I want to do far less than I want to rub titties.) I managed to miss talking to John Scalzi at every opportunity. I blew off a crapload of programming. I never met 'the XKCD guy'. I didn't slam a single jello shot or quaff a single pirate rum ration.

In other words I missed a lot of other things, many of which interested me more than 'Open Source Boobs'. Life is like that...

I've been reminded that today is the third anniversary of this blog. And yes, despite the fact it is hosted on LJ, this is much more of a blog than a journal.

You know, just because a GPS says go this way doesn't mean you have to go that way. Especially driving a large bus. Or, in the words of the GPS manufacturer, "Stoplights aren't in our databases, either, but you're still expected to stop for stoplights."

This little incident occurred in Seattle's own Washington Arboretum and, admittedly, you don't need a GPS to screw up that bad. (Anita and I once passed a large truck that had attempted the same trick in the same spot, but was clearly moving somewhat slower than the bus mentioned above.) The part that gets me is the way both the driver and his employers are attempting to blame the GPS for the damage.

Well, all good things must come to an end and this one will soon end with me returning to Detroit metro airport to catch a flight home. Penguicon was fun! But I will be glad to sleep in my own recliner tonight...

I didn't attend a great deal of programming, but what I saw was mostly pretty good. (The exception was a panel on intelligence enhancement which included Vernor Vinge, but consisted almost entirely of two guys I didn't know arguing. On the other hand I played some computer games, met up with old and new friends, attended some good parties, saw some good anime, and ate several bowls of liquid nitrogen ice cream.

The highlights of the con were the giant singing tesla coils and talking to Vernor Vinge for an hour or so over scotch in the Confusion party. Plus I liked the Pirate Party, which consisted of a fake boat they would push up to other parties and use to 'board' them. (An idea I would love to steal for Vikingcon/Valhallacon, except we would 'invade and pillage'.) All told I am glad I came and hope to do so again.

Yeah, I finally made it. Haven't seen much programming, other than the singing tesla coils concert; which was an hour late starting but totally worth the wait. Oh, and I've been making the rounds of the parties with a bottle of scotch under my arm...

One funny, marykaykare and hubby are here. It kind of boggled them to see me!


(No video up from tonight yet, this clip is from Duckcon 07)

Well, I was supposed to be basking in SF and Open Source geekyness right now, but instead am still beavering away at our client site. Huge bummer!

On the more interesting side, there was an earthquake in Illinois that was felt as far away as here in Detroit. Except, well, I'm ashamed to say I slept right through it.

I am at Seatac airport right now, waiting for my flight. Doing some work stuff near Detroit, then Penguicon for the weekend.

ETA: I am at my hotel in Troy MI now, tired as hell and cringing at the thought of getting up in less than five hours (seven o'clock local time). Tomorrow work at a client site. Friday morning? Maybe some more work, but there is a chance I won't have anything I need to do; in which case I will maybe head over to the Henry Ford Museum, a place Anita and I visited for a quick look-around when she came out here back in 2003.

I have been working on a secret project for a while now and it is nearing the time when I will let the first select few into the know. What follows is a snippet (previous snippet):

Wallace was sitting by himself with a cup of coffee in the cafeteria module when the Avatar came in. He happened to be looking directly at the door when it opened, so he was momentarily blinded by the flood of harsh light in which she was just a slim silhouette. A silhouette with a mushroom-shaped head that resolved itself into a pith helmet when she closed the door.

"Mr Hicks." The Avatar said in a warning tone, her pretty face drawn up in a delicate frown.

Suddenly remembering, and not wanting a repeat of the last time he forgot, Wallace leaped to his feet. Banging the table and knocking over his chair in the process. "Uh... Hello Avatar." He was still blinking from the bright daylight.

The Avatar smiled and sat down across from Wallace. She was dressed in a white linen safari suit, only slightly dusty, that perfectly matched the helmet she now took off and put on the table. Her features were Eurasian, but her eyes were a bright blue. As were her lips, nails, and short-cut hair. Wallace assumed the latter were artificially colored, he wasn't certain about the former.

"Be glad," She said. "that I don't make you kneel to me."

Wallace grimaced, but kept his mouth shut. Certainly all the drudges at the base, the people who weren't scientists, knelt to the ground whenever she passed near.

"I understand you've made some interesting progress."

Wallace wasn't certain what she meant. "I've finished the gene studies on the samples I've been given. And I've started to work on the cylinders Gomez is removing from the tombs."

"It is to those cylinders I refer. They are . . . a natural material I understand."

"Uh..." This put Wallace on firmer ground. "Yes, scat to be precise. Dried dung, apparently the dung of the Ancients. Carefully rolled into cylinders and stored in separate boxes."

"So, they buried their dead with little boxes of shit. You found genetic markers in this shit?"

"Lots of different things, it looks like the Ancients were definitely omnivores. But there were also some markers that matched the few samples we have been able to pull from Ancient bones. The, uh, scat was actually better preserved."

"I am especially interested in these boxes of shit." The Avatar leaned forward and looked up at Wallace with a baleful eye. "Someone, maybe the Ancients themselves, razed their cities, tore down almost every trace of their civilization. The only things left intact on this entire forsaken moon were these tombs. And all we find in them are bones, primitive stoneware, unadorned agricultural implements, and iron age weapons. And little boxes of shit. Many little boxes of shit. I want to know why it was so important to them!"

She stood up and put her helmet back on her head. "More than half a million years ago the Ancients had a very high technology. We've found traces of fiber optic cables, semiconductor chips, and other indications of this technology here and on the other moons. But we've found no writing, no storage medium of any kind. There must be some clue what happened. You, Gomez, and the rest are going to find that clue for me. I don't care what it takes. You will work harder, or you will face the consequences!

"I am the Avatar of the Goddess Isis, and my will is Hers. Do you understand?"

Wallace nodded dumbly. Sometimes, in the three weeks since he had woken here, he got to wondering if he wasn't stuck in some kind of virtuality game gone bad. Moonbat-crazy crap like this just reinforced that feeling. Still, virtuality games don't run on for weeks. And they can't actually hurt you, can they?

And the one thing Wallace knew for sure was that the petite woman across the table could drown him in an ocean of pain with a blink of those innocent blue eyes. That was one reality he didn't want to experience ever again.

Yesterday was one of the bad days. I still have them, since Anita died. They come further and further apart, but there remain those days where I get to thinking about things and find myself drowning in the sea of 'Should Have Beens'.

It comes with a terrible lethargy, which makes it harder to fight: I feel up to doing nothing positive and the negative requires no effort at all. As a result I find myself reading or watching TV more than I would like, as a way of redirecting my mind. This is exacerbated by my recent Tivo purchase; meaning that I have more useless shit to give my attention to when I don't have the energy to write or get things done around the house.

On the upside I have read more books and seen more movies in the last few months than I have in the previous few years. So I feel that I should knock out some reviews in penance for the wasted time. To redeem my lost hours by doing something productive based loosely on them. To that end I offer the following reviews and should point out that there are more coming, including some Stross and a Bainks...

In any case there is a dimension of grief little talked about; often called "survivor's guilt". The excessive unfairness of losing someone like Anita leads one to wonder why one should have lived on in their stead. You feel unworthy. Wrong. You wish there was some way to atone. You crave a deeper redemption than a silly blog post could possibly bring.

And that is the theme in these reviews: Redemption. Each of these stories is essentially one of a character bringing redemption to themselves and others by their actions. Some are Christlike figures; blameless in themselves but destined to bring redemption by their suffering for the sins of others. Others are finding a more personal redemption for their own sins.

Let us start with a fairly transparent Jesus reference:

Horton Hears a Who

In retrospect I shouldn't have taken Riley to see this movie. Yes it is rated 'G'. Yes it is based on a children's book by no other than Dr. Suess. But it really was too intense for a five year old: During the penultimate sequence when the jungle creatures were about to commit genocide, egged on by a power-crazed kangaroo, Riley was crying. And for good reason! The thought of drowning an entire civilization in boiling beezlenut oil should be terrifying for anyone, great or small!

On the upside, in the end even the kangaroo achieved forgiveness for what was really a quite unforgivable sin. It almost seems unfair, really, how easy it was for her...

In many ways this was the best adaption of a Dr. Suess story I have ever seen. It stuck quite close to the original. What changes there were came off as additions rather than subtractions. The animation was excellent and the characters were (mostly) quite well done (for example Horton is unrecognizably Jim Carrey). Recommended, but think carefully before taking small children.

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

While we are on the subject of Christ figures, I finally got around to reading this so-called 'cult' novel by two of the best Fantasy writers of our generation. Yes, I know everyone has read it already. But not me.

Now I know what I was missing and dang; this is some good stuff. The basic story is eschatological zaniness, the end of the world seen through a particularly humorous filter. All the basic features are there: Demons, Angels, the Four Horsemen, witches, witch finders, even the anti-christ come to Earth in a Omen-inspired way. Yet the story is mostly about what it means to be human.

In this case we have one each angel and demon who have lived among the humans a little too long and gone native. Add to this an anti-christ who is, in his heart of hearts, really the eleven year old boy he appears to be. Here the Christ figure is not a cartoon elephant, but rather the anti-christ himself. And he doesn't suffer to bring redemption to all so much as come to realize that, without the tension between good and evil, there isn't much left to make it worth getting out of bed in the morning. And therefore he neither forgives nor punishes the guilty, instead choosing to leave well-enough alone.

Recommended for anyone except those with no sense of humor or who get headaches whenever they try to think.

The Emperor's New Clothes

I originally Tivoed this because it had the great Ian Holmes in the starring role; there was little else about the terse on-screen description that seemed interesting. I expected to give it a few minutes and then delete it, but ended up watching the entire thing.

The basic story is that of Napoleon (Holmes) exiled to island of Saint Helena but wishing to escape back to France and regain all he has lost. To this end he effects a Prince and the Pauper gambit and is replaced by a look-a-like seaman in his luxurious captivity while he sneaks back to Paris, putting up with much indignity and privation along the way. There to announce himself when the trick is revealed and lead a new peasant army to glory.

However the plan goes awry when the impostor, liking his new position too much, refuses to admit to the sham and then dies. Napoleon tries to prove who he is, but eventually finds himself placed among the insane in an asylum catering to those who are each convinced they are the true emperor of France. In the end Napoleon is forced to the realization that the world (and France) no longer wants him in anything other than a historical context. And that he is a man like any other; something that brings him a surprising degree of peace.

This movie is not perfect; with the exception of Holmes the performances are a bit uneven and the writing could be improved. Yet the story is one of a personal redemption that brings a little redemption into other's lives along the way. Recommended with caveats, but if you like Holmes don't miss it.

Sleepless in Seattle

I have stated before that I think Tom Hanks is the Jimmy Stewart of our generation. He has the same range, yet in all of his varied parts he retains the same homey ordinariness. He seems like someone real. Someone you could have a beer with.

That said, I haven't seen everything Hanks ever did. In some cases, like Sleepless, I have seen different bits at different times, but have never stuck through to the end. It is certainly true that Sleepless is a quintessential 'chick flick' (even if it does spend an entire scene making fun of 'chick flicks') and therefore not the kind of thing I am ordinarily drawn to. But my Tivo recommended it to me and I was feeling sorry for myself and, hey, I could fast-forward through the boring bits...

There was less there than I had thought would align with my own story. Sure, Hanks was playing a recent widower trying to get over his grief. But the screen depiction and my own reality diverged too widely. In the end I realized it wasn't really Sam Baldwin's (Hanks) story anyway. Instead it was about Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) attempting to come to grips with her own demons of stupidity and insecurity and about how she brought redemption to all of them by simply failing to do so in a meaningful way.

You know what? Unless you are far more forgiving of idiots than I am, I cannot recommend Sleepless; even as much as I would like to. If this movie had a sequel it would probably involve a nasty divorce.

Cast Away

The probable reason that my Tivo thought I would like to see Sleepless is 'Cast Away', another Hanks vehicle. I have seen this movie several times now and just recently began to understand why I like it.

Here we have Chuck Noland (Hanks), a workaholic nice guy who finds himself stranded on a tiny Pacific island. The story is multifaceted. We have his effort to survive (with a wonderful scene where he finally manages to start a fire). We have the theme of time (running out, never enough, suddenly too much, yet that also not enough). We have love and loss. And we have the horror of being forced to live for four years with only yourself for company.

Of all the stories reviewed here this one depicts the most pure redemption; for Noland finds himself in a way we should all envy. Certainly he loses everything that is important to him, but he walks away from it a new man. Made over into someone he could never have been before his terrible experience. And, somehow, the better for it.

In this Noland was as alone as upon the island. No one else found anything like the same level of redemption in this story. And the very best part is the way the final scene is one of Noland standing at a crossroads. He has a universe of choices before him and it is unclear upon which he will settle. It might seem unfinished to some people, but to me this is the perfect ending. Noland has escaped from the ultimate solitary confinement into the ultimate freedom. And he knows it...

Recommended.

Atheist and evolution blogger P.Z. Myers was ejected from a screening of a pro-creationism film because the director didn't want him to attend. The punch-line is delicious!

I have been working on a secret project for a while now and it is nearing the time when I will let the first select few into the know. What follows is a snippet:

It was an intensely dark night; clear, moonless, and the Flag not yet risen. The handlers were working by the lights on their boats and navigating by the stars, while their dolphins required no light at all to herd the fish into the pens. The men and cetaceans wove through the water in a complex choreography, signaling to each other with shouts and excited chittering. The sea, what they could see of it, was a gentle rolling field of glossy black, smelling of fish and iodine. Disturbed only by the boats and the leaping dolphins.

Suddenly a light blossomed in the sky, brighter than even a moon or the Flag, if not so bright as the sun itself. All work came to a halt as the men gaped and the boats continued aimlessly. Even some of the dolphins left their work and rose to look in curiosity. Then there was much shouting and cursing as two of the boats collided and everyone got back to work, though still looking up at the bright new star and gossiping among themselves as to what it could be.

By the time the Flag rose, it's gauzy fabric draped across the sky to the east the new star was halfway to the horizon, as bright as ever. With the sound of laboring engines an airship passed over the boats, heading west. The star's light outlining it in silver, running lights and portholes marking the rest of it's bulk. Low to the water, it obscured half the sky for a moment and then shadowed them from the new star as it continued on; leaving the boats in a darkness less then before the star had brightened into being, but somehow blacker and more sinister.

Five months ago I wrote a futurism essay about a possible technology which would change picture taking forever: Capturing a perfect moment.

Today Immersive Media publicly announced their Dodeca 2360 camera. Yeah, pretty close to the first generation of the technology I predicted. No, I didn't know about this beforehand.

Does that mean I get a Futurist Point?

(Some explanation of the post title here.)

Suppose that one follows the Strong Anthropic Principle line of reasoning far enough to believe the Simulation Hypothesis and accept that we are living in a simulated reality. The first question you have to ask is: Why?

There are many possible reasons why someone might run such a simulation (including you and me in it). However, let's face facts: Our own little slice of reality (virtual or not) is certainly not a simulated heaven. Moreover, it seems unlikely someone would recreate everything we know in order to study a historical period when they could just read the actual historical documents. (Except, that is, if they are studying the effects of small decision changes to historical outcomes. In which case one has to wonder if we got the short end of the 'What if the 2000 USA election went differently?' stick or not.)

When you get down to it, the most likely reason why someone would go to all the trouble to create a simulation as complex as our world is, quite simply, entertainment. This could take many forms: Ant farm. ("Watch them scurry when I do this!") TV show ("Hilarity ensues when George Bush invades Iran.") Or even MMORPG. ("Stressed out by modern life? Play 21Cen and return to the simpler times before the Singularity.")

The thing is, if a society has reached the point they can play a sim game where the sim characters can play sim games, then maybe it makes some small amount of sense that they might find it fun to be here. But it sure makes one think their own reality must really be the Suxx0r...

The topic tonight is how to put images on your weblog...

Just about six months ago Anita and I stopped at Third Place Books on our way home from something I now forget. I got myself a coffee and my grandson a hot chocolate while Anita went and found a book she had been lusting after: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final episode of J. K. Rowling's famous series.

I teased her about it a little, mostly because the book had been a media sensation and Anita wasn't much on media sensations. She thought I was yanking her chain because it was a kid's book and, much of the way home, proceeded to disabuse me of the notion. Being naturally contrary I took the opposite position for a while, but she did intrigue me a little with her description of how the books became steadily darker and more sinister and not so much children's fare as simply good Fantasy. She explained that they were far better than the (as I had to admit) otherwise quite good movies.

Only a couple of days later she finished reading it and, that night, she made me promise I would give the Harry Potter sequence a chance. I was more than willing to follow through right then, but the first few books in the series were ensconced somewhere in one of the book boxes filling an entire side of our storage unit; not exactly close to hand. Being me, not long after that I completely forgot about the whole thing. . .

. . . until during my recent move, so soon after Anita's death, I found myself packing up the last couple of Harry Potter books, along with one from the middle of the seven. I remembered my promise then, and it started itching at me. I looked up 'Harry Potter' on Wikipedia and was amazed to find a wealth of information about the books, all cross linked and full of spoilers. (Follow the link, you will be surprised at how complete and well-written the articles are.) Clearly the fan-base for Potter included many smart (and mature) people.

Those first few books still lost in the depths of my storage unit, I looked in the 'Young Adult' section the next time I was at a used book store and walked out six bucks poorer, with a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in my hand. This was about a month ago.

Tonight I closed the covers on the final book with a deep sense of satisfaction. Taken as a whole the books were not the best extended novel I have ever read. (If I re-read The Lord of the Rings again this summer it will be the seventeenth time. Yes, I have kept count. No, I can't imagine reading the Harry Potter books even a fraction as many times.) But I don't think I have read anything longer than a hundred thousand words in recent memory which I found quite so captivating.

Harboring my own ambitions of writerhood, I found myself analyzing as I read Rowling's work. Why was this holding my attention so well? What in it worked? And what didn't?

Quite honestly there is a lot there that doesn't work. The settings and props are too fantastical by half; sometimes enough to break suspension of disbelief and drop you sputtering right out of the story. The characters are often dumb as rocks. You want to shout at them. Make them step outside themselves and pay attention for just a moment.

And right there is one of the things Rowling gets right: You care about the characters. Most of them seem real, with flaws and strengths that bump them out into three dimensions. Clearly she cares about the characters as well, otherwise why spend so much time developing minor characters into believability? Unsurprisingly the only truly cardboard characters of the lot are the ones lost to evil. Apparently Rowling found them much less interesting.

And then there is the writing itself. We are not talking high literature here; rather a workaday prose whose greatest strength is its clarity. Most of the time the words simply do not get in the way of the story. Certainly there are times Rowling gets a bit too clever, as described above, but most of the time you are simply reading the story instead of chuckling over a ingenious usage here or unpacking a hidden meaning there.

Nearly all the story is told in the tightest of tight third person narrative, with Potter as the viewpoint character. The exceptions are info-dump devices intended to bring the reader up to date as the story gets trickier and events start moving with more speed. This also works well, you find out things as Harry Potter does and, even when the foreshadowing gets intense, chances are you are barely ahead of the young wizard in figuring things out.

Which brings us to plot. The first four books are simple 'coming of age' mystery adventures, each slightly more complex than the last. Then the mysteries become far more intricate and the books suddenly slide sideways into character-driven narrative before slewing back around to adventure towards the end. This is not the usual Hero's Journey stuff either; there may be one viewpoint character, but there are too many real heros here for your standard monomyth. Each overcoming their natural shortcomings. Each making a part of the myth their own.

All of this doesn't work one-hundred percent of the time, but it works enough to hold your attention and keep you turning the pages until, by the end, you find yourself awed by the depth of the world Rowling has created. No, this isn't Tolkien. Hell, it isn't even Pratchett. But it is more than good enough.

Good enough for me to think Rowling deserves the fame and money Potter has brought her (even if I think Tolkien deserved it more). And good enough for me to thank Anita for extracting that promise from me on a hot July night...

I'm hurting a lot right now...

On Valentine's Day in 2001 I asked Anita to marry me. In her words:

We parked, and enjoyed the view. We've admired the sunsets here before, though it was already dark tonight. Jack started talking about how there was one more Valentine's Day gift. "But you'll have to help pick it out -- I just couldn't decide."

He was silent for a few moments. "I'm having trouble coming up with the right words here. This is scary!"
I knew something was up, by this point. Finally he was able to speak. "Will you marry me?"

Wow! I said yes, right away, and we kissed and hugged. I was so happy! I'd been thinking about us getting married, and had decided to bring the subject up myself after the third anniversary of our first meeting, so I thanked Jack for not making me wait that long, which made him laugh.

I asked why it had been so tough to speak, since I'm sure he knew I was willing. The difficult ending of Jack's first marriage was the cause, of course. He'd been thinking about asking me for the past few months.

The gift in question was her engagement ring, of course. I didn't want to buy a diamond because I am morally opposed to the diamond trade as it is practiced today, but I wanted her to have anything she truly desired. In the end she chose a Moissanite ring because of the Science Fictional connection: Moissanites were originally only found in asteroid and large meteorite impact craters. Plus it was beautiful in the old-fashioned cut and setting she picked.

In her journal Anita leaves out how I poured out my heart to her that night. My first marriage had been so disastrous and had led to so many long lasting consequences (which affect my life to this day) that I was extremely fearful of that kind of committment. I knew Anita wanted to marry me and we had already discussed it a little, of course. But, as I told her that night, I did truly love her and I knew I must overcome my past and accept that a future with her was what I truly wanted as well. Anything else wasn't fair to her nor to my own sense of self.

Why am I telling you all this? Because tonight I bookended my life with Anita in a rather gruesome way. Just as we were wed in the same place where we held Anita's memorial service, so tonight I spent my Valentine's Day evening by transferring her ashes to the urn I purchased for her three weeks ago. I added a photocopy of the death certificate and a handwritten note reading "Anita Marie Rowland, 1956 - 2007, Beloved Wife of Jack William Bell, 1957 - ?, I will miss you forever..."

I wish to hell it hadn't been tonight. But I was informed this afternoon at work that Anita's sister had arranged the internment into their parent's crypt for tomorrow. (M***** is forgetful these days, a consequence of her own health problems I think, so I don't blame her for not remembering to tell me until the last minute. Still...) This means I had to ready Anita's remains tonight. It also means that I must pay for putting off having the urn engraved by saying goodbye to it blank, except for that note inside and Anita's name written in permanent marker on the seal. My own fault that.

I originally picked Valentine's Day to propose to Anita because I knew it was a date I couldn't forget. Given my problems with remembering birthdays and the like, this seemed like a smart thing to do at the time. Now I have a much grimmer reason to remember this day well, and to tag it with Anita's name.

We all carry memories with conflicting emotions, I think. But I hope few must endure the clash that February 14th will bring to me every year from this day forward...

Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself. I will get over it and probably will feel deeply embarrassed by this post when I do. So be it. I want pity not, nor a shoulder on which to cry; for I am sufficient unto myself in this. I share my pain only because there are those who I think want to know the story and because I myself wish never to forget both the joy and the heartbreak. Not that I will, but now it is made explicit and beyond denial. I have the entire Internet for a witness!

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