In part it's because I'm busy, of course. If I were bored I could go on long screeds about stuff, because I'd need to occupy my time with things. As it is, I'm plugging away at a couple of outlines for Steve Jackson Games (you can but try, right?) and throwing myself into the fray here at work, I work dorm duty those two nights a week, I do art Tuesdays....

Like I said, busy.

It's kept Andrea and I from hooking up other than on the phone (though we had a great phone call last night -- Andrea's fun to talk to, even if last night I feel like I was showing off. I do that with girls, which is kind of pathetic, since it's easy to see through me). Despite this, I think we're developing something nice. We've got plans to hook up after she finishes work next Saturday, down in Newton. It's been a long time since I was in Newton. I used to live up there, not quite in Newton itself but in Brighton, which like Brookline is Boston under a slightly different name. I lived right on the Green Line, and knew exactly which trains would take me close to the building we lived in.

This building was my second apartment with Andy Alexander. The first one was also on the Green Line (right on the Green Line. You looked out our window and there it was.) This one Andy and I shared along with Andy's girlfriend (now wife) Robin. By sheer coincidence, my cousin Cory and his girlfriend of the time lived not two miles from me. Cory managed a Christy's down there, off the C train Green Line. I lived a street from the B train Green Line. Occasionally we'd get together.

They were good, but weird times. I was working at the B.U. Bookstore Mall as a "Senior Sales Associate," and had I not gone to Ithaca, I could have gone far as a lackey for that store, at least until the place folded and I found myself in Barnes and Noble Hell. Andy, Robin and I all worked. Our friends Matt, Ernestine, Andrew and Charlie all lived nearby and were going to school. Charlie left before I did, and Andrew left afterward, but still. And the city was there and I was alive in it, and that was very cool for a nineteen year old.

And at the same time, it felt very... well, dead end. It felt like if I stayed there, I'd stay doing exactly the same things in exactly the same way for the rest of my life. Moving to Ithaca was a shock to my system (and nearly cost me a few friendships), but it started me on the road to adulthood. And started me on a Gypsy-like existence that was at the least different for me.

Speaking of which... I'm wondering about the future again. I love Brewster and my job here, and I expect I'll be here for years, but at some point, in some way....

Well, we'll see.