I'm not sure there was any specific event that triggered it, but in May, I started feeling a little better about the situation with Aaron. Maybe it was that as the time grew nearer that he would be leaving, I realized that if things didn't get better before he left, chances are they never would. Maybe it was something else. I don't know. But whatever the cause, I knew that this journey was right for him.
In looking back on it now, it seems pretty clear that I'd been going through the classic stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, though not necessarily in the usual order) regarding Aaron leaving. When I first discovered the note, there was Anger. Much anger. It's a very good thing that I had several days to work through that before he returned, because if I'd discovered that shortly before he'd returned, there's a good chance that our friendship would've been irreparable. But I got over it, and moved onto Denial... surely Aaron didn't really intend to leave; Melissa had probably just been exaggerating or playing, and Aaron hadn't told me about it because there was nothing to tell. The idea of me also moving to Alabama, while certainly a long shot, would've been Bargaining. From mid-March through most of April, my behavior was consistent with Depression... for example, I was withdrawn from and much less communicative with Aaron. That is really not a nice stage to be in, especially for that long, though I think Anger was a bit worse. And finally there was Acceptance, which is where I came to be in May.
Interesting... I used to think that the "stages of grief" thing was kind of silly, that Human behavior was both complex and diverse enough that it couldn't be boiled down to such a simple formula. And now I find that, at least in this case, it fit. Very interesting.
A few noteworthy events happened with Aaron in May. First, there was his graduation from ICC, which essentially raised the last anchor keeping him in Peoria. Then he filled up his car with possessions and drove down to Mobile, returning a few days later with Dave and Melissa in a minivan. There was a going away party, where Aaron announced that while he'd been down in Alabama, he had officially proposed to Melissa, she had accepted, and they had set a date. They left, with as many of Aaron's remaining possessions as they could fit in the van, the following day. He actually left quite a bit behind with me... a couple chairs and desks, a dresser, his bed, and the downstairs TV and DVD player being the most significant. It's kind of funny that so many items in this house were left behind when somebody departed... the refrigerator, dishwasher, and washer and dryer; all but one of the couches; several chairs, a lot of bookshelves. Technically, it's all mine, but I still tend to think of a lot of it like "That's Dave's chair", "That's Aaron's desk", and so on. About the only thing that I've really made the mental transition with is my cat Patches, and in that case, it's really more like she owns me than that I own her. :-)
By the beginning of May, it seemed like all of the other Psi Phi members who'd been participating at OkCupid hadn't returned in a while, and it seemed unlikely that anyone I knew would find me there. I decided to be just a little bit more open, so I changed my ID to "davidh_peoria", copied over my information, and added a couple of pictures. I marked the options "Friends", "Penpals", and "Activity Partners" in the "Looking For" blank, so that people would know that I wasn't seeking anything more than that.
After signing up under the new name, I started communicating with a few people on the site, including Kevin, in Bloomington. We mailed each other about Star Trek, games, and assorted other geeky things. After a couple of weeks, he suggested perhaps meeting for a meal sometime. Although it wasn't an inherently suprising suggestion, I did have to think about it for a couple days. See, I'd never been on a date before, and here was another gay guy asking me out. After giving it some consideration, I decided to proceed cautiously. We worked out a time that he'd be near Peoria anyway, and I met him at Culver's for dinner on May 30th. We talked about science fiction books, political satire music, and some other stuff. I had gone on my first date, and it was a good experience.
More on developments in this area next month. :-)
In Psi Phi-related happenings, we elected new officers (I remained Chief of Operations), I hired Xeen as my lawnmower (because I'm lazy and Xeen was looking to earn some extra money), and I helped Joel F. get his stuff moved into storage.
Other random things of note that happened in May, 2004:
Google made an initial public offering of $ee9.
I posted my first My Upcoming Week post.
I made a very interesting discovery at work.
Steve Mollmann sent me some secret messages in my blog referer. I wish the referer spam I got these days was as innocuous. :-)
Enterprise's season finale left my jaw dangling.
I saw The Passion of the Christ at the theater. This was, to the best of my recollection, the first time I've gone to the theater solo.
So that's pretty much my May. Stay tuned for a June recap.
davidh
]]>[As a side note: My 2004 recaps are now all accessible from a single page for quick access.]
Near the beginning of April, I changed my blog's subtitle from "The world's most professional fan" (which had been Keith R.A. DeCandido's inscription in Gateways, Book Four of Seven: Demons of Air and Darkness) to "The year is 2261. The place: Babylon 5." (from opening narration of the fourth season of Babylon 5). The full text of the narration describes 2261 as a year of fire, destruction, taking back what was ours, rebirth, great sadness, pain, joy, and everything changing, as well as it being a new age and the end of history. Throughout the year, much on that list has applied to me: fire (a cookout at Marisa's), destruction (my car being in an accident, albeit a minor one), sadness (several posts), pain (likewise), joy (likewise). For "taking back what was ours", I can't think of anything that applies to. And as for "rebirth" and "everything changing", well, certainly a lot has changed in a number of areas of my life, but I would say that nothing has changed so much to really be called a "rebirth". What about "a new age" and "the end of history"? I'm really not seeing those. So that's five or so, out of ten; I guess the description was about half-right. :-)
As I said back in the February recap, I had realized that I had been neglecting, and needed to strengthen, my other friendships. The most obvious place to start would be members of Psi Phi, whom I tend see on a weekly basis. I often stayed after the meetings to talk to people, getting to know them better. I had done that before, often just sort of as a social thing, but now I was doing so to find out more about what was going on in others' lives, and to get to know them better. The two people I hung out with most were Joel F. and Ryan, as I already seemed to have the closest connection to them, of all the current members. Somewhat ironic, I suppose, since they were both seniors who were going to graduate and return home in May, around the same time Aaron was leaving. Ah well. :-)
One of the first major development points happened on April 5th and 6th, when I helped Joel F. prepare for the Seder he was hosting. I took him to Schnuck's Monday night, and we did some shopping for the food he needed. Then on Tuesday, I and a lot of other Psi Phi'ers came over to his place and we all participated in the Seder. I stayed around after most people had left, and helped clean up a bit. Aside from the event itself, which was very good, spending time with Joel and the others helped me feel more connected to them. (Also over these two days, I had a few more firsts: I was carded for buying alcohol; I bought alcohol; I sampled wine; I had matzah.)
The following day, there was another big social event: A large number of Psi Phi members went to the Weird Al concert, including Aaron, though we didn't sit together. A good time was had by (as far as I can tell) all, and after the concert, we held the Psi Phi meeting at Steak 'n Shake instead of Bradley. That was a pretty wacky meeting... what with the food and people coming late and a long table where people at one end couldn't quite hear the people at the other end. Still, to put it in Sims terms, my Fun and Social Needs were very satisfied. :-)
Just as Aaron and I didn't sit together at the concert, we also didn't go to church together anymore, and hadn't since before our respective trips back in March. There wasn't anger or hatred, or anything like that... we just didn't do anything together. It was almost as though we were two acquaintances living in the same building. Perhaps this was my way of trying to minimize the impact that his eventual departure would have on me?
Another thing that happened in April, which seemed unimportant at the time but ended up having a major influence on events later in the year, came from LiveJournal. Several of the Psi Phi'ers who had LJs were taking a test at OkCupid which was supposed to describe their personality. As I enjoy a good meme, I decided to take the test. One of the first few questions was about sexual orientation, which made me pause for a moment... if I told the truth, then I couldn't post the results on my LJ, but if I didn't tell the truth, there was really no point in taking the test. I thought it over, and since it wouldn't be posted on my blog regardless of which way I chose, I decided to go ahead and answer honestly; this test would be for my eyes only. I took it, and got the Slow Dancer. I was amused, and that seemed to be that... until the site asked me to register an account to find out how compatible I'd be with others. Again I thought about it for a moment, and decided to sign up, but with a phony name and a separate E-mail address... that way I could see how compatible the site thought I and others I knew were, and see their profiles, but they couldn't see mine (or if they did, they wouldn't know it was me).
I started comparing myself to my friends, and one thing I found fascinating about the site was its mathematical model it used to match people based on specific questions, like "Which, on you, is closest to perfection? (a) Your mind (b) Your body (c) Your wallet (d) Your soul" or "Do you say grace before meals? (a) Yes (b) No" -- you pick an answer for yourself and which option(s) you want in an ideal match; the site uses your answers and the answers of others, along with both people's preferences for their ideal matches, and weighting them with levels of importance assigned by each person, it created interesting statistics and characteristics... for example, if you marked an ideal match as answering the first question with "Your wallet", the site gave you points for being "more capitalistic"; if you said grace before meals, you were "more spiritual". As I answered more questions, it showed me more points of comparison with my friends.
In addition to just comparing my various traits with my friends, as I explored the site more, I also found lists of people whom the site thought I was compatible with, i.e. guys who were in the same general vicinity, who had traits that I was interested in, and who were interested in traits I had. Now, my philosophy with regards to a relationship had always been "If somebody finds me, that's great, but I'm not going to go looking." And since the number of people who knew I was gay was around ten (plus family) (and plus the some of the posters from way back at the old Voyager Psi Phi board, but I'd lost contact with nearly all of those people, since even before the original site loss of February 2003, so I'm not really counting them), the odds of a gay male successfully "finding" me were incredibly small. And when I signed up, it wasn't my intention to join a matchmaking site, just to see how accurate this site was in seeing how good my friendships with the other Psi Phi'ers who'd signed up was.
But here it was. And as I pondered what to do about this, I decided to stick with pretty much that same philosophy... my profile would exist on the site, and if somebody found it and thought it was interesting enough to contact me through the site, that's great, but I wouldn't go out and contact anybody myself. And in fact somebody did find it... but that's a story for another month. (You're probably getting tired of me dropping these forward-looking hints by now, aren't you? :-) )
Upon reviewing my E-mail archive, I found that I didn't actually check with the fellow employee who worked in Oregon until the first of April, so pretend I mentioned that here first instead of in the March recap. After hearing a generally positive report from him (there was an ongoing issue with state income taxes, with the employer withholding based on Illinois tax laws, but him needing to file both an Illinois return (to get that money back) and an Oregon return (since he lived there), but that was the only big problem), and after letting the other fellow employee who would be most impacted by my potential move know that I was thinking about it, I decided to tell my boss (at my employer). My note began:
I have been doing some thinking recently, and since it's gotten past the "purely theoretical" stage and I'm giving it some real consideration, I thought I should let you know about it:
I am thinking about moving to Oregon in late 2004.
If I do choose to move, it wouldn't be until October at the earliest; I'm still weighing my options. Two important considerations I have are: (1) I need to be sure that [Supervisor at Client] is well taken care of, and (2) I would be interested in keeping my job with [Employer] if I move.
My boss and I talked about the options over lunch a few days later, and I was told that that me working remotely would certainly be an option that they'd like to pursue if I decided to move, and to keep him informed as things developed. We decided not to tell my supervisor (at the client's office) for the moment, at least not until a decision was made... no need to get him concerned over something that might not happen, and if it did happen, there would be a sizeable length of time between the time I decided and the time I moved, during which arrangements could be made for what to do about the on-site work.
Other random things of note that happened in April, 2004:
I don't recall exactly when this happened, so I'll arbitrarily place it in April. :-) Joel O. and Lyz, who (along with Landon) were at the time living in Ohio, visited Peoria one weekend, and several Psi Phi'ers went out to lunch at Culver's to spend some time with them. Joel mentioned that he was looking for a place to stay for a couple months over the summer, and since Aaron was going to be moving out in May, I suggested he might rent the front bedroom at my house. He said he would consider it.
I started doing the weekly free association meme over at LiveJournal. I don't think I've missed a week yet.
A legislator from California tried to ban Gmail. Although I did not yet have a Gmail account, I still strongly objected to State Senator Figueroa's attempt to prevent people from voluntary giving up a tiny piece of their privacy for a reward.
I wrote a short story based on some words included in a piece of spam.
Some people protested the actions of the Israeli government by marching in front of one of the businesses that manufactured items that they bought from a third party for a non-violent purpose. This is roughly the equivalent of marching in front of a Michigan company that makes barricades because the Georgia police used them to block off traffic.
So that's pretty much my April. Stay tuned for a May recap.
davidh
]]>March began with me anticipating my upcoming trip to Alabama. Aaron and I were going to stay at Dave's house (Dave being the former Sunday School teacher from whom I bought my current house), and Aaron, Melissa, and I were going to get to visit lots of nifty touristy things in the area, such as a zoo, an aquarium, the French Quarter over in New Orleans, and so on. I had scheduled the time off from work a few weeks in advance, and had made plans for somebody to watch Patches while we were gone. I was packed, and was waiting for Aaron to get home from work Friday night so that we could finalize the schedule for the next day. I was so excited.
And then, everything fell apart. As it turns out, I had fallen victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." Only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line." And just behind that: "Never talk to a friend's girlfriend when that friend's not there."
The previous night (Thursday), I had been chatting with Melissa, telling her how much I was looking forward to coming to visit. Things had gone well for a while, but then she'd hit me with one of those trick questions, like "Do these make me look fat?", except this question was a bit bigger than that: "So, do you believe Aaron really wants to marry me?" At first glance, this may not seem like a trick question, but it actually is. You see, Aaron had mentioned to me that marriage was something that he had been thinking about, but he had only (as I recall) talked about it in terms of it being a possibility down the road, if things went well after he moved down there. The wording of this question had led me to believe that Aaron had already proposed, and that he hadn't told me about it. That had gotten the suspicious part of my brain working again... I'd already had the episode with discovering that Aaron had been hiding things from me back in December, and this seemed like it could be a return to that.
I'd said, "I don't know. I think you'll need to have more than just four weeks of actual time in each other's company to figure that out." (Four weeks would be the total amount of time they'd've been in the same state by the time Aaron moved out... Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, her visit back in February, and the upcoming week.) I'd then asked whether Aaron had actually asked her yet; if she'd answered "no", that would have put my mind at ease, but instead she'd answered a question with a question: "What do you think?" Which had, of course, just increased my suspiciometer even more. I had told her I was worried about Aaron keeping things from me again, about him not trusting me again. She had said, "If he didn't trust you, he certainly wouldn't be bringing you with him down to Mobile. That wouldn't make much sense." And my reply is quite likely the biggest mistake I'd made in a very long time.
See, my mind works logically, and when I am faced with a statement that has a noticeable logical flaw, I tend to address that portion first, before moving on to the main thought. To me, the logical flaw in Melissa's statement was that it wouldn't make sense for Aaron to bring me with him to Alabama if he didn't trust me enough to tell me that he had proposed marriage (assuming that he had, in fact, done so). However, the invitation to come on this trip was made back in December, just before Aaron went on his second trip down to Alabama. So the amount of trust he had about telling me or not telling me about possible wedding plans was irrelevant. And so I had said "Well, he could hardly un-invite me, after inviting me before he went down in December". I hadn't meant to imply that there was any reason that he should un-invite me; I had simply been addressing what I saw as a mistaken assumption. But certainly a reasonable person might infer from what I said that Aaron wouldn't un-invite me even though there were problems. And that, apparently, is what Melissa had done. She had to sign off shortly after that, so I really hadn't had a chance to clarify what I'd meant. I didn't realize what a mistake I'd made until Aaron came home the next night.
Aaron got home from work pretty late Friday, somewhere around 11:30pm. I asked if he'd dropped his spare key off with Ed (who was going to bring in the mail and feed Patches). He said no, and that we needed to talk; over the next three hours, we did. My truncated conversation with Melissa the previous night had had consequences beyond what I had realized. Through my actions, Aaron and Melissa's relationship had suffered. Long story short: Aaron asked me to break off all contact with Melissa, and he un-invited me from the trip. How ironic that where there had been no problem, an inference that there was one turned into an actual problem, and led to exactly the result that I had said couldn't happen.
To say that I was devastated would be putting it mildly.
Aaron left for Alabama the next morning.
I sought and received consolation on-line, from Robert and Peter. Each of them independently, and probably only half-seriously, suggested I fly out to see them for a week. What initially sounded like a long shot turned into a fantastic week, as I decided to visit Peter in Oregon. Over the next seven days, went on my first airplane, entered my first ocean, visited my first waterfall, "climbed" my first mountain, and visited Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota for the first times. A log of my journey, written in ten posts from #53 to #62 (just use the Next/Previous links to move from one to the next), are rather detailed already, so I don't think I really need to fill in the gaps here. It was quite a wonderful adventure, and one I'm not soon likely to forget.
One thing that I hinted at during my journey log, then at the end of the month, expanded upon a bit, was that I was starting to think more seriously about moving to Oregon. I started checking into things at work, about whether working from home might be an option; I talked to a fellow employee who had himself moved to Oregon a couple of years prior, and continued to work full time for the company, to see how he liked working out of state, what benefits or drawbacks there were; and so on. I started crunching some numbers to see if the idea was financially feasible. And I started thinking more about how Psi Phi might carry on without me. It had turned from an idle hypothetical to a real consideration. And an interesting coincidence befell me as I was considering this... a friend expressed potential interest in buying my house if I should happen to move.
Pieces seemed to be falling into place... but as this was the end of the month, you'll have to wait for the April recap to find out what happened next! (Or you could just go read the old entries, but that would just be silly. :-) )
Other random things of note that happened in March, 2004:
I mused about cell phones a couple of times.
My blog turned one year old (see also: first post).
I created an index to my blog. Originally holding links to the first 49 entries based on keywords, the new index to my blog now organizes items from the first 280 entries (soon to be 281!), is 325kb in size, and contains entries starting with all 26 standard English letters, plus three Hebrew letters, one Greek letter, one phonetic symbol, and a bunch of numbers. :-)
I tried halibut and clam chowder for the first time.
So that's pretty much my March. Stay tuned for a April recap.
davidh
]]>February began slowly enough, with the the Super Bowl and Survivor. The group I was watching with (Aaron, his dad, my dad, and my brother Dan) saw the Janet Jackson thing, and we all laughed at it... it went by so quickly that we just thought it was supposed to look like Justin Timberlake had "[gotten her] naked by the end of this song"; I don't think I discovered until the following day what had really actually happened.
I became an uncle on February 11th, and Doug and Misty became parents, when Zoey was born. She's grown quite a bit in the past ten months. I don't get to see her that often, but I always look forward to spending time with my niece.
It was February that I first started pondering moving to Alabama. Actually, it may have been in January, but on February 15th, I first hinted at it (#9 on the list). Basically, I treated it as sort of a "what if?", thinking about what might need to happen if, hypothetically, I decided to do it... things like selling the house, making arrangements with work, and so on. On the plus side, I'd be closer to Dave and Aaron. On the minus side, I would be leaving my family and Psi Phi. Untimately, this hypothetical scenario didn't go anywhere... but that's a story for another month. While I was musing on this, I also considered other possible destinations, such as Oregon and Florida.
And the big event of February... Melissa came to Peoria for about a few days, arriving on Friday the 20th, and leaving Wednesday the 25th (before the Psi Phi meeting, alas--she'd seen the minutes on-line, and had been looking forward to seeing a meeting in action). While she was in town, she stayed at Aaron's parents' house. We rented and watched Austin Powers 3 on, I think, Saturday night; she went to church with us on Sunday. And during her days here, seeing her and Aaron together, I realized a few things. First, that Aaron really did love her. Second, that he really was going to leave Peoria. And third, that my friendship with Aaron was never going to be the same. Not that it would necessarily be worse... just different. But it was still a difficult thing for me to realize.
And from those last two realizations came another thought. For the past couple of years, aside from when I was at work, most of the time that I had been with any other people, Aaron had been there... at church, Aaron was the teacher; at home, if anybody watched TV with me, it was Aaron; even at Psi Phi meetings, he was there, though there were many others as well. After May rolled around, he would no longer be in any of those places. Which led me to realize that I had been focusing too much on my friendship with him, and hadn't been spending much time enhancing my relationships with others. This was a problem. I needed to start spending more time with other friends and work on building connections with them. And so I did. Again, a story for another month.
Other random things of note that happened in February 2004:
The plumbing in the house got messed up for a couple days early in the month, but Aaron got that taken care of fairly quickly.
Psi Phi alumni member Kenny visited Peoria for a while, which was nifty.
I took the minutes for Psi Phi on February 18th.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won eleven Oscars!
So that's pretty much my February. Stay tuned for a March recap.
davidh
]]>Technically, this starts back in 2003, but it relates to my first blog post of the year, so I'll include it all here. And since these events led to quite a few developments later in the year, it really is important to lay a foundation.
Back in September 2003, I first learned about Melissa, sort of off-handedly as Aaron was talking to someone else. At that point, she was only an "interest", but I was surprised that he hadn't mentioned her to me before. A couple of days before Thanksgiving, Aaron announced that he was going to visit her over Thanksgiving break. When he came back, they were officially "boyfriend/girlfriend". A day or two after Christmas, Aaron again took off with about a day's notice to see her... here I had a week off from work, and suddenly there was nobody around to do anything with. Aaron did tell me that I could use his Xbox while he was gone, as I had been playing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring recently.
Well, a day or two into his vacation, I went into his room to play Fellowship, and I noticed a card standing partly open on his desk. With the background information that when I get cards from people, they are practically always pre-printed ones, and the amount of personalization inside is usually limited to "Dear David," and "Love, [relative's name]", I didn't think it would be at all an invasion of privacy to read the card. I picked it up, and saw something cute on the front (I don't recall what it was now). I opened the card, and rather than finding a pre-printed message, poem, punch line, or something like that, I discovered that the inside of the card was a hand-written note from Melissa to Aaron. I know that I should have immediately put the card down once I realized what it was, but I didn't, and as I was looking at the page, a couple of things caught my eye.
First was the fact that indicated that she had been looking forward to his upcoming visit... and the date on the card was a couple of weeks prior. This meant that Aaron has been planning to go out of town for quite some time, and hadn't told me about it. The way he had presented it before he left let me to believe that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, a spontaneous idea that he and Melissa had come up with on Christmas Day. He hadn't out-and-out lied to me, but I did feel deceived by it.
The second was that she was very excited that he was going to move down to be with her. That one floored me. Not only had things progressed so rapidly that within a couple of weeks after they first met in person (before, it had only been on-line), Aaron was planning on relocating--that in and of itself was pretty surprising, and that got me worried that he had made a rash decision--but more importantly, this was the first I was hearing about it. Now, I knew that I was not necessarily Aaron's best friend... that would more likely be one of Chuck or Ed (they'd grown up together, while I'd only known Aaron for six years or so). But I had thought we were pretty close friends, sharing lots of information about what was going on in each other's lives. And I considered him to be one of my best friends. So to discover that he had been keeping something this major from me... that was hard for me to accept. And it got me wondering... if he hadn't told me about the Christmas trip until the last minute, when would he tell me that he was going to move out? Would I simply come home one day and find that his room was empty? A bit of an overreaction? Perhaps, but it was the principle of the thing which bothered me.
Over the next few days, I wrote Aaron a letter. And re-wrote it. And re-wrote it. I needed to express what I was feeling, which was a combination of anger, shock, worry, disappointment, betrayal, sadness, etc. But I also needed to balance that with trying to see things from his perspective, to try to understand why he might have chosen not to tell me what was going on in his life. I came up with several possible scenarios, trying to give the benefit of the doubt where I could. I edited that letter over and over again, trying to not sound too confrontational about why he had been hiding things from me, but still getting across my hurt. I'm not quite certain that I got it right, even after several days of editing and re-writing. In the end, it came out to nearly 1100 words, and I hand-wrote a copy that I planned to give to Aaron when he came home.
Skipping back a bit... After the initial shock had worn off, I decided that I should do what I could to make the house look presentable for Melissa's visit in February, which Aaron also mentioned before he left. Rather than solely dwelling on what had happened, I put my energy into something productive and constructive, doing a ton of cleaning and organizing.
When Aaron got back, he and I talked for a while about how his trip had been. Since he hadn't yet mentioned anything about his potential moving, late in the evening, I gave him the letter. We talked for a few hours about things, particularly with how fast his relationship with Melissa was developing, and how concerned I was that by making this decision without even talking to his friends about it, he may have been making rash decisions without thinking them through. As I recall, I said that moving is a really major decision, and not one to be taken lightly, and I suggested that he make sure that he was thinking with a clear head about whether that was what he really wanted to do... and that if he could take a step back and look at things objectively, and still decide that moving is what he wanted, I would support his decision.
The following evening, I wrote a post about Aaron's potential departure. (I suppose I should note that the third "Maybe" in the paragraph that starts with "Fortunately" was intended only as a joke; our friendship was deep, but not at all romantic. However, I do think that was the first hint I gave on my blog that I was gay.)
About a week later, Aaron told me that he would be going in for outpatient surgery on the 21st. That was definitely more important than anything else that was going on, but it was also an additional source of stress. I believe that it was that combined stress which led to me temporarily develop a ringing in my ears four days before his surgery. I went to the clinic the morning of the surgery, and helped his mother get him out to the car and set up at his folks' house. Aaron coming out from the effects of anaesthesia is very funny! (Then again, I bet everybody coming out from the effects of anaesthesia is very funny. :-) )
Within a couple of days of the surgery, the tinnitus had reduced, with that stress out of the way... but the ringing was still there to some extent. Another thing which had reduced my stress level was that I had chatted on-line with Melissa. Part of my concern had been that, in addition to the suddenness of the relationship, I knew very little about Melissa. She was a big ol' question mark, and I thought that by talking to her, perhaps my mind would be more at ease with the situation. After talking to her and getting to know her a bit, it did help more, and though I was still not sure that Aaron's plan was right for him, things seemed better than they previously had. A few days later, the ringing was gone. I'm not 100% certain that it was stress which caused the problem, but given the timing, it seems awfully likely.
Other random things of note that happened in January 2004:
My parked car had been run into by somebody backing out of a driveway in late December; the driver's side back door was unopenable. Their insurance paid for all the repairs and my use of a rental car while it was being fixed. So for the first few days of the year, I had a different car. I don't recall that much about it now, other than that it seemed much smaller than my Lumina, and the gas and brake were each quite sensitive, so I had to be careful not to press down as hard as usual.
I wrote an open letter to WMBD about their mispreëmption of Joan of Arcadia.
I made my first post on my LiveJournal on January 7. It was just a recap of recent blog posts, though. I started the Pepsi can count on January 10. And I made my first non-blog-recap post on LJ on January 23... it was a survey that I'd yoinked from somebody else... my first LJ meme. :-) [Some of the answers would change if I re-took the survey today.]
At work, I got signed up for a 401(k) plan, having completed my first full calendar year with the company. Just this year, I've put a sizeable amount aside for retirement.
Psi Phi returned from hiatus, and planning for the Reunion intensified. The first on-line chat took place with current members and alumni coming together to brainstorm ideas.
So that's pretty much my January. Stay tuned for a February recap.
davidh
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