Lordy, it's been eons since I've had the time to update this thing. Between homework, miscellaneous choral activities, and spending every free moment with Larkin (who is, today, 18!), I've just had no free time to jot down what I do in my free time. Or something.

Region auditions were held last weekend at Nimitz HS in Aldine. Annoying and dissonant musical arrangement of some Walt Whitman poem in hand, I waltzed into the audition room with the unfriendly hall monitors with an uncharacteristic aura of confidence about me. I did allright. 22nd place, it turns out. I didn't advance to go do pre-area auditions, but I did make the mixed choir. Some people would shoot poisoned darts at me for this position.

HA! And considering I just opened the practice cd's PACKAGE the night before, I think I kicked some ass. Region weekend will be epic.

Choirboy junk aside, my life's been going well enough. There's all that stress that comes with staying up until pretty much forever to finish those damned physics labs, and trying to remember characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin besides Uncle Fucking Tom, and trying to remember what period it is.

School's a bitch. So is trying to sleep when the neighbors are always getting arrested, making the dead end street next to your house a very unpleasant place to be.

But it's not really bad. I lean towards the negative side of things when I say my life's been going well enough. Realistically, it's grand. I've got this little blue-haired duckling who has been following me around for the past seven and a half months, and I absolutely revel in taking care of her. To have someone to cook miso soup for, someone to buy coffee for, a cute little head to scratch, silken skin to touch, and all those other things I can never comfortably do for people because they are so unlike me -- is a beautiful thing. Larkin Dennis has changed my life, but more importantly, changed me. I am a better person for her love and friendship. I will never forget it. As the French novellist Marcel Proust once said, “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” And I am grateful eternally.