christ666's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mount St Helens is about to blow up and it's gonna be a fine, swell day.... Worked last night and I'm at the hospital now. With band practice moved to Saturdays now, every other weekend I'm losing sleep so I can drive to Boise and work on Mortal shit. We're so close to having this new album written and ready for recording, but I can't help but be a little pragmatic about staying on schedule. Still, it feels good to have a goal for the band again. We're tentatively on the lineup for a festival in Lake Tahoe in May, and I'm hoping we'll be in the studio by summer to track, with a September/October release and tour in mind. Steve came to visit for a few days, and it was incredibly soul refreshing. His stay was brief, but we were able to spend a couple of days reverting to our usual juvenile selves. We thumbed through records at an antique shop where he found and purchased the Dragnet soundtrack, we ate disappointing Chinese food at Golden Palace, visited a bar in downtown Caldwell that I have never been to in my entire 35 years of being alive here, and even got the chance to see the new Spider-Man movie. I got particularly nostalgic and depressed walking outside the theater in Caldwell, thinking about how different our lives are now than twenty years ago. Back then, it seemed like we had all the time in the world to pontificate over nerdy bullshit, or pine over our unrequited loves that occasionally happened to be the same person. We always had a reason to do shit together, whether it was performing in Orchestra, rehearsing plays or musicals for the drama department, or hanging together, either with our group of drama friends, or just us. Now, we only get to see each other every few years, and when we do, we struggle to find moments where we can be alone, to honestly catch up on what we've been up to, and how we've been doing, hoping we remember every question we've wanted to ask each other since the last time we were together. There are so many conversations that I miss out on having with him, because I'm so overwhelmed that we're finally getting to see each other, I'm not able to remember everything I've wanted to talk about. We got to sit down at for a random beer at Buffalo Wild Wings, and I told him as much as I could of what went down over the last year. He apologized that we didn't talk more, and I welled up a bit when I told him how much of a hard time I had adjusting to all the heartache and loneliness, but we promised to talk to each other more, and that I assured him that I was doing okay. Anybody considering the distance between them and their friend would be sad like I was. We spoke briefly about it after the movie, but then we went home, and a lot of the grief just disappeared as soon as I heard my son's laughter, caused by Steve lifting him up in the air and kissing his cheek with loud, obnoxious smooching noises. Usually, I'm the asshole that has a phone or camera out to take pictures or video of every moment worth remembering, (a trait I inherited from my dad), but I barely pulled my phone out of my pocket while Steve was here, which sucks because my best friend meeting my children is easily one of the most precious memories I'll ever have for the rest of my life. He played video games with Sophie, wrestled around with Lucas, and even held Zelda a couple of times. Good vibes. Our life paths took us in different places, and it's a real testament to our friendship that we've worked as hard as we have to still be as close as we are, and I'm so grateful that I have him in my life. I'm also grateful that his wife and I get along so well, and that our relationship is such that even she texts me to check in on how I'm doing. I hope it's not another two years until I see him, but I take solace in the fact that whenever we do get together next, even though we'll be older, fatter, more gray, and less limber, it will still feel like it did when we were together twenty years ago. 9:19 p.m. - 2022-01-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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