Hey, guys. I'm on the run, kinda. Have class in about half an hour. Just stopping in because time's going to be kind of short the next few days.

Went to bed last night feeling alright. Woke up this morning feeling not so alright. Held my head under the faucet in the kitchen sink for a few minutes, missed my first class. Did my Italian homework with absolute despair.

Mom's upset about finances again. Driving the rest of the family crazy. My car is acting up, over-heating a bit, and I can't afford to get it fixed-- which would be less stressful if I weren't taking it to Nashville in two days. But those things don't bother me any more than anything bothers me--and today I was just sad.

Note: in Italian, you don't say "I am sad." You say, "I have sadness."

Today, I had sadness. I was sitting in the grass, eating my turkey ham sandwich, when Amanda found me. She always seems to find me when I have sadness. That day I was all torn up about Devon and sat on the sidewalk, crying-- she found me then.

We talked about dumb stuff. I told her about SouthernCon, and my plans for the weekend-- which means that I had to explain slash. And that will always and infallibly lighten my mood.

Keep that in mind.

When she left-- or, rather, I left, because I had to get to class, I felt really, really, alot better. God bless Amanda. But not in that Christian way.

And I've fixed up the paper for my Fiction-Writing class-- the one that I showed you, with Jason in the elevator . . and I don't mind it so much. And I still have a sandwich that wants eating, and god bless that.

AND. I've spent the last hour looking through Oz screen stills. Bunches and bunches of pictures of Beecher and Keller. So now I'm feeling all soulful. And I figure, worse comes to worse . . I don't know, we run out of money, we lose all our material stuff, I take up a dashing life of crime, end up in prison, go crazy, meet up with a sociopathic prison lover-- and we fight and fuck and cry for the next twenty to forty years.

Sounds pretty good, to me.

Freedom, thy name is financial uncertainty. Yours, adventure, is driving to Nashville in a Blue Subaru with the flu.

I'm gonna go grab a Gatorade and eat that sandwich now. Maybe think about my prison lover some more. Sit through three hours of Fiction-Writing class. Love you lots.

I'll talk to y'all soon.

--Alestar