So what's been happening lately? Allow me to give a short rundown of the events of the past year or so.

On 10 October 2004, Edward freed me from the depths of engagnement-ring-obsession when he proposed to me. It was deliciously romantic, on a bench at the edge of Volunteer Landing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Sappy details may be found at Our Wedding Webpage.

On 23 November 2004, my wonderful friend Russell died. He was living in Baltimore and working at the box office of the Center Stage theatre. I hadn't seen him since he last visited, I think my junior year of college. This whole ordeal was sudden and horrible and impossible for me to wrap my brain around, and seemed especially surreal being so far away in Tennessee. I put together a disc of my favorite photos of him -- he stayed with us that summer in the apartment with Vicki and Mel and me, so suffice it to say I have numerous rolls of bizarre pictures from those carefree, substance-addled evenings -- and I had intended to put some up here in tribute, but I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm. Everything -- webpages, wedding planning, life in general -- just seemed so superficial after his death. To be honest I still have a really, really hard time with the whole thing. It catches me at unexpected moments. This morning I was opening my daily email from The Writer's Almanac, and this was it:

Parting, by Emily Dickenson

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Some time in February, my beautiful Dell, Adelle, became crippled with viruses and spyware compliments of my insufficient Norton Antivirus and Comcast's hating of my guts. Eventually it was rendered useless. Edward and I are going to do a full re-install of Windows to see if that will fix things, but it will of course mean I will lose everything I had. With my luck the viruses will have burrowed deep into the hardware and will now be impossible to remove. I can't afford a new computer so I really hope this is not the case. I know this isn't a real tragedy, but when your main source of entertainment and recreation becomes riddled with crap programmed by some anarchic teenager pissed that he can't get some, it makes you bitter.

Other than that, not much else has been happening around here. The lease ran out and Meghan moved to Vermont where she was accepted into Vermont School of Law. Genevieve moved back onto the UT campus after she was accepted into the elite Interior Design program in the Art & Architecture division. And I... am still at the same crap job. It's not all that bad, actually, except for the fact that I don't make any money and I don't utilize the skills for which I've gotten so deeply into student loan debt. But I have a very lax internet policy and get to play around on Neopets all day long.. woohoo...

Can you see why I haven't updated in the past year?

Okay that is all.