Winter Update

I really don't write in here enough.

Work and life (and sleeping and eating and laughing and learning and all other necessities) seems to get in the way at every turn.

I quickly glanced back at what I wrote back in August and the words have a strange new resonance after the events that followed. That day in Oakville, Ontario at the end of August when I was resting and reading the paper and catching my breath between two conventions feels a lot different now. As I wrote and passed the time that day my young cousin was upstairs, peacefully sleeping in until the late afternoon.

It's a teenager's right in the summer: to stay up all night and sleep in until the sun is well on its way past noon. I envied him that day; I used to love when the pressures of life weren't so heavy on my shoulders.

He's gone now though, my cousin James, taken away far too early by an incomprehensible infection that no one could see coming. I was lucky to have had time with him, though I didn't know how precious it was then. We watched Heroes and talked movies, and TV shows, and music, and all those comfortable conversation topics you cover when you think you'll see this person again and again throughout your life.

A lot of things are different now.

I'm single again, and I'm doing surprisingly alright. Devoting a lot more time to my endless watching of DVDs, you could even say I have a bit of an addiction. The DVD series of the moment is the Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition, and it's amazing to have the whole series (Pilot included!) in one massive and beautiful set. I'm devouring it really, and it's even better than I remembered.

Twin Peaks is one of those shows that used to keep me up at night in my teenage years, in the summer. It used to come on A&E really REALLY late and the lateness combined with the odd nature of the show made it the ultimate guilty pleasure. It opened my mind to a lot of the strange and wonderful movies and shows that I live on today. I'd watch and laugh and get scared and marvel at all the twists and turns that the human mind could fathom. Most of all, I'd wonder what was going to happen next.

Then I'd go to bed and sleep in until the late afternoon.