I'm giving a closer listen to the Cry Cry Cry album, and it's really lovely--pretty quiet, perfect for a quiet Saturday night before bed. My favorites includes "Cold Missouri Waters" and "By Way of Sorrow", but there's also a song from The Nields (who were on NPR recently, by the way, and can be heard here). Nostalgia is a particular vice of mine, and the Nields are tied up part and parcel with my high school experience, because Nerissa and Katryna worked with my a cappella group, Katryna coached softball, Nerissa and David both taught English, and David was the theater director. They were there the same four years that I was, so within the Loomis universe, we sort of grew into the place together. They got better and better and more successful, and left when I graduated to make their fortune as musicians. They did pretty well, although I don't know the story of how the 5 of them became just the 2 sisters.

Nerissa wrote a beautiful song called "I Know What Kind Of Love This Is", and it makes me think of a social group I knew at Loomis, people a couple of years older than I, who had at various times managed to all sleep with each other and have intense, wild, passionate relationships, creating a giant multi-person emotional train wreck that would take grown adults a while to iron out, let alone high school kids. All manner of love and cruelty and foolishness, as people discovered who they were and were not, acted with selfishness and love and compassion and greed, and provided a younger Chris with an outstanding case study to show that yes, Virginia, sex has great power and can have consequences even just for yourself, and even when you grow out of high school.

Along the lines of my nostalgia vice, I'm starting to look forward more to my college reunion in June, as memories re-assemble themselves, and faces and personalities and experiences come back to me (and occasionally names). While I was dating the pretty hapa girl in 1998, she and a couple other friends got me out to Mino's Sushi House in Saratoga Springs, but I refused to try the raw fish, and I stuck to the vegetable tempura. One of those friends was a crazy lesbian I'd made out with a couple times during my sophomore year; although I didn't view it quite in terms of boundaries at the time, she finally overran my tolerance for discourtesy and flakiness and I stopped being friends with her.

My life seems so interesting if you just describe it the right way. I'm sure Kelly would remind me that I have lived a life full of Stuff and Things[tm], no matter how you describe it.