Words are inadequate

I am about 99% sure I just encountered a friend of mine from third/fourth grade.

She's a comedian who works with Seth Meyers, who is apparently also a comedian of some note.

I mean, it's not like her bio says "Jenny Hagel went to White Oaks Elementary" but her age is right, she looks (and sounds) really familiar, and there's a couple of tiny facts that line up with what I remember.

For complicated reasons that boil down to "later elementary school was Intensely Traumatic," I still clearly remember a bunch of my friends and acquaintances from third/fourth grade. There's basically no chance any of them remember or recognise me, though. I made my peace with that a long time ago. (Mostly by running into three of them and each time getting "nope, don't recall you, but i'll take your word for it.")

But it's good to see she's doing well.

For the first time in longer than I care to remember I have the house to myself for days at a time. uilos has gone to Portland to pet sloths; I could have gone, but at the time of planning I had thought I might be in Portland last weekend (or maybe the weekend before) for train gaming. That didn't happen but I'm still glad I stayed home. It's good to be on my own for awhile.

I don't really understand the "need to be on my own." It's not like uilos is particularly demanding when she's here. But ... I just feel freer, more able to be myself and do what I want or need to, when there's no one else around.

And I've mostly been using it for zonking out and being brain-dead, which is a thing. Hadean Lands, Zarf's sublime text-adventure from late 2014, is out on Steam, and I've been replaying that and enjoying the heck out of it. And shooting things in Assault Android Cactus, and seeing the Canada Day fireworks from my balcony with a few people. And going over to hang out with... hm.

A couple of years ago I went out once with a fascinating woman named Erin, and then she was busy and I was busy and we never got back in touch. I unexpectedly ran into her again months later, when we saw The Last Unicorn with special guest appearance by a very tired-looking Peter Beagle, and we made vague plans to get together again. Those turned into actual plans and we had a very pleasant evening wandering around New Westminster near Xmastime 2013.

For those of you keeping score at home that was a time when I was burning out something fierce, for a wide variety of reasons that don't bear re-exploring at this juncture. And so I never got back in touch with her after that. By the time I could start thinking about possibly doing so it was not quite a year later, and I figured I'd just lost out.

A couple of months ago my friend James started dating someone who he was absolutely head-over-heels for, and, yep, same Erin. And she was in town this weekend (she's way off north for a summer internship-like thing), so I got to re-meet her. That was surprisingly pleasant. I'm looking forward to seeing a bit more of her this fall when she's back in town more often.

It's been good to relax a bit.

If you're not reading Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog (chaucerhathblog) then why on earth not? You're missing out on things like Aye, Virginia, ther ys a Robin Hood, and throwaway lines like "And aske ye nat about the frantic advyce that My Lord the King doth see fit to solicit yn the middel of the night concerninge hys confusioun at the operacioun of hys newe i-diptych."

Anyway. Apparently Chaucer Hath A Blog also hath a book. Which has an author name. Who I'm about 99% sure (Update: and now confirmed by a mutual friend) I knew as Frater Cthulhu from BBSing in high school, because the age is about right, and seriously, how many Brantley L. Bryants can there be?

Unreal.

One of the things that comes with being a milbrat has been the desire (sometimes coupled with the ability) to keep track of people I used to know. Even when I didn't know them all that well. Sometimes this has hilarious results.

Facebook's been a boon in this regard. No one ever finds /me/ on Facebook, but I've dug up a remarkable number of used-to-be-acquaintances. Like C--, who was my Big Brother in the VT theatre department when I made my Triumphant Return to full-time student status. (I was a pretty poor Little, between being fairly introverted, having theatre as a second major, and trying to cram the whole experience into two years. I occasionally feel sorry that he didn't get someone who wanted to be more into the whole thing.) Facebook also provides a way to stay nominally in touch with my sister. This is, I think, an appropriate level of contact for us.

Anyway, C-- noted yesterday that his wedding was two months away. There was one comment (a "congrats" kind of thing), from someone whose name looked familiar. It took me literally about thirty seconds to process that, yes, a guy I knew from college had some connection to my baby sister.

But Wait, There's More. "Some connection" turns out to be that a) he went to St Stephens UMC (my church, with which I had a close relationship until I graduated and they fired the totally awesome religious ed director for telling them to mind their own business), so they were in the youth group at the same time, and b) they'd dated for awhile in high school.

I think I'd be pretty dazed by that even if I weren't substituting stress for sleep these days.