Everyone!

Last night, A. Bemius put on a little banjo/guitar concert at the Hen House. It was a lot of fun. The highlight is always the O’Connell’s who have basically adopted me over the course of the last year. We spent the night embroiled in debates about neighborhood barriers and the Great Bridgeport Possibility (the O’Connell family exodus of ’05? stay tuned....)

Tonight ushers in the birthday of Eric Singley. At 25, Eric has nothing to show for his life and therefore elected to retreat to the technical college that is Notre Dame Law School. There he will, no doubt, enjoy two years of philosophically vacuous indoctrination and emerge highly employable. He is making the best decision of his life.

As fall approaches and winter looms, I begin my yearly cycle into self-hatred and loathing. Like a squirrel preparing for winter's doom, I will soon begin lashing out randomly at shadows, gain 15 pounds, and drink Turpentine as I pour over classified ads and plan my escape.

I will purchase a pipe out of which to smoke tobacco and pine needles. I will wear my tattered yellow cardigan, sweatpants, and slippers and mope about the apartment lamenting these troubled times. Occasionally, I will peek out the window to the street below and complain about the freezing winds and the shockingly large number of ethnic individuals in the neighborhood.

Come February, convinced hundreds of thousands of dollars line the walls of my garbage-infested apartment, I will begin tearing them down between mumbled grumblings about long dead friends and Mexican conspiracies.