Things I missed while working on Thirty Years in Thirty Days:

Baby Stuff Avery's kept up with her blog pretty well, actually. She's holding her head up by herself, rolling over with more intent, and figuring out that when she screams bloody murder we pick her up.

The Harry Potter Release Coop and I planned to attend the midnight party July 20. Unfortunately, by the time we got there at 11:15 the joint was already too full for us to partake of wizard games and whatnot. I say "unfortunately" knowing that it makes me a huge nerd, but at least I'm not such a big nerd that I make my own Hogwarts uniform.



Oh, and there was a book that came out, too, apparently. I was right on a lot of my predictions, especially the part about the dishwashers coming to life and holding Prince Wills hostage.

The Next Food Network Star I've said it before: this contest is totally rigged. Food Network decides who it wants to win on the basis of the submission tapes. Then in the commercials for the show, the network positions one contestant as a vile charlatan to be despised, and puts that person in the finals. Of course, then America (and by "America" I mean "the handful of losers to whom this dreck actually matters") picks the other one on the basis that we don't need another Rachael Ray.

Think about it. Deborah was "ticked off right now" and she lost to the Hearty Boys. Reggie was shrill and in your face during every single promo and Guy beat him out. Now, even though Rory wanted it "so freakin' bad," who won? Amy. Tell me that's not a back-handed smear campaign.

Back to Evil Incarnate for a minute ...

The New 30 Minute Meals Intro Come on, people. We already see enough of Rachael's new fright mask during the show. Didja have to put her and her eyeliner in the opening? The corn was fine. Though I suppose, given the network's current direction, that they're trying to remove as many references to cooking as possible. (Hey, it worked for G4 and gaming.)

The Tigers' Ridiculous Slide Maybe I need to reassess my prediction of AL Central champs. If this keeps up, they'll be lucky to snag the wild card.

The Alberto Gonzales Trial, Drunken Astronauts, and/or YouTube Debates Aw, who has time for that? I'm too busy cursing the Twins and mocking Sandra Lee's collagen injections.

And that's it. As of 11:48 this morning, I officially have one foot in the grave.

This project was a lot harder than I expected it to be, actually. Who remembers things that happened when they were one? But in talking with family and friends, loved ones who would remember, I learned a lot and remembered more things I'd forgotten.

Moreover, I learned about myself. Not from what I wrote, necessarily, but from what I chose to write about. It's one's actions that define who he is, but it's also his surroundings, his friends and family, his environment. All of it touched me, but some of it happened in ways I might not have expected to last at the time. Going back over it helped me realize which events in my personal history really molded me into what I am, and which that seemed so significant at the time actually weren't.

I hope you've enjoyed my month of navel-gazing. Was it really important? Maybe not in the grand scheme of things -- but to me it has been. And let's face it, I've never pretended to be grand. Except maybe in pants size.

I'm not sure I even have to write this entry. After all, this entire blog is essentially a paean to my daughter already, even though she's got her own.

We weren't ready for kids. I guess you never are. You keep making excuses, helping each other draw out your youth and irresponsibility as long as you can. Let's wait until we have more money. Let's wait until we're settled into our permanent location. Let's wait until the heavens and earth collide and wizards and unicorns fight balrogs and chimaerae for control of the universe.

So when Sed showed me that little testing stick with three lines on it late in August, naturally, the first thought through my head was, "Holy shit -- I'm not ready."

But then, swiftly behind it: "Yes, I am."

We weren't long out of Vancouver, so the memory of seeing Lourdess was fresh. But more directly related was the time we'd spent with Georgette. When your perfect older daughter is desperately sick, sometimes you don't have the energy or wherewithal to give the more demanding younger child all the attention she needs. So to help lighten the load on everyone, I jumped right in with Georgette. I played games with her, I scooted her around the floor on a truck, I read her stories, we watched videos. When her uncle appeared and offered to take her out for the day, she wouldn't go unless I came along, and I was then in charge of her allergy medicines and spare clothes.

Isn't that what being a dad is about? Being supportive, sharing the wealth, taking care of health concerns? I actually had the thought running through my head all that day while we trailed her uncle through shops and museums: "What am I waiting for? This is it, this is what I'm supposed to be able to do -- and I'm doing it."

So even though Lourdess is the one who got her own entry, it was Georgette who made me realize I was ready, who helped me not to panic in welcoming Avery into our world.

And honestly, how can you panic at the sight of this face?

I've already spoken once about the fear, anger and resentment that comes along with losing a family member young during this project. But as I also mentioned, I certainly wasn't prepared for its potential return.

So when Sed's little sister contracted acute myelogenous leukemia shortly after her eighth birthday last spring, the previous loss didn't make that load of bricks falling on us any softer.

There are two types of blood cancers, I'd learn over the next seven months. AML is the "bad" kind, the kind that kills one of every two of its victims, the kind more likely to return. If Lourdess had contracted ALL -- acute lymphoblastic leukemia -- we'd have been able to bask in the comfort of a 99% remission rate. Instead, we were reduced to chewing our fingernails to stumps, hoping that she was the good one and not the bad.

By all rights, Lourdess's illness shouldn't have touched me like it did. She lives in another country, and I'd only gotten to play with her two or three times, and she wasn't actually my sister. None of that mattered, not before she was sick and less after. The girl took seconds to find footholds in my heart, and neither the distance nor the gaps in our company did anything to erode them. There's a picture on our family wall of Lourdess and I standing by a stream near her family's house, holding hands and watching the water. It's heartfelt enough that more than one person has asked if she's my daughter.

I'm not going to pretend I was the only one affected. Her sickness bombarded the whole family with grief and fear -- her parents, her sisters, her aunts and uncles. We managed to keep strong faces and keep Lourdess's spirits up, but it wasn't easy when we visited in August. Chemotherapy had taken her long hair; her color, once dark and rosy, was now wan; she took stairs less like an adventuring child and more like a laboring retiree; bouts of sickness lingered around every corner, waiting for an opportunity to strike. When she had to return to the hospital, Sed almost didn't fly back with me -- she was sure she'd be staying in Vancouver for a funeral.

Fortunately, not all stories of strife have the same vulgar ending. Lourdess got better, and Sed and I came home. Sometime around the end of October, the doctors reported that the leukemia was in remission. Within a month or two, she was able to return home. By February, she was back in school. In March, she and her folks visited us in Florida, and it did both our hearts good to see her regression from a thin, sallow invalid to the cheery playmate we knew before.

Officially, five years must pass before Lourdess is considered cured. As strong as her spirit is, and as much support as she has all around her, I don't think the cancer has a chance.

I never thought I'd leave New Mexico.

Well, that all changed when I went to Japan, but once I came back I never thought I'd leave New Mexico again. Obviously it's easier the second time, especially when you're going to a place where they speak your language.

It wasn't really all our decision to move to Florida. A component of medical school is The Match, where near the end of your fourth year they place you in a residency program. The Match is a program run by the U.S. Medical Licensing Association Or Something Like That, in which graduates-to-be interview at residency programs and then both sides rate their partners in order of preference. Then, via a complex algorithm that nobody understands (undoubtedly involving, at some level, a blindfolded retiree with a dartboard), the USMLAOSLT matches (thus the name) residents into programs. Sed had interviewed at her program here in Orlando and immediately felt at home. So even though we didn't want to be so far from the Rio Grande Valley, we knew we had to take the chance.

There were a lot of bummers about moving to Florida. I was leaving my family, my friends, and a job that I was just starting to really fit into and love. Plus, when we got here, I learned that the displaced New Yorkers who live in Orlando are, on the whole, rude and abrupt. Not necessarily a learning curve I'd like to re-ride.

But then again, we knew we needed the distance. When you live so close to your parents, it's difficult to ever truly grow up, to feel like you could do it on your own if you had to. We always felt somewhat cowed by our familial authority figures into operating closer to their way than we might without the advice. And Sed and I had never really been alone, living together without some form of support or companionship ready to insert itself into our relationship. First we'd had the dorms, then we'd had our mothers, then we'd had roommates, and even when they'd moved out we still saw them all the time.

I'm not trying to sound ungrateful. We love and cherish everyone who stepped through our door (except for maybe that one guy Shauna brought home who thought he could try out for the Blue Man Group and eventually ended up pounding on windows late one night). But Sed and I never wanted to take them for granted. You can see how it's hard to not do that when every Thursday and Sunday (and sometimes on Fridays) they were knocking on the door. The distance, we knew, would be good for us.

So on May 30, 2005, we packed our cars, called our dogs, and started driving to Florida. It was a long drive, with multiple heartbreaks along the road the farther we got from our home. But when times are difficult here, when we wish our friends could just pull up and knock on that door, we remember we have each other to lean on no matter how lonesome we may be. And that's gratitude.

Nothing happened when I was 26.

Well, nothing of particular note, anyway. I didn't get married, I didn't move, I didn't change jobs, I didn't really make any new friends. About the only thing out of the ordinary that happened was Sed and me taking her younger brother to Disneyland, just the three of us with no adults.

Or so I thought, anyway.

When we walked through that turnstile on the first day, Sed and Clayton were so excited that they immediately tried to bolt off in opposite directions. Quick as a flash, I seized their shoulders, calmly reined them in and advised that we make a plan for what to visit first, what we wanted to do during the day and where to meet if we got separated.

It was my first big moment in adulthood.

Thinking about it now, you aren't supposed to have huge milestones after you pass 25. That's what society tells us, anyway -- you can smoke, you can drink, you can vote, you can drive a car and have qualified for the reduced insurance rate; now take that and be happy until you retire at 59 1/2. You're supposed to settle into a routine, go to your job, go home to your family, have a nice dinner and a relaxed evening with your favorite show or a board game. It's one of the hallmarks of maturity -- you've learned what works for you, what you like, what you don't, how to get it, how to enjoy it, how to moderate yourself.

So living a quiet, peaceful life doesn't provide me with much blog fodder, but it taught me something about growing up. It's boring, and it's happening all around you like it or not, so you might as well go with the flow and learn what works.

I've always been a dog person. My uncles had dogs when I was growing up, and my stepfather eased into my life with his. I trained my parents' basset hound puppy and won over my college friends with her cuteness. But I didn't have my own dogs until I got back from Japan.

They weren't even my dogs to start with. Two months before my return, my friend and future housemate Coop had gone to Pound Puppy Day (or whatever it's called) at PetSmart, coming home with a ten-pound golden fluffball named Mai Tai. I still remember my reaction when Sed's text message appeared on my phone: a groan of dismay, followed by explaining to my friends, "I have a dog, apparently." I knew I'd be taking care of the puppy when I got home, not necessarily because of anyone's neglect or incompetence but simply because I had the most experience with dogs.

When I moved in, Kucha (as she had been quickly renamed, after a tribe on Survivor, which for the record I would like to say I only watched for one season and then gave up, and don't do drugs, kids) was a gangly 50-pounder who could stand with her paws on my shoulders. She howled, she clawed at the sliding glass door, she dug in the dirt, and she would make you chase her around the kitchen table for hours before you could put her outside. But she also leaned against your hip while you petted her, nestled her head in your lap when you sat on the couch, and snuggled up with you in bed. I loved her right away. Here was a dog, I realized, who had been concieved out of neglect and left for dead, but she was still sweet, loyal and loving.

But she was still Coop's dog. So I tried not to get too attached.

When Shauna moved in about a month later, she asked if we objected to her bringing her dog along. Angel was a skittish cocker spaniel runt who barked at everything and everybody. She hid behind Shauna's legs for the first three days in our house, and stayed in her room while her master was at school. But it only took about fifteen minutes of Angel's whining the fourth day to call Shauna and ask if it was OK to let her out. After that, Angel took to me like I was her best friend. She sat on my lap, she curled up under my feet at my desk, she raced around the house like a banshee when I came home.

But she was still Shauna's dog. So. Again.

One year later, we've enjoyed living together and enjoyed having the dogs in our lives. Kucha and Angel are best buddies by now -- they play tug and chase as readily as they curl up together on the couch. But Sed and I are getting married, and as such we'd like to have our own place to live, no roommates.

"We're going to get an apartment," I announced to the roomies a few months before the wedding.

"Well, if you're moving out, we don't really want to take care of this house by ourselves," they said. "We'll find an apartment too."

"What about your dogs?"

I received a momentary blank look.

"Oh, yeah."

That was when I realized it. Kucha and Angel were already my dogs. I fed them, I walked them, I played with them, I cleaned up after them. And as such, Coop and Shauna had stopped thinking of themselves as dog owners.

So I kept the house with Sed. Coop and Shauna helped me clean and paint over the summer, I helped them move to a new apartment, they passed over the paperwork, and by August Sed and I were officially the proud parents of two blonde canine children.

Over the course of the last few entries, I've alluded to the best thing to ever happen to me. Sed was another orientation leader, and from the moment she laid eyes on me she knew we'd be together. I was not so fortuitously endowed (you know how it is, guys, you're always the last one to find these things out) until, during a party at the end of the summer, she leaned over and whispered those seven fateful words in my ear:

"You know I'm crazy about you, right?"

It was all downhill from there. Not in the bad way; our relationship has been a smooth ride down a shallow slope with relatively few obstacles. I'm not saying what we have is perfect, because no long-term human interaction can be, but it's pretty darn close.

We weathered our storms. A guy she'd known before tried to wedge between us. My most recent ex-girlfriend worked very hard at making me jump ship and go back to her. And of course there was that whole year abroad thing. But we came out on the other side just like a well-tied sailor's knot: a bit battered and shabby, perhaps, but fused ever tighter by the tension and the maelstrom lashing around us.

We exchanged vows on June 15, 2002. I know; three years (adjusting for Japan) isn't really that long to know each other in the grand scheme of things. It was certainly not impossible that one of us had simply not yet discovered a deal-breaking flaw in the other. Of course, it's also not impossible for a human to fly. Technically.

Sed and I have always been totally open and honest with each other. A serious relationship cannot survive without serious communication, and that's not possible without honesty. Sometimes it hurts, sure, but our relationship is better for it. And it serves to prove that anything is possible if you're willing to compromise. With her, I am. (Hey, I'm in Florida, after all. Bet you didn't see that coming.)

Five years later, I'm confident that the deal-breakers are a thing of the past. I love my wife, and she loves me. We have a beautiful daughter and a willingness to work together to give her and each other the best life possible. What more can a guy ask?

So you've just spent three-quarters of your life in school, living with your parents for a lot of it or at least never leaving your hometown. You've met a wonderful person, someone with whom you're prepared to spend the rest of your life. And you've finally nailed down that degree you've been after, that piece of paper that says you're ready to enter the work force.

What do you do now? Leave the country, of course.

No, it's not always so cut and dried. But remember, even though I was a card-carrying adult at this point, I still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So when I heard about this internship program through my Japanese class, I thought it sounded like a great way to ease into the working world.

Nothing was easy about Japan, though. The culture, the language, the priorities, the personalities are about as far removed as one can get from the Southwest. And I found out pretty quickly that what I'd learned from The Karate Kid did not really apply.

On my 23rd birthday, I was awakened by the manager of the dorm I lived in, telling me I had a phone call at the front desk. My fiancee had the right idea -- conveying her love and best wishes -- but coming as it did so soon after I'd moved across the globe, it served to reinforce exactly how alone I was all of a sudden, how vulnerable I'd become, leaping into this (literally) completely foreign position. And it hurt.

But by the end of the day, after some co-workers had taken me to a bar and a summer festival that just happened to coincide with my birthday, I felt better. It was about then that I decided not to burrow inside myself, like I might have were I simply in, say, Pittsburgh; in a place where I knew the language and thereby could be self-sufficient, I would not have to make new friends, but a culture as strange as Japan would require it of me.

That year abroad was probably the best thing I could have ever done for my people skills and my self-confidence. I never really learned the language -- the best I managed was to buy a summer kimono with matching obi for my girl back home without a translator -- and I never fully felt at ease with the customs and traditions and ways. But I learned that in Japan, they understand that, even expect it of foreigners. They won't expect you to get why they do things the way they do, and they won't hold it against you if you don't do it that way. Maybe it's a little condescending, but it sure makes for a nicer relationship -- especially when you surprise them by doing things with wa-fu.

So I don't know more facts than I did when I went. I don't know more language; in fact, in the intervening years I've probably forgotten almost all of it. But I do know that if I go into something with an open mind and a willingness to try and learn, that's almost as good.

College was just the next step after I graduated high school. It was an expectation, a foregone conclusion -- I knew I'd be getting that bachelor's degree before I pursued any kind of a career. What I didn't know was how much I'd care about my school.

Four and a half years later, when I graduated from the University of New Mexico, I was an embodiment of its spirit.

To be honest, I'd always sort of been a Lobo. My dad took us to a lot of basketball games when we were growing up; we watched legends like Michael Cooper and Luc Longley and Hunter Greene work their magic in the perilous confines of The Pit and dreamed of one day playing on that hallowed floor.

Still, UNM was just somewhere to go. It was the backup plan, the college you picked when you hadn't gotten into anywhere else, when you didn't know what you wanted to do afterward. It was the University Near Mom.

But I didn't know what I wanted to do afterward. I wanted to write, that much was certain. I thought it pretty unlikely, though, that I'd get a degree in creative writing and suddenly begin churning out novels no matter what my baccalaureate education. Besides, my mentor had drilled into me that a degree was all but useless in pursuing publication. So I would be going to school for a degree in something that paid money, at least a little bit, and when I got home from that job I'd work on my stories.

As it turned out, UNM had an accredited communications program, with a journalism major within the school. That's writing, I thought. That pays, at least a little bit. And I'd already done some work for my high school paper, so how hard could it be?

The schooling itself was only a minor part of why I loved UNM. I loved its architecture, the Pueblo Revival style that I took for granted in Albuquerque but if not for President Tight's decree would have never taken off. I loved its sports teams, affable losers with high expectations of themselves despite their general lack of competition and competitiveness. I loved the fact that even though I was still quiet and withdrawn, I could now make friends, as this was not as much of a liability as it was in high school. And of course I loved the athletic bands, where I could shout and make a fool of myself and it was appreciated.

UNM was more than a school for my career. It was a school for my life. I lived on my own for the first time in college. I got drunk for the first time. I voted. I partied. I fell in love.

And on December 18, 1999, when I walked in my graduation ceremony, I finally got to realize my childhood dream and perform on that Pit floor.

Woof, woof, woof.

I never expected to get the job as a freshman orientation leader when I applied for it. After all, I was an average student, most of my activities were off-campus, and I wasn't in any kind of fraternity or student support group or activities committee or anything. How could someone as uninvolved as me get hired for a job like this?

As it turns out, my overall aloofness to campus events was a selling point. The LOBOrientation directorship needed a diverse group of students to properly portray the range of avaliable options to incoming freshmen. So even though I'd applied mostly because I'd just lost the job at AOHell and needed money to pay off my dorm bill, I was one of twenty students tabbed to introduce new students to my university.

It's a good thing I got the gig, because this turned out to be the best job I ever had.

Our group of leaders came together at just the right time. We'd all had some significant letdown within the last year -- getting fired, losing a grandparent, breaking up with a long-term significant other -- and needed understanding, supportive friends that we just weren't finding otherwise. This group was a godsend for almost all of us. Almost immediately we bonded, knit as tightly as if we'd known each other for years -- to borrow a phrase almost used in the comments of my Academic Decathlon entry, it was "a Breakfast Club moment."

The program director had told us in our interviews that we would become friends with our co-workers, but I don't think any of us expected it to happen quite on the level that it did. Yes, we had fun during working hours -- discussing the job, working out presentations, dealing good-natured shit talk. But in a drastic departure from any other job I've had before or since, we actively sought each other out when we weren't at work. We went so far as to draw up a social calendar to make sure that a week would not pass without spending time together outside of work.

The job itself was less remarkable. Giving tours, answering questions about campus life and helping kids work out their first-semester schedules was good for the soul, but it got repetitive and tiresome eventually. However, we knew that we had each other there, keeping us on our toes and keeping our hearts happy even if our minds were numb from drudgery.

I loved being an orientation leader so much I did it twice. Thanks to this job, a lot of people I never would have approached otherwise have become lifelong friends. In fact, one of them ended up having my baby. But that's another entry.

Moving on campus was the best thing I ever did for my personal growth.

Until then, I'd lived with my parents, twelve miles from campus, a commuter student who only went to class and then headed home. My best friend at the time and I had planned to room together, but I just couldn't afford the housing, and my mom wouldn't pay it.

"You have free room and board here as long as you're in school," she said. "If you want to live somewhere else, that's your burden to shoulder."

And shoulder it I did. By the beginning of the fall 1997 semester, I had enough money saved to move into the freshman dorms -- not my dream destination, but better than nothing.

I had a roommate for about six weeks. Landon was a true freshman, new to UNM and New Mexico, going to college ostensibly for a degree but truthfully to get sidetracked as quickly as possible. He rushed a fraternity and moved into their house, leaving me with a double room for one person. Gee, and I thought we'd had so much in common, what with the ska bands we were both in and the porn we downloaded.

Despite the lack of in-room socialization from then on, living on campus was a happening time. After all, I'd come to a student housing complex where there were 2,000 students living from a house in the Far Northeast Heights where there was one. I didn't get involved right away -- the residence hall Olympiad left me cold, starting as it did at eight in the damn morning, and my resident advisor's programs mostly consisted of him ordering pizza and laying it out in his room for us to take back to ours. But the longer I lived there, the more I began to do.

I started hanging out in the Cellar, the dormitory pizza place, playing pool with guys I didn't know before. I did homework in the commons, befriending by sight the usual suspects who worked or studied there. I attended more functions the activities committee sponsored. And eventually, I applied to be an RA myself.

My time with residence life didn't end well, sadly. The politics involved wore me out, to the point where I burned my bridges with several co-workers. When two of my best friends (one my girlfriend) were fired in an elaborate cloak-and-dagger scheme masterminded by a toadying suckup, I was glad I was through.

Still, if I may be so corny, residence life molded a lot of the facets that make me who I am today. Without it, I might still be shy, reticent, uncooperative, and evasive. But I'd still be great-looking.

Meaningless summer jobs are all well and good when you don't need to pay for anything, but sooner or later you become responsible for bills and have to enter the soul-crushing workforce.

So in January of 1997, I accepted a position as a technical support representative for America Online. It was my first real job, taken in order to save toward moving out of my parents' house and into on-campus housing. And it sucked.

All work sucks to some degree, of course. But working on the phones for AOL, in the midst of its strongest customer push as personal computers and the Internet began to hit stride, stands as the worst job I have ever had. It's not just that the service caters to clueless unemployed housebound types -- retirees, soccer moms, thirteen-year-olds named Jason who are learning to cyber -- and I was required to support these people. It's that the company treats its employees like disposable silverware.

I learned quickly -- when most of my training class was gone within three months -- that call centers expect a very high employee turnover rate. But rather than attempting to hold onto the quality employees while allowing the chaff to fall as it will, AOL presumes that all of its staffers will eventually wash out and therefore are not worth wasting precious company funds that could be better used to buy Steve Case a new BMW. We were indentured servants tethered by telephone cords for eight hours a day, our bathroom and food breaks tightly monitored by the Lucent boxes. (I believe it is no coincidence that "Lucent" and "Lojack" both begin with "L" and have six letters.)

The worst part was adhering to call times. Company-wide, we were required to keep our calls to an average of less than six minutes. Often, that's not even enough time for your clueless housefrau to describe the problem. But worse, my supervisor (who uncannily resembled Hootie of Blowfish fame) expected us to have a team average of five minutes or less.

"Give them one solution and hang up," he preached. "If it doesn't work, they can call back."

Right. We're supposed to answer a call from some poor schmuck who's been on hold for an hour and a half, tell him to reboot and if it doesn't work to call us back? I'm sorry, Hootie, but even if I'm getting paid to do it that way I have to say it's not very good service.

The final straw was when AOL partnered with some telemarketing company, to redirect our inbound traffic post-call to a representative who would then offer a savings program membership. So now after I failed to solve the caller's problem, I was expected to sell them a coupon club card. It felt dirty -- I was prostituting myself for my own paycheck.

So I stopped doing it. All of it. I stopped pushing the savings club, I stopped hanging up after one solution, I stopped watching the call time clock. And I started solving technical issues for my callers.

Every day, I had more e-mails from customers, singing my praises for fixing their connectivity problems and getting them back online. I forwarded them all to my supervisor. Shockingly, none made the company newsletter.

It took about two months before I got it. Hootie didn't care about my "Raving Fans." He cared about that little clock on the Lucent box, the one that showed my average call time was seven minutes and forty-three seconds. He cared about the counter that showed I hadn't forwarded anyone to the savings plan since October.

He offered me an option, sort of. Either I could quit or he would fire me. Well, you should have seen the laundry list of reasons I gave in my resignation letter. I'd just been waiting for the opening, I realized, and even though it meant I wouldn't be able to pay for my dorm anymore, I was better off without it. My integrity comes before my job, then, now, and evermore.

Up to this point, I'd been lucky enough to not have to work. My family valued education (at least for me) very highly, and it was more important to them that I study and learn and get good grades than that I make money to support my Mountain Dew habit.

But upon my high school graduation and moving one step closer to the real world, I decided it was time I learned about the job force.

OK, I didn't actually decide that. All of my parents informed me that it was high time I procure employment. Honestly, I wasn't sure why -- I had a full scholarship to college and would be living with my mom rent-free. Certainly this work business could be put off for another four years.

So I started small -- as a concessionaire for summer entertainment venues. I applied at a grand total of two places: Cliff's Amusement Park and the Sports Stadium, home of those triple-A legionnaires, the Albuquerque Dukes. The Dukes called me back almost the same day; I think I heard from Cliff's two months later. (I ended up working for them the next summer.)

Working a concession stand is a nearly-perfect summer job for someone who's still looking to have fun with his break from school. Five days a week for six hours a day is hardly demanding, yet I built job experience that I could later cite on my resume, as well as funds which I could later spend on breakfast burritos. On top of that, I met a lot of new people with the same goals, all willing to go out after work (or on days off) and have said fun.

The best part about these jobs? They ended just as school was swinging into gear. The Dukes' season finale was on Labor Day; Cliff's closed shortly after the beginning of the fall semester. So I could say that I worked without my job interfering with my schooling, and everyone was happy.

Maybe having such easy gigs as my first jobs is why I have such a cavalier attitude about work now. Oh well.

In high school, you're defined by your primary activity. Wear a letter jacket with more than two sports pins? You're a jock. Spend passing period playing games on your graphing calculator? You're a nerd. Write poetry, dress in black, and work to convince your classmates that you're certifiable? You're either a stoner or a drama freak, depending on the length of your hair.

So obviously I was a band geek. But for my senior year, that changed a little bit when I made the Academic Decathlon team.

There were nine of us from all walks of life. We had your standard well-rounded smart kids -- the pre-med, the pre-law, the pre-doctorate researcher. And sure, there was a geek among us. But we also had a jock, a stoner, a drama freak, and one of those kids who's so far beyond high school that you're astounded she's actually participating in a school activity. And me.

Obviously, I've overcompartmentalized us. Our coach needed well-rounded students, after all. If all Mike knew was wrestling, or if all Marissa knew was Renaissance period dress, or if all Jennie knew was which gas to introduce to a solution to start a reaction, we never would have made it to nationals. Our breadth of experience led to our success -- but it also led to friendships we would have otherwise never known. By the end of the year, we seriously loved each other, and we loved the woman who brought us all together.

I've always regretted that I never had a class with Paula Karmiol earlier than my senior year. But what I missed early on I made up for in 1995 -- besides my AD coach, she was my mentorship coordinator, my independent study advisor, and basically my personal therapist. More than any other teacher I'd ever had, more even than the counselor I saw in elementary school, I felt comfortable opening up to her, telling her my conflicted feelings about everything in school and asking for advice. We all felt that way, which is partly what made us so close.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. We finished eleventh at AD nationals in May 1995. And then the seniors among us graduated, and we floated apart.

And then PK died of lung and bone cancer just before my eighteenth birthday.

We all promised we'd reunite more often after that. But it never happened. I get periodic e-mails from the crew these days, but I never stop thinking about it, how for one gleaming year in the otherwise tarnished morass of high school, a group of kids who couldn't be more different stopped being our labels and started just being friends.

If you take one piece of advice from my thirty years of accumulated wisdom this month, I hope it's this:

Don't play rollerblade basketball.

I was on my way out to skate up and down the bike path that fateful day (February 2, 1994, for those following along on the calendar). I'd already started to pack on the poundage at that point -- I was teetering on the brink of 200, and was hoping some intensive cardio would tamp my gut back down. So in-line skating had become a way of life for me, and nearly every day I'd go out around the neighborhood, or further if I could get away with it.

But Mike and Chris were shooting hoops in the driveway, and somehow the ball found its way into my hands. So I shot it, and it went in.

I probably don't need to describe the mini-adrenalin rush making a basket brings. After that, it was difficult to break myself away, especially since the skates made me suddenly faster than Chris, which had never happened before.

But then I took The Shot.

I was coming out of the gravel by the street, ball in hand, losing my balance out of bounds. So, as I'd done in innumerable basketball games before, I tossed up a shot. Only unlike those previous games, I didn't have a flat surface on which to plant my weight.

My right foot twisted, wobbled. I compensated, leaned left -- too far left -- fell -- landed on the side of my knee. The patella sheared into two, the ligament holding it in place snapped, the tendons inside the joint tore.

I managed to hobble inside and get the skates off. My mom (thank Zeus she was home that day) came in, saw me sitting on the recliner, white as a sheet, my knee nearly the size of the ball. Within seconds, I was in the car on my way to urgent care.

Recuperation took nearly three months. I wore an immobilizer brace for a week, until they could schedule the surgery. My doctor hunted down stray kneecap pieces arthroscopically before flaying the whole thing open anyway to nail down the ligament. I was in a cast from hip to heel for four weeks, and then spent six more weeks in the prison of physical therapy every Monday and Wednesday from 3:30 to 6.

But it paid off. I walked better on that leg than I ever had. Of course, my right leg paid the price -- I later sprained that knee coming down a flight of stairs. Honestly, though, I'm just glad they both still work. My therapist, upon watching the arthroscopic surgery video, turned to me awe-struck and said, "It's a wonder you can still walk at all."

I've been on in-line skates once since then (an attempt to impress a girl, which was stupid because the one that mattered got upset), and I can't play serious basketball without a knee brace anymore. One day, I'll walk with a cane, and then I'll be stuck in a wheelchair. These bastard joints of Satan will have to be replaced with steel and silicon so I can move at all without wincing. And it'll all be thanks to the travesty that is rollerblade basketball.

Every night after dinner, my mom would get up and leave the table, and we'd try to follow her, but Jerry would stop us.

"You guys need to help out," he'd say. "She spent all this time cooking. We need to clean up."

I hated cleanup duty. Time wasted in a kitchen putting dirty dishes away -- dishes which weren't, after all, going anywhere and could certainly wait until someone who cared could wash them.

My mom would just shrug her shoulders when I complained. "Jerry's right," she said. "You have to help out in the kitchen. If you don't cook, you have to clean up."

She probably didn't expect me to call her on it.

By the time I was fifteen, I was routinely working as Mom's prep chef. If she needed carrots or onions chopped, I was there. If something on the stove had to be stirred continuously, the spoon was in my hands. If cans needed to be opened, pots filled with water for pasta, butter melted, veggies defrosted -- guess whose job that suddenly became.

Most nights Mom drove the dinner bus, but there were some days that I tried to take the wheel. I started small, with dessert -- a lemon meringue tart that I found in a cookbook I'd taken out of the school library. Or at least I thought I was starting small. The custard didn't set, the meringue deflated, and the crust simply dissolved into the runny, lumpy goo. It was literally inedible -- I took one bite and nearly spit it out.

But I was determined to figure out this cooking thing. It was fun, after all, and Mom wasn't going to be there to make my dinner every night. Eventually, I settled for easier processes, like the stir-fry. A melange of onions, green chiles, ground beef, tomatoes and beans was the launchpad for what is now my most popular dish -- The Infamous Chili.

In college, I discovered the cooking block on PBS and began watching religiously, devouring every technique and taking notes on dishes from different regions. A few years later, we got the Food Network, and the game was on. I was no longer a food hobbyist. I was a chef in training.

Of course, a stint in a real kitchen didn't pan out (mostly because I drove two hours every day to be paid like an indentured servant). But I still push my boundaries in the kitchen, making myself better with every failed casserole and spoiled souflee. And one day, I'll get that meringue right.

I joined the school band in sixth grade, and I liked it well enough. I was a decent saxophonist, perhaps overzealous (which got me into trouble with my first director, Mr. Stickupmyass) but enjoying the music we were playing and the chance to learn a new fun skill.

It wasn't until ninth grade, when I joined the La Cueva High School Big Bad Bear Marching Band, that I found my true love.

Marching band was, to me, the perfect marriage of music and choreography. After all, how many dancers can claim that they're actually playing the music to which they're moving? I loved it right away -- maybe because it was more difficult, maybe because I was working harder than I ever had in my life ... maybe because I was good at it. In fact, I won the first drill-down competition I ever participated in.

For the uninitiated, a drill-down is a set of commands called to a block formation. You execute the commands until you make a mistake, at which point you fall out of the block and cheer for the people better than you.

We didn't have a drill-down until band week was nearly over, so we knew all the commands. Or at least we should have. Granted, the competition lasted a lot longer than subsequent drill-downs earlier in following band camps. But it was down to me, a senior, and three juniors when Julie, our drum major, called "oblique left march."

Unhesitatingly, I snapped 45 degrees to my left in full stride, pointed my imaginary horn to the imaginary box, and kept marching at eight steps to the next yard line. The other four competitors stopped and looked at each other, confused, understanding that we wouldn't be doing obliques this year. But I'd learned it, I'd done it, and I'd become the first freshman to win a drill-down since the school's inaugural year when there were no seniors.

It wasn't my last first. The next year, I was the first sophomore section leader the school had ever seen. I was the first kid to challenge my way from last chair all the way to first. I was the first section leader who hadn't been in private lessons for most of his life. And I was the first saxophonist to be the favorite student of our notoriously short-fused band director.

What carried me through four years of high school marching band and five years of college athletic bands, more than God-given talent or long hours of practice, was heart. I loved playing, I loved the groups, I loved the raucous audiences, and I loved the feeling of working my ass off to totally rock a crowd's face. It was that love that kept me coming back, and it's that love that's making me try again.

Granted, it's on baritone bugle now -- I'm learning a whole new instrument. But with my new drum corps and our vision for the future -- a bunch of people who share my heart and my motivation -- it can't be anything less than great.

Eighth grade was my last chance to win the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. Hey, the kid who'd won the previous year was in fifth grade; I figured I had a chance by seniority alone.

I'd always been a good speller. In fifth grade, I made it to the regional bee, outspelling all the elementary and middle schoolers that would eventually go to my high school and even outlasting the cute eighth-grader who they sat me next to before I missed "tremulous." I was the second-youngest speller that year (the youngest went out five people later, the freak).

But eighth grade was my year. I wasn't even nervous when I walked into the library that day and sat down with my friends. (Your English teacher selected you, and as we had different classes, pretty much every member of the Nerd Herd was represented.) It went pretty quickly, at first, anyway. By the end of the class period, it was down to me, Michael Brooker, and Robert Ibarra (who I'd beaten three years earlier in elementary school and who forever claimed I'd "cheated and robbed" him of victory).

Well, Robert lasted about two or three more rounds before he misspelled something and ran out crying. But Michael and I went back and forth for almost another entire class period before he missed one. I wasn't sure I knew it, but when I got it right on the steal, the next word was really easy.

The first- and second-place spellers both go to the district bee, so Michael and I got to miss science class for it. Competition in this cluster was a lot less intense than it had been at my old school -- my middle school was in a different district, and we would only face about twelve other kids.

As luck would have it, the bee came down to me and Michael in mere minutes -- again. Our teacher representative groaned when she saw it; she'd been at the school bee two weeks before.

So I was really surprised when, on the third go-round, Michael misspelled "ham."

No, it wasn't actually "ham." But it was ludicrously easy, and I almost felt guilty stealing it from him. But not guilty enough to miss it on purpose. One more correct word later, and I was in the regional bee.

The regional was even bigger than the school bee. One student from every high school district in northern and central New Mexico was in Albuquerque for it, packing a stage at the Holiday Inn Pyramid. (Where the towels are oh so fluffy! I get it, I know the song.) And finally, my nerves kicked in.

Three hours later, five of us remained on stage. And sixty-five words after that, we were all still there.

Then I got up to the mic. The orator, Eyewitness News 4's Carla Aragon, read my word.

"FAHS-jeen."

"Uh ... could you repeat the word?"

"FAHS-jeen."

"Can I have a definition?"

FAHS-jeen is a colorless, volatile liquid or gas used in chemical warfare and organic synthesis.

"Could you use it in a sentence?"

This one took a little more time, but it didn't matter. I had no idea how to spell FAHS-jeen.

I looked around the room a little bit. There was my mom, smiling up at me, willing me to do my best. There was my dad, shaking his head, knowing I didn't know it. There was Carla Aragon, grinning that vacuous news anchor grin. There was no way I was going to get this right. I might as well bite the bullet.

"F...."

When Carla Aragon shook her head, I knew I'd blown it. P-H-O-S-G-E-N-E would haunt me in my sleep that night.

It would have been really easy to write off spelling as a skill altogether after that disappointment. But I always felt that it was important to -- aw skroo it. waz da point, evr1 wrytz lik dis now anwyz.

A lot of my friends had already lost a grandparent by the time we were in seventh grade, or had never gotten to know a grandparent. Some of them had grown up with three, or two, or even fewer if they'd come from another town and didn't see them. So I felt privileged to have four living and local grandparents.

That all changed when my mom's mom died a few weeks before Christmas in 1989.

I've alluded to her sickness in a few posts already. My grandma was God's testing ground for horrific diseases. She had tuberculosis when she was young, which was why she'd moved to Albuquerque in the first place (for the dry desert air). She had polio too, which required her to wear a hip brace and walk with a cane. But that wasn't enough -- when I was probably six or seven, she completed the trifecta and acquired kidney disease.

She never let it get her down, though. My grandma was a gruff woman, but one of the most loving and loyal people you could ever hope to meet. She'd bark at us to get down off the couch, or stop climbing the shelves in the pantry, or put down those knitting needles and stop playing swordfight, but we knew it was all about making sure her grandsons didn't get hurt, and there was usually a cookie in it for us.

Right to the end, when she had to lean on my grandfather to walk anywhere and breathe assisted with a bottle of oxygen, she never stopped taking care of us. My mom would be working in the kitchen, busting her tail to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table, and my grandma would be right in the middle of things, trying to help.

When she died, there was a little sigh of relief, if you listened under our crying and wailing. Sure, my grandma was gone and we were all sad, but she was finally no longer in pain. Besides, she could have gone a lot earlier -- if you thought there was actually a chance she was going to give up that easily. She fought tooth and nail for every last second of her life, and I like to think that determination colored us all a little bit.

Even with the divorce finalized, I harbored my deluded fantasy that someday my mom and dad would realize their mistake and get back together. So it came as quite a shock to me when my mom announced that she and Jerry were getting married.

Jerry was my mom's boss, for a while anyway. He was the administrator at UNM's children's psychiatric hospital, where my mom was his executive assistant. He moved on a few years later, from the job anyway. To my mom, he was irreversably attached.

I forget exactly how old I was when he moved in with us, but I never thought it was permanent. My denial-addled brain had me convinced that the only reason he stayed in our house and shared a bed with my mother was because his lease had run out at the place he was renting in Westgate and he couldn't find another place where he could keep two big dogs. Sombra and TC (both German Shepherd-Doberman Pinscher crosses; Sombra more Shep, TC more Dobie) were the reasons I accepted him into the house and into my life, if I have to be honest. I'd always wanted a dog.

But I wasn't ready to accept him as a father figure. My dad was still around, after all, and active in my life. As long as he was still in the picture, there was a chance that my mom would take him back and we'd be one family again. But if she married Jerry, that eliminated said chance.

Of course there was never really a chance, and my mom made no bones about whether it was actually my decision either. So on August 9, 1988, we went to the courthouse and watched them make it official. (It would have been the 8th, but my grandmother was sick and my mom really wanted her there.)

That didn't mean I was going to be happy about it. And no, Jerry didn't know much about kids, but I never gave him a fair chance to learn. I was sullen, morose and bitter for most of the next seven years, right up until I left for my first day of college and Jerry made me change my mind about him with one simple hug.

Because when he pulled away and wished me luck, there were tears in his eyes. And I realized just how close he'd grown to me as I grew up, how hard he always tried even as Mike and I rebuffed his advances time after time.

Ever since then, my dad and stepmom have always been just that, but my mom and Jerry are "my parents."

My elementary school friendships were always such fiascos. Jenny had done her part to take care of business on the day care front -- through her, I'd befriended a good number of the other girls there, inciting jealousy in the bullies who were now starting to notice girls for the first time but also staving off further ass-kickings at the hands of said same as they realized flat-out physical dominance didn't do it for most lady types. But I wasn't having the same kind of luck at school.

But finally, halfway through fifth grade, I met Matt Wilson. Matt was another imaginative, passionate eccentric, someone who finally got me, and he was able to guide me to the group of kids where I'd be accepted. (This group would later be forever stymied as "the Nerd Herd," but I was so happy to belong I didn't care.) Though I don't know what happened to most of those guys, and have largely fallen out of touch with the others, one relationship has lasted through the years. And it's not with who you think; Matt moved away the summer before middle school without a forwarding address. His one-time best friend had to take up the slack.

Chris was the weird kid in our group. And when I say he was weird, you have to know that means something. He leaped from play equipment, hit himself in class, dove headlong into immobile objects. And he was fiercely loyal, in his own sort of Columbine way. Chris was the kind of kid who, if a bully was staring you down, would go harvest rocks to pelt at him in a blind ambush, aiming for the head because of course that does the most damage.

We'd learn a few years later about his ADHD. Chris cycled on and off medications -- Ritalin, Dexadrine, whatever it-drug was supposed to work the best this year. Without them, he was manic; tackling shadows, drumming on his own head, spinning down school hallways with arms extended and shouting "WHIZZ" at the top of his lungs. With them, he was lethargic, his desire for anything other than video games and high-sugar beverages sapped.

I probably wasn't the greatest influence on him as far as taking his meds, to be honest. After all, I'd befriended crazy Chris, and far preferred him to cadaver Chris. But when his doctor finally found something that worked, the transformation of my formerly frenetic friend into a paragon of youth responsibility was nothing short of remarkable.

Chris moved away right after high school graduation. Literally -- we walked across the stage, and the next morning he was driving to the Pacific Northwest with his dad. Ostensibly it was to attend Oregon State, but he got sidetracked by employment and relationships -- neither worse than education, necessarily, and both of which helped him re-evaluate his goals and motivations, including getting out of Corvallis.

He finally managed it this month. Chris now has a bachelor's degree, an apartment in Las Vegas, and a loving fiancee with whom I get to see him tie the knot this weekend. I can't say how delighted I am that for my friend who once had such a hard time focusing on anything, his goals are suddenly within his grasp.

My parents had been separated for a few years already, but the announcement that they were divorcing still hit me out of left field.

It was a foreign concept to me at the time. My mom and dad had been married since before I was born, my grandparents for more than thirty years each. I didn't have any friends -- well, as stated yesterday, I could stop there, but I didn't know any kids whose parents were divorced. They didn't talk about it on the TV shows I watched or in any of the books I read. So I was operating under the assumption that the separation was temporary, and that sooner or later my dad would be moving out of his smelly one-bedroom apartment and back into our house.

In retrospect, I should have known it was coming. They'd never really gotten along very well. Some of my earliest memories of my parents in our childhood house involve trying to squeeze between them to break up a shouting match. They simply could not coexist under one roof.

Regardless, it tore me up. I'd always had a temper, but now my fuse shrunk from Chinese-acrobat to Lilliputian. I yelled at teachers, withdrew from classmates, refused to participate in group activities. I'd just joined Cub Scouts not long before, but after they dropped the bomb I wasn't having fun anymore and almost quit. And I wasn't fun to be around either; they probably would have welcomed my absence.

Help came from sources I'd have never expected. From my den mother, whose son was always so quick to join the taunting (if not the ringleader); from Andy, the crazy kid on the playground who used to beat me up but now saw a kindred spirit; from my brother, a product of the same broken family who somehow seemed to take it a lot better than I did. And my parents, rather than becoming more distant with the divorce, put even more effort into ensuring that I was healing and progressing.

Today my parents have remarried. To other people. And I'm past being upset about it. No, I'm glad they're happy now. Let's face it -- if banging your head against the wall makes you unhappy, there's no sense in doing it forever. Better to admit your mistake, cut your losses and go find something softer to bang.

(I don't know about you, but I could have done without that mental image.)

So far, I've talked about bullies in day care, at school, and on my block; about being poorly thought of among my peers to the point of outright mockery; about kids who I thought were friends abandoning me to prevent their own stock from dropping.

Something had to go my way, socially speaking, sooner or later. And it did, one afternoon during the summer after third grade, when Jenny showed up at the day care.

Her family was new to the city -- well, more or less; they'd lived in Albuquerque before but had most recently been in Texas. As luck would have it, she would be going to my school in the coming year. It could only be even greater luck that somehow her parents had passed four day care centers between their house and the one I attended to enroll Jenny and her sister in the summer recreation program.

But it wasn't the perfect meant-to-be scenario you might be picturing. Jenny was three years younger than me. And a girl, during a time in one's life when one does not consort with the opposite sex for fear of contracting the dreaded cootievirus.

It took maybe a minute to realize I didn't care. I was already an outcast, and befriending a girl my brother's age wasn't going to hurt me any more. Besides, that minute of conversation with her was all it took to hook me.

Looking back on it, Jenny was probably my first crush. I usually say it was Lindsay Humphreys in middle school, but that's because by the time I was twelve I knew what it was. Besides, Lindsay and I never bonded the way Jenny and I did. Hanging out and talking with her just felt right, natural, what a friendship should be.

And it still does.

Yes; despite a physical separation that started when she left the day care shortly after my brother and has only had two brief interruptions (one year when we were in the same high school and two or three before Sed and I moved to Florida), Jenny and I have actively maintained our friendship. Maybe we can only exchange letters, phone calls or e-mail these days, but it's a relationship that's been too good to us (or at least to me) to just let go.

OK, you got me. I actually owe Jenny a long letter about everything that's gone on this year -- my daughter, my new job, my hobbies, the works. Truly, I've been an inexcusable slacker about contact. But maybe she'll happen upon this paean to our friendship, and that will count for something.

On September 12, 1984, my cousin Amanda was born.

Less than two months later, she died.

They couldn't explain it at the time. Amanda had been a healthy, happy baby who just didn't wake up one morning. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, it's called now. There are recommendations to prevent it, but there's still no sign of what causes it nor guarantees that these methods will be successful. So basically, my aunt and uncle were horribly unlucky.

Amanda's death so young cast a pall over our entire family. It scared us. Her parents most of all, naturally -- they were never able to get over their fear of it happening again. But it got to all of us. Let's just say I have four sets of aunts and uncles, but only two cousins.

This was my first memorable experience with death, but I was too young to really understand it. All I knew was that one day I was thrilled about being maybe a year from having a playmate, a family confidant, and a girl too (even then, I related better to girls than boys), and the next day I was staring at a coffin that was simply too small to be allowed. It made me mad, the unfairness of it. If it was really God's will, if He was calling my baby cousin to be with Him, then why would He pick an infant who hadn't even had a chance to prove herself over, say, my devout 80-year-old great-grandmother? (Come to think of it, this sort of lines up with my family leaving the Church, on the timeline if not for the reasoning.)

To this day, we don't discuss Amanda. It's bad manners, of course, but it's certainly bad luck. So I've never really understood the full story, and more than likely I've gotten a lot of it wrong, which if my family reads this will provoke its fair share of corrective e-mails. It's not that I don't want to know; I just don't want to be the one dredging up bad memories.

But we have to remember these things, to realize what good fortune we have and to not take it for granted. After all, I myself now have a healthy, happy two-month-old. The loss of my cousin, before I even got to know her, will help me remember to protect my daughter with every ounce of passion and fiber of care I possess.