God, it's beautiful outside. If Heaven had a climate, it would be close to this.

I had my last trainer appointment today. Bobby, my trainer, keeps trying to get me to agree to take Hunter along on a double date with him and some random girl, but I really don't know if the worlds would mesh well.

Why?

1) Because Bobby probably still has a crush on me. He's compared me to Cinderella and the Princess Bride more times than I can count. Dude, not even guys who work at Disneyworld compare girls to Cinderella.

2) Bobby is perpetually high. I didn't know this before paying for the sessions, of course, but he is. Today he bragged about the massive new bong he had purchased. Call us snobs, but we're really not into that sort of thing.

3) Have I mentioned that it turns out that Bobby has a night job? Yeah. He's an "exotic dancer." Yep. He's even got exotic-dancer-business cards with American flag backgrounds that say "Bobby *****, All American Boy."

Call me crazy, but I have a hunch that the whole double-date thing wouldn't work out too well.

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I got an AIM from Liz (the other-best-friend-from grade-school) last night. She didn't know if I had heard about Vicki's dad, and she wondered if I could call her and give her Vicki's cell phone number.

Liz, Vicki and I were all "OMG B/F/F 4Evr!" starting in 6th grade, when I met Liz as we were running the Mile in gym. Before we finished that Mile, her ankle shattered and she ended up coming back from the hospital in a wheelchair that she needed to stay in for 6 weeks. Ironically, I was the only person in all of Liz's classes, and I ended up wheeling her around between classes (and being the envy of many for leaving early all the time.)

Liz happened to live in the same neighborhood as Vicki, who I had known since 2nd grade. The combination of factors led us to form a fast friendship, and many good times were had. They were the first real "best friends" I had that didn't stab me in the back - childhood is, after all, a bitch. We had a three-way BFF necklace and everything (boy, was that hard to find.) Of course, it always had the potential to become awkward - two of us fighting and the other one in the middle, or one of us excluded - but all in all, it worked really well and I probably wouldn't have survived middle school without them.

Anyway, it just seemed strange that Vicki hadn't called Liz at all. I know why that is, rationally - not only was Vicki most likely very busy, but Liz, as we sort of always knew, is very hard to get along with at times, and there have been fights. She's grown apart from us - no, we've grown apart from her. Remarkably, Liz is still very much the same personality we knew in high school. Except that now she's getting her Master's in dairy nutrition. [I shit you not. Apparently people study this stuff.]

But it was an awkward in-the-aftermath phonecall. We exchanged pleasantries, and after getting past the requisite "boy, is this awful or what?" I explained how Vicki's dad died, so she wouldn't have to ask Vicki [doubt she wants to go into THAT a million times.] I passed on the phone # and we parted ways.

While all of the conversations regarding the topic are sad, there's also this underlying realization that this kind of thing won't go away. All parents die. Vicki's dad was taken from them too soon, and without any warning at all - but sooner or later, another one of us will lose someone. And another, and another.

But that doesn't change one bit how horrible Vicki's situation is right now. I hope she'll be OK.

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Moving on to the subject of moving. It's ironic - I've been searching for a voice teacher in the East Bay for a long time now, but there are none who live close to me. It's all Berkeley or the city, and I'm not going to fight the Caldecott Tunnel during rush hour to get voice lessons.

Then I went looking for voice teachers in the Peninsula, being as we're moving in 2 weeks. Lo and behold - a new music school has opened up not 2 blocks from our new townhouse - and it even has teachers from my alma mater, which has quite a decent music program.

A sign? Perhaps. But I'm excited. Now all I need to find is a good place to do headshots and I'll be well on the road to doing local theatre.

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Yesterday was really a crapper of a day in the end. Not only did Vicki's dad die - enough on its own - but the strange news about the fire in my hometown, followed by the news that our good friend Liz (opera singer in training) broke up with our other mutual friend. It's tentative and all, but not any easier on them.

I also forgot to mention a creepy story my mother shared yesterday. One of my friends from elementary school, Bobby, died of an anyeurism at Stanford just before coming home for the holidays a few years ago. Apparently, one of my mother's friends was talking about this open house they went to where the parents had left the house the day their son died and never returned. Now someone's selling the house for them, and it hasn't been entered since Bobby died. His bedroom, along with the rest of the house, remains untouched. His parents have divorced. now strangers are bidding on this dusty shrine of a broken home. How creepy and sad is that?

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And then my brother IM'ed me. Last time I spoke to Doug, he was thinking about dropping out of college. The poor boy has got my father's out-of-whack emotions to a lesser degree, and since he refuses to see a psychiatrist, he is forced to deal with his demons without help. I think I could earn a psychiatry degree just by dealing with Doug and Dad.

Anyway, now he doesn't think he's going to drop out of college.

Instead, he's going to run for Congress in 2008.

No, seriously. They've already put together budgets and stuff. ("They" is Doug, along with his close friends Alex and Jeff, who will be running his campaign. Naturally.) $2 million dollars, he says, is their fundraising target.

Oookaaayy. He mentions it as if it is the most obvious turn of events - "You know I want to run for Congress, right?"

Of course. When you said "drop out of school", I obviously assumed it was a ruse and that you were really going to run for national office. Duh!

The thing about Doug is, I know that he's not joking. And he's got this whole mildly frightening insistence upon failure being unacceptable. I hope that if this campaign gets off the ground, he makes it all the way. The aftermath of anything besides success won't be pretty at all.

Of course, the country could do far worse. He's highly intelligent, extremely informed, and extremely passionate. He's also a class act, and he inspires a lot of respect from others more experienced than him. And thank God, he's a Democrat.

So we'll just have to see how that whole thing turns out. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.