Everytime I see your face it reminds me of the places we used to go

If you could get away with calling in sick all the time from work yet still get paid, this blog would be my job. I don't know where to start for playing catch-up on the last seven months. No major, life-altering events have occurred, just the ever-quickening course of time as the weeks and months streak by. I took a four-day weekend, forced to use leave time by a corporate policy that refuses to allow leave to roll across the annual date of hire. One of the worst policies I've ever encountered, but appeals have fallen on deaf ears. But it's been a great weekend so far as I sit here on a Sunday evening by myself. I picked Megan up from school Friday morning and received what I've quickly come to consider the best hug of my life. I was looking down the hallway when I heard her squeal, "Daddy!," behind me as she ran and jumped into my arms, wrapping her body entire around me and pressing her face against mine. I used to worry my little girl might be autistic in her early years, she avoided physical contact so much. It's a hard thing not being able to hold your first-born without her squirming out of your grasp for years on end, and watching her develop out of these issues to the point of exhibiting such naked affection is almost beyond words. The memory of that hug will be one of my most treasured possessions in this life.

I turned 44 last November, and an odd thing happened. My brain, always slow to take up the blindingly obvious, finally realized that there are more years behind than ahead. Why this thought didn't dawn on me on, say, my 40th birthday I have no idea, but it struck me last year hard and heavy with its undeniable truth. I'll be lucky to see my little boy, Ian, reach his 30th birthday, and can only hope he no longer needs his father as he's left to this world. I read Cormac McCarthy's bleak post-apocalyptic father and son struggle for survival, "The Road," last night in almost a single sitting. The father's desperate and losing fight for his son's continued life left me unable to sleep after the book was shelved, the son's appearance Ian's wide-eyed impish face so full of innocence and discovered mischief. Hard stuff to process after reality's imposition onto fiction.

My brother phoned a few nights ago to say his second wife wants a divorce. This will leave my mother's two oldest children each twice-divorced. We spoke for almost an hour that night. He's in a bad situation, financially, with child support for the twin boys, Alex and Zack, from his first marriage, and now for his young son from his second. My brother was in a bad automobile accident almost four years ago that severely damaged his left leg and costing him quite a bit of his business caring for rental homes in his neighborhood outside of Orland, Florida. Yet as my mother would say, "Life goes on."

I'm still strongly addicted to Lord of the Rings Online, playing almost every night after everyone else goes to bed. This game has crimped my reading so much that if my stack of unread books continues to grow at its current rate it'll one day in the not-so-distant future outgrow my collection of read stuff. The game recently saw the golden woods of Lothlorien introduced, the heart of elvendom in Tolkien's Middle-earth, the place where Aragorn and Arwen pledged their love for one another, and the developers have done a fantastic job lifting this fictional location from the page.

I've been repeatedly listening to Ringo Starr's "Photograph" while writing this entry. I heard the song during a trailer for Judd Apatow's new comedy due this summer while Melissa and I sat at the movies during our first date in well over a year. I couldn't quite remember the song's title or its artist but found it on iTunes after a few minutes of searching. We're now at 100 songs for Melissa's iPod.