Thanksgiving involved enjoyment without stress: an ideal and narrow threshold of energy. Matt and I hitched a ride with my sister to eat with the Ashevillian wing of the family, and the ride home resulted in perhaps the most unique moment of the holiday: the two of us returning to our own car by trekking down a Commerce sidewalk past two miles of standstill Black Friday traffic, shouldering huge backpacks and carrying half of a plastic-wrapped birthday cake on a platter. I came home to find several generous checks from my mother and grandmother and an excellent CD thanks to Bec. On Sunday, inspired in part by my artist relatives' urgings to invest more effort in my artwork and in part by an uncharacteristically nonspecific need, I traded all of that birthday money for a shiny new digital camera. As I'll be making frequent use of it in order to justify the purchase, one can expect this space to soon be filled with more images, though undoubtedly few of any merit. (The photos below were shot with a disposable camera and scanned, just for reference.)

We now have a week and change left in the semester and my ambivalence is climbing to critical levels. I have an eerie amount of free time, actually. I've been sinking many hours into LOTR: The Third Age and just finished William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, both gifts from Matt; before that I finished Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole. Over the weekend Matt and I also signed up for Hollywood Video's MVP pass and have since been putting it to exploitative use. At some point soon I might take a break from watching movies and playing Third Age to prep for finals.

Tomorrow night I am taking off of work to go downtown with Charlie and get a tattoo I produced of the Ouroboros. (Charlie's getting the crucified serpent.) I have wanted a tattoo for a long time, am tired of idly talking about it, and feel particularly well-acquainted with this symbol's meanings. And because of what I have already gone through, I am not at all concerned that the procedure will hurt. I will take pictures.

On Saturday night I dreamt I arrived at work to discover that Andy was still alive, puttering around the office as normal before the shift started, in his usual button-down shirt, tight jeans and scuffed brown wingtips. When I remarked that I'd thought he was dead someone said simply that the body had been misidentified. "Oh," I said, and in the dream that made sense. I wonder if I'm handling his death as well as I think I am.

My week was good, my birthday was excellent thanks to my baby, and today, a bit of damp driving aside, is going to be great. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

See? I said there would be pictures.

   The view of Asheville from Dad's porch. Those are leaves in the sky.
   Becca, Monica and Zoe.
   Becca, Monica and I.
   Matt by an overlook in Suwannee.
   Sheba on the patio.

I forgot to mention that after my last checkup I was diagnosed with both low blood pressure (~100/60) and Gilbert's Syndrome. Two more random and basically negligible feathers for my cap, I suppose. I've survived another year, in any case: I'll be turning 23 in six days, on the 23rd.

The past week has been especially busy, which I'm thankful for. Keeping up with my schoolwork has given me something to think about other than Andy. Andy was my boss for over two years, and he was always a lot of fun to talk to but we were never very close. A lot of my coworkers who knew him better are understandably having a harder time adjusting to his sudden absence. When I got to work on Sunday night to see everyone and help close down, I found out that while Matt and I were in Tennessee, everyone had been under a barrage of visits and calls from the press. Due to its political connotations Andy's suicide became a quick media event, with reporters from across the country calling my coworkers for information and quotes only hours after his body was found, and minutes after they heard the news themselves in a call from our sobbing administrator, to whom Andy was like a son. They even got ahold of Andy's parents before the police did, and that's how they found out their son was dead. And it still infuriates me to know that the other supervisors, whose grief was more intense than mine, had to deal with this when I wasn't there to support and defend them. We are a very small and tight-knit group, and being both the senior supervisor and the only male, I am very protective of them. My disgust for our press system has reached a new height.

The first few days, it was very hard to try not to think about it for a while only to see it on the front page of CNN and the NYT. This was Andy; this was my boss, and these articles talk about him and my job and they quote people I know. Our lives had suddenly been cracked open and mined. And then after that few days, even as we were still trying to understand what happened, this national interest began to fade rapidly and is now mostly gone. This mystery, our lack of proof and understanding, was unappealing. Briefly there were sensational reports of a ridiculous "suicide journal" and a mysterious love affair with another woman, but these have also faded. The people who didn't know Andy have since moved on to other tragedies and those of us who did are now gradually digging ourselves out of the wreckage.

We had an administrative meeting on Monday night to discuss how to manage his loss at work and decided that we, the supervisors below Andy but above the staff, would simply divide up Andy's workload between ourselves. While none of us said it outright then, we have since admitted to each other that things will actually be more efficient this way. Since then things have been running more or less as smoothly as before. Our relaxed dynamic is still there, but we feel Andy's loss. I'm still who I was on Sunday afternoon, wearing a towel and picking up the phone to call Leigh and really just wanting to take a nap, but I feel Andy's loss. A blitzkrieg of reporters was unable to dig up the true heart and meaning of his death in three days of rabid searching, and I don't know how long it will take all of us to do it on our own.

Last Friday I wrote an 8-page paper in one frenzied sitting, fired it off to my professor and then embarked on the trip with Matt to attend my cousin's wedding in Suwanee, Tennessee. My goal was to leave by 1pm; I didn't even finish the paper until 1:30. We were packed, gassed up and on the road by shortly after two, with the rehearsal dinner scheduled to start at 6. Sweaty and tired we arrived half an hour late to discover that no one else was there because we were now in Central Time and it was only 5:30. Saved! We hauled our things into the bathroom and changed clothes in time for everyone else to arrive.

As mentioned before this is the very southern and very conservative side of my family. Fortunately, everyone was very warm and aside from Matt being introduced as my "friend," we had a great time. The wedding was beautiful of course, but ohhh, the food-- a big dinner on Friday night, a big brunch on Saturday morning and then a huge reception feast after the wedding. It was arguably the best part of the trip. We also got to spend some time with my mother and grandmother, who were staying in my aunt's guest house with two very beautiful and friendly Abyssinian cats, Sheba and Solomon. (I have pictures. I swear they're being developed.) We're slated to visit Mom and Grandma sometime this spring in Arizona, where they're currently in the process of moving.

We woke early on Sunday and made the drive home again in about four hours. We dragged everything inside and Matt checked the answering machine while I checked my mail (78 emails, 11 of which weren't spam). I took a quick shower and was out in time to hear a message from Leigh, one of my coworkers, asking that I call her at work as soon as possible. I puttered into my room wearing a towel and called, hoping I'd be able to ask for the night off to take a nap. "Aaron," she said, "Andy's dead. He shot himself yesterday morning."

The trip back to Asheville was short but pleasant. I had a good visit with my Dad and spent most of the rest of the time with Bec and Monica; we played a lot of Mario Party 5 and on Friday visited UNCA's haunted theatre, which was impressive. I've finally realized the fundamental difference between Athens and Asheville: here, the bumper stickers on all the rusty, mud-spattered Ford and Chevy pickups are for Bush/Cheney; up there they're for Kerry/Edwards. I forgot until I was driving up the mountains that the leaves are turning now, the time each year when Asheville goes from beautiful to gorgeous. I'll post some pictures once I get the roll developed.

Having been following national politics faithfully since the last election, waiting for yesterday to arrive, I did well at keeping myself from hoping up until a few hours before the voting began to taper off, when I saw several credible polls that predicted it easily for Kerry. Then I finally started to hope, and suddenly four years' worth of hope condensed in me just in time to watch the race end in sputtering defeat. I slept off the sting last night and even went to campus today before eventually giving up and coming home. I promptly blubbered like an idiot for half an hour and now I feel a little better, but not much. There aren't many things in life that I truly believe in and care about, but this cause was one of them. Now that it's been crushed, well... You know, every word I type about this is feeling akin to stabbing myself in the face, and there are plenty of other people with more eloquent sob stories, so I'll leave it at this.

In other news, I recently found out I'm graduating soon.