The Default State Is Broken

This is probably incredibly shallow and male and white of me, but I have to admit that every so often I just straight-up forget  how beautiful my partner is. It has to be at least partly because I can't believe that someone so beautiful would be interested in me, and at least partly because I have a terrible memory, and probably partly because I'm pretty self-involved and self-directed by nature. But yeah, I'll be sitting around and I will just plain forget that my wife is beautiful. And then I'll see a picture, like this one: Or she will come home from work and I will get up from my desk and she will take off her scarf and say "Hello, Husband!" in this fantastically posessive  way that never fails to make me smile, and I will see her and suddenly remember all over again how beautiful she is, and how amazingly glad I am that she is a part of my life. I don't want to forget, but sometimes I do. And the best part of that is when I get to learn again ...

My friend Brian died today. He'd been sick for a little while. It'd been tough to see him struggling. Brian was kind, and generous, and fiercely self-reliant (to his detriment, it turns out). He was sharp and wise and while he didn't talk very often, frequently his contributions were the spot-on perfect note for humour or insightful commentary. He was a good host and a good gamemaster, and he convinced me to try more than one thing I never would have tried before, from specific boardgames to specific game engines to specific foods, even to specific music. He was one of the people that convinced me to move to Portland, and who welcomed me when I arrived, and who opened his home and his social circles to me when I was settling in, and who consistently made sure I had a place at his table and his games. He sold me his house, my first house, when I decided I was ready to put down roots here. We were going to pick back up on our tabletop game next week; we tried to work out ...