Hey adr0ck , remember Mrs. Orsman?  kakita_shisumo , I know you do.

I dreamed I was searching for something.  I was downtown, in a strange split-level building.  I was on the lower level, which was like a garden level, half underground.  The walls were bare brick, the floor was bare concrete, and the ceiling was rafters and joists and plumbing, completely unfinished.  Some grumpy old alcoholics apparently lived there - big, brawny, bald type guys who were functional, had jobs and whatnot, but were leery about a stranger rummaging around their residence.

The room I was in had a couple areas, one was two steps lower than the other.  The upper area had a set of folding chairs & table.  The lower level had a long wall of what looked like safety deposit boxes like you'd see in a bank vault, or maybe they were drawers of some kind.  They were dark gray metal, all identical and all had metal handles.  That's where I was searching.  I was sitting on the floor when I found what I was looking for.  One of the drawers was full of these tiny, thin rolls of paper, almost like super skinny rolls of tape, like what you'd use to pinstripe a car.  The paper was sticky on one side, and when I unrolled it, it had tiny tiny little transparencies - thumbnails of old photos.  And I mean they were small, like a few millimeters on each side.  Somehow though I could see them, and they were old photos from my time in elementary school.  There were photos of kids whose names I remember, and photos of kids whose names I don't, but whose faces I remember.  And there were photos from Mrs. Orsman's GTC class.  This was exactly what I had been searching for.

Fast-forward (because that's what happened in my dream) to some point soon after that.  I had somehow tracked down Mrs. Orsman, and also gotten ahold of a bunch of her other old students that I went to school with.  Ashley, Adam, you guys were there, as well as Kirsten Bisbee and some other girl whose face I remember but whose name I don't.  And we all got together and brought Mrs. Orsman to that building downtown so we could show her those photos.  I feel like they were something she'd lost and had been searching for, although that was just a vague feeling in my dream.  She was delighted to see them and started talking about her relationships with certain students, the bond that sometimes happens with certain kids, and she compared those relationships to other meaningful relationships that happen throughout life, telling us that we all fell into that category. It was really cool.  And I think that we had worked out some way to scan those photos and enlarge them, and we were going to make normal size prints of them all.

So yep, that was my dream.  It was so interesting and cool that I woke up from it at 5:30 this morning, grabbed my phone and e-mailed myself the details so I wouldn't forget them.  Cool, right?

www.fstopdj.com

I mean, I know I already did that once over at vox, but that one was lame, I decided.  I've spent a bunch of time creating this new one from scratch, and I've ported tons of old music posts I've made around the internet over to that blog, complete with download links for the music.

I've put a lot into this one, so I'm invested.  I think this is what will keep me posting over there. :-)

in other news, I've been reading LJ with some regularity again for the last few days. no idea if that will stick, but there it is.

I was born in Wisconsin, but my family moved to Kansas when I was two years old. I don't remember anything about Wisconsin.

When I was about eight years old, roughly 1984, a man showed up unannounced at our front door. My father, after greeting and hugging him, explained that he was an old friend from Wisconsin who was in town on business, and wanted to take us to dinner. I was in the third grade and my best friend Adam and I had been friends for a couple years. At that age, I'd never experienced growing apart from someone, never experienced no longer being friends with someone you once had a friendship with. So when my father tried to explain that he and this man weren't quite as close as they had been when we lived in Wisconsin, it was tough for me to grasp. "Why don't you just write letters?", I remember asking. I'm sure his answer sounded something like "it's just not that simple, kiddo."

Then and there, I vowed I was never going to let any friends get away like that. My friends would ALWAYS be my friends, and we would never needlessly grow apart or lose touch. If only the world worked that way, right? What do you want, I was eight.

Fast forward to me being 19 years old. It was 1995. I had switched schools a couple times, but I eventually came full circle back to the public school system I started out in. Adam and I had drifted closer and further apart but had never lost touch, and we became pretty close again through high school. So far I had done a pretty good job of keeping my good friends close and staying in touch. But that year, Adam went away to college, and I didn't. Naturally we were both very busy and quickly grew very far apart. We would see each other occasionally, over holidays and such. We hadn't lost touch, but it was headed that way quickly. We were living very different lives and as time passed, we had less and less in common. This was my first real experience with this and I have to be honest, I had a really hard time with it. I could see that in just another year or two, we would likely grow apart and lose touch completely, just as had happened with some of my less close friends from middle school and childhood. This was Adam though. This was a guy I had now been friends with for 13 years, and this was the very guy I had in mind when I made myself the promise not to lose touch with my friends.

But distance makes it hard, and diverging interests make it even harder. It was fortuitous that the next year was when the Internet came along and really started to become mainstream. The Internet saved that friendship. The ability to easily e-mail, and later chat (when that technology matured), allowed us to easily keep in touch across the distance. I was saved! The Internet was going to enable me to continue keeping that promise to myself never to lose friends unnecessarily.

Yes, even at the age of 20, I still had not really learned about how life works with regard to that. I went to school and church with mostly the same set of kids from the time I started going up until about that age, 18 or so, and had managed to keep in touch with most of the ones I cared about over those next couple years. It has been the years since then that have showed me just how fluid life is, and how easily and frequently your group of friends can change. Since graduating high school I've averaged a new chapter in my life about every two years or so, and with each new chapter comes a whole new group of people. I've been able to keep in touch with most of the ones that I care about, but the sheer number of people from my past who I've friended on MySpace or FaceBook who I've had absolutely nothing to say to beyond the initial "hey, I remember you" conversation is a pretty stark indication that no matter how badly I wished to the contrary as a child, my dad was right. It just ain't that simple, kiddo. People really do fade out of your life. People change, they grow apart, they move on. It's a part of life.

And having a late wife who passed from cancer a couple years ago I feel qualifies me fairly well to speak on the subject of people moving out of your life, sometimes no matter how tightly you try to hold them close.

I guess I just wanted to share my personal story of how I learned the lesson to enjoy the people you love while they are near. You never know when it might be the last time you're all together. It doesn't have to be tragic, it's just the way life works, so enjoy it. Don't overthink it (like I'm totally doing right now). Just cherish it. People will go, others will come to fill those spaces in your lives, but enjoy the times you get to have, and don't forget those people. Not very many people in your life will be with you over the course of many years, through thick and thin, through geographical, professional, and personal changes. Cherish those people most of all, but love your friends too while you've got 'em. I do. And yes, although not frequently, Adam and I do still talk, and still see each other once in a while, which is pretty cool.

I got fired last week.

So, web developer for hire in Wichita.

Las Vegas Boulevard

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Storefront

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Fountain

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Inside Caesar's Palace

I'm too tired to say a whole lot.

I voted last Thursday. Tonight I DJ'd (horribly) at the Sedgwick County Democrats' official watch party. A bunch of my new twitter friends were there and that was so cool.

The feeling when they announced Obama's win... the theater just exploded. I'm so happy right now. :-)

I remember a long time ago (but can't be bothered to find the post right now) when I posted a big ranting vent about my high school sweetheart and her refusal to let me have anything to do with the child we had together.

Yesterday that child, my biological daughter, who is now 12 and who I've never been able to talk to or be with, sent me a message on Facebook.

I'm being sued over a car accident that happened last year. I need a good attorney. Know any?

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Because I do.

In spite of the fact that my wife passed away, I'm a really lucky and fortunate guy.

I just came from a house party where I was asked to DJ. I did, and had a great time. Before that, I took my son to see the 4th of July fireworks, and we had a blast. He loved them. "Fireworks daddy! Fireworks!"

Tomorrow I have a meeting with local photographers, a BBQ at my best friend's for his birthday, another BBQ with some of my DJ friends, a get-together at another friends house, and then I'm meeting some out of town friends for drinks. I get to spend some time with my son, but I also have a sitter for the rest of the night. I'm so lucky I get to do these things.

I know this because my marriage was pretty much just a weight around my neck. I loved her and always will, but I see now that I'm so much better off without that relationship holding me back. I never would have wanted things to end the way they did, but I'm glad to be out of it. Not very many people get a second chance at this part of life - the part where you're young and having fun. Sure, I have an 8 to 5, I have stress, I have bills, but I take care of that stuff, and I still have the time and money to kick it on the weekends. And that's a really fortunate thing. I'm happy. :-)