There's something in the air...

You'd have to figure with all the snow we've gotten over the last few days, weeks, months, that Spring has GOT to be right around the corner. We've had a few days over 40, and that's always a good start, especially after getting 8-10 inches of wet snow on Saturday. But that's not it. No, there's something else. And actually, I wouldn't really call it a sign of spring, but I guess my brain is just making free associations -- nature's rebirth, birds and flowers, new beginnings.

People are getting married.

The march of progress is inescapable -- I got my first evite to a wedding a few weeks ago, from my friends H & J. It was just a save-the-date, but still kind of amusing. (It also asked for my meal choice -- salmon, chicken or mushroom risotto.) And practical -- a heads-up before they got the actual invitations in hand, addressed and in the mail. And, I knew they were getting married this summer, so it wasn't like it was a surprise or anything.

As opposed to hearing about the engagement of some frisbee friends, B & C, at a party on Saturday.

Or the phone call I got last night from my friend V, when he told me that he had just bought a car, and oh, by the way, he and M had just gotten married.

And then finding out about Matt and Amy by reading Matt's blog this morning.

Yep, there's something in the air.

Me? I think I might've caught a bug -- my throat's feeling a little scratchy today. And my girlfriend is moving to Chicago.

I don't want this to come off the wrong way. I admit to being pretty cynical sometimes, but I AM genuinely happy for all the previously mentioned couples. And things between me and the SOOTTAD are still really good, other than not wanting to think about the logistics of living 1,000 miles apart, and dealing with the visceral "she's leaving me" response.

But sometimes I feel like the one guy who bought the [insert wicked cool thing that everyone loves] when it was first released and had the battery explode when I turned it on. The only guy to fall off a Segway? Um. No, maybe not. But you get the idea.

Or, to use my favorite analogy, it's like David Wilcox's Big Blue Poodle (from Live Songs & Stories):

I'm tryin' to find my way to some club, and somebody will have told me, "oh, you just drive straight on such-and-such, and you see the..." y'know, something ridiculous: "you see the HUGE BLUE POODLE, and then you CAN'T MISS IT... and then you turn right and..."

...and I'm thinkin' to myself: "now, I've been driving now, and driving and driving... and I have only one landmark to go by. What if I... missed it?" And you know they said you can't miss it (which is the kiss of death) so what if I'm just driving into oblivion, and I'll just drive for the rest of my life, you know?

And the reason why it bugs me... Y'know, it's no big deal -- I can make it to the club, I can skip the sound check. I'll find it, eventually.

It's only bad directions.

It bugs me on a metaphorical level, because it's just too much like life.

Y'know, like as a kid when you're asking people "well how do you know... when it's true love?"

What do they always say?

"Oh, you'll know, you'll know."

Well, y'know, that's like saying "you can't miss it." It's the KISS OF DEATH, y'know...

...you just imagine you're 96 years old: "No, I'm holding out for the big blue poodle... They said it was on the road here, 'I can't miss it...'"

To follow through with the analogy, you could say that I've already made the turn at the big blue poodle. Except that, well, it turned out that it wasn't actually the big blue poodle.

I kinda jumped the gun... y'know? I didn't want to miss it... And, well... at the time, it seemed kinda poodle-like. But well, y'know, maybe it was really, uh, like a big shrubbery. Or a rock or something that kinda looked like a poodle? Y'know, from the right angle it might have looked like some kind of dog or something. Ok -- so maybe it was a big rock that might have been shaped more like a fish. And it was red. But I coulda sworn there was a sign next to it that said that it was a blue poodle. (Ok, maybe it said I was a poodle. It's been a while, it's hard to remember the details.)

And I wasn't entirely sure there really were any poodles on this road, so I figured it was close enough, you know?

So anyway, it took me a few years to get back on the road.

A few years ago and a few years later, I thought I might have really found the poodle -- so I turned... but there wasn't actually a turn off. And when I got the car back on the road, I noticed something up ahead and pulled up to it to figure out what it was.

I'm pretty sure it's blue, but you know -- what if what we call "blue" is actually perceived as a different color by different people? So, if I could look at something I think is "blue" with someone else's eyes, it would look... "orange," except they'd call it "blue" because it's always been "blue" to them. Then is it really blue? (So maybe it's orange. Or aqua. Or cyan. WTF is cyan, anyway?) And I think it's a poodle. Well, a dog, probably. But what if it's really a puli or something? And is it big enough? "Big" is a pretty subjective word. . . .

Yeah, so I've been here a while, but I really don't want to mess this up again. Of course, there's more than one way to mess this up. Yeah, we're good like that.

So maybe that's a little backstory, perhaps more than was necessary, which we can set aside so we can move on to more important things.

Things like: congratulations Matt and Amy! Congratulations H, J, V, M, B, C, and all the A to Z's that I've forgotten or haven't heard from yet. Congratulations, good luck, well wishes and happy thoughts to all of you.

Really.

I hope to see you all soon, with my own poodle.