Look, I don’t want to be a downer, but its my website, alright?

So, at what point is it supposed to get easier? I can’t honestly say that I’ve had a single day yet where I haven’t thought about Derek being gone. Sure, sometimes its just a passing thought (on the good days), but the thought is there, nonetheless. Whether its telling joke that was a favorite of his, or simply passing by a place where he and I had gone (how silly is it that I find Best Buy mildly depressing right now?) the thought is there. Sure, there are good days and bad days. There are times where I’m surprised how ok I am, and times where it feels like I’m being smothered by a ton of bricks. Moving the last of Derek’s big stuff from his house in Cheverly, and therefore having to visit that house and his room, was surprisingly not as painful as I thought it would be. Seeing all of Derek’s stuff neatly piled in his Dad’s garage? A kick in the balls. His parents were talking about having a day where we gathered friends and pretty much gave away Derek’s possessions. That will probably be not so fun. Though, I will admit, there is some stuff of his I’d like to have – some for selfish reasons (stuff I could actually use, as gross as that is), some because I’d like to have it just because it was his. The idea bothers me a bit, for the same reason that I always get depressed when I move and see all my stuff boxed up. There’s this passing feeling like you’re summing a person up by their possessions. I like stuff. I like having stuff. Sometimes, my stuff definitely defines me. That doesn’t make it a good thing.

Gaming night has been sort of touch and go for me. In the past couple of months, Derek had missed our gaming nights a lot – he had been really busy at work before he left for Hawaii, and then… well, he left for Hawaii. So his absence wasn’t out of the ordinary, and yet now its just painfully obvious that he’s not there. Despite the fact that we often joked about how Derek tended to be a pretty passive roleplayer (something I hope I’ve learned to overcome [at least a bit] in the past two years of playing Nobilis) it was always obvious how much he loved being there with everyone. We just restarted the D&D campaign yesterday, and while we didn’t have a moment or silence or anything, I felt him missing (particularly since Kirt kept using the word “taint” – but you probably don’t want an explanation for that).

I am totally screwed if my MythTV box stops working. Why the hell did I let Derek convince me that installing Gentoo Linux was a good idea? I have no freaking idea how to even update the system. I guess this is where Derek starts teaching me to be as fearless as he was with this kind of thing. If it breaks, you just fix it, right?

I’ve never had to be Mr. Fix-It before. Not like this, at least.

Need to make time to get my second tattoo. I’d love to go down to Miami and hit up Miami Ink to do so – it would be a cool trip…but I think that might be a little difficult and expensive.