Today for you, tomorrow for me.

Friday after class I headed to Birmingham; the drive down was less than pleasant because of traffic and construction, but I arrived safely, so I suppose the drive wasn't to bad after all. As soon as I got there I met Tyler, Lance, Britni, Mark, Jennifer, and Melissa, and we were off to see Rent! It was amazing, as was expected, and it affected me more than I thought it would. I first started leaking during "Will I Loose My Dignity." For those of you un-interested in Rent (so you probably stopped reading this as soon as you saw the word mentioned), this song takes place during a life support meeting for the AIDS carriers. I kept thinking about Camp Kaliedescope, and my kids there. For those who don't know, that's the camp I do at McDowell for children with or affected by AIDS. A lot of our campers don't actually have the virus, but someone close to them does. I mostly thought of the mothers who come to camp with the kids, and what it must be like to slowly loose the ability to take care of your children, and what it's like to accept your future absence from their lives. So I cried. I cried again at the reprise of "I'll Cover You." I knew it was coming and I knew it was a sad part, but this wasn't a gradual tearing up... this was BAM, water everywhere! It was beautiful. Umm, also, Lance scared me shitless by leaning in from the row behind me to whisper in my ear; I was intent on the stage and jumped like 2308 feet in the air; I had the complete fight or flight response-- it's very difficult to sit through the end of a play when your adrenaline is rushing so.

The play left me feeling pretty worthless, honestly. I have so much; I am financially secure and I know I've got enough experience to keep me hirable, at least in day cares; I've got a family I love and a family who loves me; I've got friends upon friends; I can read. And there are so many with so little, and there are people dying, not growing old and dying, but just dying. I'm not saying I want to sell everything I own and start working in the slums; I am saying that I am going to make a greater effort to be an active part of the changing world. As it stands now, I do a camp for the mentally disabled and one for AIDS kids, and I do Big Brothers Big Sisters; two of those events, however important they are, are about two weeks of intensive service, but nothing the rest of the year. BBBS doesn't take up that much time, and there are plenty of organizations that I could actually get my little sister involved in with me.

Back to my Birmingham update... we got back to campus, where we parted ways with Britni and Mark and Melissa, and we met with Jennifer and Jessica (not my Jessica). We played a mixed up version of Circle of Death (or was it Ring of Fire?), which was ended early so we could play Drunk Driver... man, that was fun. Jennifer and I collaborated to make the game longer, much to the dismay of Thomas, who was the drunk driver. Poor guy. And poor Lance, who had to take care of Puking Thomas and Puking Tyler. I'm going to have to say that passing up the trip to Wendy's was a good call on my part. (Jessica was sober and drove them). I heard great stories about it all this morning.

I also lunched with Karen, which was wondeful, as one would assume. We also talked for a very long time about very random subjects. She might be making friends with Anthony, the special ed. cafeteria worker, and that makes me VERY happy. I wish all of you would make a point to just say hello to him whenever you see him. Just introduce yourself once, then give him a wave every now and again. You will make his life better, I promise.

I hope Rosario and Stephen are home soon... I'm ready to go hang out with my beautiful Meagan.