What I realized today: I really miss Barb. I'll spare the world the entire thought process behind the realization that I miss her--the short version: I realized today that I still use one particular word *way* too often, and I picked it up from Barb my freshman year of college. That's almost twenty years of word overuse. Thanks, Barb!

I think it's really odd that I miss her, though, given that I haven't talked to her in at least five years, haven't seen her in more than ten years. Don't know where she is (not quite true, I know she's in the Seattle area somewhere), don't know what she's doing. I'm not really quite sure where our friendship went. Time and distance probably did it in; my fault for moving to L.A./Oregon/Indiana, I guess. Maybe we both could have made a better effort. Maybe she was tired of dealing w/my difficult personality, I don't know. And actually, I don't care. If she called me tomorrow and said, "You know, I haven't seen you in ten years because you're the most annoying person on the face of the earth, but hey, I've decided to give you a second chance," I'd say, "Hey! That's great! Let's go see a movie!" Ah, it's telling that I would see a movie for Barb, because Catherine has to practically tie me up and drag me to the movie theater on a normal day.

So, I tried doing a web search to see if I could find her, and I did, sort of. I found her father's obituary, which just...stunned me. He's younger than my dad! Anyway, the obituary mentioned that both she and Deb were in the Seattle area, but she's got such a common last name, I can't find her. I did find a mortgage officer with the same name, a lot of good that did me. I don't know, maybe the alumni association would help me out. I'm not sure what the proper etiquette is--her father just died, does she really need to be dealing with anybody else right now? Maybe I should just let it slide. What started out as sort of a happy thought earlier in the day has turned into something else, and maybe that something else just needs to be let go.