Oh Townie night! It was fun. With my 3 brothers and 2 sisters-in-law and also my friend Ed, and then I saw a friend I hadn't seen in years and years, Long Tran. And all his brothers and sisters. We all played pool, and I suck. Saw Mike Smith (Vince's little bro) and a few others. Not so many people out due to the chilly weather. I enjoyed it not so crowded. Some of the people I was with got pretty tipsy. I hate seeing my bro Joe resist trying to shake his alcohol addiction. We had a pretty good (and sometimes absurd) talk the night before in which he admits he's an alcoholic. Not by any prompting of mine. The hard-core alcoholics I know best are my brother and then Karl, who is, to Steve and I as a couple, and to Steve personally, a best friend. And really they both carry the same look even though phenotypically they couldn't be more different. I think I can identify an alcoholic at this point by sight and smell alone. It's a form of self-medication and the brain gets dependent. And for those of us who tend toward dependency period, or self-medication, for whatever reason (depression probably) it just compounds that reason and makes it even worse.

My heart breaks for the victims of the tsunamis, especially the children. We have to remember children every day, for every day tsunamis of loneliness, hunger, neglect, and violence engulf so many. Please, please pray for the children and families and everyone but don't stop there. Pray for them all, wherever they may be. Orphanages. Wombs. Everywhere.