Dirge

Hey kids, greetings from the happy corner. I wish I had an exciting story or two, but the thing about being in a new relationship is that I think it pretty much makes for boring blogging. Things are going well with The Girl. I actually quit smoking cold turkey, and had my last cigarette on August 7th. For a decent run-down of my life lately, check out Frankie's rant here. And the following excerpt from an e-mail chain between my co-worker Walt and Frankie:

Frankie: The sooner you are able to reconcile that you need to say goodbye to the Jack you knew in April, the sooner you'll be able to move on. Then again, there's an outside chance that Meg figures out in the next few weeks that the real Jack is not the same guy she's been dating for the last two months and dumps him. That result is a long-shot though, because she sounds like the kind of girl who will convince herself that she can "change" him, and Jack has shown a propensity to actually give up all kinds of things for this woman.

So I'm guessing this is how it plays out over the next year or two: 1) Jack continues down the path of spending more time with Meg and her family and less time with his friends; 2) Your time with Jack continues to decline until it settles into a happy hour every third Thursday or so; 3) you get over it, because that's what guys do; 4) in about 18 months, after a particularly nasty fight during his first year of marriage to Meg, Jack realizes that he's marginalized all of this guy friends and asks you to have a few drinks so that he can apologize to you and vow to be a better friend; 5) Jack makes up with Meg and you go back to seeing him about once a month for 3 hours, yet now it's on the sly because Meg thinks you're undermining her.

Then again, if you fall in love and get married to a woman Meg likes to spend time with, you'll have more time with Jack, but only when you're together with your significant others.

Good luck.