So what I’m supposed to do is write about what we’ve learned with upgrading our media system. Mostly I’ve learned that backing up your DVDs is hard, and I managed to lose one DVD (Babe) in doing it (the center ring disintegrated and nearly took a DVD player with it). Meanwhile the jury is out on the Neuros OSD, and I’ve got a sneaking new regard for my Archos.

But mainly what I’m stuck on is my best friend, and words. You see, just about everyone I know in long-term loving relationships has developed their own vocabulary, which ranges from impenetrable to cloying and possibly nauseating when exposed to outsiders. I was reading a great new (to me) blog, “Snotty McSnotterson”  (http://sn0tty.wordpress.com/), and she signed off a (at times gross) paean to her love, “I meatloaf you the most, J – bonne anniversaire!” Which I get, but not really.

Is it a riff on mispronouncing Love (I luff you, I loaf you)?  Is it a shared remembrance of a meal, or lack of a meal (God and FSM know that I’ve screwed up my share)? And the French, a shared Francophilia, an extended bon mot, or as is the case in own home right now,  spawned from language practice as we prepare for a long-planned trip?

Who knows, really. It’s amazing how language fails us here, and that we accept that this is how people who share space, lives, and themselves so completely communicate. In layers of connotations built of words, memories, glances, and movements. And occasionally we reveal them to others, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unintentionally. Which brings me to my best friend.

I have a tendency to start obsessing about abstract stuff. Right now it’s document-based database systems (e.g., CouchDB, Tokyo Cabinet, and MongoDB), asymmetric and symmetric encryption, and Twitter. Oh, and graffiti. Yeah, paint on walls. While trying not to burn the cassoulet. My best friend is there, and here, making sure the important stuff in our life gets done, the pets get fed, the books get balanced, the place stays clean. She is a gracious, loving person who fiercely defends and nurtures the people in her life.  And I’m the lucky guy who gets to say,

Back to you Splash.

Love, Sparky