saying goodbye to Lou

OK, this is a little odd: I'm listening to country music. I can't explain it. Ah well.

I digress. This is about Medgar, a fellow Smelt. For a few days more. Medgar - Lou, as I call him - is moving with Mike to Seattle at the end of the month. Which means, of course, that I have to move there about a year from now.

I joke. Medgar and I knew each other in Montreal, so for almost ten years now. I met him at my second practice with À Contre-Courant, and we became friends thanks to sharing a lane and living not too far from each other. When he finished his degree (no, he's not also a librarian), he got a job in Chicago. Serendipity brought me here as well, and for most of my first week in this city, I stayed with him until my furniture arrived.

Friday night was one party for him, a Smelts party. Conrad and I begged off another one last night - I was so worn down that I was in bed and asleep before 8:30. Not hard living, just encroaching old age. In any case, some photos from the party (and that first photo, I should add, was from dinner at Nohana on my 31st birthday, waaaay back in 2001), and a goodbye to Lou. Conrad and I very much hope that we'll have opportunities to see him and Mike when we're back west in Vancouver, whether they come up or we head down.