This blog is awful. I'm not blaming you, or myspace, and I'm certainly not blaming me. I'm just saying that this blog is terrible. I think it has to do with GUI and broadcasting rss so you don't have to type everything twice. Or whatever.

Speaking of doing things twice, I got sick for a month. At the end of the second week, when a cold exploded into some kind of respiratory infection, I went to the doctor's office. He put me on a rigorous course of amoxicillin, which one might think could nuke the bacteria or fungus or fauna or whatever. But three days after the course ended and my doctor pronounced me cured, I got sick again. I came back to the clinic, this time actually angry about still being sick, and he blinked awhile, and prescribed azithromycin, which is a different antibiotic.

And I was relieved but super duper annoyed now, because it's going to take more than two weeks of the Dannon Activia Challenge to get my innards back in fighting form, but also because the doctor's explanation was batshit insane, AND because I have already personally sought advice using myriad hypochondria sites on the internet, and the doctor still hasn't been able to guess the diagnosis I have in mind. Regardless, I've decided to spring for an ENT. We're meeting tomorrow.

Newburg phoned me in the middle of the night, while I was bundled on the couch half-asleep trying to watch Freaky Friday or the Parent Trap or whatever. I began enumerating the reasons I didn't want to be sick--friends and parents visiting, principally--and then I mentioned that my pal Nik purchased us Arcade Fire tickets, but that I was too sick to go. Newburg recommended that I start downing those fluids! that I need some inspiration in my life! that a live Arcade Fire show would hold the answer! that I need to see Will at his last stop in the US!

I did down my fluids, and Newburg phoned the next afternoon to say Will put two guest passes aside at Will Call, and to get my butt off the sofa. Nik and I took a cab all the way to Berkeley, which is a pretty town that smells like pot and dissent. Nik and I discovered that guest passes could get you seated in the roped area behind the sound guys, so we sat there.

It was soooo good to see Will! The audience cheered as he climbed all the way up the scaffolding to pump his fist and god I had to cover my eyes. I'd shied from seeing a live show for a few years now, because it seemed so strange and foreign, the idea of Edwin in front, and Will--who had brought a toy piano to band practice circa 2002--flailing and jumping across the stage with force and power. Watching it, though, it made sense.

There was a door to the afterparty. Kate, who I knew from WNUR, was standing near the back, by the door to the afterparty. "Jenn!" she shouted at me. I turned and frowned. "I changed my hair," she said. "Oh!" I said. Will popped out, and we hugged him like crazypeople, and he was doe-eyed as ever, only his hair was long. He motioned us in.

I saw Tai, and I was excited and surprised. I was also embarrassed, because I knew she'd moved close to me. She shrugged and sighed. "I heard you don't get out much anymore," she said, really congenial. "Who told you that?" I said. "Anyway, it's true."

We had all--Tai, me, Kate, Will--worked at WNUR together, which is strange, that that would be the lasting bond. Tai was at google, and I told her my friend Adam worked there, with a tent around his desk. "That's actually really common," she said, "building a tent around your desk." We all asked about the food. We'd all heard the food at Google was good. Kate explained that she landed her job fundraising for a Jewish elementary school by adding "WNUR Phone-a-thon" to her resume. Tai and Kate heard about Will's recent engagement the same way--in the New York Post, in an article that was really about Jenny's sister Liza.

Will couldn't find Christine. I phoned her. "Are you here?" she asked me. "Where are you? I'm walking toward the grey WILL!" The call dropped, and up ahead, I saw the back of Will stoop to envelop something small in front of him. Then he and Christine made their way to our collective. We waved! We all said hello! Then we stood there quietly.

Christine's hair was short, shorter than it was before, and defying physics. "Uh," I said, looking at the ground, "everyone's hair looks so good!"

Tai's eyes narrowed. "I'm wearing a hat." That was true.

It was all frustratingly brief. We all had somewhere else to get to, and it was strange. We felt guilty, finding Will (he'd really only disappeared a short time) to hug him again and bid farewell. He apologized, too, needing to host and being distracted, and we'd all have a good, serious, focused time later. I liked that.

"I wish there were a way for you to see your own show live," I said to him. "It didn't happen enough, but when the red lights came up and your shadows were dancing on the columns of the amphitheater, way out on the sides, projected onto the architecture...!"

"I saw it!" Will said. "I looked out, and I saw us dancing on the columns. It made me really happy."

"It made me really happy too!"

Will said something really funny, then: "I got you tickets for this a couple months ago, but I forgot to tell you." That also made me really happy.

I know it doesn't sound like I'm rounding a point, and I don't want to say it: I'm really, really sorry about not being more available or communicative. I guess that's why I'm typing so much. I want to make an excuse, like my lymph nodes are the main reason, or... actually, work is the main reason. But the other main reason is because I'm so nervous to see you again, because you'd be let down. I'm glad we all shared this one wonderful friend to make us come together and be amazed by one another again.