A farewell to Eugene: It's been a great long drink with you, my friend!

If I've been absent from updating for a little too long, it's all thanks to the second election to come down upon Californians this year... and it's not the last. We sure do love to practice democracy around here, don't we? It keeps us all occupied... and keeps our streets abundantly littered with colorful, absurd, and sometimes printed on recycled paper with soy ink campaign propaganda. If you're a frequent voter like me, you'll get a good 10 pieces a week - so the lesson to be learned here is keep your opinions to yourself! I kid, I kid.

The second item taking precedence over my social calendar is much more sad. May 26th marked the last week before bootcamp for my dearest friend Eugene, who's leased his very able (although after this week, well-saturated with Tennessee whiskey) body to the Army for the next 3 years, where he will be a proud officer making 18-year-old boys give him twenty or something. You'd think that for someone like me, a dedicated civilian (that's right, I'm dedicated to being a civilian) who nerds out to COIN blogs all day long and has Big Brother Marine imparting his sage wisdom on me from Iraq (do they have wifi in the barracks now?), it'd be no big deal. But I'm already missing the way he'll knuckle his way through my freshly-curled hair 5 minutes before we catch a cab to go out, destroying all my "getting ready" efforts in one fell swoop; the way he teases me about my love life; the way he gets drunk on Jack and makes incoherent comments until I catch up on enough Glenmorangie to understand what the hell he's talking about...

Basically, it's been a great few years in SF with you, buddy. I hope to catch you on the flip side, and long before that, your break before Officer School. You be well out there, you hear!

Featured flaked by Erik and myself, the very handsome future Officer Eugene.