A Guilty "How's it been?" Phone Call

I have a habit of not being very good at staying in touch, and this always leads to these guilty "Heyyyy... so how's it been?" phone calls. That's how I feel about this blog; I see the link to it and I always feel this tug, like -Oh, man, Alex, you should really go give your old blog a visit. Give it a ring. See how it's all going. And so here I am, feeling guilty, and Mr. Blog is like, -Hey. Haven't see you around in awhile. It's been really, really lonely. When I am abandoned by both my author and lone reader all at once, it kinda hurts.

I'm sorry, Mr. Blog. I'm back.

So, the entree on the menu today is Shanghai. I'll be heading over there in a month. That'll give me some material to talk to you about, I'm sure. That's all it's been. Just nothing much going on over here on my end. I promise. I'd tell you if anything exciting was happening. This summer has mostly rotated around working in Houston, missing the girlfriend and dealing with related issues, and waiting till Shanghai. See? Nothing much to tell you about, that you'd be interested in, at least. I've been learning Chinese! That's fun, right? And German! I'm learning German partly because it's so much easier, and because I like it, but mostly because I want to try and spite Chinese because that language is so freaking difficult, and German is so much easier, and that's what Chinese gets for being so hard. And I'll run a half marathon in August! Ah, and the guys of the family just went on a big West Texas roadtrip! See, that's cool, right?

There have been some grand conversations this summer. There are large goodbyes that loom. I'll only be gone till Christmas, but in my mind... I'm leaving for a much longer time than that. We'll see, right? I've been in a mood where I'd love if there were some sort of melodramatic soundtrack playing in the background when I drive around. Something like A Long December by Counting Crows, or something more melancholy like We Did It When We Were Young by the Gaslight Anthem.