There was a homeless man who used to sit on the sidewalk right near our building. He'd make conversation with anyone who would listen, including some colleagues of mine who'd buy him coffee occasionally. I probably walked by him a few times, probably nodded and said hello and thought vaguely about giving him some change the next time I saw him, and then of course never did.

Last week, he passed way. They don't know why, but they suspect he OD'd. They found him curled up in a nearby alley.

He was 32 years old. Thirty-two. He was the son of a prominent Montreal journalist. Apparently every time he started to get successful at something, he'd retreat into addiction and self-destructive behavior. I guess he never got out.

He also had an 11-year-old daughter, whom he loved to spend time with. Apparently when they were together, he'd light up and laugh and chat with her and be alive again.

I guess it wasn't enough to keep him going...

You know, I'm not really that different than him, except I guess I'm fortunate that my addictions -- such as procrastination, reading the news on the Web, watching TV (once upon a time, but not any more) -- aren't nearly as harmful or destructive.

Man, sometimes you wonder...

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Monday night Pinky and I went to her university to see an academic talk on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Jewish prof, from New York, who gave the lecture was animated, funny, intelligent and charismatic. It was great, even if I could only understand about %20 of what he was talking about.

I also never knew that the Scrolls created such a hot topic of debate between Christians and Jews. Of course, it couldn't have happened any other way -- that each group would try to claim the scrolls as their own, or as representative of their own religion, thus legitimizing their own religion.

Oh, and the other thing that's surprising, but really shouldn't be, is that in the 40s, 50s and 60s, people sold parts of the scrolls for personal profit. I mean, the historical value of these things is enormous, and nowadays I don't think many parts of such a discovery would make it outside of the claws of the government of the state in which they were discovered. But in those days...

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Tuesday night we worked on a couple of the original tunes; for one of them, we spent almost an hour working out the bass riff for the song's solo. For the other one, I recorded two guitar parts, and realized I haven't been thinking enough about that particular tune and will have to work on it some more.

How Lead Guitarist is able to feel we can be finished 14 songs by February or March is beyond me! Although I'd love it if he could be right.

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Last night the workies and I went for drinks at the local pub, and the fries and curry made my boss sick overnight for the second consecutive time. That aside, it was kinda cool to hang out with them and not feel nervous; it's taken almost a year, but I'm finally not stressed around them all the time. Man I must be getting old -- I just can't seem to adapt very quickly to new people at *all*.

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Tonight we go to see my former co-worker play a gig in Montreal. After this, he's off to tour Europe and Japan. Bastard.

;-)

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