magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

developed film this evening. the two rolls of black and white that i took over homestay and northern tour. i hadn't worked in a darkroom since nmh. nine years or something. but it all sort of came back to me. of course the homestay roll didn't come out. i don't think it was any fault of my devolving though. the first picture and the last picture were fine, but the rest of the roll looked completely unexposed. total weirdness. and i had opened the back of the camera before rewinding the film on the other roll, so the last couple of pictures were ruined there (one really nice one of a cat in venice), but it was mostly okay.

called stef later in the evening. the phone call wasn't quite as nice as the first time we talked. there was the moment when she realized who was calling, and i could hear her voice melt and new her face had lit up with that knowledge, and it is just always nice to be a little closer to her in some way. but a lot of my normal phone nervousness sort of felt like it was elbowing its way in. it probably didn't help that i had a terrible headache. or that she was driving to home depot with amy for model making supplies for their big crit which is tomorrow. it's all okay though. her voice in my ear and i'm happy with that.

and then called george. i had gotten two very long emails from him the other day and felt that rather than try to respond to everything in them, i'd try to call. he's back in school, starting college actually, after seven years of that real life stuff. except that he's still doing the real life stuff. school and work, both pretty much full time. so he's feeling overwhelmed and stressed and exhausted a lot of the time. plus some personal issues on top of that. i felt bad about not really having any good advice except to say that when you get through it things will be better, which is really pretty stupid, advice-wise, but is sometimes just something that you have no choice but to try and keep in mind.