Three weeks in October

If you don't write it down, it never happened.

I learned this after undergrad, but before grad school, from Tom Clancy of all people.

In his book "Debt of Honor" Clancy paints a picture of a country in crisis; one of many looming problems is a broken market system. Bad guys attacked the servers that kept records of trades on the NYSE. All of them, including backups, for an entire afternoon.

The main character's wife, a surgeon, remarked off handedly during the crisis that as a doc she had far too many things to keep track of in her head. "If you don't write it down, it never happened," she states, regarding her own notes. The main character sees this as a way out of the huge financial crisis. Everyone just picks up from the last recorded trade as if nothing happened.

At this very moment, I am getting a strong vibe of art imitating life.

I've referred to Tammy here and there in various online venues ( as well as real life, of course ), and hinted at our relationship. That's over now, or rather, we're "back" to being what we were before, I guess. This happened last night, but I've known for a few days it was a conversation we were going to have.

I bounced by her blog today, and noticed something. She hadn't mentioned Her & I once, there. In and of itself this doesn't really mean a thing. But somethings she had mentioned, last night, bring the absence of her and I in written-down-form into sharp relief.

For my part, I am clearing up any ambiguity, on my end:

For three weeks in October, I was involved with a girl named Tammy, and happier than I have been in quite a while; this was despite reluctance on both of our parts to go "all in". She is many things a partner should be, and any man would be very lucky to have her.

Regardless of what she thinks or says.