Okay. I'm an historian and am enamored by the experience and relics of my own life. But I have an unconscionable amount of CRAP. Upon this move to New Orleans, I hearby resolve to become a person who throws things away much more promptly. I just found a box in my closest containing floppy discs and programs from my first computer: a Mac LC III with a whopping 40 MB hard drive that I bought when I arrived at Notre Dame. I guess I was saving that just in case the System 7 operating system came back. Right? I mean, I still save letters and photographs, but that's enough.

Oh, and Mom: found that check you wrote me. In 2007. Sorry 'bout that.

In happier news, I had an absolutely lovely going-away lunch with Diane today, where we did our "traditional" picnic on the lake after buying food at the Metro Mart deli. Mommyness is ruling with her, and so we talked about baby Naomi, about New Orleans and the job, about her unexpected foray into law enforcement, and then, in a strange echo of one of our earliest conversations, she tackled me on the nature of ethics pretty thoroughly, and so we talked about the distinction of the philosophical and the theological approaches to ethics, what philosophy could achieve on its own, and where theology introduced some pressing questions that a purely philosophical basis for ethics seemed to inevitably leave unaddressed. We wandered around by the Art Museum while talking in this way, and then drifted to mutual enthusiasms like the Queen and Country series by Greg Rucka she had turned me onto, and my efforts to win her interest in Smallville. Saying good-bye, I had to tell her that I couldn't be happier with one of those utterly unexpected friendships like this one has been. I'm just annoyed that I couldn't find my camera before we headed out, and so I still have no cool pics with us together.