Chapter 2

January 9th 9:00 am

Dear Diary;

I decided that today I'm going to invite a some friends over after work to see if they can help me with my decision, and also because some of them had work/ school and couldn't make my birthday party so I also wanted to see some of them.

January 10th 2:00 pm

Dear Diary;

Wow, yesterday was a long night. We did have fun though.

Keith and Jane came, she came at his insistence and it didn't bother me at all I'm a more the merrier type of person. Joe came alone, Kristen came with Jamie her younger sister, Nick came and drove Matt, and my younger brother Zach came in from college(via a plane ticket from me).

The night really was at first a rehash of me stating that I was thinking about retiring but because Matt and Zach were there and because they both play baseball (Matt for the tigers, and Zach for U.C.L.A.) they sort of understand where I'm coming from. Although Zach did ask me a question I had yet to think about. "What would I do with myself if I do retire, I mean sometimes I get really bored just during the off-season could I do nothing all year, most people retire at 65 for a reason."

I definitely have some more thinking to do, though I'm not sure but I was thinking about trying to go to college. Since I never went, but I'm not really sure if I could do it, I want anonymity but I doubt I would be able to get that out of college, and I also guess that I'm sort of hesitant to retry the world of academia after my experiences in high school.

The conversation section about baseball really died down because of both Matt and I. So we started talking about everything other than that, like politics, science, religion, and relationships.

Jamie and Zach seemed to be really hitting it off, though my brother is 5 years her junior, and I'm really glad about that, I was worried that he wouldn't fit in with my friends, but then sometimes I forget that as he gets older that six year age gap closes.

Keith's now fiancée Jane didn't really talk much at the beginning of the evening which sorta confused me, since she was a very smart and talkative woman until I realized that she was shy and nervous. I decided to ask some questions about the how the presidents health care bill would work, and as she started getting into it, I sorta antagonized her a little to get her animated and to defend herself, and when she did I gave and Nick and Joe both looks that they correctly assumed meant help me defend my position and she then really started getting into it, until she asked me straight out "How could you defend this stupid policy?" when I just told her "I can't but you were acting all mousy over there in the corner that I figured the only way that you would speak up would be to get you interested in the conversation, did it work? Are you over your temporary shyness?" she just turned red and whispered yes, and then started talking about something else I really wasn't paying attention because Keith came over to thank me, saying he had been trying for some time to get her to join in.