schweblog

I met Andy when I started working at Sandia. He was a tall lad that looked like a Viking and had a most excellent sense of humor. Consequently, he was my officemate, so we got to know one another quite well. Well enough that had our own catch-phrases and he felt comfortable stealing my cookies that I had packed for lunch without asking beforehand.

When he left Sandia to go teach Spanish to high school students, I was disappointed. Sandia National Laboratories isn’t exactly known for its high-quality witty banter. We’re better known for our geek quotient. And atom bombs. Or something like that. Anyway, Andy was a diamond in the rough and when he left, my only real personal tie to Sandia was broken–now the only thing that keeps me here is financial necessity.

Andy and I were out of touch for the most part. We’d visit occassionally. He came to see me when I had knee surgery. He brought me a jar of peanuts. Anyway, our meetings were rare, but lately we’ve been getting back into the swing of things. We’ll meet pretty regularly at a cafe and shoot the shit. Well…it’s not really shooting the shit.

Seriously…Andy and I can talk about god for hours and hours. Little metaphysical details fascinate us and we explore them until we’re too tired to talk about them any more or we have to go because of other obligations. I didn’t realize how much I missed that kind of conversation until recently. And Andy’s just the right kind of guy to have it with.

He’s a pretty hardcore Christian dude–does a lot of the prayer and worship music stuff with his church and the greater Albuquerque community. But he’s the type of Christian that doesn’t let it pervade his life so much that it becomes boring or repetitive. He’s a very good balance to me, the quasi-skeptic with an ounce of desire to believe in something. Anything.

We’re figuring out this god stuff pretty well now, though. Love is the difficult part of it all. We can’t seem to even begin to breach that wall.

Filed under: general by Jesse