I have big, mega-severe news for this entry, but let me start at the beginning (and no, the beginning part has nothing to do with the mega-severe news).  A few weeks ago I was sorting through an old box while doing my laundry, and I found all my old pictures from my highschool Senior class trip to England.  I thought they had been lost and destroyed long ago, but to my amazement, they were right in front of me.  I was quick to search for the pictures of me and my friend Ruth, who I had recently reconnected with after an extended hiatus in our closeness.  She was more beautiful in the pictures than I remembered, but the point is that I was just happy to find them.  And other stuff has happened since I last wrote.  Melissa went home yesterday... meaning back to New York to live with her fiance.  I don't know what to think.  I miss her tons, but it's like we're all moving on in our lives.  More on this to follow.  Speaking of moving on, I finally got a new job.  Now, it's only ten hours per week and it's mostly office work, but I love it, my boss is a good friend, and I feel appreciated... and better paid than ever in my whole life thus far.  But there's more!  Oh so much more!  Well, I asked my parents a couple of weeks ago if, for my birthday, they would be willing to contribute toward a plane ticket to Mexico.  Ever since my friend, Marma, was killed in the car accident, I've felt a big need to return, and for the longest time I've wanted to wait until I was "ready", both mentally and physically.  I wanted to look significantly thinner than how I looked when I was in Mexico last time.  That was a feat in itself, because I first had to lose the ninety or so pounds that I gained in the year between coming back to Vermont and getting the surgery.  Well, I now feel comfortable that I am at least looking a lot better these days.  But anyway, when I asked my parents about it, my dad told my mom no way, and that he thought I should just get twenty dollars in a card.  I couldn't really argue with that, and even though Mom told me to talk to Dad about it, I wasn't going to beg him.  It's not like I had earned it, or anything.  Well, last night a large part of my family, including both parents, came in saying they wanted to talk about my credit card problems.  I was less than enthusiastic to even go near that topic, when Mom pulled out a card.  I opened it and it was surreal.  Inside was four hundred dollars and a printout of an airplane itinerary to Mexico City.  So I was going.  But it didn't really sink in until I got online and bought the tickets.  I really was going to go back to Mexico, and my entire family had helped.  Not just parents and siblings, but friends, uncles, aunts, and even several cousins I either hadn't seen in years or I thought had hated me, contributed and had all signed the card.  I was flabbergasted, to say the least.  So now I'm in the process of trying to find places to crash while I'm there for A WHOLE MONTH!!!  And I'm also trying to raise as much spending money as possible between now and then.  I decided to finally have the stinking yard sale my mom has been begging me to have for the past few weeks, and she said I could keep all the money from it.  Just today I made about a hundred and thirty dollars.  I guess I still can't believe it's even true.  I am just so excited for this to be happening.  And on top of that, I'm going with Heather before I leave to see Brad Paisley in concert.  I'm not a huge fan, but I probably could be if I just listened to his music more often.  And before I forget, I finally went a second round with that damn gorilla at the zoo in Granby, Quebec.  I took my two sisters up there last Wednesday.  I was looking forward all day to facing down that big lummox.  Well, he was the last animal we went to see. I was a little anxious to see if he would charge the glass again after what happened last year, but I thought that maybe he wouldn't because I've lost so much weight.  Well, when I got there, he was in his own cage this time.  I had to wait about ten to fifteen minutes for this other woman to move so I could get close enough to the glass to see him.  He was just lying down in the back of the room, almost as if he were dead.  Other people were tapping and banging on the glass to try and get him to do something, but he wasn't about to fall for that trick.  Well, when I finally got up there, I tried to wave him over.  I knew sounds wouldn't work, but I figured most people probably didn't try to communicate directly with him.  So once again I tried out some sign language.  I just told him to come here and asked him how he was.  As soon as I started signing, he got up and started pacing back and forth, just staring at me.  I tried to come off as non-threatening by avoiding eye contact and making faces I had learned from documentaries years ago.  If you smile as wide as you can, it's a subconscious primal sign that you are not a threat.  It seemed to work at first, and so he just went to the other side where I couldn't see him, because the new room he was in was sort of split into two sections with a big dividing wall down the middle.  So all the kids and a couple adults, excited by the sudden and surprising liveliness of the gorilla, all went and huddled on the other side to gawk at him.  I new he was waiting to see if I would come over, and sure enough, when I did, he stared only at me out of all the other people that were there.  After a few seconds, I noticed that I was sitting identically to him, because I was in my wheelchair.  Most other people are standing prostrated, but I don't know if thought I was mocking him, so he rushed back to the other side.  So because I was behind all of the other people on the left side of the division, I was the first back on the other side.  When I got there, he was fuming and pacing back and forth, and I just knew what was going to happen.  So about three or four kids crowded right up to the window, parents completely unsuspecting in the background, and he charged full throttle right for me.  He was screaming and pounding his chest and banging on the window, with obvious frustration that he couldn't get at me.  Even though I saw it coming, it still jolted me.  The kids ran screaming, and one little boy even backed up and fell off the little ramp into some damp mulch.  The parents were so shocked and started grabbing their kids and heading out as fast as possible, and I just headed for the door.  I couldn't believe he did it again!  So I guess I still am so similar-looking to a male gorilla that I am threatening to his territory.  Just great.  So I've lost the first two rounds, but I will certainly be challenging him again in the future.  This fight is not yet over!  So that's been an overview of what I've been up to the past few weeks.  Tonight I went to Heather's house for an Independance Day party.  Her parents throw the absolute best parties.  People were drunk, there was lots of food and fireworks, and we talked late into the night around a fire while roasting marshmallows and joking about old times and new ones.  You can't ask for more than that.  And I also met their neighbors of several years.  They are just the nicest, most normal, but very worldly people I've met in ages.  And the father in the family, Ted, works as an international community and business developer, and told me all about the field.  He is very well paid, and he travels all over the world all the time.  It's exactly what I've been looking to do, and from what I told him about myself, he said that if I got walking, I'd never be out of work, because it's really hard to find people who do what he does.  I'm certainly going to look into it, but probably not until I get back from Mexico.  He's going to Macedonia in a couple weeks, and he does that sort of thing all the time.  Man, that would be for me.  Well, from the past few weeks, all I can say for sure is that life is great and prayer really works if you just give it a chance and be patient.  Now if only I could get out of doing that stupid yard sale tomorrow... just kidding!