you broke my heart at the FunPlex

"Have you talked to Steve lately?"
"No, why?" [a suspiciously familiar silence falls] "Wait, why?"

It seems my erstwhile co-worker Steve is leaving to volunteer at a newspaper in Romania. Or at least, that's what he says--there might be some other, more sinister explanation. This latest defection from the Geek Squad is surprisingly hard on my morale. Of course, some of our departing geeks come back (hi, Thea!), but I live in fear of being surrounded by people who stare blankly when I talk about building my doomsday machine. Who's going to accuse me of moral bankruptcy and/or irrational jingoism? Who's going to slander Joss Whedon? Who's going to bring me magazine articles about zombies, or create tiny dinosaurs out of modeling foam and make them talk to me in squeaky voices when I'm having a bad day?

Normally this is where I would issue a decree about how no one else is allowed to go anywhere, for any reason, for the rest of our natural lives, but so many people have moved on in the last little while that the joke doesn't make me feel any better. So, uh, fly free little birds, or something. I love that people I am fond of are testing their limits, bravely stretching themselves into the world. I just hate that it takes them away from me.