Just talked to an old friend from back home on IM - she let me ramble on about card games and pirates and discordia and tattooing and bondage films and half a dozen other damned things for at least an hour before she told me that another friend of ours had had a stroke. A mild stroke, to be sure, and she seems to be okay now, but seriously. I wish she'd have said that right off and not let me talk about crap forever first.