Two disasters in one day...make that three. First, I was walking to work and saw cops directing traffic on Guadalupe, and found myself wondering what the hell was going on. Turns out that a girl who had run away from home had been approached by her mother's boyfriend, who tried to force her to come back home. She ran, right into the path of oncoming traffic. Now she's in critical condition, three days later. According to people who had talked to her, she had run away because of her mom's boyfriend-no wonder she ran. The sad thing is that there are so many runaways that run away for a good reason. Most people seem to think that these kids choose the life, and in a lot of cases they are right. Unfortunately, there are just as many cases where the uncertainty of life on the street is better than certain pain at home.

After getting off work, I was walking north on Guad when I saw an orange glow in the sky. I decided to continue north, and saw an apartment building burning. After the fire was put out, half of the building had burned, and the other half was flooded. Luckily, no one was hurt. My friend Lucretia commented that things have been going really well for her recently, and it seems like when things are going well for her, the rest of the world starts falling apart. It brought back memories of a theory I had at one point, the constant of happiness.

The theory goes like this: For any social circle, there is a certain amount of happiness. If one person's level of happiness increases, the other members of the circle lose some amount of their happiness. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you believe it, as you get happier, your perception of your friends' increasing misery will temper your happiness.