The Godfather

Travis, my pseudo-Godson-not-quite-nephew, is four years old today. I can't quite believe this- I can't concieve that the little tree frog that I once wasn't allowed to hold because I might break him in half with a pinch has grown into an actual, real life human with thoughts, feelings and plans all his own. I can't quite process that four years has passed since Mel had him- so much has happened, I know, but it doesn't seem that long ago, and yet I can't imagine my life without him, even though I see him very little.
So very little, in fact, that Travis has no idea who I am: for a while he thought I was a big CGI racing car due to a shared name; then for a time he knew a 'Rory' was something important to his mother but didn't quite grasp that it was a person (at this time he called me 'Jojo'); and then, for a lovely brief period, he called me 'Uncle Rory' unprompted and spontaneously and it was lovely and special. But now, after an interval of six months of separation, he answered Mel's relayed message of "Rory says 'Happy Birthday'" with "Who's Rory?". A little while ago, she showed him this picture:

He immediately recognised himself (even though he was half the age he is now when this was taken) but refued to recognise the smiling idiot in the background.
This sounds a lot like I'm blaming Travis, which I realise is unbelievably unfair, but it does make me slightly sad that pretty much every time I've seen him, I've had to reintroduce myself. Those of you proficient in maths will be able to calculate that he was born just before I went to uni, and so I've only really seen him at Christmas and during the summer. This doesn't look to be changing with my recent job offers, but I hope that, at some point, I'll regain that magic feeling I had that one singular time that Travis saw me and said 'Hi, Uncle Rory!'.

In other news, because I'm a fool, I forgot that I do actually have another friend in France that I can visit when I go over: Gregoire! We were in Improv Mob and Aussie Rules together back in Melbourne, so I can relive the glory days with him. Like Dani, he's in Paris, so won't be a million miles away. I knew that visit to Australia wasn't all for nothing.
In other news, I've started using this blog as a means of telling people that I'm apparently coming to visit them in October, so hi, Greg!

I got my grade back for Uni and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, which I'm chalking up to a win, especially considering I had food poisoning during my final exam. With this grade, I could feasibly continue my education, and although at the moment that isn't on my radar it's nice to have the option.

I had dinner with Emily, Daniel and Amanda the other day, and they said I was pretentious: this was one of those times that a truth I had held about myself was shattered. I had always thought I had evaded pretension- they explained that I like to use big words because I like to sound intelligent and that's true, but I thought that was mere arrogance, not pretension. I always make sure I know what the words mean before I use them, so I'm not pretending to be something I'm not; I just like etymology and having a varied vocabulary- I feel it allows me to express myself more clearly.
However, my friends have apparently construed this as pretense, so I guess I'll have to endeavour in the future to make my speech sound more natural- but then, this will mean I'm more self-conscious about my speech, which surely will only make me more pretentious? Good lord, but socialising is a minefield.