[SmootSmack]

I'm still in shock over this. I'll admit to shedding quite a few tears over it. Last night, our other roommate Andy and I were talking about our upcoming 10 year college reunion and reminiscing.

I remember Zach was an avid photographer and one morning he took some pictures of me, hair all mussed up rolling out of bed, in just my boxers brushing my teeth, then eating cereal with the milk dripping down my chin. A couple of weeks later I see these pictures of me in all my splendor on display in our Student Center. First Prize. Turned out Zach had entered them into some contest. You'd think I'd have been mad at him for doing that without my permission, but there was just no way you could get mad at Zach.

Anyhow, neither Andy nor I had spoken to Zach in a few months. You know how it is, you get busy and lose touch, you keep saying to yourself "tomorrow." But I decided it'd been too long and I was going to email him. But first I thought, just for the hell of it, let me Google his name and see if there happens to be anything on him. Being in the military, I figured there might be some small town article like "Local Boy Serving Overseas" and I was going to tease him about it. We had these running jokes about our respective hometowns and the local coverage of them (sort of inside joke stuff I guess).

So anyway, I did a search and this news was sadly the first thing that popped up. It was really difficult to call Andy this morning and tell him the news.

You know people say that my job must be so cool, and most of the time it is. But Zach died serving our country, and Andy risks his life each day as a cop in SE DC. I'm thankful for them both.