"Saying goodbye, going away…"

It's the standard good news, bad news scenario. Good news: Damian McGinty, late of the group Celtic Thunder, has won "The Glee Project" along with another contestant. Bad news: Damian is now late of Celtic Thunder. He will not be touring with them this fall.

This news affects me more than I thought it would. I'm the last person in the world, and certainly I have no right, to stand in the way of anyone going after a dream. Still, when Krystal told me the news, I very nearly cried, threw our Celtic Thunder poster across the room, or both.

It seems big girls really don't cry. Neither do they wantonly fling things, especially when those things only halfway belong to them. Instead they sit down and calmly try to figure out why they feel the way they do. I find this terribly annoying in other people, never mind myself, but such is life.

Due to a great many factors, including my personality, my upbringing, my environment, and just plain stubbornness, I have had something of a prolonged adolescence. My mental image of myself is stuck at the age of seventeen, and though some of my emotions have matured, others haven't.

One of those immature emotions is apparently having crushes on celebrities. It helps that Damian is both quite handsome in the "black Irish" style and has matured from a sweet boy tenor into a dark chocolate baritone equally alluring on traditional ballads and pop standards.

(May I say in passing that I hope Damian never reads this, as I think it would cause us both terminal embarrassment. Note to any prank-minded readers: terminally embarrassed writers hole up in their bedrooms and categorically refuse to write. You have been warned.)

Another piece of immaturity I find myself guilty of tonight is wishing that everything could stay exactly the way it was. It's so good the way it is, this line of thinking runs, so why does it have to change?

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, life is change. Nothing's really ever the same, and all we can do is try to make as many changes as possible for the better.

So, with that in mind, break a leg guest-starring on "Glee", Damian. May the road rise to meet you and the wind be always at your back. All your Thunderhead fans will miss you on the tour this fall, but hey, they'll probably watch "Glee" just for you.

In the meantime, I'm going to make hay while the sun shines, or rather, write angst while I'm in the mood for it. (It may be somewhat ruined by the fact that Dragon recorded "The Glee Project" as "The Ugly Project" the first time through…)

The title of the post, in case anyone is wondering, comes from a song aptly titled "Saying Goodbye" from the movie The Muppets Take Manhattan. Look it up on YouTube. Have tissues ready.