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March 17, 2000 |
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Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Today is also Trudy's birthday. I got
up just past 11am, which is miraculous if you consider that I went to sleep
past 7am. Why do I continue doing this? I don't know. I was tooling
around with writing yesterday's
journal entry, as soon as I dialed up to upload it, I got a message from Lisa on ICQ. We chatted for a while, she's going through
somewhat of a rough time. I only wish that there was more that I could do
to alleviate her hurt, but alas there really isn't… save from being
there to listen. We chatted about a number of other things as well.
Believe it or not, we talked about our non-human roommates… Magic in my case, and Jake and Samantha in hers. And
about electronic gadgets… no, not those, pervert.
Well, back to this morning and waking up.
I immediately called Jim to see if we
were doing a lunch thing for Trudy. We normally do a lunch thing on
Fridays anyway. Uhmm, technically they do a lunch on Friday, I
arrive to the office sometime in the afternoon and realized that I've
missed lunch with my friends. [Groan] Jim wasn't answering his
cell phone. Strange. I got dressed and wander in to work, I see
the mail they sent about lunch, but don't actually see them at
work. I called Trudy on her cell phone. She told me that they had just
sat down for lunch. It's only about five minutes away, so I sped to the
restaurant.
Trudy, Jim, and Steve were all there. Unfortunately, Rick was working from home this morning, so he
wasn't able to join us. We chatted about the typical things we normally
discuss… some of it was work, some of it was personal. I'm glad we can
still talk and be friends despite the fact that we work together. I
suppose that we all really believe in doing what is best for the company,
so we're working towards one common goal, except that maybe we occasionally
have different ideas on what the best way to accomplish this may be.
However, I'm just a grunt. I keep telling people that; though
they don't seem particularly amused.
And naturally, Trudy had to endure wearing a sombrero and having the
restaurant staff (and the rest of us, of course) singing her a happy
birthday. I must say that Trudy looks quite fetching in a sombrero.
Note: I know that, to most of you, the word sombrero implies this particular type of hat. Of course, it does. I mean… where have you heard it being used. However, for those of us who speak Spanish, the words sounds a bit silly. You see, in Spanish the word simply means hat, not a particular type of hat, just any type of hat. So every time someone refers to the type of hat as a sombrero, I find it a bit disorienting. Similarly with the word salsa, which simply means sauce in Spanish.
I went to check my snail-mail at work today. My mail slot had a handful of items…
This week's company newsletter.Be afraid… be very afraid! If you know what kind of joker Carlos happens to be, you'd be afraid too. The envelope looked harmless enough. It turns out that he sent me a picture which he took of me some time ago, I don't really know precisely when since I can't remember him taking the picture, but I seem to be alert and conscious, so it couldn't have been some cruel that he was playing. The picture was developed in November 1999; I checked the back of the photo for the date it was processed.
Last week's company newsletter.
Some company sticker about a new product.
An IO (Inter-office) mail with a CD (which I was expecting).
An IO-mail from from my friend Carlos…
Well, thank you Carlos, for being considerate enough to send me the picture… Please destroy any copies that you may have in your possession and I'll do the same. It isn't a particularly flattering picture.
I had evening plans with my friend Tom and another friend of ours, Kenny. It seems as though we had not seen each other for months. It was his birthday nearly a month ago, and Kenny's precisely a month ago. We just wanted to get together to see each other. Now this particular group seems a bit lively in e-mail. Well, maybe lively is not the word, where most e-mail can be described by flow, our e-mail is normally described as flood. Still, they're a good bunch of guys (…just don't mention Cheetos)
One of us had suggested going to Casa Vallarta, but I mentioned that I just had Mexican for lunch (at the same place, incidentally) and would like something different. We eventually decided to go to Chili's for dinner. If you have ever been to this Chili's on a Friday night, you'd know that it is insane here. Well, insane is probably a strong word, packed is probably closer to the truth. Despite the fact that we all work on different groups now, we are still working on some of the same products. These kinds of things happen when we ship these huge products. We talked briefly about what is going on with each group and what we're each working on. It is refreshing to hear what the different perspectives are in each group. I also found that despite the fact that my particular group is very busy, it really isn't so bad there. None of us come in fearing our jobs or dreading what we'll find in e-mail.
They also seemed pretty interested in hearing the stories about my girlfriend, Pam and I. They didn't ask in an invasive way; they asked because they care about me and they care about what makes me happy. Kenny, asked if it was the one woman that he had seen me with during lunch some weeks ago, and I responded that it wasn't. I told them the tale. In the interest of her privacy, I won't divulge too many details here.
We spent the rest of the evening chatting and drinking. For a while, we even listened to some music. I had gotten Tom a CD for his birthday, the latest Dream Theater album, and we listened to that for a while. We're both big fans of Dream Theater. Tom is a musician, as well as an engineer, so he has a distinct appreciation for their percussionist and guitarist. They indeed weave a spell of enchantment with this latest album; it may replace Images and Words as their favorite album.
I miss spending time with these guys, maybe we should get together more often.
March 17, 2000