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May 19, 2000 |
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I like Dave. We made this silly lunch
bet. I had won. I normally like to give people a little space when
they lose a bet. Dave scheduled me for lunch on Monday… at
Hooters, that was the bet. He is a good guy. We could talk
baseball for hours.
I got a call from Aileen today. She left me voice-mail at work very early, before 6am as a matter of fact, but that's only before 9am in the east coast.
The news was that our sister, Terry gave birth to a baby boy, Christopher Brian. Terry and I spoke on Sunday (Mother's Day). She told me she was going in on Tuesday to give birth. She was going to have a cesarean section. We talked at length about different things, one of which was naming her son.
Originally, she had picked Gabriel, which is fine, afterall it is her kid. However, she made the mistake of asking for my opinion. I just made one observation, I asked her if she realized that she was about to name both of her kids (the other being Michael) after arc angels, which I found a bit curious. We stayed on the phone for a while. Talking on the phone with Terry is a little like donating blood. It is a good thing that you know is benefiting someone, but it slowly but surely drains your life force. After a while, I felt as if I had been running laps… on Mount Ranier. We were still in the discussion on what to name her kid. I quietly suggested that she should name him Judas, there was a biblical reference. She cut the conversation shortly after that.
Today was no exception. I called her at the hospital. She was fine, just recovering from the cesarean section. I talked to her briefly while her newborn son slept. I told her I like the name that she picked for him. I briefly suggested that it would've been fun to name him Christopher Robin, but she felt that he would be bombarded with numerous Pooh references growing up. I didn't stay on the phone with her for very long, I had some things to attend to at work… And I could feel my life force steadily dropping. I cut the conversation short. Thanks goodness.
Today, would be another fire-fighting day at work. When I got in there was a bug waiting for me to investigate. How I love moments like this. There are the regular logic bugs that happen on every machine, then there are what we call config bugs. There are bugs that only happen on certain computers, typically because of the hardware in that computer. This bug was a config bug, but one whose hardware I didn't have readily available.
So I exchanged mail with a few folks until we tracked down the configuration and were able to reproduce the problem. The rest of the afternoon was spent tracking down the cause. As evening was nearing, with the test engineer's help, I was finally able to track down the cause. I sent him a few more details in mail.
This is an important bug, one I would take me a couple of hours to come up with a fix now that I know the cause, a couple of hours that I didn't have tonight since I had plans with Pam. I could have to come in this weekend, to tie loose ends.
Tonight's plans with Pam are simply dinner and a movie. I would be driving to her place to pick her up. We talked about seeing one of two movies, Frequency or Gladiator. Between the two, she picked the former. The movie started shortly after 10pm, so we had some time.
It was a pleasant drive across the bridge. It was moderately warm; warm enough to roll the windows down. As I arrived at her place the sun had not set yet, and I was driving in wearing my sunglasses. Seattle is mocking me. In a few months all of this will be gone. All this life would be caught in a deep hibernation that Seattle folk call autumn or more accurately anything but summer. Still, I had little complaints today.
We decided to go to Chili's for dinner. It was a fun place and close to the theater. Pam wasn't particularly hungry, but she did order a dessert for her dinner, one which she still didn't finish. No, I don't mind. Really It is just an observation I make about people.
I had the Chicken Crispers which was good as usual. I ordered it with mashed potatoes instead of the fries that it normally comes with. Why? I don't know, their fries are okay, but I was in the mood for mashed potatoes. I ended up slicing the corn off the cob before eating it. I'm not supposed to eat corn-on-the-cob with my braces.
I could complain about my braces again, but I'd simply bore you wouldn't I?
As it happens, I ended up finishing Pam's dessert. It was a warm brownie with ice cream. It was very good actually, but I knew that since I've had it before.
The movie theater was in the same shopping center. Yes, I drove there; partially because I was lazy but also because Pam really doens't like the colder evening weather.
We got there about twenty minutes before the movie started; we had a few minutes to kill. The first thing we did was we went into one of those sticker photograph booths. The pictures were $3, which Pam paid for. We got a dozen photos of a pose where I was kissing her on the cheek. She was very amused.
When we first walked in and started to find our seats, we noticed that the place was empty. We picked a couple of seats in the back row. Pam was still feeling a bit silly so we decided to call some of our friends. This while I was putting my phone and pager in silent mode. She called her friend Jay, who either wasn't home or answering the phone; she left a message. I was still fumbling with my pager whose user interface is nearly undecipherable. I ended up calling Len, who didn't answer the phone either. I did not leave a message.
The movie started shortly after. She seemed tired so she just leaned over during the movie. I had her adjust her position so that I could massage her feet during the movie. It seemed to make her feel better.
What about the movie? It was a good movie. Being an engineer, I know that there were some technical holes in the science aspect of it, but otherwise I thought that the movie had a good balance of drama, suspense, and science fiction. Very accessible for most folk, which I thought gave it a really good feel. And it had baseball, which is always a good thing for a movie… even if it was the Mets.
It was just past midnight when the movie got out. We went back to my place to pick something up (and air pump if you must know) before heading back to her place.
We also stopped by the 24-hour Bartell Drugs that is a few minutes from her place. We wandered around the place while we debated the number of different things to get. Oh, and finally we were able to put an argument to rest. Some time ago, while we were discussing our favorite candy bar, I mentioned that I had a fondness for one called Chick-O-Stick. Then we debated whether such a candy bar even existed. Fortunately, the drugstore actually carried them, so I was finally able to show her.
It has coconut. No wonder I like it.
May 19, 2000