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May 25, 2000 |
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I woke to find two messages on my machine. One message was from Carlos. His message said he wanted to catch
up, but somehow I knew that wasn't it. I'd reserve that one for later; I'd
call him from work or send him e-mail.
The next message was from my friend Lisa (no, not this Lisa); she's a friend that worked with me
some years ago. She had heard about Laurie's death and wanted to chat. Laurie's
funeral is on Saturday, at about the same time at my Thanksgiving party. I
briefly thought about cancelling it, but I had a number of people coming in
from different places and it would've been an incredible pain. Maybe it is
that I didn't want to deal with her death. I really don't know. We all
grieve in different ways. I suppose that mine is to internalize and become
introspective.
I tried calling Lisa and wasn't able to get a hold of her. I left a
message.
I called Carlos sometime in the afternoon. He too had heard about Laurie.
He didn't know that she was diagnosed with cancer, nor did he know about
her struggles over the past year. It's just a bit strange to know that
she's not there anymore. Knowing that this could really happen to any of
us. We continue through our lives and deal with the day to day problems.
…sometimes we run …and then trip.
We didn't have much to say about her death… just that it happened.
Neither one of us was attending the funeral. He was leaving town for the
weekend and I was throwing a dinner party.
Our conversation drifted from topic to topic like it always does. Somehow
we managed to drift again into racial prejudice. I like talking to Carlos
about racial prejudice. He has some very interesting insights on it. The
racial stereotypes about Asian folks are generally pretty good… good at
math, hard working, etc. He faces different stereotypes, and thus I find
his observations quite interesting. We talk about the source of racism and
different approaches of dealing with it. He's got a good head on his
shoulders; sometimes this is hard to believe since hs is such an incredible
smartass.
Speaking of dinner parties. I sent mail to Tom asking him to include Pam in whatever they were planning for my dinner party. I suppose that he figured that her e-mail address was one that I had put there to be devious… which, admittedly, is certainly a Frank-like thing to do, but not this time.
It was a bit funny because he kept denying it… until I flat out told him that I knew and even pointed him to the corresponding journal entry. He then forwarded a link to the journal entry to everyone and asked who was the one who leaked it. Funny. I only new this part because I was tracking the traffic through my site.
Like I said before, it is an incredibly sweet gesture to celebrate my birthday, even if it is three weeks in advance.
I had to pick up some more things for my dinner party on Saturday. I needed to get peas with pearl onions, which is a staple for Thanksgiving dinner, but ironically they didn't seem to have at the first grocery store which I went to on Monday. What else did I pick up? A spiced rice package, and some other miscellaneous items.
May 25, 2000