tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

I remember something else Tony used to say that would always crack me up.

He told me this story once where some guy he worked with was trying explain something to Tony, and he was just wrong about the whole thing. So he said to Tony, “I really think this is going to work.” To which Tony replied, “There’s a difference between you thinking it will work, and me knowing that it won’t,” and walked away.

Every time I think about that it cracks me up.

I recently got back in touch with my buddy Tony from Dallas, and realized how much I miss working with him. He is so freaking funny. He has this way of talking, these certain expressions, which I guess you have to hear him say to appreciate how funny they are. Or, I may just be easily amused.

I think it’s partly the fact that he comes off as arrogant, but does it on purpose in a mocking way. It’s just a funny concept to me. True arrogance is annoying, but when you do it on purpose and know that it’s ridiculous, so over the top, it’s funny.

He likes to make what he calls ‘claims’, which is the funniest thing to me. One time I worked with him in Dallas for a solid 80 hour week along with a few other guys. By the end of the week we were all making claims.

So anyway we worked in what we called the service station. It was nothing major, just taking executive’s laptops and fixing the minor errors they had. Misconfigurations, driver problems, etc. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was fun.

We had one guy who couldn’t connect through our VPN software. David got assigned this problem — and David was a newcomer to our group, just doing it as a favor to Tony. So this was a weird problem neither Tony or I had seen before.

David takes one look at it and says, “I claim you need to uncheck this box, restart it, check it again, restart it, and it will work.”

Now, that was a bold claim. Tony and I mocked him endlessly about the boldness of this, his first claim.

But, he was right and the stupid thing worked! From then on, David got respect.

Anyway, on to the main event.

We all had walkie talkies since this was a huge profile event, we were working insane hours and running all over this huge facility.

Bob was managing the event, the head honcho who was coordinating and herding all the executives to all the lectures — the service station was just a little side project in this big event.

Anyway, it was Tony, David, and myself working the service station. I think all of the executives who came to get their laptops fixed were men. Very much a boys’ club. Anyway, this one guy comes in and drops off his laptop, and I grab it out of the pile. I end up having to install some drivers so I pop open the dvd drive to load our tech cd.

Out pops a dvd called “Cum Shots.”

I start cracking up. I suppose some people would consider that harrassment of some sort, but I just wanted to see if it was any good. So I called Tony and David over, and they immediately start playing it.

Tony gets on the walkie talkie to tell Bob he needs to come to the service station.

Tony: Bob, we need you in the service station please.
Bob: I’m in the middle of a meeting with **** and ****, I’ll stop by later.
Pause
Tony: Bob, this is mission critical.

Minutes later Bob was upstairs with us checking out the porn.

(It was international, and it was very bad.)

Bob had to report the guy to one of the VP’s, who then had to come talk to me to make sure I wasn’t scarred or whatever, I guess to make sure I wouldn’t sue anyone.

The guy got fired I think.

Anyway, every time I think of Tony saying, completely deadpan, “Bob, this is mission critical,” I start laughing out loud. Every time.

Today is Aaron’s birthday! Yay! Make sure you wish him a happy birthday

It’s hard to believe today marks 8 years since my dad died.

I think about how much my life has changed in those 8 years, and how often I wished I could have asked his advice for certain things. He was so incredibly intelligent. He knew everything. Not in that way that all dads have where you think they are all-knowing until you grow up enough to realize that they’re just winging it like the rest of us are. He really did know everything.

It still catches me sometimes when I’m trying to do something and I think, ‘Daddy will know what to do, I’ll just ask him’.

Yeah.

Go here now and read two amazing essays by my very talented sister.

http://www.iranian.com/Travelers/2005/June/City/index.html

http://www.iranian.com/Travelers/2005/September/Hamadan/index.html

I’m actually trying to smile in this pic, but my face is so tight on the right side that it won’t move. I can’t open my mouth more than 1/2″ either so eating is not fun. Man, I’m not a good looking fat woman.

I’m actually trying to smile in this pic, but my face is so tight on the right side that it won’t move. I can’t open my mouth more than 1/2″ either so eating is not fun. Man, I’m not a good looking fat woman.

I’m actually trying to smile in this pic, but my face is so tight on the right side that it won’t move. I can’t open my mouth more than 1/2″ either so eating is not fun. Man, I’m not a good looking fat woman.

I had a gum graft done on Friday. I don’t remember much of it due to the sedative, just that sometimes after I fell asleep the doctor woke me up to tell me to open my mouth wider. I slept most of the rest of the day and so felt ok.

Saturday the pain and swelling started, and I realized that Vicoden does nothing for me.

By Sunday the swelling was a lot worse and I was in agony. Even doubling up the Vicoden did nothing — stupid sugar pill. Finally this morning when my eye was almost swollen shut I called the doctor. I felt really bad since it’s labor day, but as Aaron said, this is why she gets paid the big bucks.

So she opened the office for me and removed the bandages, confirmed that I had an infection, and trimmed away the necrotic tissue — part of the graft didn’t ‘take’ so it waa basically rotting in my mouth.

So gross.

So two antibiotics and two more painkillers later, here I am. I have had 8 prescriptions filled for this gum graft. It’s been quite the experience.

I just popped a percocet so hopefully that will dull some of the pain. At this point I just want to pass out. And for my face to go back to a normal size. I now know what I’d look like if I weighed about 300 pounds. I’ll post a pic. This should keep me going to the gym regularly!

Since I couldn’t do much this weekend due to my gum graft (to be discussed in a later post), I spent some time trying to clean up and get rid of some clutter.

Since we sold our house when I was a junior in college, I have had to cart around all my childhood mementos with me all these years. Most of my friends are lucky enough to still have a home where they grew up, rooms intact and looking the way they looked when they went away to college, memories lining the closets and shelves.

My memories live in 4 plastic bins in the basement.

And I finally decided that I didn’t need to be carting all of that stuff around forever. My goal is to get rid of almost all of it, and keep at most one plastic bin full of the most important mementos.

Going through all those things took more out of me than I thought it would. I only made it through one bin.

And I realized, I have some pretty great friends, and I have known some amazing people in my life. My friends — both in high school and college — are funny, smart, beautiful, caring, thoughtful, wonderful — and I have the letters and cards to prove it. How did I get so lucky to be surrounded by such amazing people?

I have just about every birthday card I’ve every received from 16-21. And Christmas and New Year’s cards, Valentine’s Day cards, etc. I even have notes my friends wrote me while they were in class and then stuffed in my locker, all folded in the latest fad of the time. (I can’t even remember how to fold them back together anymore. Ha.)

And they still make me laugh. I miss Caroline Oh so much, if anyone out there knows her, tell her to write me! [End pathetic plea for long lost friend connection.]

Do you know how many cards and letters I have from friends addressed to Mrs. Robert Smith (of the Cure)? At least 20. Ah, they knew me so well.

My mom and dad used to send me Valentine’s Day cards (actually my mom still does!) which I think is so sweet. I mean, it’s something so little, it takes so little time, money, and thought, but it means so much. My mom was great about stuff like that. And it floored me that my dad had sent me one. (I think that was more at my brother’s urging, but whatever).

The best part was finding letters my dad had sent me in college. I miss his handrwriting. And his jokes. Everything, really. Wow, this month it will be 8 years since he died. Feels like I just saw him yesterday.

Ok, enough of that before I break down.

I have at least 15 pages of notes written back and forth between Chris and me in our Databases class in England (one of the reasons I am NOT quite so adept at databases as any other computer subject. Only reason I passed the class is because the teacher died — but that’s another story).

Of course there were all the ex-boyfriend notes, cards, letters. I dunno…everything seemed so unique at the time — they could have only ever felt this way about ME! But then I see the same feelings expressed by different boys in different cards, and I start to wonder, (well my thought process went around a lot of different ways but ended up here) are they saying all these same things now to new girls? How much of it is said now, or said to me, just because it was supposed to be, not because it was so truly deeply felt? Anyway, I haven’t fully fleshed that thought out yet.

I ended up throwing most of the cards out. Kept the funniest notes and cards. Threw out all the drawings my friends had made of me married to Robert Smith, holding our baby. Ha ha.

Which brings me to my revelation of the day. There is nothing quite like receiving an card in the mail. Or stuffed into your locker (er, whatever that would correlate to now that we are grown up).I guess that’s why I make it a point to send loved ones unexpected notes. Or at least I have that intention a lot It’s such a little thing, but means so much. Little kindnesses like that really get to me. The fact that someone thought about you enough that they were inspired to send you a card is overwhelming to me. Even more so now that our lives are so busy. In high school we wrote to each other to stave off the boredom. Now it’s something we have to make time for. And when someone does….it floors me.

I am scared to see what is in the other 3 bins. I know I saw my high school diploma in one of them. What else could I have kept all these years?!