I know it's going to be a bad day, but I go in anyway. What choice do I have really? True to form, Murphy's Law kicks in right on cue, and my inbox has a couple of messages that just can't wait. The light on my phone blinks red and begs to be listened to and like Pavlov's Dog, I give in. I figure there's no way that the Chief's going to be in before nine, so that gives me a few minutes of breathing room. Just after nine I finish up with the urgent things and go to see the Chief, but find him instead in a meeting with the Director and I know I'll have to wait to get the drawings. 1:30. That's when my meeting is. There's a budget to adjust, a schedule to work out, and a layout to produce. 10:00 and the budget is done, check on the Chief and my plan drawings are still unsigned. Give me a few minutes, he says. Wish I had a few to give. Thirty minutes and a few more urgent phone calls later the Chief brings my plans to me. Three hours and a hundred and forty seven sheets to copy. Ten copies that is.
These aren't wimpy eight and a halves. These are thirty four by twenty two. That size paper doesn't collate itself. Just shy of fifteen hundred pages in all. That's a lot of weight-- as I would figure out later -- and a lot of paper, but I'm getting ahead of myself, I run for the copy machine. I've never done this before, printed ten copies of anything, and I know I can't collate it on the fly so I go get some help, some advice. It's 11:00 now and I'm ready to make sets. The first thirty pages go in smoothly. Half way through at copy five or six, I run out of paper. No sweat, I've loaded this paper before. I heft the 500' long roll and slam it into the machine. The first thirty are done and I realize I printed them on the expensive vellum. Crap. I go and switch out the paper again. I look at the stack of blank rolls and I realize this is last roll of thirty four. Five hundred divided by a little less than two is a little more than two-fifty or a lot less than the twelve hundred I need to finish the set.
Ten sets of sixty laid out evenly on the table in the other room and I decide that I need to use different paper. 12:00 and I call the Administrator to ask if I can use the thirty six inch rolls, there are three of those left. 12:25 and the call comes back. I run back to the copy machine. 12:30 and nine hundred pages. 1 hour and a little less than 1800' of paper to go through. God I hope there's at least 300' in the machine. I eat lunch at the machine because it's easier to collate as the sets finish. I time the batches. Less than eight seconds a page or about four minutes for a set. Hopefully, forty minutes for ten. I won't make it. It's a little past 1:00 and I have ten sets of ninety. To hell with it, I'm finishing. I run to grab some one driving out to the meeting and tell him to tell the Administrator I'd be late. It's just before 1:30 when I hit page thirty and I know I've managed to make up some time somehow. There are four discarded rolls on the floor now and I know I'm about to hit my last roll. I need help to get these to my car. I run and get my co-worker and tell her to bring my car around. I run back to the machine and just before I get there I hear it stop.
1:47 and I'm nine sets into the last run when the machine breaks. I've got eight good sets, that'll have to do. I cut myself trying to bind everything quickly. By set two, I give up. The corners of a few pages are already drying brown and my co-worker is in the car waiting for me. I try to pick up all eight sets at once. I ended up doing the math later. Figuring that the sets of two that I was able to carry were thirty pounds each, I had tried to lift a hundred and twenty pounds of slippery unbound paper by myself. No wonder I was bleeding. I pick up two and roll them up and bolt for the car. My co-worker comes back with me and helps me with the rest. 1:55 and I speed off for the meeting. I make it half and hour late and two sets short.
The meeting went well and I managed to stop the bleeding. The machine is still broken, but I managed to finish the last two sets a different way. Needless to say, I'm not updating at work these days.
Everyday I log on and check quickly over the day's news, the RSS feeds, and blogs I read. Except livejournal. Oh, I check livejournal. I check livejournal like I'm addicted to cigarettes. I check a couple of packs a day. It's just that I don't check quickly. I wait. And I wait. No, I don't blame livejournal. For me, it's free. I blame my addiction. Why on earth am I addicted to anything this frickin' slow? I'd better be careful with my language here or else I'll start sound like someone in government. Someone like Dick Cheney. What's wrong with the Vice-President saying go fuck yourself? Nothing. I'm pretty foul mouthed myself when it comes down to it. Here, let me show you. Go fuck yourself, Dick Cheney. Go fuck yourself, George W. Bush. Unprovoked you say? Well, I had a bad day too. I had a bad week. A few more people died in the world today. A few of them died fighting for what they thought was right, a few of them were just innocent bystanders. Yeah, I don't know them. But I still give a shit. So you know what, go fuck yourself.
I have sooooo much faith in my IT department. The network went down this morning and just recently it came back up. In their infinite wisdom, the IT department left me a voice mail saying that the network appears to be working. I think the network went down and they didn't know why so they prayed really hard and they went back to check and then it appeared to be working so they said hallelujah, it appears to be working.
In all honesty ... I wonder if anyone up there does anything more than kick the servers and then restart the whole network. Maybe as slmdnk suggests, they lick the network jacks on the switches. Heck, they probably do that just for the rush. Anyway, this is speculation is pointless, I'm going to go back to sniffing my Sharpies ... lalalalalalala.
Dear Dad,
I haven't written you in a while, but I figured that I should since it's father's day. Something I heard this weekend reminded me of you. Many things remind me of you. Betsy got married this weekend. It was the most elegant wedding I've been too. They had it up at the Thomas Fogarty winery in Woodside. I was held up in traffic so I missed most of the ceremony, but I managed to make the part where Judy introduced Felix and Betsy as husband and wife. The view from the wedding site was perfect. It was a little bit like Joey's wedding, where you could see all the expensive houses spilling into the Pacific Ocean, except that yesterday it was clear and sunny and I was looking at the San Francisco Bay. The food was really good too, best I've ever had at a wedding, but you probably could have guessed that. Felix's brother designed everything, from the decorations to the programs. Everything was lovely. There were even a lot of well-behaved babies, your grand daughter included. That's not what reminded me of you though.
The best parts of the wedding were the speeches. Everybody who spoke was great, but I think people probably liked Wayne's speech the best. I remember when I was getting ready to make my speech for Dave's wedding, one of his groomsmen told me that the best speeches make people laugh and cry. I don't remember exactly how it went; I'm pretty sure Wayne couldn't tell you either. I just remember thinking that I had never really thought about how hard it must have been for their family, being separated by an ocean. I just remembered that they seemed to argue a lot. He talked about how Betsy used to write him, he being in Taiwan and her being over here, and how much he would look forward to getting those missives. We all laughed through our tears when said that, even now, he didn't know whether or not their mother had forced her to write those letters. It didn't matter, regardless, they were important to him. I don't even remember the rest of the speech, what struck me at that moment was the feeling you get when you realize for the first time that one person loves another. You hear it sometimes, you take it for granted. Of course they love each other, they're siblings. Of course, they love each other, their married.
That's what reminded me of you. I remembered that day that you told us you had cancer, in the car. You hadn't wanted to tell us, and perhaps if it had been only me, with my tendency not to ask questions, and not both your sons, we might not have found out before you wanted us to. You wanted to wait until after the holidays, but innocent questions have a way of unearthing dark things. Dave went up to his room as soon as we got home and I, still in shock, went to talk to mom. She was relieved then, having held that secret for so long. She wept; I held her. She cried about how good a father you were, how good a man. Before that moment I don't think I understood how much you two loved each other. I thought of all the things that I had called love, how they seemed so small in that moment to what you two shared and how I had failed to understand, failed to see it. Looking back it seems clearer now, the little things.
Maybe when you tell someone you love them in front of others, if you say it in just the right way and the time is just right, everybody who hears stops to reflect on love in their life. I love you dad. Happy Father's Day.
A little social satire to start; and of course, I would be remiss if I didn't link what ought to be a devastating blow to the Bush administration. But that's all I'll say about the news in the world this week, cause honestly, I just don't feel like it. Lately, I've been feeling pretty crappy. Not emotionally crappy, physically crappy. I think I might be sick, but it hasn't really hampered my ability to go out or go to work so I figure I'm not. Unfortunately there's really no in-between. I'm in the habit of calling in sick only when I'm close to dying. Which is why yesterday, I accepted Alvin's gracious offer to fill in the sixth spot at Gary Danko for dinner. Silly thing really, going out to fine dining when you're stomach isn't up to snuff. But since I blew almost a hundred bucks I figure I should make some mention of it here. The atmosphere at Gary Danko is refined, but not too snobby. Honestly I prefer something like Clementine which at first appears snobby but is actually very provincial ... especially if you speak French, but I digress. The staff at Gary Danko is top notch. I especially liked the way that they often used two or three servers to make sure the dishes (all six in our case) were served and removed within seconds of each other. The decor was also impeccable, just the right blend of high-class and inviting.
Fine, fine, you might say, but what about the food? After all, you don't pay $78 dollars for service and decor. At GD you have the choice of the five course tasting menu, or making a three, four, or five course meal or your own. For my four course meal I choose the oysters with caviar, asparagus tips and lettuce cream; the pan seared scallops with bottarga and sage oil, the lamb with goat cheese polenta, and earl grey mousse on chocolate cake with dark chocolate sorbet. The meal started with a pre-appetizer (I'm sure there's a french word for this but I never took French so....) with I believe was sweetbreads in a cilantro oil and something else that I can't quite remember. Whatever it was, it was excellent. Light and refreshing I though that I was in for a real treat. I wasn't as impressed with the appetizer. It was very good, but I thought that it was a little too rich. Too be honest, it looked more like a bisque to me and I was expecting something different, like oysters and caviar on ice ... but that's what you get when you don't ask questions. In any case I think the richness of the soup (more like a thin gravy) detracted from the flavor of the ingredients. The seafood course more than made up for this failing however. The pan seared scallops were absolutely delicious with just a hint of sweetness. Mike, Brian and I were debating what they had put in the sauce, but in the end we couldn't figure it out. It's probably better that way, if I knew I'd probably waste a lot of time trying to replicate this excellent dish.
The third course was the most disappointing for me. Although the lamb was cooked to perfection, I felt the pairing with the polenta was perhaps better suited for lamb that was medium to well done and heavily spiced. As it was the polenta's rich and creamy texture completely overpowered the lamb, which I had ordered rare. The sides of caramelized onions, mixed bell peppers and eggplant were impeccable however. The dessert was a saving grace. Because of the way the meal is served, I missed out on two of the courses that various other people had ordered, which under normal circumstances would have been fine, except that my stomach was hurting and it was getting late. The earl grey mousse was delicious, it was like having the perfect high tea, a full tea flavor, mellowed by sugar and cream. Separately, the dark chocolate sorbet was excellent, pulling no punches and requiring a true chocolate lover to appreciate. I felt though, the dish required some foil, something tart, a cherry sauce to go with the sorbet instead of a caramelized wine sauce. By the end of the meal I was feeling rather heavy. That of course, I can not blame on the restaurant. As is the case when you have a choice, those things you can only blame on yourself. The evening ended with some after dessert desserts (again, there's probably a word for this...) Those that I tried were excellent. Overall, I didn't have the greatest experience, but I think I might try again under the right circumstances.
The Span of Attention: Tired of reading about hostages in Saudi Arabia, Iraqi assassinations, and flagrantly erroneous reports of dropping terrorism levels? So am I. It's not that I don't care, I'm just tired of reading it. And I'm tired of writing about it too. It just goes to show that my attention span isn't that much better than the average American. In fact, I think it's probably much worse since it's only Wednesday and I really don't want to do any work. Not that I'm lazy, it's just that I insist on questioning the rationality of what I've been assigned to do. Something that ends up getting me stuck in an infinite do-loop. Damn, just writing this makes me feel guilty. Oh hell, I'll just go and do what I'm supposed to ... however stupid it might be.
What for? It was hot yesterday. I know, I was speeding back to work after meeting up with my sister-in-law in Castro Valley. A couple of taps on my nifty instrument gauge told me that it was 92 degrees. "Damn," I thought, "I should be wearing sunscreen." And in fact, I carry sunscreen in my car, along with a brush and some hair ties. Essentials if you plan to have anyone with long hair sit in the passenger seat of a convertible. "Damn," I thought, "I am one lucky bastard." But not because I was racing back to work and working on my tan at the same time. But because Lila decided to bring Amelia (and really she didn't have a choice, what else are you going to do with a five month old beside carry her everywhere you go?) and there she was playing on the bank counter making the lady on the other side laugh and smile. Cause that's what babies do, they make you laugh and smile. And they force you to make major changes in your life. "Damn," I thought, "I'm just glad I could help out." I'm just a go-between though, it's really the C.Y. in Cydney whose graces I'm passing along.
Haste and Waste: I heard a comedian once comment, "The funny thing is, a few years ago, no one had cell phones. Now if we leave our houses without one, it's reason enough to turn around and go back." A week ago, when I realized I left my cell at home, I certainly should have turned back around. But I was in a hurry and I was already at the bank. So instead of checking to make sure that my sister-in-law hadn't changed her last name (and I know that she didn't, I really do.) I flipped a mental coin in my head and went the other way in deciding what name to put on the cashier's check. And of course, you all know, whenever you flip that mental coin, you're bound to be wrong. So there I was just this past weekend talking to the cashier about reissuing the check. In her broken English she convinced me that since they were married, it wasn't necessary. Yup, I'm that gullible. It doesn't help that though I really wanted to say, "Look, you're not understanding, please get your manager." I felt uneasy about calling attention to another's language difficulties. That, and of course, I was in a hurry.
A matter of Timing: Last word on Reagan, I swear. This weekend I happened to be cleaning up around the house and I had NPR to keep my mind busy. I was surprised by the number of events that had happened last week that went unnoticed (unless it's only me, perhaps I'm as easily distracted as I am gullible) mostly because of Reagan's death. You might have heard of the DOJ memo sanctioning torture. Salon.com does a good job in summarizing that one. And what about the suit that CNN brought against the State of Florida? Wired.com gives you the low down on that interesting tale. Lastly, what's the point of a game if you're not keeping score?
Chess with a Dragon: Yesterday, after finishing dinner at Consuelo, we sat down at a chess table in Santana Row. Carol had never played chess before and so her sister J. proceeded to teach her using me as the strawman. At first they moved recklessly, allowing me to gain a sizable advantage in the beginning. I overextended my pieces however and I didn't develop my pawn structure enough to support my position. In contrast, their bold moves had resulted in a formidable wall which made my petty intrusion meaningless. Carol moved with uncertainty in the beginning but, lead by J.'s aggressive moves, she developed more of a feel of where to move her pieces. By the end of the game, they had my king trapped on the last rank and it was only a matter of time before they sealed the deal. To be honest, it wasn't my best chess, not that my best chess would stand up to a serious game, but I was still surprised by the outcome. Not many people can boast a winning chess record of 1-0 but my baby's one of them. Watch out world, here she comes.
Light Reading: I really shouldn't be reading and posting without getting a second opinion, but this article really ticked me off today. I figure I'm a pretty intelligent human being, decently well informed, and aware that my viewpoint may not be right. I sure as hell don't need people to help "balance" the news I read. I prefer my news the way our president likes it, coming from trusted sources:
HUME: How do you get your news?I suppose though, to be fair, most of us probably don't have a much better feel for what a "trusted" source is. I mean, if you didn't think your sources were right, why would you trust them? I think Francis Bacon's words are appropriate: "Read not to contradict nor to believe, but to weigh and consider."
Remeber the Time: I was home for the summer after my first year at Berkeley, meeting up with old friends when I first heard Noam Chomsky's name. Lamentably, I've never read anything by him (except for a few chapters in a book that was given to me as a birthday gift) but he's up there with Joseph Campbell on my list of authors to read if I ever really wanted to educate myself. This article from Common Dreams caught me a little by surprise. I thought Reagan was a decent president, but then I was 5 when he took office, so what do I know? Truth be told, in recent days, I've read about a lot of horrible things that went on when Reagan was president, but in deference to the dead I tried to block most of it out. I appreciate that in his brief statement Mr. Chomsky doesn't mention anything disparaging about the recently deceased and attributes his current reverence to "extremely effective marketing." For more just the facts reporting, follow this.
The Circus: I try to get around to all the things that piqued my interest during the day in my blog, but I think that I only manage to capture about 10% of it. There's a lot that goes on in the world that I ignore or overlook, it's easy to do when all you have to do is not click on a link. I'm sure some of you have done that reading my journal, especially if you have no interest in politics at all. Other things are just ephemera and I treat it as such. Take for example the fact that giraffes have control valves in their necks that keep their heads from exploding when they bend down to drink ... you didn't really need to know that now did you? And still other things just leave me speechless. Anyway, today was one of those days when I couldn't capture the real essence of things that came my way. It doesn't mean that I'm not listening or that I don't care. For all the entries that you might run across when you visit, there were a few that weren't written, fewer still that were written and deleted. It's very much like a circus, you notice all the hoopla that spins 'round the rings, but unless you pay attention you miss the person in the center, all alone.
I'm really starting to like the RSS feed feature that My Yahoo! offers. Without it, I would have never run across this article. The quoted comment from Jake Dobkin reminded me of this quote:
They came first for the Communists,I first ran across this when I visited Boston a few years ago. I was actually looking for a place to quench my thirst when I spied six tall glass towers. Anyone who knows Boston knows what I'm talking about and from the quote I'm sure you can guess. Six towers, each one etched with a million numbers, the heat rising from grates in the ground. Powerful reminders of the past, but today I wonder, have we learned anything at all?
I was heartened earlier in the week by this story. I'm a member of the ACLU now after being outraged enough by stories of abuses going on under the Patriot Act. I'm wondering though if I'm not being swayed by my subscription to too many progressive newsletters. Maybe I should subscribe to the conservative ones. Unfortunately, I find their spin a little too blatant ... heck, I can't even watch Fox News. At the same time, some overly liberal publications irk me too. Hey, I know Reagan wasn't a perfect guy. No president is. Cut the guy some slack, he just DIED. Sigh, that's not effective though. That's the unfortunate thing about the news. You gotta present it while it's hot, or else no one cares. And by now I'm sure I've lost all my readers so I'm out.
Deadlines: I'm under a self imposed deadline to go to sleep earlier tonight. Reason? This morning I had vertigo and was basically incapacitated for half the work day with thoughts of running to the bathroom and puking. It didn't help that the walls of my cubicle are made of jello. Anyway, I've had this before, but the last time it took me a couple of days to kick it. I hope that if I get enough sleep tonight that'll do it. It's good to have deadlines. In the four hours that I've been awake an at home, I've done three loads of laundry, sawed half a tree down in my front yard and made firewood in the process, attempted to plant a new vine in my backyard, and cleaned my espresso machine.
Expectations: Deadlines have such a bad connotation ... I'm not one to really talk, seldom being under one given the nature of my job. Still, I have to say, to all those who labor under them, they seem like a good thing to me. I seems to me the really bad thing about deadlines is the way that the people who impose them, manage them. For me, on the rare occasion that I have a deadline, which usually lasts anywhere from 90 seconds (think Swordfish) to four hours, it really does focus the mind. Take this journal entry for instance ... I just may be able to squeeze it in before 11 o'clock. If I manage to x-post it too, that'd be bonus points.
Next: I've been loath to post a entry to follow the previous one. That's one thing that I don't like about trying to be prolific ... moving on. I think James Joyce via Daedalus was on to something when he wrote that three things are needed for beauty, wholeness, harmony, and radiance. I'm afraid that this day's entry will have none of those.
Exclusivity: Last week I drove down to P.A. to pick up B. in my Z. On our way to T.G.I.F. we had a conversation about the meaning of friendship, which he recounted on his semi-private, semi-public website. I was surprised to learn that I was one of six to hold the key to this particular door. What is the key to friendship? B. seems to think that a friend is someone that you'd feel comfortable asking to lunch. I think I might go for a broader definition. A friend I think is someone with which you share a key. It might be a small thing, but it would be something private, given and received, that separates them from everyone else and you from everyone else they know.
Gratitude: Whatever the definition of friend is for you, there is something that I know for sure. How ever they choose say it, when someone calls you friend, you know it to the core of your being that it's true.
Once there was a girl of many words named Kirei. Her parents had given her that name because when she was born she was the most beautiful baby in the world. She had very large eyes for such a small girl and her hair was the color of dusk. At the young age of eleven, all those around her were certain that she would grow up to be someone famous, like a model or an actress. Kirei cared little for those things though, and spent a great deal of her time reading books and dreaming of heroic adventures and epic loves. She spent even more time writing in the diary she kept hidden in her room.
“Go outside and play,” her mother would tell her, “Such a beautiful girl shouldn’t be cooped up like this.”
“I’m studying to be a late bloomer,” she responded precociously, “You can’t rush a good thing.”
By the time she was nearly twelve, she had worked her way through most of the books in her family’s considerable library. Being very careful, because being such a small girl she had to climb very high on the ladder to reach the top shelf, week by week she worked her way through the heavy tomes there. They were laden with marvelous words, ideas that she wasn’t quite sure she understood, and worlds that she could never have found in books on the lower shelves. There she found inspiration for her own tale, which she kept hidden in her diary, the story of the man she dreamt she would one day meet.
When she thought that she had finally read all there was to read, she saw that there was one book that she had overlooked. It was tucked in to a quiet corner, shadows tracing the cobwebs there. The words on the binding were faint traces of what they once were and gave no hint of what lay inside as she stood high up on the ladder examining it. Slowly she pulled the book free from its dusty perch....
THUMP!
Kirei hung by one hand to the top rung of the ladder, the other outstretched toward the obsidian book that now lay open on the floor. She dangled there paralyzed for an interminable moment as she strained to hear the footsteps of her mother coming up the stairs. Silence. She let out a long sigh of relief and scrambled down the ladder to see what she had uncovered. The book had opened itself to an early chapter and the jaundiced pages there dripped with a quicksilver calligraphy.
“Ki-rei …” Her mother’s voice seemed impossibly far away, as if in a dream that she once had. And then it struck her, haven’t I been here before? Sitting on this floor, in front of this book? Yes, I remember now, what was I reading? Kirei looked and the pages and saw there her life spilled out before her. Yes, I was sitting here just so, reading in this book the story of my life. I read about how I met my true love and I read about all the wonderful adventures we would have together. Kirei laughed. Even at such a young age, she knew that certain things weren’t possible. No one can know the future. At that moment she did not know whether she had actually read these words or just dreamed them, but she knew that she was tired and that the sunlight that once spilled honey from the half drawn shades, now seemed like the fog that rolled over the hills in the afternoon. Through her heavy-lidded eyes the silvery script seemed uncertain and began to blur until it covered the entire page in a thin sheen. Weary, Kirei felt herself dip closer and closer to the page until she could stay awake no longer and then she fell.
She fell for a long time and dreamed many dreams. She dreamt of a foreign land, the cherry blossoms tumbling from trees like winter’s last snow and lying in the velvet softness carving out angel shapes. She dreamt of summer on the vast plains, the unrelenting sun cracking the desert hardpan in shapes that seemed to tell of giants passing there. She dreamt of another coast, the trees awash in autumn hues, tall ships with their white sails billowed by a growing wind, as she wrapped herself in scents of hickory and elm in the smoke scented air. She dreamt of rains that told of sorrows she had not yet conceived and of the days that followed. She felt older then, the visions of things yet to pass weighed on her like years. She caught her reflection in the puddles of water that the rains had left behind and saw a young woman she did not recognize except for the still bright eyes that were hers.
When Kirei awoke, she found herself in an unfamiliar hall; the only thing she recognized was the book on which she had laid her head the rest upon. She stood and walked toward the lighted archway at one end, taking with her the book and leaving behind her doors that seemed forever closed. On either side she saw shelves of books without end. As she passed through the portal she found herself in a labyrinthine library, endless rows filled with countless pages and words. She knew without looking that they were books like hers, filled with stories of people’s lives. She saw many people there looking at books and putting them back. Some carried one book with them as she did, some carried two. A few lost souls carried none at all.
Kirei wandered for hours through the library, clutching tightly to her the story of her own life, afraid that she might drop it and lose it forever, thinking that if she lost the book, she might lose her fate. She wandered until she was tired and stopped to sit atop a nearby stack of books. She had forgotten how long she had been sitting there when she felt a tapping on her shoulder. Looking up, she saw a man with a boyish face and eyes that spoke of far away places. She held those eyes for a moment, sinking into the possibilities that they held, before she realized that he was holding out to her a book. It was a book that she instantly recognized, her very own diary.
“I believe this is yours.” He offered. She took it, surprised to find something real here, and opened it to see the hopes and dreams she had put down there. “And I think you have mine.” He continued. She looked at the leather bound tale that she had been holding on to so tightly, the story of her life, and realized that therein was written all of his hopes and dreams. She relinquished it reluctantly, knowing that without it, she might never be able to find him again.
“Wait” She said as he turned and began to move away.
“I should go.”
“How will I find you again?” The stranger turned around and placed a hand on Kirei’s shoulder. He smiled a bittersweet smile and then pulled her close into a tight embrace. He whispered something to her, then let go, turned and walked away. She wanted to follow him, but she knew that she had to leave this place her own way. She walked toward a mirror she had passed along the way and stopped in front of it. There she saw a young woman, a quarter of a century old already with hair the color of dusk, fallen asleep on a sunlit floor. Her hair spilt over an open book and she was alone. Kirei paused for a moment before stepping through and thought of the words the stranger had said:
The minute I heard my first love storyWeekend Report: We Californians are some kinda lucky ... the clouds and rains lifted just in time for a absolutely gorgeous weekend. I'll bet there are plenty of people out there sporting sunburns. Unfortunately, I only had time to cast longing sideways glances outdoors for most of the weekend. The results of which are telling in the disaster area that is my living room. Still, I'd have to say we were pretty lucky this weekend; despite being stood-up by U-haul, we managed to move the majority of Carol's things by Sunday evening. Now we just have to find a place to store everything. Some might call it clutter, I like to think of it as fullness - and for the first time since my birthday party, it feels full, even though there's no one home.
Youth: Today we had our annual AEA luncheon for what might be the last time. Although it felt a little rushed and a bit impromptu, I thought it was one of the best ever and that can only be because the students that we had were exceptional. There a budding beat poet who was also a teenage mother, there was a ceramic sculptor who donated her works to the fund for next year's recipients, there was a Chinese songstress, an Indian dancer, and a orchestral composer. There was more, but I think you get the point, being exceptional as a high school senior is so much more today than it was a decade ago. Still, it wasn't their talents that I envied, it was their youth. Perhaps even more than that, it was the maturity they seemed to possess at their age. Just watching them brought back all the could have, would have, should haves. To them I can only offer this: at every stage of your life, make the most of your age.