I don't eat turkey, so calling it turkey day is kind of weird for me. Though I guess a bunch of other people DO eat turkey, so it's still a turkey day or something.
Had a nice big meal with the L family as we quite often do. B & R were back from Scotland and it was super nice to see them. Had a bit of a strange while where I felt like I was just sitting on the edge of the room and G was kind of napping next to me and it was all full of people talking and I wasn't part of any of it. But shortly after that I got up and moved a tray so I could sit next to B & A and then got to talk to them for a bit and felt more like I was part of things.
I made roasted veggies which went over really well. Seems funny to me because they are SO easy, just chop up the veggies and drizzle lots of olive oil, herbs, and some onions and garlic. But people liked 'em lots! I also made vegetarian stuffing that was barely touched since there was tons more, and some cranberry sauce that wasn't even opened since there was LOTS of that. Anyway, I like both those things so I'm sure they'll be eaten soon.
The other thing people liked that I brought were these little coconut cookies, that are also super easy to make - just sweetened flaked coconut, sugar, egg whites and chopped pistachios. I think that may have been the only dessert that was completely eaten! T didn't even get any because she was too full and by the time she wasn't, they were all gone! I made them last night because I wanted to offer something to G's soccer friends who were over and I figured I could bring the rest to Thanksgiving. :) Luckily I happened to have just the right amount of pistachios on hand to make them.
It was strange to see B & R and realize we really haven't been in touch much for the whole year and a 1/2 since we visited them and how much has happened since then! It's been nearly a year since I lost my job at AS and it's still such a big part of my story. Might be time to let it go? It WAS a rather life changing event though, and it's part of the explanation of how I got to where I am now. Interesting though, to really notice, that it was almost a year ago.
Right before Christmas, when we cleaned out the whole office, and it looked so sterile and bare. Granted, I stayed on to train people, but only for 1/2 days and only from home. I still have boxes full of crap that I brought home, sitting in my little home office, taking up space. I threw out a bunch of old notebooks last month as it was infinitely clear that I would no longer need them. Some of the stuff from the office was the little knick-knacks I'd collected over the 3 years working there, little things that brightened my day or helped me get through it. I really was pretty miserable at the end...
The worst part is when you have to sit there, when there's nothing to do. I mean, there's ALWAYS something to do I suppose, but you definitely don't have the freedom to say "ok, I've done enough for today, I'm going home." And then being so tired and drained that I couldn't do any of the things I wanted to. Such a waste.
G is heading to Dubai tomorrow, and Colombia directly after that. He'll be gone for 20 days! eeps! That's pretty long. Hopefully I'll be able to keep myself busy. It'll give me plenty of time to get used to the Prius. So strange not to need to use a key, just press a button and it's on, press a button to park it. Hard to TELL if it's on because it doesn't make any noise starting up!!
Anyhoo, I'm thankful for a year of transformation, growth and figuring out boundaries and desires, many adventures and getting to see lots of friends and make some new ones. Grateful to be building relationships with people in the music world and to recognize that it's a real and valid lifestyle, not something that's shameful or crazy. Thankful for the President Elect and all he seems to be doing already in preparation for taking office. (I read something the other day about how he's going to "green" the White House, loved that! Very thankful for my amazing and supportive G who has stood by and helped me up during all my crazy figuring out of things this year. I don't think it's quite over, but getting closer!
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Momentary Panic
My brother is a prolific YouTuber. He went out to San Francisco for the YouTube live event. Just 3 days, he took Friday off work and the event was on Saturday and we went to pick him up in Des Moines today.
G had to get a hardtop suitcase to carry a desktop computer to the trade show in Dubai, so we stopped at the Samsonite outlet in Williamsburg. There was a buy one get one half off, so we got a new big suitcase for us to replace the falling apart one I brought to Colombia. I also got a new laptop bag, a padded silver one that I'm SO wanting to take out to a cafe somewhere so I can feel terribly romantic and professional. Maybe tomorrow. :D
Anyway, G also needs a black suit jacket, and we were trying to figure out if we should just make T wait longer and stop at one of the nice stores at the outlet mall or continue on and go to the mall in Des Moines. We opted for the latter since we were pretty behind schedule and didn't want to make T wait too too long.
I called my cousin who lives in DM (and only about 5 minutes from the airport) to see if she might be able to pick him up so he could wait at her place instead of in the airport. She was out but said if she went home before we got there she would swing by and see if she could see him waiting outside.
T's flight was supposed to land at 2:15. I tried calling him at about 2:20. Straight to voicemail. Same deal several times after that. It's just a temp, pay as you go phone he only uses for traveling. We figured he probably wasn't freaking out that no one was there quite yet and would remember to turn on his phone as soon as he wondered where mom was. Called my mom to let her know what was going on in case he called her (she was originally going to pick him up).
My cousin drove by the airport around 3:30 and didn't see him, and he still wasn't answering his phone. I called the airline to see if his flight had landed and it had. G and I got there a little after 4 I think and T was nowhere to be seen. Des Moines is a tiny airport, you can walk the whole area that you're allowed to walk (baggage claim, ticketing and foodcourt/gift shop) without a ticket in about 5 minutes.
This is where the panic sets in. My mom had called him once while he was in SF, but he didn't answer. I knew he'd made it to SF because he'd sent out a Twitter saying so but hadn't heard anything after that. The airline people can only tell me that he hadn't changed his reservation but his original flight arrived on time. I don't know if they actually KNOW if he boarded and just can't tell me or if they don't even know. There didn't appear to be any operators working the white phone paging system because it just rang and rang and rang. I started crying. My mom called me back to say that she'd talked to his hotel and he had indeed checked in on Friday and checked out that morning, and she was trying to look up his flight number and call the airline to see if she could track him down another way.
G points out that there is another flight coming from Dallas (T's connecting city) at 4:30, which by now is only minutes away. I continue to freak out. T finally, finally calls, he is indeed on the 4:30 flight and it has just touched down. His flight from San Fran was delayed due to weather in Dallas or something, and when he got to Dallas his phone didn't work. He didn't check any luggage, so when he gets off the plane we can go straight to the car.
On the way to the car, he tells us that he had had a headache, and ended up watching the event on his laptop from his hotel room. He'd left his sunglasses at home, so apparently walking around all day without them gave him a headache. (He does have really sensitive eyes.)
It turns out he couldn't find the place it was being held, even though his hotel was supposed to be a 7 minute walk away from it. Apparently the map was misleading. By the time he figured out he was lost and went back to his hotel and got help with the directions, and made it back to the event, THEY WOULD NOT LET HIM IN. Even though he had an e-ticket. Which was apparently fairly meaningless, because it was first come, first serve, and he was late enough that they said they were at capacity. I thought the point of tickets was to RESERVE YOUR SPACE at an event?!
So now I'm pissed. Here's a guy, YouTube is a MAJOR part of his life, he has over 400 videos and watches plenty more than that. He can tell us all about these people by their screen names, many of which are a combination of numbers and letters like xx23pandaxxx. It's his community. I don't know how many people actually watch his stuff or if it's a one-way connection, but he took a whole day off work, spent money on a ticket and a hotel, and made at least two videos that clearly demonstrated how excited he was to be going. One was him simply dancing around in pure joy, and the other an improvised rap. His stuff is nowhere as polished and professional as his idols, but you have to give him the devotion and passion points. And he gets to this party/concert event that is being billed as a community building event/celebration, and ends up watching the thing on his laptop in his hotel room. It must have felt like a betrayal on some level I'm sure. Thank goodness the hotel at least had internet. It would have sucked even more to not get to see it at all.
Here's the thing, my brother has a mild learning disability. In school they called it ADD, I think some later time they called it a form of asbergers. It's not a big deal and he's fine living on his own, but it's little things like my mom did want to make sure he had family nearby, so T lives in his own apartment in the basement, he's probably never going to drive a car, and he sometimes seems to ignore people when they talk to him. I think it's also why he wears sunglasses a lot, because normal life/light is too overwhelming for him sometimes.
But some people aren't going to know all that. Some people are just going to think he's weird, or stupid or stoned. And they're going to be mean and make fun of him. I've seen it in some of the comments people leave on his videos. And the big sister protective vibe kicks in big time. But all I can do is give those comments a thumbs down, and that's probably more than I can do in most of real life. I've gotten a lot better at not taking it personally and making it my responsibility to protect him all the time, but the whole thing still breaks my heart sometimes. He's such a good sweet person, generally happy and mild mannered and creative. And the YouTube thing has given him a chance to reach out and connect. I just hope he doesn't get too discouraged by stuff like this.
Maybe I'm the one more bummed out than him, he's already got a bunch of plans to tell the organizers how they could do a better job next time, and he's already got some ideas about how he can be proactive from his side (finding out how to get to the venue is the night before the event, trying to meet up with some people he can go with from the same hotel, etc.)
Anyway, he's home safe, and learned a bunch of things.
And now that's off my chest I can remember that I wanted to mention this morning I stopped by the cafe because Anais had run out of CD's at the concert and was supposed to bring one by this morning, but it turned out she'd really run out, so she said she could mail me one. I brought my box of jewelry that I'd made for the Farmer's Market and let both of them pick something out. Rachel immediately grabbed the green chunky bracelet that was on top, and looked through a couple other things but said, "well I think I might have already found it", and I said "I had a feeling you might like that one" and she said "who me, green?" hehe. At that particular moment, she was wearing green glasses, a green hat and had long green fingerless gloves. Then Anais said she had to choose carefully because she tends to just wear one jewelry item at a time until she loses or breaks it, and picked out the big wooden etched medallion on a sheer green ribbon necklace. It matched really well with what she was wearing. She asked if I was saving it for anyone special and I said I would be happy to for her to have it. The fangirl in me really wanted to take a picture of them wearing the stuff, but I didn't want to be too, well, obviously fangirly. heh. Would much rather be a friend.
Then they had to go, for a quick dash to The At Home Store for yarn, and then back to Chicago for one more show of their mini tour. (We were a quarter of it.) Sharon was out in the lobby playing her guitar so I sat down and talked to her for a bit. She asked me what I had and I showed her the box of stuff. She particularly liked one set of earrings and said she'd buy them from me later, but I told her she could have them as an early Christmas present, because I was probably going to give her something and it was probably going to be from that box so she might as well have one she liked. I told her about my experience FEELING the guitar, and she agreed that it's pretty easy when you get into the business side of it to forget about why you started at all. And then G called cuz he was ready to go to Des Moines. So a good little quick plug-in with my music peeps for the morning, glad I made it over while they were all still there.
G had to get a hardtop suitcase to carry a desktop computer to the trade show in Dubai, so we stopped at the Samsonite outlet in Williamsburg. There was a buy one get one half off, so we got a new big suitcase for us to replace the falling apart one I brought to Colombia. I also got a new laptop bag, a padded silver one that I'm SO wanting to take out to a cafe somewhere so I can feel terribly romantic and professional. Maybe tomorrow. :D
Anyway, G also needs a black suit jacket, and we were trying to figure out if we should just make T wait longer and stop at one of the nice stores at the outlet mall or continue on and go to the mall in Des Moines. We opted for the latter since we were pretty behind schedule and didn't want to make T wait too too long.
I called my cousin who lives in DM (and only about 5 minutes from the airport) to see if she might be able to pick him up so he could wait at her place instead of in the airport. She was out but said if she went home before we got there she would swing by and see if she could see him waiting outside.
T's flight was supposed to land at 2:15. I tried calling him at about 2:20. Straight to voicemail. Same deal several times after that. It's just a temp, pay as you go phone he only uses for traveling. We figured he probably wasn't freaking out that no one was there quite yet and would remember to turn on his phone as soon as he wondered where mom was. Called my mom to let her know what was going on in case he called her (she was originally going to pick him up).
My cousin drove by the airport around 3:30 and didn't see him, and he still wasn't answering his phone. I called the airline to see if his flight had landed and it had. G and I got there a little after 4 I think and T was nowhere to be seen. Des Moines is a tiny airport, you can walk the whole area that you're allowed to walk (baggage claim, ticketing and foodcourt/gift shop) without a ticket in about 5 minutes.
This is where the panic sets in. My mom had called him once while he was in SF, but he didn't answer. I knew he'd made it to SF because he'd sent out a Twitter saying so but hadn't heard anything after that. The airline people can only tell me that he hadn't changed his reservation but his original flight arrived on time. I don't know if they actually KNOW if he boarded and just can't tell me or if they don't even know. There didn't appear to be any operators working the white phone paging system because it just rang and rang and rang. I started crying. My mom called me back to say that she'd talked to his hotel and he had indeed checked in on Friday and checked out that morning, and she was trying to look up his flight number and call the airline to see if she could track him down another way.
G points out that there is another flight coming from Dallas (T's connecting city) at 4:30, which by now is only minutes away. I continue to freak out. T finally, finally calls, he is indeed on the 4:30 flight and it has just touched down. His flight from San Fran was delayed due to weather in Dallas or something, and when he got to Dallas his phone didn't work. He didn't check any luggage, so when he gets off the plane we can go straight to the car.
On the way to the car, he tells us that he had had a headache, and ended up watching the event on his laptop from his hotel room. He'd left his sunglasses at home, so apparently walking around all day without them gave him a headache. (He does have really sensitive eyes.)
It turns out he couldn't find the place it was being held, even though his hotel was supposed to be a 7 minute walk away from it. Apparently the map was misleading. By the time he figured out he was lost and went back to his hotel and got help with the directions, and made it back to the event, THEY WOULD NOT LET HIM IN. Even though he had an e-ticket. Which was apparently fairly meaningless, because it was first come, first serve, and he was late enough that they said they were at capacity. I thought the point of tickets was to RESERVE YOUR SPACE at an event?!
So now I'm pissed. Here's a guy, YouTube is a MAJOR part of his life, he has over 400 videos and watches plenty more than that. He can tell us all about these people by their screen names, many of which are a combination of numbers and letters like xx23pandaxxx. It's his community. I don't know how many people actually watch his stuff or if it's a one-way connection, but he took a whole day off work, spent money on a ticket and a hotel, and made at least two videos that clearly demonstrated how excited he was to be going. One was him simply dancing around in pure joy, and the other an improvised rap. His stuff is nowhere as polished and professional as his idols, but you have to give him the devotion and passion points. And he gets to this party/concert event that is being billed as a community building event/celebration, and ends up watching the thing on his laptop in his hotel room. It must have felt like a betrayal on some level I'm sure. Thank goodness the hotel at least had internet. It would have sucked even more to not get to see it at all.
Here's the thing, my brother has a mild learning disability. In school they called it ADD, I think some later time they called it a form of asbergers. It's not a big deal and he's fine living on his own, but it's little things like my mom did want to make sure he had family nearby, so T lives in his own apartment in the basement, he's probably never going to drive a car, and he sometimes seems to ignore people when they talk to him. I think it's also why he wears sunglasses a lot, because normal life/light is too overwhelming for him sometimes.
But some people aren't going to know all that. Some people are just going to think he's weird, or stupid or stoned. And they're going to be mean and make fun of him. I've seen it in some of the comments people leave on his videos. And the big sister protective vibe kicks in big time. But all I can do is give those comments a thumbs down, and that's probably more than I can do in most of real life. I've gotten a lot better at not taking it personally and making it my responsibility to protect him all the time, but the whole thing still breaks my heart sometimes. He's such a good sweet person, generally happy and mild mannered and creative. And the YouTube thing has given him a chance to reach out and connect. I just hope he doesn't get too discouraged by stuff like this.
Maybe I'm the one more bummed out than him, he's already got a bunch of plans to tell the organizers how they could do a better job next time, and he's already got some ideas about how he can be proactive from his side (finding out how to get to the venue is the night before the event, trying to meet up with some people he can go with from the same hotel, etc.)
Anyway, he's home safe, and learned a bunch of things.
And now that's off my chest I can remember that I wanted to mention this morning I stopped by the cafe because Anais had run out of CD's at the concert and was supposed to bring one by this morning, but it turned out she'd really run out, so she said she could mail me one. I brought my box of jewelry that I'd made for the Farmer's Market and let both of them pick something out. Rachel immediately grabbed the green chunky bracelet that was on top, and looked through a couple other things but said, "well I think I might have already found it", and I said "I had a feeling you might like that one" and she said "who me, green?" hehe. At that particular moment, she was wearing green glasses, a green hat and had long green fingerless gloves. Then Anais said she had to choose carefully because she tends to just wear one jewelry item at a time until she loses or breaks it, and picked out the big wooden etched medallion on a sheer green ribbon necklace. It matched really well with what she was wearing. She asked if I was saving it for anyone special and I said I would be happy to for her to have it. The fangirl in me really wanted to take a picture of them wearing the stuff, but I didn't want to be too, well, obviously fangirly. heh. Would much rather be a friend.
Then they had to go, for a quick dash to The At Home Store for yarn, and then back to Chicago for one more show of their mini tour. (We were a quarter of it.) Sharon was out in the lobby playing her guitar so I sat down and talked to her for a bit. She asked me what I had and I showed her the box of stuff. She particularly liked one set of earrings and said she'd buy them from me later, but I told her she could have them as an early Christmas present, because I was probably going to give her something and it was probably going to be from that box so she might as well have one she liked. I told her about my experience FEELING the guitar, and she agreed that it's pretty easy when you get into the business side of it to forget about why you started at all. And then G called cuz he was ready to go to Des Moines. So a good little quick plug-in with my music peeps for the morning, glad I made it over while they were all still there.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Blogging from Menlo Park, CA
Ah, California.
Well, it's rained, drizzled or misted pretty much the whole time we've been here, but hey, beats the snow!
It's such a short trip, happening faster than I can process really, and then it'll be back to work before I have time to breath. drats... and tired, all wonked out on the time change, waking up at 5 am and such, and yet staying up late, late, late.
Wondering if any pieces of my song that I started 2-3 years ago after a trip here will come out of this trip as well?
Super speedy summary:
Friday was San Fran with Jyoti. Train, Civic Center statues, Jyoti's apt, Rain, Bus, Sushi, Walking, Bus, Golden Gate Bridge, Rain, Bus, Ghiradelli Square, bit of Fisherman's Warf, Walking, Bus though China Town, taking touristy photos all along the way.
Spent some time with tiny cousin Maggie today. Cute little bundle of energy! Palo Alto Junior Museum. Meet Cousin Brett for the first time. Dropped Maggie off and saw the house. come back to Nana's for sandwiches, Drove around Stanford a bit, stopped in at Fry's, as is the tradition with our techie geek family, got some toys for my iPod. Had big family party/late birthday gathering for Nana this evening.
Alright, more later I suppose...
Well, it's rained, drizzled or misted pretty much the whole time we've been here, but hey, beats the snow!
It's such a short trip, happening faster than I can process really, and then it'll be back to work before I have time to breath. drats... and tired, all wonked out on the time change, waking up at 5 am and such, and yet staying up late, late, late.
Wondering if any pieces of my song that I started 2-3 years ago after a trip here will come out of this trip as well?
Super speedy summary:
Friday was San Fran with Jyoti. Train, Civic Center statues, Jyoti's apt, Rain, Bus, Sushi, Walking, Bus, Golden Gate Bridge, Rain, Bus, Ghiradelli Square, bit of Fisherman's Warf, Walking, Bus though China Town, taking touristy photos all along the way.
Spent some time with tiny cousin Maggie today. Cute little bundle of energy! Palo Alto Junior Museum. Meet Cousin Brett for the first time. Dropped Maggie off and saw the house. come back to Nana's for sandwiches, Drove around Stanford a bit, stopped in at Fry's, as is the tradition with our techie geek family, got some toys for my iPod. Had big family party/late birthday gathering for Nana this evening.
Alright, more later I suppose...
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