Month: November 2007

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Slappy Anniversary

In December 1997, I experienced my first Christmas party with my new company. The party started around noon at Mt. Fuji, a great Japanese restaurant up on a big hill over in NY state.

Noticing the amount of alcohol my coworkers and their partners were consuming, I turned to my girlfriend around 4:30pm and said, “You wanna get out? I’m a little afraid to be on the road when these guys leave.”

I later found out the party continued on past midnight, at two more bars and then someone’s home. Of course, I was too upstanding a citizen to have fun like that. Go figure.

Anyway, that party also was the occasion to celebrate the 20-year work-anniversary of three of my coworkers: Matt, Sharon & Cyndi. At the time, I didn’t really think about how uncommon it is to stick with a single company for 20 years.

Today, we celebrated Matt & Sharon’s 30-year mark at the company (Cyndi retired two years ago, and seems much happier for it).

I think Sharon’s deliberately smiling goofily; it was too early in the afternoon for that expression. And, yes, Matt was drinking in the workplace, but it was only Coors Light, so that doesn’t count.

Congrats/condolences!

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A Gala Night is About All I Can Handle

Last night’s “black tie optional” event turned out to be pretty slanted toward tuxedos. Rocking the black suit, white shirt and silver tie, I feared that I’d be mistaken for a waiter. Fortunately, the waitstaff wore Nehru jackets

Even so, I felt pretty out of place among the tuxes and bespoke suits. I thought that it’d be nice to get suits made sometime, but realized that I’d prefer to blow my money on high-end gin, too many books, and the NFL’s HD package.

Anyway, the drive into NYC was smooth, even though the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting was going on that evening. Figuring that traffic would build close to my Columbus Circle destination, I decided to get off the West Side Highway at 79th, park at a garage near West End Ave., and walk the 19 blocks down to the Mandarin.

On the way, I passed Lincoln Center, which had its own (much smaller) tree on display. I liked the colors, so I insist you must, too!

And while we’re at it, here’s a photo of the sunset in NJ, as I cruised down the West Side. The view was absolutely spectacular as I came off the George Washington Bridge, but taking a picture from that ramp would’ve been impossible:

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What am I, a farmer?

Last night, I was writing to a buddy about how tired I was from my autumn biz-travel schedule. I think I was attempting to elicit sympathy for going to Milan, Las Vegas and San Diego over the course of 6 weeks. “Boy, you think you’ve got it tough. . .”

In that spirit, I won’t even try to express any sort of discomfort over tonight’s gala in NYC. It’s a dinner/dance benefit event for Just One Break, an employment service for people with disabilities. Pfizer’s outgoing R&D chief is one of the honorees, and one of my pals at that company kindly invited me and my wife. (Thanks, Mak!)

I’m suspicious that this is just a plot by my (day job) readership to find out exactly what sorta woman would consent to spend the rest of her life married to me, so I’m thinking of asking Amy to wear a burka to the event.

I, meanwhile, am wrestling with the concept of “black tie optional.” I don’t think that covers leather chaps and a giant sombrero, so it looks like I’ll have to stop off at the dry cleaner and ransom my nice black suit.

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Lesson Learned

If I stare at the screen longer than the duration of the Anglo-Zanzibar War without writing a word, it means my idea for a post was no good. So, the salient points I had hoped to make are:

  1. Sometimes, going back to a book can be rewarding, even when you don’t remember it fondly
  2. As a corollary to that, A Confederacy of Dunces is now one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read, and I was bored by it when I read it in 1992
  3. I have so many books in my library, I won’t get around to reading half of them before I die
  4. As a corollary to that, I was so bored by James Wood’s The Book Against God after 70 pages that I tossed it into my “Books To Sell” box after the San Diego trip
  5. Oh, and sometimes my Eco Chamber strategy just doesn’t work