I turned on the Superbowl around halftime yesterday to try to catch the commercials. I guess I chose the wrong time. All I saw was some singer (who I later found out was Shania Twain) and No Doubt singing with Sting, murdering an old Police song. The only commercials I saw were spots for network television shows.
That training I was talking about earlier is starting today, while the boss is in London (again).
As much as I enjoyed this past weekend in the Poconos, I’m not sure that it satisfied my desire to get away. After all, here I am at work, back where I was before I left. Not only that, but my Freshblogs&tm; Recently Updated list on my side bar still doesn’t seem to be functioning properly.
But it has the potential to be an exciting day. I will be meeting some new people at work today through software training.
In other news, I heard about this on XPN this morning: Naked-Air Boasts All-Nude Miami-Cancun Flight. Vacationers destined for the clothing-optional beaches of Cancun can now let it all hang out on the plane ride there.
Hi. Denise and I in Pennsylvania. There a fire in our hotel room, but we’re not panicking. There’s chocolate and water boiling on the table. It’s nice to be away.
Denise and I decided, sort of at the last minute, to get away. So I booked a hotel room in the Poconos with a nice fireplace. After we arrived earlier this afternoon, we read through the brochures we picked up in the hotel lobby. We started making reservations at various places and drove over to the mountain to check out the snow tubing situation. It was unbelievably crowded; we were told by the ticket sellers that the crowd gets much lighter (and fewer kids show up) after dark.
We decided to go out to eat at a place recommended by one of Denise’s coworkers, Smuggler’s Cove. It was good, but we ate far too much. After dinner, we stopped by the hotel to digest and then headed back out in search of the ice skating rink. It was a bit of a distance, but we found it eventually. I wasn’t too bad after not skating since college, and Denise wasn’t too bad either, considering she had skated only once before.
Now we’re warming up in front of the fireplace, drinking hot chocolate, dialing in at 14.4kbps, and thinking about our plans for tomorrow which include snow tubing as I mentioned above and horseback riding. We had wanted to go horse-drawn-sleigh riding, but unfortunately there isn’t enough snow.
Nevertheless, there are still many things to do up here. I’m glad we decided to get away this weekend. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
I speak to my mother once every week or two weeks. She, a resident of Orange County, is relentlessly attempting to convince me to move to California. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live a southern California life. Other times I don’t want to wonder about California, but New Jersey just doesn’t cut it anymore. I guess I wanted to move back here after college to be in a place with which I had a good level of familiarity.
Other places I’d consider moving to if I were to move: New England, Baltimore area, North/South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and somewhere out of the United States.
Early in my dating career, I saw a girl I had known from summer camp. Although I can’t remember if it was my first or second year of high school, I was young at the time. We had scheduled a Saturday night movie at the Mercer Mall Cinema which no longer exists. My father drove me to her house in Princeton to pick her up.
We arrived a little early, and her family was just finishing Havdalah. My father and I stood and watched as they performed the family ceremony, and afterwards our families made their introductions. Of course I didn’t remember any of this, and perhaps I didn’t know it at the time, but her father was a Princeton University professor who, among other things, eventually received the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton. Her mother was also a professor (of astrophysics) at Princeton.
Their daughter was Orli, and we flirted. I still remember the drive home from the movie with my father driving and the two of us flirting (just flirting) in the back seat.
A few months later, we went on another date—at least I thought it was a date at the time—to see Pippin at her high school. I thought it was going well until she decided during intermission to sit with some other friends, leaving me to sit by myself. Maybe I was supposed to go sit with her, but it didn’t seem like it at the time.
But that wasn’t the only time I felt ditched by her. Once we went into New York City with a bunch of her synagogue friends to deliver meals to the elderly. When it was time to head back to Princeton, she decided to stay in New York with her friends, something I wouldn’t have been able to do. So I rode the bus home alone.
After these events we talked on the phone one more time. I was so hurt. She asked for my forgiveness. How could I refuse? She was such a cute, sweet girl.
Apparently she went to MIT, had a perfect 5.0 GPA, received a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford University, and a few weeks ago spoke about Tuberculosis.
I just thought I’d give everyone an update.
The Mayfly Project 2002: Summing up my year in twenty words or less.
That’s not an easy task. Displacement, family, isolation. Self-love, friends and others. New job, income, no traveling. Start fresh again.
Now for my New Years Resolutions, which I haven’t thought out until now. I resolve to continue to be true to myself and to my friends. I resolve to try to be more tolerant of others. I resolve to be forgiving of others, but also of myself. I resolve to love more. I resolve to stop old habits. I resolve to keep in touch with my friends better. I resolve to be the master of my own destiny.
There. That wasn’t so difficult. Check back with me in 365 days.
Favorite Childhood Memory #368:
Waking up on a school day to the sound of snow plow trucks.
I’m in Toms River and it’s snowing. I’m kind of surprised because I figured out here by the shore it wouldn’t be cold enough to snow.
I finished exchanging presents with Denise this morning. I think she was happy with everything she received in the last two days. I am, as well. Today and yesterday I received a CD/MP3 player, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling script and songbook, a new pocketwatch, tickets to a They Might Be Giants concert this weekend to which everyone’s apparently already going, cologne, several DVDs including the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings “gift set” (including the bookends), some books, and some CDs. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things at the moment, but more of Denise’s relatives just arrived so I should go be social.
Bryan is back in town (for less than three days, as usual) so we celebrated in a way that is fast becoming a tradition — chili and hot chocolate at his parents’ house. The meal was great, of course, and the dessert consisted of a strange family concoction including chopped Butterfingers, butter, whipped cream, and I’m not even sure what elase. Surprisingly, it was good.
The food fest was followed by a foray back to our fine apartment where M-D, Darren, and to a smaller extent me, introduced Bry to the wonders of Mechassault (or as our lawyer roommate, Ward calls it, Mechattemptedbattery, since it more accurately describes the game), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and some car racing game.
Today I get to work for half of a day (three hours and forty-five minutes to be exact). I wish I just stayed home…
Also, since the anticipation and temptation was too much for us, we decided to open a few presents that had been sitting underneath the tree. Ah, presents. I got a few DVDs and Denise opened her foot spa thing. We both tried it out. Relaxing.
Becca‘s home, too, and I hear she has some shopping and some Lord of the Rings watching to do.