Kurt, Kevin, and I did indeed pay for last night’s sins this morning. Dragging ass. All of us.
I had quite the affirming day from very different sources, for very different things, but all in e-mail or on the Internet.
An e-mail from a wonderful lady I worked with many years ago, and with whom I’ve been in touch on and off over the years. We’d lost touch for a few years, and then last year, or the year before, we reconnected by e-mail, and we swap holiday letters now. Her affirmation was with regards to my writing:
| John …. I just got back from a trip to Cincinnati and found your Christmas letter. As always, I loved it! Your letters describe a real Life, lived carefully and generally joyfully. They make me weep and they make me smile. Thank you for both!
Be on the lookout for mine ….. probably somewhere around Valentine’s Day! xoox, Pam |
And this e-mail from Sarah, a total gem of a friend, with an affirmation regarding the enjoyment of my company:
| Brad, Etta, Anna, John, and Kim:
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I would like to invite the five of you to Mitch’s on Thursday Jan 8 from 6:30-? for a Salon Discussion. (I hate to write this, but check out Salon Gatherings at Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering) for some more information…) In December, we had a series of interesting and spirited discussions that included the following: 1. Stoned parents at Thanksgiving 2. Burning and microwaving marshmallows 3. Honors at graduation and who is worthy to wear “the cord” 4. Wikipedia, Blogs, twitter, Facebook, clickers, and mobile devices 5. Bathrooms of Asia I can only imagine what we could discuss on the 8th… (If 1/8 does not work for everyone, please let me know. I just picked a date…). Happy New Year! Sarah |
The other two affirmations were via instant message regarding my Christmas presents and thoughtfulness. Robert told me that his mother loved her little soaps from Ten Thousand Villages, and then his brother sent this instant message to him regarding the popcorn I sent over for him:
| djss1928: i forgot! tell him thank you sooo much, very thoughtful of him |
Obviously, I didn’t quite get what it meant to be a VIP at the RBC Center this evening, where I had a parking pass for section “1A,” and seats in the Chancellor’s Box for the NC State – Loyola of MD basketball game.
I showed up at 6:15 for a 7:00 game, and was literally the second car in section 1A, which is right up beside the coliseum. I think the whole point of having a VIP parking spot is to show up minutes before the event, so that people can oooh and ahhh at you when you pass by all of the lines driving up to your front spot.
I was delighted not to be the first one to the Chancellor’s Box, though. The seating person kept trying to send me down to some seats on the front row—I mean on the floor front row, but I saw the box area behind him and Marc Hoit, our CIO and host of tonight’s event, and kept trying to tell the seater that I was with Marc’s group.
Finally, Marc had to say to the man, who was pretty much just ignoring my plea, “No, he’s in here, with us.”
The view was nothing to write home about in the box, but the free hot dogs (with chili, slaw, onions, mustard and ketchup available), and the boneless fried chicken pieces (nuggets-like, with ranch dressing and barbecue sauce available), the vegetable trays (with cucumber, broccoli, carrots, and green pepper, I think, available), the potato chips and French onion dip, the ginormous cookies (chocolate chip, oatmeal and raisin, and one other, I think), and the choice of drinks (bottled water, orange, Sierra Mist, and maybe some kind of cola) were pretty darn good.
In the category of “You might be gay if…”, in the game, I was most moved by the National Anthem. The woman who sang it had a chillingly beautiful voice.
This is the first NC State basketball game I’ve ever been to, and during it, I learned that the “wolf” in Wolfpack, also has audio associated with it. Of course, I’ve seen the wolf a gazillion times, having gone to State for grad school, and working on Hillsborough street, which is across the street from the campus, and on just about every establishment’s door the wolf is, but I’d never heard it—until tonight.
On and off, they played this recording of a wolf howling, which to me, sounded like a werewolf. However, it did make me think that I’m not so sure of the difference in sound between a wolf and a werewolf, although I do understand that werewolves aren’t real.
At one point in the game, the fans started doing this chant back and forth, with everyone on one side yelling one thing and everyone on the other side yelling another thing back.
To me, it sounded like the exchange was, “Crack! Whore! Crack! Whore!” but I knew that couldn’t be right. Someone else assured me it was, “Pack! Roar! Pack! Roar!”
When it happened again later in the game, the back and forth sounded like, “Wolf! Pack! Wolf! Pack!”
I had some great conversation with Fay, the wife of our CIO, and with a lady named Harriet, who is a friend of one of my colleagues. I did watch the last three minutes of the game, when it was close enough that it could have gone either way. Fortunately, although I don’t really know why it’s fortunate, we won.