~Thursday~ I was up at 4:15, left my house at 4:30, picked up Joe at 4:45, dropped him off at Terminal 2 at 5:00, and returned home at 5:15.
I had hoped to work from home today, as earlier in the week I had no meetings scheduled today. However, a 9:00 one got put on my calendar yesterday, and I thought it best to take it from the office instead of at home. At lunchtime, I went home and worked the rest of my day from there.
After loading the software to listen to a digital recording of the meeting, I spent the entire rest of my work time completing the minutes from the May 13, 2009 University IT Committee Meeting. Tedious.
At 5:30, I lay down for a nap. I woke up at 7:00, and got online only to find Twitter, and the entire Internet really, suffering under the weight of the news that it had just been confirmed that Michael Jackson had died. This was in addition to the news that, earlier in the day, Farrah Fawcett had died.
For posterity, I’m going to capture the things I did, and thoughts I had, after hearing the news:
- Went to cnn.com and looked at the developing headline stories.
- Checked out the trending topics on Twitter (MJ, RIP MJ, #michaeljackson)
- Checked my iPod for MJ songs, shocked to find that I only had one: “Got To Be There.” I remember buying that song on iTunes when I heard it on the radio some time in the last couple of years and thought, “I absolutely loved that song when I was a kid.” I know I owned the 45 at one time.
- I could have sworn that I owned Thriller and that it was on my iPod. I haven’t looked back through my CDs for it. Maybe I had it on vinyl!
- I put “Got to Be There” on my iPod, which was on my Bose SoundDock. It finished much too quickly. I played it again, putting it on “repeat song.”
- I clicked on some emerging cnn.com stories: Larry King Live interviewing Cher, where I was taken with a video playing in the background of when The Jackson 5 was on her show, Cher (not Sonny & Cher), and she was dancing with them. I searched on youtube.com for it, and then watched it.
- I searched for some more of his early performances and watched only the beginning of most of them.
- I saw a reference to one of his songs that’s an all-time favorite of mine, Man in the Mirror, and watched a video of him performing it with a gospel choir. He is such a mesmerizing dancer to me. This video contained shots of people fainting in the audience, being totally overcome by witnessing his performance.
- Donna called, coincidentally, and she hadn’t heard about Michael. She was in her pool. We were on the phone for 21 minutes, longer than any phone call I’ve probably had in the last five years.
- I listened to a recording on the Internet of a phone conversation with two entertainment reporters (I had no idea who they were) who were talking with Debbie Allen about Michael’s death.
- I searched for a statement from Liz Taylor, but only found news blurbs saying she was too devastated to comment at this time.
- As a result of that “liz taylor michael jackson” Google search, I found videos of him singing about Liz, some song called “I love you, Liz” (I think it was) for some tribute or another to her. I’d never heard about that, and it wasn’t compelling enough to me to watch more of a minute of the video.
- I watched the beginning of an inverview with Jesse Jackson about Michael’s death. He was sniffling a lot through the portion that I saw.
- I saw a video recording of Barry Gordy being interviewed about Michael’s death. Twice he said, “He was like a son to me.”
- I read some horribly racist and absolutely vicious youtube.com comments on various MJ videos that I watched.
- Tonight was the first time, ever, I believe, that I thought briefly, “I wish I had a television.”
I did get a little bit of reading in today, and reached a milestone in the book:
