Just like a Slattery

There is more to life than increasing its speed. – Gandhi

I really, really like this one.

I’ve always worked in a deadline business, so when I’m not at work, I don’t like for things to be hectic.

I like to make a list of things that I need to get done and work through it, and sometimes when I make my list, I put things on it that I’ve already done, not just so I know I don’t have to do them, but so I can mark them off and feel like I’ve already accomplished something.

So. There you go. Slow down. You’ll get there when you get there.

I spent the weekend running around picking up things for Sunday afternoon, which is when I was having my surprise party, which I like to throw for myself every year.

Except I forgot to take my birthday off Facebook, so it wasn’t such a surprise.

I like to treat for my birthday, because I have the best friends in the world.

This year the only we had that I actually made myself was pimento cheese, because I make really good pimento cheese. Everything else I ordered and rode around and picked up.

The best thing I picked up was sausage I had made at The Spotted Trotter. It was beyond all reasonable belief.

The best things that showed up were my friends – every single one of them. Some were friends I see practically every day, and some I hadn’t seen in decades.

As the afternoon wound down, we all ended up around the table, laughing and talking and picking at the leftovers.

I wish every one of you could have been here.

It was all just so wonderful, even the part where Tina Turner went walkabout and we had to go out in the rain and drag her bad little self back.

I am blessed beyond measure. I hope you are too.

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. – Marcel Proust

Last night my head had just hit the pillow and I was out like a light. About thirty seconds later, my eyes snapped open and I remembered I hadn’t posted the truth of the day. I considered getting out of bed and doing it and then I fell asleep again.

I’m in a busy stretch at work and I come home exhausted. I’m about to fall over now and it’s just past nine o’clock.

But about that truth up there. It’s true.

Dooce and her husband, Jon, have separated.

I do not know these people, personally. I have never met them, never been in a huge convention hall and heard them speak on a panel, and likely never will.

But I have been reading their blogs and looking at photos they have taken for umpteen years; they are a regular part of my week-to-week, just like that guy who used to ride the No. 10 bus out of Midtown Station to downtown every morning with me, Art. He had a heart attack and was gone for six weeks. I was worried sick and I had never even seen a picture he had taken.

I’m unspeakably sad about Heather and Jon’s troubles.

Which I guess might sound weird, but there it is.

Many of my closest friends today are people who I would not know were it not for the miracle of modern telecommunications. Many of my oldest friends, people I have known since childhood, are people I keep up with via the Internet. I see my own brothers and sister online more than I do in person.

It’s a big, big world, but the Internet has made it so tiny.

Ah, well. Back to the data mines.