1. I had a bad birthday. A miserable birthday. Something like 3 people remembered it was my birthday. One of them was my father, who sang his annual "Happy Birthday to youuuuu" into my voice mail. He was calling from the hospital and sounded weak and sick, but still managed to call his Baby Girl on her birthday. I deleted the message at the end of the day, telling myself that I would call him on Sunday, after the morning news shows so we could have one of our talks about the jerks who populate the Republican party.
2. On Sunday morning at approximately 2:00 a.m., Dad died. So I didn't get to call him, after all. Tony Blankley will have to go on being a jerk without Dad to comment on it.
3. On Thursday, we buried him in the new National Cemetery of the Alleghenies (one of the early arrivals at this new cemetery built to accommodate the approximately 325,000 veterans living in Western Pennsylvania.) Quoth my younger brother, "I think this is probably the slowest Dad's ever driven on Clifton Road."
4. I became, at last, a full-time, permanent staffer at the company where I started in August. The wheels of HR turn slowly, slowly, slowly. I attended new-hire orientation. Apparently this company has grown so much and continues to grow that they are doing a weekly orientation with approximately 30 new hires every week.
5. Last week, as I turned the corner from 53rd Street onto Madison Avenue on my way to work, I heard a thump, then screams, and turned my head in time to see two people get hit, then RUN OVER by a speeding yellow taxi, which then, missing me by inches, crashed into a building a foot in front of me. I watched a white-haired gentleman with blood on his head get to his feet and wander away. The woman was not so lucky. Though the police officer to whom I gave my statement said she was alive, she was face down and broken in the gutter. It was the worst thing I've ever seen in person. What I keep seeing is the look of disbelief on her face as she flew by me. What I keep wondering is -- how is she doing now? What happened to that man? And, had I been two or three seconds faster, I would have been crushed against the building by the cab. One down, eight to go.
So you see, it's been an unsettling kind of month for me. So I'm taking a little break.
