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Month: March 2004

The Game of the Name

The Game of the Name

Last week a co-worker introduced me to Jennifer Lopez. He explained that she had worked for our company before and had decided to come back and help us out a little. Elated, I told her I was honored to meet her. Then I asked her about the time she used to work for the company. Did she ever get a chance to meet John Kennedy, and did she ever work closely with Bruce Lee? I don’t remember if I ever…

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Life Lesson #6: What I Learned About One Bad Mood in Two Good People

Life Lesson #6: What I Learned About One Bad Mood in Two Good People

That night didn’t start off great. One thing after another kept going wrong in our drive there, like good little citizens of Murphy’s Law, until H.E.’s usually good nature turned absolutely pre-menstrual—never mind that I was the one menstruating and nuturing a migraine at the time. Considering my potentially emotional state, I could have fed off of H.E.’s bad mood and launched us into a royally disastrous fight, but I made it very clear that only one of us at…

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My Other Whitman Is a McGowan

My Other Whitman Is a McGowan

I spent St. Patrick’s evening at a poetry reading. The last time I’d been to one I was still in college, where—for a grade—I’d been forced to go to such events and keep a poetry journal of my own. I say “forced” because every other poetry reading I’ve ever been to was maddeningly dull. The readers take themselves really seriously, and they let their voices, the perfect cure for insomnia, drone on and on until I’m a blank stare with…

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Wait For the John

Wait For the John

H.E. and I had never seen the last Star Trek movie, Nemesis, so when it played on TV today, we stuck around to watch part of it. Anyway, Jean-Luc Picard was gearing up for a battle and said something that confused me. “The crew has responded with the dedication I’ve come to expect from them… And like a thousand other commanders on a thousand other battlefields, I wait for the [blank].” The blank, of course, was something I couldn’t quite…

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I’m on tenterhooks, in more ways than one. This past month has been a whirlwind of activity. The day job’s coming close to a production deadline. Add to that a new person going through the process a first time, a not-so-new person who just left to go on maternity leave, a temporary person dropped into the middle of everything, a person-in-charge making an impractical and ill-timed change in the most crucial part of production, and a completely undependable person who…

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