A Greener Shade of Gray
If it’s possible, somehow it is even grayer today. Lake Mendota greenish gray and wavy. The horizon is a rainbow of grays blending from lake to land/trees to sky.
I much preferred my first week of work when the lake was calm, the sky was blue and the occassional sailboat drifted in and out of view.
The only life-form I’ve seen on the lake in the last 2 days has been one lone duck. It wasn’t even trying to swim, it just seemed to be bobbing along in the wet. Poor ducky.
And, on the bright side, its September 12th. I do have a funny 9/11/01 related story though and on this gray, rainy day I’ll relate it to you as best I can remember.
RyanD was trying to plan a birthday party for RyanK (b-day 10/31). He had friends coming out for that weekend in October and RyanK wanted to go out to a Halloween/Corn Maze/haunted house thingy on his birthday. Anyway, RyanD needed a way to divert Ryan from his Halloween idea so we could throw a surprise party for him. I offered to throw myself under the bus for this one. I told Ryan I couldn’t POSSIBLY go out on Halloween to such a public place — there might be terrorists/anthrax/biological weapons about and it was too scary/dangerous. Since I was probably the most freaked out (in the group) by the whole 9/11 thing we knew he’d buy my insane story. I remember telling him on IM that I wouldn’t go out and he blocked me from IM and wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the week.
He was genuinely surprised by the party and he forgave me for sounding like a frightened idiot when he realized I did it so we could have his birthday party.
On a side note, I really miss RyanD and RyanK.
We may have shaken the last bit of Virginia dirt from our shoes, but I think I’ll remember those 7-ish years out in VA as some of the best years of my (younger) adult life.
Hey Ryan, if you’re reading this can you send me a copy of that pic in the NYC subway where everyone is looking really cranky because we’re lost in the bowels of the subway system. Remember, it was windy, cloudy, cold and early spring 2001. The WTC was still there and I remember thinking what a monstrosity those things were and hating the wind-tunnel effect they created.
Now I’m depressed and craving a road trip up the NJ Turnpike for an autumn New York trip.
Oh god, I COMPLETELY forgot
Oh god, I COMPLETELY forgot about that!
That was right before I lost my wallet in my own kitchen cupboard and you had to buy all of the party supplies. :)
I am staring at the picture in question, but have a small problem. We took it with a film camera, so I need to scan and them email it.
PS: we miss you too.
No Problemo...
I’ve got the picture framed on my shelf. I’ll scan it this weekend.
And, just to clear things up, because apparently the gray weather is growing cobwebs in your brain… your excuse was that you didn’t want to get shot by the sniper. That was during the height of the sniper shootings in Oct 2002. 9/11 had happened a year earlier.
Just trying to be helpful!!!
- Ryan –
OK, So I was wrong
I felt like I must be missing something when I posted that.
Yeah, the Sniper. That was loads of fun for the DC area.
Somewhere in my blog archives is a posting about that whole incident.
Good stuff…