B'nai Mitzvah, Turtlebacks, Moonbeams and the Jets

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

"No, they won't have a moment of silence at one o'clock, Sarah; they want people to order food and drinks, not lose their appetite." Pat told me this on the way to the restaurant, where we met our friends Felice & Stacy. Pat was right, as usual.

While waiting for our food, we talked of where we were that day. Me: in Manhattan, at 590 Madison Ave., till my Boca-Raton-based manager at the time sent me an instant message, telling me to leave the building immediately, as he worried that whoever had destroyed the World Trade Center would keep going after U.S. landmarks, and even if they didn't want to blow up our IBM building, we were next to the Trump Tower, which he thought could become a target. I talked of how I saw the dark cloud in my rear-view mirror the whole way up Madison Ave., and how parents were rushing across my path at red lights, holding their kids' hands -- the kids who they went to get from their schools -- and how it seemed that all of us made eye-contact....

In May, I posted a collection of several years' worth of commemorative blog-entries, but never did gain the energy to post screenshots of 2002-2006 entries. And I'm not going to re-read any of the entries today.

Living in Metro-NY, we've had a ton of coverage, and even our twin nephews' bar mitzvah remarks referred to 9/11, since they became b'nai mitzvah (plural of bar mitzvah) on 9/10/yesterday. They were just three years old when the Towers went down, but the tragedy touched their special day in any case.

On the way home from the celebration, heading toward the Midtown Tunnel, Pat & I saw a number of commemorative billboards, including this one:

Tonight, it's a full moon and I'm glad I can see moonbeams, but no longer the twin-beams from NYC, since the backyard trees have grown fuller over the past 10 years. Today, I was determined to have a life-affirming time, which we did by going to the zoo with Stacy & Felice after lunch. Here I am on a lizard sculpture:

Even so, I made sure to take my cellphone with me today, just in case, and found myself extremely anxious as I watched the start of the Jets-Cowboys game, where the whole crowd was chanting, "USA! USA! USA!..." Please, don't provoke them, I said to myself and then turned to Pat and said, "You know that I've always thought that if terrorists wanted to do further monumental damage, they'd blow up a football stadium full of top teams and fans. God forbid!" It hasn't happened, and God willing, it won't. Pat & I swam this morning, spent time with friends and animals, watched football, and now, we're tired. Please, God, keep this 10th anniversary of 9/11 safe.

Once in a Blue Moon

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.

Blogging During that Swimming After-glow

Tonight is the last night of the year and a blue, full moon. After our swim just now, Pat told me that the last one occurred on New Year's in 1990. God, I was 24 then and I'd never trade now for then, even as I seem to be going through a mid-life-what's-my-legacy struggle currently.

Back then, my pet, Gwen, was a Siamese fighting fish in a simple, small, glass fish-bowl, or had she already died by then? Gwen was the only other living being in my home then, which was an efficiency apartment in Chicago on Marshfield St. near Ashland Ave. -- a block from the Y, where I swam, and three blocks from my therapist.

My love-life was super-active, but not yet happily so. There was a series of lovely women with whom I became involved at that time, but none who compelled, or was compelled by, me ultimately.

By the second month of 1990, I would leave my job as a client rep for Video Monitoring Services, figuring I would enter a prestigious English Ph.D. program...except after I left my job, I learned that all of the programs to which I had applied had rejected me.

In short, by the start of 1990, I had no love, no job and was renting a sad, little home.

Perspective

Compared to 1990, 2010 is miraculous:

For nearly two decades so far, I have had Pat's dedicated love and she, mine; nearly 20 years of continuous, meaningful employment, including a six-month assignment in India and business trips to a huge number of exciting cities around the world; a home I'm proud of, and which we're working toward owning through our mortgage, compared with my renting 20 years ago; 3/4s of a Masters degree from the best school in its class and one of the best schools in the world; consistently healthy eating, where it was not prior, that is, where it included too much sugar prior; two lively cat-siblings as pets; and more. All of this should be instructive, i.e., it should help me remember the proverb that it's always darkest before the dawn. Of course, there were two sad times: my inability to become pregnant and my being diagnosed with otosclerosis, which meant that I could go deaf at any time with no warning. Neither of these were predictable events.

What could the dawn of the next 20 years bring? I'll respond in the order I think it's chronologically-likely: even more of a sense of purpose in my work at IBM, e.g., expanding the number of people my work helps, and its scope still further; the completion of my Masters program; watching our niece Zoe and nephew Zach each graduate from high school and go to college; having some of my writing published; visiting Israel with Pat; marrying Pat legally; re-learning trop (cantillation) and chanting from the Torah at our synagogue; watching our nephews Sam and Max graduate from junior high school, then high school and then go on to college; seeing the four nephews and niece finding partners with whom to settle down; becoming great-aunts; losing family or friends to illness or old age; continuing our swimming throughout our later-years; and at least a couple of sad, unpredictable events, God forbid, but it's natural that they would occur, unfortunately.

Never will I consult a psychic, as I'm superstitious; nor am I comfortable with having suggested what's possible in the future myself as I did here, but I also think that it's probably a good idea to have a vision of what I'd like to do and see in the coming years.

Father's Day

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

...According to Moonconnections.com

The moon is waning at 98 percent full, states Moonconnections.com, which means that probably, it was full last night. My father of blessed memory died on a full moon, and so I always feel his presence most around these times of the month.

It's chilly, windy and sunny this morning, I notice while retrieving our NYT from the driveway, like we're living once again in Chicago. Now, back indoors, a cat's warm body hangs over the crook of my left arm, which makes typing challenging. This is the first Mother's Day, where I've felt somewhat qualified to be celebrated -- for parenting our two cats, Phoebe and Toonces, who we found at the local P.A.W.S. shelter last July.

It's the old Joy and Pain combo, I'm feeling this morning, looking at the sunlit leaves that are being whipped around by the cold wind....

Joy: Pat and I, finally, are some sort of parents; Pain: my father's not alive; Joy: my mother, at 83 and a half, thank God, is still alive and relatively healthy; Pain: she is much less mobile and less able-bodied than even a couple of years ago; Joy: my mom's brain is totally intact; Pain: I didn't sleep well; Joy: I have the most loving, compassionate partner I could ever wish for; Pain: she's still asleep while I'm unable to; Joy and Pain: we'll see my mother, sisters and their families later, but instead, I just feel like lazing around locally.

Full Moon Reflection

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Soon, I Will Be Walking Under It

It's beyond time to leave my office for the night and return to my hotel-room on our Learning Center's campus, where I'm staying for part of the week while I co-facilitate a program for our emerging senior technical leaders. When I do, I'll have a moonlight-walk that should be brisk and refreshing, and should inspire at least a 60-minute second wind when I arrive in my room:

I really must make more progress on reading the two academic articles that are due for school this week, so that I can respond to our professor's guided inquiry by Thursday...but I'm lonesome for my blog, and so here's at least a quick acknowledgement:

On any given day, my Sitemeter delights me for the diversity of viewers' locations it displays; locales from yesterday and today were no exception:



I love reading the city-names in this excerpt. Tonight, I'm feeling hopeful that I can be an agent for a more globally-harmonious company and even world; it's the fault of the program participants: Their cultures include American; Belgian; Canadian; Danish; German; Indian; Israeli; Japanese; Romanian; Spanish; and Swiss.

And then in addition, if my blog is at all useful to people from Camachile to Yonkers, then I'm blessed.