Star Struck

Gotta write up this one quickly because I have way too much work to do to warrant spending even ten minutes blogging.

Last week I was out at The World Cafe in Santa Monica, hanging out in the bar with Suzanne, when a guy with scraggly blond hair walked by. I didn't give him a second look, but after he started attracting some attention at the bar Suzanne said she thought he might be a celebrity though she wasn't sure which one. The guy was turned away from me so I could tell either, but his hair reminded me of Owen Wilson's. Then the guy turns around, and I'll be damned if it's not the wedding crasher himself. I didn't want to go say hi or anything - didn't want to be one of those fans, since I'm sure he was just looking to get out and have a drink with some friends - but just seeing him there was kinda cool. Surprisingly (to me, at least), that was only the second celebrity sighting I've had in my time out here in Santa Monica.

Anyway, fast-forward today. I'm out walking around the Promenade (coincidentally enough, with Suzanne again), and I find myself walking behind three guys, one of whom is fairly tall. Before long the tall guy turns such that I get a profile of his face, and I'm like, "... wait, that kinda looks like Brandon Roy..." Brandon Roy was the star of the UW basketball team this year, and is most likely going to be a lottery pick in this year's NBA draft. Now, there are very few NBA lottery picks that I would recognize on sight. Actually, other than Roy maybe only Adam Morrison, but that's because Morrison is like 6'10" and has a goofy mustache, so it's kind of tough to not recognize him. Brandon Roy is more like 6'6" and is relatively non-descript, but I recognize him largely because I've followed his career since he was a basketball player at my high school, two grades below me. He had a rough start to his college career, what with some academic issues that initially prevented him from enrolling, but since has blossomed into a pretty damn good player. Anyway, so I'm walking behind these three guys and I'm not yet sure if the guy in front of me is indeed Brandon Roy. After walking a block behind them I finally decide to go up and ask him. Sure enough, it was Brandon Roy. Apparently he's working out in LA to get ready for the NBA draft. I told him I graduated from GHS in 2000, said I thought he played well in the tournament this year, and probably came off as a total bumbling idiot - largely because when I approached him I had no plan beyond finding out if he was Brandon Roy. He was friendly, smiling throughout and engaging for a short bit before shaking my hand and going on his way.

Anyway, the crazy thing I took away from this experience was that six years ago, I was a senior at GHS, Brandon was a sophomore, and that's all there would have been to it. I wouldn't have turned my head if he had passed me in the hall. Now, six years later, I'm going up to him basically saying "Holy Shit! It's Brandon Roy! What's up?!" and feeling slightly star struck. I'm not really sure what to make of the whole experience, but whatever, it was cool. And everybody should follow Brandon Roy's NBA career, starting now.

The Perfect Moment

I had to share this one.

I just a few minutes ago I got back home after driving my grandparents to the airport. I'm currently in Seattle for an extended weekend so for my cousin's wedding reception and to see family and friends in the area. As it happened I arrived home on Thursday morning to find an empty house (as my mom was on a trip of her own, from which she wouldn't return until Friday night), and thus I found myself with a good amount of alone time to start my vacation. As an Intp (with only the 'i' capitalized on purpose) I enjoy having time to myself, especially when I'm in a reflective mood - which was the case on Thursday. In some ways I feel like I've been in sixth gear since I got back from my winter break back in January, with the days, weeks, months flying by. NE demoed their scanner over two months ago. Damn, It feels like that was just last week. I've felt out of control the entire time - I haven't been able to set a good disciplined schedule for my workouts, for my reading, for my work schedule. I've felt incredibly lethargic and apathetic about doing anything other than the bare minimum (and we all know what we think about people who do the bare minimum), and, for the most part, have felt powerless towards breaking that cycle. The want has been there for a while, but the drive to actually do it hasn't.

So, this vacation hits. NE is getting pretty close to our scanner's beta date (May 12th, code freeze on May 5th), so I brought with me good amount of work that needs to be done by the time I return on Tuesday. Well, I got home Thursday morning, and after staying up all night and sleeping on my 3.5-hour plane flight I didn't exactly have the mental acuity to step up to the massive amount of application design that was on my work plate. So... I took a little drive over to Redmond, had lunch with Matt, came home, slept, had dinner with my grandparents, watched some TV, partied with Matt, Kutta and others some more, then came home and crashed. Yeah, that was a sweet day. I didn't really need to do any work (still had four days of vacation), while I really needed a day to do whatever the fuck I wanted. What's been crazy about the last couple of months is that even with working only the bare minimum I haven't been able to chill out on a weekend and catch my breath. That's not to say I haven't been having fun recently (on the contrary I've been having a blast), but there something to be said for having time to not do anything if you don't want do, to just relax. That's what Thursday was.

Friday came and I did a few hours of work... though I sure as hell didn't feel like working, and as such stopped at the "few hours" mark and did.... hmm, probably a whole lot of nothing, considering I don't remember what I did Friday. That night I got back together with the boyz and hung out at Trinity where DJ Rap was having her monthly residency appearance. Kutta and I shared a fine stogie, Anthony comp'ed me an adios, and I had another night of fun with my Seattle crew.

I woke up early Saturday so that I could play basketball at the Y - first time I've played there, or anywhere for that matter, in over two years. As such I couldn't hit a jump shot to save my life, but my game in the paint was on so I did what I could. It was fun. Afterwards my dad took me to breakfast at a local restaurant - probably the only time I'll have an omlette with oysters in it (and it wasn't half bad). I got home, watched some baseball, napped by the fire (that's a wood fire bitches, none of that gas BS that so many are subjected to these days), and eventually got snazzed up for my cousin's wedding reception. I went, got a little liquored up with my bro, saw a ton of family members I never get to see, and, again, had a great time.

What do these three days all have in common? I let work go, had a good time, and did my own thing. And it was so worth it. Even today I didn't get to working until maybe 5:30 or so - and work was actually a little fun.

So, back to the moment. I got back from driving my grandparents to the airport. I parked the car in our garage, walked out onto the path that connects our garage to our house, and stopped dead. The stars were out. I just kinda stood there, looking up at the sparkling sky. There was the big dipper. There was Cassiopeia. There was Orion. And there were a bunch more stars and constellations that I didn't know, all there in the crystally clear, minimally-light-polluted West Seattle sky. Part of the moment was due to me living in LA, where it's as light as Alaska in the summer time, where it's smoggy as all hell, where the stars rarely get a chance to twinkle. But the true magic of the moment was recognizing, in the moment, that this was nature, that this was life not just giving me a rose, but also giving me a moment to smell it. I just stood there, gazing, rotating from time to time to take in the different horizons, jumping between being the awed four year old and the appreciative twenty-four year old. It really was something else.

So I did this for what was probably nearly five minutes, and right as I was starting to think, "it's probably time to head inside" the silence was broken by the faintest of noises - "mew". I didn't really notice it the first time, then, "mew". Finally I returned to the world around me - "mew". It was my brother's cat, Mylo, sitting on our porch, asking to be let in. Mylo is a super-skitterish cat, and nearly every time I walk to the door she's meowing from she'll run away, even if she wants to be let in. (I'm not saying it's logically, just what she does). But not this time. She sat right next to the door as I approached and waited patiently for me to open the door for her. Nice.

And then I came in and wrote this.