Browsing Tag

News

four23org-grim
Life

Grim

Every time I turned around this weekend, there was death.  It was in Norway and London.  It was all over the local news, with bodies found behind grocery stores and boaters driving into piers.  And it was a bit closer to home than I preferred, as a friend of mine lost someone to a drunk driver and a former coworker was gunned down in a murder suicide while leaving work on Friday evening.

For the most part, I wasn’t personally connected to any of these, with maybe the former coworker being the exception, but our acquaintance was rather vague since she worked at a different branch than I did and most of our interactions were over the phone and through help desk tickets.  Regardless, all of these events just seemed to mushroom into this huge black cloud of darkness and grimness that has plagued my mood throughout the past few days.

It’s strange because I can’t exactly explain how I feel or necessarily justify why all of this should affect me.  It’s certainly not something that I could use as an excuse to, say, call off of work or stay in bed and pull the covers over my head.  It’s not personal.

But it’s a grim look into a really crappy state of human affairs and that could have it’s toll on anyone.  Sure, we all go on with our lives because they weren’t people we knew but every once in awhile, that reminder of what happened or the thought that there are people suffering because of senseless violence or stupid decisions creeps back into the recesses of your brain and that sadness just settles into a small part of the heart.

It is sad and painful to think of how far that kind of suffering reaches and most of the time, you just don’t let it get to you but then you remember that people are out there grieving and you remember that it wasn’t so long ago that you grieved and you really don’t wish that kind of pain on anyone.

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four23org-busy-busy
Life

The Bright Side

This was a very long week.  My case of the Mondays never seemed to go away despite my best efforts otherwise.  I tried to counteract it by giving myself little pep talks before I went to bed but every morning I woke up with a grey cloud already over my head and it took every effort for me to get out of bed and drag myself into work.

It’s mostly work itself.  Things have been slow the past few weeks and while I’ve been able to complete smaller easy tasks throughout the day, I’m really kind of lacking any projects to throw myself into.  Which leads to me feel very unchallenged.  And there are days where I will sit with no direction, nothing to do and I’ve literally got to find things to do.  I mean, I’m all caught up on my blogs in Google Reader and I’m even able to read them as they’re all posted through the day.  I don’t have email to return.  And everything else of fun and interest (Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr) are all blocked by work and even though I can access them from my phone, it is certainly more obvious to be sitting in my office on my phone all day than it is to be staring at my computer.

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four23org-royal-wedding
Entertainment

Marrying Up

I know there have been tons of other more important things going on in the world but there’s one thing I wanted to say and I’m kind of late on it since I didn’t technically open this site until Saturday.

She … was perfection!

I didn’t wake up early, I didn’t throw any parties.  As a matter of fact, I DVR’ed it and fast forwarded through to the good parts.  When I was younger, I had always thought William was kind of cute but truth be told, Harry got the better end of that ugly stick.  I mean, he’s not atrocious by any means and being a Prince sure does help in the getting girls game and I’m sure he’s quite a lovely person.

But Kate is simply lovely.  Perfection at it’s finest.  Am I the only one thinking he got the better end of the deal.  I mean, she is stunning and she makes such a great royal.  I bet after all of the bad press and shitty couple of years the royal family has had, the Queen is looking at Kate like she’s a breath of fresh air.

Because she is!  I could care less about the rest of the wedding but those two dresses, I am IN LOVE with.  I want to get married or throw a party just so I can get some replicas and wear them.  She could not have looked more beautiful.

And when you take that and wrap it up into the whole pomp and circumstance and tradition and fairytaleness of the whole day, you can help but be a tiny bit enamored.

I’m sure Diana would be proud.

As an aside, a probably awful, mean, hateful aside – does anyone see the two poor unfortunate looking little girls in the first picture to the left of William?  I mean, I guess they’re not horrible but I can gurantee if I looked back on a picture of me like that I’d be kind of sad, particularly if it had to do with such a large occasion.

Tribute in Light
Digital Life

Yesterday

I’ve always felt to be a bit of a fraud when discussing the events of 9/11 with people because most of the time, they very clearly remember hearing the news, stopping everything they were doing and being glued to the TV.

I, on the other hand, had decided to skip my morning classes and slept right through it.  And, to top it all off, managed to get myself out of bed and ready to go without hearing a word of what was going on (this was of course, before Twitter, Facebook, etc.).  It wasn’t until I was in the car, on the way to work and heard the radio DJs discussing how everything was closing and how basically the entire city of Phiadelphia was shutting down.  I actually called my mom and she told me what happened and told me not to go into the city.

I remember calling Steve to make sure everything was ok there.  I knew it was, of course, but I think I just wanted to hear his voice.  I remember being so mad that Temple didn’t close and that one of my professors was expecting us to come to our evening class (of which I was not going to go regardless – you weren’t going to catch me within million of feet of the closest metropolitan area to New York that day).  I remember all of us gathered somberly in the break room still watching long after the initial attacks, dumbfounded, saddened, terrified.

So I have memories but this unfortunately it is just one of those events that I missed right as it was happening and I think I will always be ok with that in some way.   My emotions from that day and the subsequent days are just as raw and valid as anyone else’s but somehow, I’ll always feel a bit disconnected.

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