I Am The Walrus

PROLOGUE: I’ve been annoying my friends these past few weeks of my passion for The West Wing and Studio 60 actor Bradley Whitford and now I’m extending my annoyance to everyone else on my friendster list hahaha. I came across his commencement speech (naks!) to the University of Wisconsin graduating class of 2007 and I think it’s worth a read. Nine years after my own graduation, his words of wisdom still make sense to me.

And yes, he wrote his speech.

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What’s up, Mad City?!

It’s great to be back in my hometown. On behalf of the acting president of the United States, I want to congratulate you all on your tremendous achievement.

A commencement address is what we call in show business a tough gig. You’ve got a huge room, you’ve got a big, distracted crowd that thinks they know everything about everything - and probably stayed out a little too late last night celebrating. I heard you at the hotel, by the way. And you’ve got a bunch of family members of various ages who you have to worry about offending if you happen to get a little too honest.

Somebody once said it’s like being the body at a wake. They stick you in the middle of the room, but deep down they really don’t want to hear a lot out of you.

The sad truth is, I don’t even remember who the speaker was at my graduation. I remember squinting a lot and a vague sense that I would never again be around so many attractive, available young people in my life. It is my solemn duty to inform you that that fear is entirely well founded. This is coming from a guy who works in Hollywood, by the way.

So I begin this address not only with the full expectation that I will soon be forgotten, but with the additional humiliation that there will probably be no one there to remind you of who I was.

I just want to take a moment to note that the commencement speaker at Concordia College this year was the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Concordia has about 5,000 students. The University of Wisconsin has about 40,000. Yes, my friends, the question hangs over this beautiful Kohl Center like a foul stench. Why couldn’t you get a more significant speaker?

Why would the University of Wisconsin, a school with a reputation and the stature to attract a genuine world leader - at least some uncelebrated public servant - the guy who runs the dog pound in Baraboo - somebody, for God’s sake! Why would you opt instead for a glorified circus clown from a television show? I can’t answer that question, my friends. This is uncomfortable for all of us. I feel your shame.

One thing I can tell you is that Concordia College is getting ripped off. George Bush did not write that speech. No way! A bunch of invisible White House lackeys, otherwise known as speechwriters, wrote it for him. And he just strutted up to the podium, he read it, and then he rode off into the sunset in his little taxpayer-funded 747.

(Mr. Whitford is a known Democrat, meaning anti-Bush. The more reason for you to love him. Although I hear he prefers Clinton over Obama which I’m not completely comfortable about.)

Now, you may think that I am inappropriately taking this opportunity to attack the president on a meaningless issue because of my particular political persuasion — and you would be correct. But I hereby challenge the leader of the free world to swear under oath that he wrote every word of the commencement address that he delivered. It is not gonna happen.

Yes, friends, take solace in the fact that if you had actually paid me anything to come here today, you would be about to get your money’s worth. For better or for worse, this horribly disappointing choice of a commencement speaker had to write his own speech.

The first problem I faced when confronted with this grim task was that, as my wife and children will attest, aside from drinking coffee, I have only two areas of expertise - reproduction and acting. Let me begin with the one that I don’t mind blabbing about to a room full of strangers — acting.

You know, I get it. I know that it’s not the most respectable way to make a living. I am perpetually assaulted by examples of children, quadrupeds and a wide variety of insufferable idiots who are, on occasion, capable of acting beautifully. This fills my life with bitterness.

The good news is that if you keep at it long enough and you actually get to make a living at this glorified high school extracurricular activity, you not only get a little better at it — given enough chances, even a chimpanzee may type a dictionary — but you begin to see that the process of acting has the potential to show us a little bit about how we might act a little better in our real lives. It comes down to about six basic principles. I call them "Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned on My Way to a Humiliating Audition," and they go like this:

Number One: Fall in love with the process and the results will follow. You’ve got to want to act more than you want to be an actor. You’ve got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be, want to write more than you want to be a writer, want to heal more than you want to be a doctor, want to teach more than you want to be a teacher, want to serve more than you want to be a politician. Life is too challenging for external rewards to sustain us. The joy is in the journey.

Number Two: Very obvious - do your work. When faced with the terror of an opening night on Broadway, you can either dissolve in a puddle of fear or you can get yourself ready. Drown out your inevitable self-doubt with the work that needs to be done. Find joy in the process of preparation.

Number Three: Once you’re prepared, throw your preparation in the trash. The most interesting acting and the most interesting living in this world has the element of surprise and of genuine, honest discovery. Be open to that. You’ve all spent the majority of your lives in school, where your work is assigned to you and you’re supposed to please your teachers.

The pressure to get into wonderful institutions like this is threatening to create a generation of what I call hiney-kissing requirement-fulfillers. You are all so much more than that. You’ve reached the wonderful and terrifying moment where you must be your own guide. Listen to the whispers inside you. We have a lot of problems in this world and we’re going to need you to think outside the box.

Number Four: You are capable of more than you think. If you’ve ever smashed a mosquito on your arm, there is a murderous Richard III inside you. If you’ve ever caught your breath at the sight of someone dipping their toes into Lake Mendota in the late afternoon sun over at the Union, you, too, have Romeo’s fluttering heart.

Now, I’m not advocating that you all go out and bleach your hair so that you can play the jerk in a really stupid Adam Sandler movie. (If you’ve seen "Billy Madison", Adam Sandler’s first hit movie, Bradley Whitford played Billy’s nemesis Eric Gordon. He was brilliant there but you would hate him. Haha.) I don’t know what kind of an idiot would think that is a worthwhile way to spend their life. But don’t limit yourselves. Take it from the professional extrovert - the most gregarious among us are far more insecure than we would ever admit. We all go through life bristling at our external limitations, but the most difficult chains to break are inside us.

One of the few graduation speakers who will never be forgotten, Nelson Mandela, put it this way:

"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world."

Let’s just take a moment to hope that Nelson Mandela and Adam Sandler never again share a paragraph.

Number Five: Listen. It is the most difficult thing an actor can do and it is the most riveting. You can’t afford to spend your life like a bad actor stumbling through a predetermined performance that is oblivious to the world around you. We can’t afford it either. Listening isn’t passive. It is an act of liberation that will connect you to the world with compassion and be your best guide as you navigate the choppy waters of love, work and citizenship.

And finally, Number Six: Take action. Every story you’ve ever connected with, every leader you’ve ever admired, every puny little thing that you’ve ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes. Learn what you can and move on. At the end of your days, you will be judged by your gallop, not by your stumble.

Many of you started here in the fall of 2000. You go out into a world we could not have imagined four years ago. Ominous threats seek to distract us from achieving our spectacular potential as individuals, as a nation and as a delicate, shrinking planet. We need you.

Come as you are, armed with nothing more than the tools of a mediocre television actor. All we need is for you to find joy in your journey, to find satisfaction in hard work, to be aware of what is happening around you, to free yourself from your imagined limitations, to listen, and finally, to act - not to play make believe. This isn’t a television show. The choices are difficult and the consequences are real.

No matter where you stand politically, we need you to participate in an urgent discussion about the future that we will all share. Some will question your qualifications to participate. We get a lot of that in Hollywood. I like to tell those people that there is nothing less American than telling another American to shut up - so they should shut up.

This is especially true when the stakes are so high. In the words of the great World War II hero and former U.S. Senator George McGovern, "The highest patriotism is not blind allegiance to official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to hold her to a higher standard."

It has always been up to the people to hold this country up to its spectacular promise. Make no mistake about it - if you choose not to participate at the ballot box or in the urgent discussion about the world that we will one day pass on to the next generation, you no longer live in a democracy. You have sentenced yourself to a civic gulag dictated by the whims of those who choose to participate.

In short, my obnoxiously young friends, you don’t just get democracy - you have to make it happen. I urge you to extend that call to action to every aspect of your lives.

Let me be clear - I want you all to stay the hell out of show business. The last thing I need is a bunch of young people invading my job market.

But I do want you to be an actor in your own life. Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen — yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

I will leave you with something I have learned from my only other area of expertise, besides the coffee — being a father. We sit in the shade of trees planted long ago. We have all arrived at this wonderful moment together because of countless gestures of hope made by generations that have preceded us — the baby born, the family begun, the university founded, the care and nurturing of our schools, our communities, a wonderful variety of faiths and, of course, our families and their families before them.

The line of fire racing across time that we call life is burning brightly in all of you at this moment. We celebrate the joy of your achievement, but we must give thanks for all that brought us here. And we must be keenly aware that our stupendous good fortune carries with it an obligation to keep that flame burning brightly into the future for every living thing that is and is yet to be.

Congratulations, Class of 2004. Go out and plant some trees! Thank you.

Source: http://www.news.wisc.edu/9829

Check out Bradley Whitford’s work:

1. Hate Him! As assh*le Roger in Revenge of the Nerds 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL6jc5aZkws&feature=related

2. Be Blown Away By Him! As Josh Lyman, his Emmy-award winning character on The West Wing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMn2s1nmsxQ

3. Fall in love with Him! As Danny Tripp of the amazing and unfairly treated show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slWd3DuS45w

4. His Emmy Win (making his wife cry awwww….And yeah, she’s the scary housewife in Malcolm in the Middle)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fzsb_Bkz6Q

This is for my good friend, Joy.

Let me get this out of the way — according to the art of rhetoric, a convincing orator must have ethos (reputation), pathos (appeal to the emotions) and logos (makes sense, logical). Fine. I have no ethos. I am absolutely unreliable — based on my love history — when it comes to love advice.

So I’ll try logos first. It’s basic and simple (and I’d greatly appreciate if other people can back me up on this). A man in love will not waste one minute — not one single minute — to not be with the woman he loves. In any form, in any way, be it an actual date or a text or an email. There is absolutely nothing that can stop him. I’ve seen this. You’ve seen this. It’s in nature!

At this very moment, I will bet my day’s salary, he is not with you. He’s with someone else. And that says it all. He woke up this morning, he said "Hmmm, I wonder who I should spend my time with today" and he didn’t choose you. It’s painful. It makes you want to eat your hand. But it’s true.

"What’s wrong with me? Why not choose me?". Nothing is wrong with you. Why he didn’t choose you is irrelevant. And him not choosing you now doesn’t mean he will never choose you ever. It’s just right now, you’re not the choice.

And so the hell what if you weren’t the choice. There was life before him. There’s life after him. Life without this moron is liveable. It really is. I swear it is.

Now I’m going to try pathos. For the love of everything that is real and pure in this world —- SNAP THE HELL OUT OF IT. I am genuinely concerned for you — probably for the first time in our friendship of 14 frigging years — because you are becoming someone else.

I remember when I got pregnant and I told you about my cheating boyfriend and how I chose to stay with him despite his rampant cheating. You told me "This is not the Ajie I know". And that hit me real hard. It also made me realize that a relationship that changes me for the worst isn’t the relationship that I should want to be in.

And that’s what I’m saying to you know. "This is not the Joy I know". The Joy I know won’t take shit from guys. The Joy I know is logical and systematic and straightforward. I’m the rulebreaker, you’re not. I’m the impulsive and crazy one, you’re not.

I honestly can’t believe for the life of me that you are crying over this guy. It truly angers me. Not at you, of course. I wish there was some law against flirting by guys with girlfriends so I can sue him and put him in jail so he doesn’t have to flirt with you ever again.

I know it’s hard to listen to me knowing the stupidity I’ve done — and am doing (haha) — over the years. But this is a sincere plea….

You deserve better, pare.

This is about a show. You probably have never heard of it. It only lasted one season in the US when stupid NBC cancelled it just because it couldn’t bludgeon the equally moronic CSI: Miami.

I love this show. I’ve been working in television for nine years and watching this show pretty much sums up the lives of people in the network. It was also amusing for me that one of their episodes — The Focus Group — is about ratings and viewership, which is what I’m really in GMA for.

The name of the show is Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Look for it in youtube. There is a small cult following of very disappointed fans like me who, sure, got closure, but didn’t get enough.

What was wrong with it? Was it the cast? Hell no. Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford —- two of the most amazing actors in Hollywood, with the rare gift of both perfect comedic timing and heart-wretching drama — lead an equally talented cast which includes the lovely Amanda Peet and the amazing Sarah Paulson (You should see her in Down With Love. She is so wonderful).  Bradley Whitford could bash the head of David Caruso with his Emmy. He is that good.

Was it the writing? Oh God, no. CSI? That’s bad writing. I love CSI, don’t get me wrong. But try watching four CSI episodes in a row then pop in The X-files or The West Wing and you’d think Gil Grissom was a retard compared to Fox Mulder. CSI is about the science of it — it’s like an encyclopedia being read by pretty actors. (Sigh. Carmine Giovinazzo.) But writing-wise, bad bad bad.

Studio 60 can match the writing genius of The X-files, The West Wing, even Prison Break. Although, admittedly, it wasn’t for the moronic.

So what was it?

Let me just lay down the facts first, so you could appreciate the irony. Studio 60 is about a variety/gag show, like, say, Bubble Gang. It’s head honcho flips out on TV and gets fired by the network so they had to bring in these two guys, Matt and Danny — think of them as Bitoy and Ogie Alcasid — who once left the show because they made fun of the war in Iraq and their network wanted them to apologize for it. But they refused.  (If you’re a Democrat, you will see the comedy in it. If you’re a Republican then… don’t talk to me).

So it’s basically about these two rebellious guys who are complete geniuses in the TV biz but, sadly, have to follow the rules of the network. They didn’t care about the ratings. They didn’t care about the sister companies of the network. They didn’t care about the advertisers. They just did their thing and gave funnies.

Sadly, Studio 60 didn’t bring in the ratings because it was up against CSI Miami. In my mind, it was like putting up a show like I Witness against Wowowee. Even if I Witness outlines completely how we as a nation can solve poverty and our political crisis, even if I Witness features a full-length documentary on how our taxes are siphoned into the pockets of politicians, people are still going to tune into Willie Frigging Revillame.

Similarly, Americans are stupid that way —– “Yay for Horatio Caine and the weekly boobage and the exploding trucks and airplanes, boo for a show that makes me think and has no sex in it” — so they tuned out of Studio 60.

So there. A show about two guys who didn’t care for the ratings got cancelled because of the ratings. Irony for dinner.

High rating shows pretty much defines the intelligence of a nation. In the US, the no.1 show during this time of year is American Idol. Here in the Philippines, it’s Marimar. The X-files hardly ever made it into the top 10. I Witness, Born to Be Wild, The Beat, Balikbayan, hardly ever make it to the top 50.

You are what you watch.

If there is one thing about me that you should know and remember at all times, it is this — I VALUE SOLACE.      
    
There will be times when I crave for companionship, and I entrust myself to the company of my friends — my real friends, those who understand me, booze or no booze — and they never let me down.    
    
But most of the time, I prefer to be left alone. I reserve the right whether to return someone’s communication or not. I reserve the right to a few hours — even days — of anonymity before going back to my chaotic life of employee-slash-single mom-slash-breadwinner-slash-all around friend. Solace brings me back to my basic self. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not. I don’t have to put on a face. I don’t have to choose my words. I don’t have to do anything against my will just because other people want me to. I can choose where to eat and when to eat. I can choose the movie I want to watch. I can choose the places I want to go.      
    
I am blessed — absolutely blessed — with friends from all of my social circles: from grade school, high school, college (one set from my Math days, another set from my Masscomm days), early GMA, and present GMA. And I would miss them from time to time, and I will reach out to them whenever I can, but then I have to go back to my life. Which I prefer living pretty much on my own.

And anyone who doesn’t understand that — who insists that I should be present in HER everyday life even if I have absolutely no real reason to be there — is no friend of mine.    

Let me begin with a longish — but necessary — prologue-slash-premise. The week before the Baguio trip had been hell at work. We were preparing for the crazy hectic albeit successful client party at the NBC tent. The morning before the party and the Baguio trip, I had to pack for both… the party and the Baguio trip. So I was lagging way too many bags for a typical Friday.

At the end of the party, I was too tired and too hungry to even care that Dennis Trillo was mere inches from my face a while ago (he was whispering something to me…. unfortunately, non-erotic). And I was also really close to cancelling my whole trip with (and remember, these will be their codenames for the rest of the blog) my friends: the girlish Spaghetti, the massive (and the only male) Pan Fried Chicken, and the plump Cheese Pancake. I was, after all, a text away. And all I had to say was “Omigod, my feet hurt, I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept, please, please, please, don’t make me go to Baguio!”

Which is another thing. I’m not too crazy about Baguio. My previous trips have been obligatory. I was, in essence, dragged around my nose for both trips, not being able to decide where and when to go. So when they said “Baguio”, I wasn’t completely sold on the idea.

But on the last minute, I said “Damn it, I deserve this trip. I have to get away from the city. And I need to not care about work for a while”

So when the party ended, I slung my three or four bags and headed for our meeting place.

Day 1

Forgive me if I fail to document the first five hours of Day 1. As my prologue had explained, I was practically a zombie by this time. All I remember is having to listen to “Careless Whisper” about three or four times, thanks to Spaghetti and her 80s CD. I also remember swearing a lot.

By the time I got to my senses, we were already at Hacienda Luisita for a quick coffee stop. There’s an old train on display there so we took a quick photo op. I think.

When we were back on the road, I offered my mp3 collection of 90s songs which included great classics like The Sign by Ace of Base (”And it opened up my eyes… I saw the sign!”), End of the Road by Boyz 2 Men (“It’s so natural …. you belong to me… I belong to youuuuu”), and every girl’s favorite, the Wilson Philips classic “You’re In Love” which Cheese Pancake said is best sung while crying. (“You’re in love…. and I know… that you’re not in love with me…. T*ngina!”).

Our next stop: Razon’s. I had arrozcaldo while my friends had halu-halo. At 9 in the morning. Which is completely against my principles even before I had started dieting. I don’t know. Breakfast is just for hot food. I’ve always believed that.

You know you’re already in Baguio when you’ve stopped at the Lion’s Head. Of course, we got off the spanking new Honda Jazz that Pan Fried Chicken had been driving for hours, and posed beside the Lion’s head for yet another photo op. But the monument was so massive that you can’t have a picture of the whole head without us being reduced to mere centimeters in the picture. So instead of snapping a photo of the lion’s head on our background, we got pictures of the lion’s cheek, the lion’s mane and the lion’s nose.

When we got to Baguio proper, we did what every tourist would traditionally do — get lost. We drove around town looking for our hotel, Pines View. “Malapit lang sa Session Road” the Pines View contact said over the phone. “Malapit” in Baguio lingo, is apparently equivalent to 10 kilometers. When we got to where Pines View was, it was obvious that the hotel was really near Session Road —- by flying.

It was a good thing that Pines View Hotel didn’t disappoint. Our room was spacious and clean with an awesome view of the city (and Session Road). The first thing I did — since it’s my job — is to check if the reception of GMA is good in this area. And it is. When I went around the city the next day, a quick inspection showed that many of the people here are proud to be Kapuso.

Back to the hotel room — my only qualm is that the bathroom had no tub. What a sacrilege! A hotel room without a tub!

After driving around Baguio for an hour, we decided to ditch the jazz and take a cab around the city. We had decided to have lunch at Behrouz which we saw on our way to the hotel. We had estimated that we can walk to the restaurant so we did.

When we got to Behrouz, it was closed. Wonderfrickingful.

Our alternative proved to be worth the Behrouz-disappointment…. Cafe by the Ruins. Cheese Pancake had frequented Baguio so the restaurant was at the top of her list of places to go to.

This lovely restaurant is, in fact, built on a ruined building. For appetizers, we had basil bread and camote bread, both of which were wonderful with the cheese and strawberry spread. For the main dish, Cheese Pancake, Pan Fried Chicken and Spaghetti had the tapa while I had the Ole Nick Open-Faced Tuna sandwich. One, because I didn’t want all of us to have the tapa like college freshmen on the first day of school, and two, because of how the dish was described — the great Nick Joaquin had invented said dish. It was a simple pan-fried bread topped with tuna sauteed in tomatoes. With a side dish of mustard, it was a healthy and filling little lunch.

As much as I was enjoying my first few hours in Baguio, my body was about to give up on me, screaming “Go to sleep, dammit!”. So we went back to the hotel room and I passed out for a few hours.

Whatever happened during those hours, you can just ask those three…

Day 1, Night Time

We had debated whether to go to Camp John Hay in the dead of night after this morning’s run-around so we decided to have dinner at the restaurant downstairs and have beer delivered to our room. As it turns out, keeping it simple can be a lot of fun.

The restaurant was wonderful. We had traditional fried chicken, really good chopsuey, brocolli in oyster sauce, and fresh fruits while playing the first game of the trip: Deal Breaker.

Deal Breaker is simple: Pan Fried Chicken (again, the only male) gives a guy’s characteristic and we answer whether we would still pursue a relationship with this guy if we discovered said characteristic. Some of the options where the following:

1. If a guy is too rich

2. If a guy is too poor/a bum/has no money

3. If a guy has had a sexual encounter with another guy (we all agreed… get him checked first)

4. If a guy had been married

5. If a guy has childish hobbies like toys and comic books (sigh. we’ve all had that guy)

6. If a guy is a cheapskate (we all responded “No way!!!”)

7. A foreigner guy (which we’re okay with as long as he takes a bath)

8. A short guy

9. A guy who continues to be friends with his ex

10. A guy too good-looking for us

We took the game upstairs where we had beers.

Now, Pan Fried Chicken not only had the pleasure of introducing Deal Breaker to us, he also had the rare opportunity —- being the only hetero male — of answering a question every single girl is dying to ask: “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US”

The discussion proved pretty long, having to dig up stories about our past relationships while talking about our current pseudo- ones. In summary, Pan Fried Chicken concluded the following:

What’s Wrong with Spaghetti

1. Her father still takes her to/fetches her from work.

2. She lives really far

What’s Wrong with Cheese Pancake

1. Her plumpness

2. Having a small circle of friends with no eligible men in it

What’s Wrong with Me

1. I have a son

2. I have bad posture

There was one thing that was common among the three girls: “Magaling kayong mambara”.

Well, ain’t that a revelation.

But Pan Fried Chicken was quick to make a positive comeback via the Bozo Bit.

Now, what the hell is a Bozo Bit?

A bozo bit, according to wikipedia (that ever reliable source of information — can you smell my sarcasm?), means completely disregarding the opinion of a person, a “Bozo”, meaning whatever he says, even if it makes sense, you would completely disregard it just because of his reputation. I can name many people at work worthy of this tag.

Anyways, Pan Fried Chicken said “I can never think of you guys as a bozo bit”. Which is a compliment — if you get to know him — that only Pan Fried Chicken could give.

We retired early, at 11 am, taking advantage of the nice cool Baguio breeze as I settled into the first real sleep I’ve had in days.

And then there’s Day 2.

There are days where — for absolutely no reason at all — I just turn into a goblin. You know how the Harry Potter books describe goblins? They’re grumpy for no reason. Sometimes, I just wake up goblinesque — no good deed of any of my friends can sway me from my indulgence of the anger-bitterness-self-pity cocktail.

I will ignore texts. I will set aside work on purpose. I will have lunch by my lonesome. I will not take calls. It’s my way of preserving my friendships and other relationships — just get out of my freaking way for one freaking moment.

But I think I’m all better now. Maybe it’s because I actually had dinner.

First, let me present to you my blogspot link where all my previous Friendster blog posts have been archived: http://thewalrusliveth.blogspot.com/ . Please read them throughly and answer the following (told you there’d be essay questions):

1. How crazy do you think I am?

2. Where can I buy a cheap laptop?

3. Can I ask another question?

The downside of having internet at home is sleeping relatively late. I am kept up by downloads and research and intellectual discussions with my peers (a.k.a. chatting). So I’ll keep the posts short and sweet.

It’s a few days before Valentine’s and I will not hide from the ugly truth that I actually care.

So now that it’s official, I can finally say it: I got promoted. From Senior Media Specialist to Media Manager (who has yet to employ a person to manage. So I basically just manage my time…. my finances…. my hair….). I have really cool benefits like flexi-time and a decent pay raise and a bump on my medical benefits. (Apparently, managers get hospitalized more. Freaky.) And yeah, at least one person to help me out at work. It’s been hard looking for one, in fact. You’d think I would hire a kind of "mini-Me" but the thought of another version of myself roaming the earth will alarm geneticists everywhere.

Then, I think I may have lost a friend. Two, probably. There seems to be some balance even among social circles — when you gain friends, you inevitably lose some. I think I just lost two this week.

My son has moved back into my room which is kind of a big deal for me. For almost three years, he’s been sleeping at my parents’ room which bothered me because of two things: I was afraid that he liked them more, and it was frightening to sleep alone in my room. Not that I’m afraid of the dark —- well, actually, I am —- but the loneliness and the cold at the dead of night gets to me sometimes.

Before the holidays ended, I bought a double-deck bed and Cojie now sleeps at the top deck.

Oh, and I now have internet at home. I HAVE INTERNET AT HOME!!!! After FIVE LONG YEARS!!!! Shudder at that thought —- I will be blogging more often now. I may even have essay questions next time.