Friends don’t let friends Google
It’s been a slow week for JavaJennifer in the best possible way. I worked two half days from home and felt, if only momentarily, a connection to the things I really enjoyed in my job with Company X. Specifically, that I was able to cook and enjoy a nice breakfast and a mid-day “run” at 3:00 to listen to Dr. Phil on my headphones.
It took me over an hour to walk the same loop I used to be able to run in 28 minutes. So that’s humbling. But with my mom’s knee surgery now less than 3 weeks away, I have nervousness about running. I’m not sure strong knees run in my family.
Alone and left to my own devices I did some social networking stalking this week on Facebook and Myspace to find as many ex-boyfriends as possible. I highly recommend this as something to further add to your procrastination arsenal. I lost most of a morning down the wormhole of Facebook.
I heart relevancy based searching (Google) because when I typed in San Jose+ “Kisses on the Beach” + naughty things best not listed and it immediately returned all kinds of information about him and that he now works for Apple.
So I had a good friend of mine at Company X and the keeper of my many secrets email me the address of a guy who works for Apple so that I could figure out if his email was a dot or underscore and then I took an hour composing what I thought was a very clever email.
Then I deleted that clever email and started with something more newsy- hi, how are you, blah, blah, blah.
Naturally, I deleted that one as well but by then, I was feeling like I needed a little more coffee. So… I grabbed my coat and decided to walk to the Bux around the corner. But when I got outside, I realized that it was way too cold for that. I took the elevator to P1 and reached into my pocket for my key…
…which was up on the 2nd floor in my office. By the time I got back to my desk, the coffee craving had passed and I sat down and thought, hmmm, maybe I should try to work…
…right after I send this email out to Adobe (his nickname).
But, ok, you know what? I’ll just call him.
So I call him and the phone rings and I dial-by-name and the next thing I get is voicemail. Except that I’m not sure it’s him. I haven’t talked to him in 7 years.
I quickly hang up and end up thinking that really, shouldn’t I just leave well enough alone?
I finally did send him an email with one word (but I’ll never tell what word).
I didn’t get a bounce back so I know it was delivered. And I didn’t get a reply which tells me that it went to the right person. Because if it went to the wrong person, that person would have sent me a do-I-know- you email. Which didn’t happen.
My Annapolis friend knows exactly who I’m talking about; she’s the only person who met him during the 4 months of our commuting relationship and there were a thougsand reasons why he should have been wearing a suit made out of yellow caution tape.
In 2001, late August, I chose he-who-shall-not be named over Adobe and given his circumstances, particularly that he lived in Northern California, he took our break up graciously. I spoke to him only one other time, on September 11th. He’d visited me several times and knew how close I live to the Pentagon.
Annapolis remarked that at some point, if I had stayed with Adobe, I ultimately would find that I didn’t like him. She was right. But if I’d stayed a little longer…I wouldn’t have wasted 5 years of my life on HWSNBN.
Life is full of forks in the road, decisions we make and choices we don’t. As I look at my life, on balance, there is only one regret that I have now… and it’s one I’m working to let go of.
Which would be a lot easier if a piece of the damn spy satellite would take dive somewhere in Leesburg.
If there were only 3 pieces of Satellite and we could choose who they would hit, I would give you a vote for HWSNBN. If I had power like that I would be too scared to use it…
Living in the past has got to be the curse we inherited from Eve in the garden. Men don’t seem to have this burden. Keep going with the walk/run You have great (and cute) knees!
Best luck to your mom next month, my thoughts will be with you both!
I, too, have fallen down the rabbit hole of Google to search out people I once knew well (a couple of ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends and ex-lovers come to mind). This can turn into a very depressing state of “what if.” What if I had stayed married to this person? Would I be as unhappy as I thought I was going to be? What if I had stayed married to that person? Would I have continued to like his family so much? Has everyone’s life turned out to be more or less exactly what I thought it would be? Ugh. Even those doing lots of lovely charity work in a smaller city in Nebraska seem to live such a mundane existence. But am I just looking with a jaded eye? I wonder who is looking at what I’ve done and thinking that I’m just as much of a restless nut case as they always expected.
Sometimes these trips down memory lane can be jarring and unsettling (is that redundant?). I don’t recommend it for late night viewing when you are feeling out of sorts . . .