lxforever

So. I’m alive. For all you lurkers out there.

Diana and I were painting closet doors in her basement on Wednesday night when her neighbor breezed by telling us that the 35W bridge at University collapsed. Dutiful perfectionists that we are, we finished the door we were on and then hustled upstairs to see what all the fuss was about.

DAMN.

By that point I had voicemail messages I couldn’t get to and text messages galore questioning my state of being. My apartment happens to be less than a mile from that bridge so I guess it freaked a bunch of people out. Lucky for me I ride my bike in the summer and haven’t been tutoring anyway, so no issue. But after updating my facebook status and getting ahold of my mom and Jeff, everyone seemed settled. There were some scary moments where we couldn’t get ahold of D’s dad, but it worked out thank God.

It wasn’t until Friday morning when we drove our usual route to the gym that happens to go above the bridge that I really realized what that WAS. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t. That’s the bridge we’d drive above and I’d complain about when they were ever going to get it done (exits from my area were blocked). Well holy shit. Guess it won’t be ‘done’ for awhile now, and I can damn well quit my complainin’. Holy smokes.

It’s just a really freaky and horrible thing, and as Diana and Jeff keep saying, “things like this don’t happen in Minnesota”. It’s naive but it’s true; I mean, we have winter. Hello.

The destruction and devastation are unimaginable, and I am so so so lucky that no one I know was involved. Thanks be to God. That all said, here’s to the people that were and their loved ones, and to the people that have been helping them out. It just blows the mind.

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I’ve been riding my bike to work every day just because the other two bridges by me are totally overloaded with detoured traffic. We’ll see when it all shakes out but for now I am very very happy to be slipping by traffic jams on my little bike. Yipes.

On Friday I had another review (we have them every three months, they’re informal lunch-y type things) and there was a lot of discussion on my irrational fears about getting fired. I can’t help it. I work somewhere that’s a Big Deal in Minneapolis and I’m surrounded by super duper talented folk everyday. It’s awesome but also frightening, and while I know it will make me better it’s still somewhat stressful. Aaah. The good thing is one of my buddies got promoted so I’m really excited about that. He will make a great SENIOR Dznr. The other good thing is I’m doing a good job. Phew.

Time for the Gymnastics and Life Analogy. So I liken my lucky spot at my job to being on the sucky D1 teams I had thought I could be on or being a student at MIT like I had considered (but thankfully wasn’t, because I don’t have $100000). I would have spent all of my time just grateful to be there, happy to be amongst such talented people but realizing that my piece in the puzzle, while there, was minimal. And you know what? It would have been awesome (being a benchwarmer on a DI team, anyway; the MIT thing may have been horrible). And so right now I’m just trying to do good work and learn some stuff so I can help out at least a bit. I think I’m getting somewhere.

I also built a totally perfect homepage for one of our clients on Friday so that makes me very very very geekily happy!!! Yeah!

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In other news…..um what else. We’ve had a really weird/rare weekend for us (‘we’ being ‘Jeff and I’, sorry, I’m trying not to be a ‘we’-er but I can’t help it. Aah.). Weird in that we’ve gone out and spent money, ha. On Friday we hit up Angela (Hoover)’s surprise birthday party in MAPLE GROVE at DAVE & BUSTERS. I thought it would be horrible, especially since it’s up in the Middle of Nowhere IMVHO, but it ended up being really really fun. Dave was so happy that he surprised her, Angela was happy to see us, and Angela’s buddies were all nice. I played a little skee ball and watched everyone else go nuts. Pretty fun.

My freelance got put on a tiny hold so I’ve had a lot of time to read and eat jellybeans, pretty much one of my favorite things ever, while Jeff plays Zelda. He LOVES that game. On Saturday after dropping his car off (and not getting it back, and finding out they basically stole his car for the next few days because they never called us, those jerkfaces, but that’s another story) we went to Southdale for DOUBLE FEATURE SATURDAY. We saw Simpsons and The Bourne Ultimatum – woo! Simpsons was pretty good, Bourne Ultimatum was AWESOME and if you like those movies you should totally see it. I love when a sequel/whatever turns out to be g-reat. Had a nice lunch at CPK – that place never fails to disappoint. We also did some requisite Apple Store cruising (twice) and played with the iPhones. They are AMAZING! I didn’t think I’d love it so much but I do. Seriously those things are incredible.

Michael came and visited me at work on Weds and that was pretty cool! He was interviewing across the street. How cool would that be if he worked right there! Yeah!

OK that’s it. This is way too long. Hope everyone’s doing well and be careful out there. Happy (happy?) August!