She Wakes Up

I went to dinner with some old friends last night. We'd gone out twice in the last few months after not seeing each other in years, so we'd already caught up on all the personal stories and to me it felt like we were running out of things to say. Back in the day (in the time of Magic and Kareem) we went to many a basketball game and shared all the latest and greatest in the world of basketball. But Kareem retired and Magic retired and Michael Cooper coaches the Sparks--in short, I've moved on and away from basketball so that now I recognize few names and fewer faces in the sport. Not so my two friends, who spent much of the dinner discussing trades and all stars. Shaq in Phoenix--oh my. Thank goodness I didn't put my foot in it and ask why that was bad (apparently, Phoenix wears purple and the Lakers wear purple, so there you go. I'm thinking what you are thinking, unless you get it.)

One friend recently got a job at a Production company and she told us about their antiquated coding system. Again, I've been away from that job for over 18 years. I gave her the appropriate "oh that's too bad" and had little else to contribute. She had gone 14 months looking for a job, but was going to take off early for a doctor's appointment and balked when they suggested that she could take some work home. I'm kind of a work-a-holic who has no trouble leaving work at work, yes, yes, that's me, an oxymoron. What can I say to her--take work home to preserve your job, but leave work at work to preserve your sanity. You can't eat peace of mind. My motto is, if you are not part of the solution, keep your mouth shut.

Then she said something about staying up all night to watch sports and off handedly added, tennis. I practically screamed "and then they replayed the match the next day--five hours!" Yes, she said, extremely surprised. I animatedly recounted the match and then we talked about all the different players and then the other matches that I went to last summer--Nalbanian is short--Safin is so cute and tall and Annie said that Tsonga looked like Ali way before the commentators picked up on it and favorite players and favorite tournaments and we even discussed tennis fashion. Wow, my friends said, Kathy woke up. That was fun.