A Reunion

If it's Friday before Thanksgiving week and the Friday of Tech Council week, then it should be a TANK FRIDAY. I had every intention NOT to do anything for work today. I was going to have a leisurely breakfast, watch some shows on TV, peruse my usual complement of YouTube videos on trading and manifestation and then later on in the evening, we planned a barbecue at Lisa's house. At first it was just me and Dexter but now apparently Henry and his pregnant wife are coming to. And so it has turned into a bit of a reunion of sorts. But before all that, there was still today.  I still needed to do a little work, if not to do payroll timesheets, to answer whatever and whoever would be pinging me today. I could sense my own irritation every time I got a ping. "What do they want NOW" I could hear myself say. I was especially irritated when Rody the former Communications Manager, now Director of Development waited too long to track my FCC telehealth application for $250K that was about to get denied. It annoyed me that he sort of expected to talk to Eloisa, it irritated me that he wanted me to do some following-up. I felt like telling him to do his damn job. They're paying him more money now aren't they? I am not going to hand hold him, not for this one. Someone fucked up on my application and he took over that responsibility.  But hey this being Friday, the day did go by pretty quickly and soon it was to think about Friday night already.

I got to Lisa's house by 5:30, with 4 steaks and about 6 chicken breasts, courtesy of a sale at Ralphs (for the chicken). Of course they weren't back yet from Lisa's office or whatever it was they were doing this afternoon. I figured I could at least start doing prep work. Get the barbecue warmed up anyway. I started peppering up the steaks and cutting up the zucchini and then Dexter showed up. He brought drinks and dessert. And he started to help with the cooking of the meats. This whole scene had a degree of familiarity. How many times had we done this before? It was nearly 6 PM when Lisa and friends came home, and of course Johnnie was fast asleep. I at least got the chicken and veggies ready and then Henry and his wife came along.  They brought mac-and-cheese and veggies too. I was happy to see him as I missed more than 3 years of news about him. He had gotten married, they had moved, and now they're about to be parents for the first time in just a little over a month. Exciting time for them I'm sure. I don't think they have any idea how much their lives will change in that time. But then again who can be adequately prepared really. After all, we got told to pick up Johnnie on a Friday for that Monday 2 days later. We had nothing, no crib, no anything. And we got ready that weekend LOL. Fun memories. Anyway we all got to sit down over some nice steaks and we got to do more reminiscing. After all, there was a time when Henry went with us EVERYWHERE. Heck he even sat Johnnie for us every once in a while at the Westwood apartment. And it didn't seem all that long ago that we would be pushing Johnnie around in his cart at one of the many soccer games I used to attend. I was a fixture at those games then. Boy, time sure does fly. One day I was pushing him around the soccer field as a baby, and then in a flash we're having a parent-teacher conference with Johnnie's first grade teacher. Anyway Henry went with us to Paris, to Italy, to Greece. Lisa called him her little brother. WEll, Little Brother has grown up apparently and I'm glad for him that he seems happy. Happy for them both actually. I stuck around for a while. Longer than I usually do anyway. Johnnie in the meantime, was asleep until I was almost getting ready to leave.  And then when he woke up he started to stir around and start being his usual energetic self. But by then I was already on my way out and I just gave him a hug goodbye. It WAS nice to see Henry after all this time. It is always nice to see Dexter under any circumstance and it was special to get us all together like this. And I have to give kudos to Lisa for that. She's in her element when getting people together even though that wasn't exactly her original intent or idea nor is she particularly good at getting all the details done anyway like... the cooking. Lucky for her I enjoy doing that and I was happy to feed everyone. And so it turned out that tonight's version of Friday night wasn't exactly like most others. But it was a pretty good one just the same.  And as Lisa says, I mostly need to get urged to do some socializing. And this one fit the bill exactly.