Saturday, December 13, 2014

Goodbye Forever, Hong Kong, Army/Navy

Look at my neighbor's house.

Complete with life-size, talking waving Santa.


And that is just the front.
I love it.

Goodbye Forever


I don’t know when it happened, but at some point in my life, I picked up the habit of saying, “Goodbye forever!” whenever I leave work.  

This can be traced back to one of my very first jobs, when I was 15 years old working at Taco Bell. My friend (with whom I worked there, and several other jobs to come) said that was one of the things he loved about working with me;  at the end of my shift, I would say, “okay, I’m leavin’ y’all!!”  And then I would come back in about 3-4 more times because I kept forgetting things, and then finally, when I actually had everything, I would say, “OKAY GOOD BYE FOREVER!!” 


I must do it still to this day, more often than I think.  One day recently, I was leaving work, and I said, “Okay, bye.”  I was answered with a choir of “Okay, goodbye forever,” from all of the guys.  I just started laughing and laughing.  We all took a minute to talk about it.  I said, “Do I say that?”  And they said, “Yes, you say it all the time, and we didn’t know what to make of it at first!”  

I told them that I’ve always said it, and I don’t know why – I guess you just never actually know if it is goodbye forever!  I have to walk across a lot of streets in the city!  And the one guy who is from Kenya (we have a pretty cultural group) told me, “See, that’s what we’ve figured, and now we get it and think it’s funny, but at first I was really worried, because we don’t talk about such things in my culture.”  And I told him that you have to talk about things!  And he said, “Well, now I get it, now it is okay, but it was a learning experience.”

It’s like that story in “The Princess Bride” where the Dread Pirate Roberts says every single night, "Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."  Click here for the reference.

Hong Kong


I have to say “goodbye forever” to two of my very good friends soon.  They (husband and wife) are part of the archery family, and they are moving to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks because they were both offered jobs at a college over there.  Can you even imagine being given 3-4 weeks to just move across the world?  They have to find places for everything – from furniture to their cars and pets.  Neither of them speak the language.  I can’t even imagine.

Well, I need them to learn quickly, so that they know what is going on over there by the time I go to visit them.  I have never in my life wanted to visit the Asian countries.  I don’t know why; it’s just never appealed to me.  But now they are going, so I have to visit.  It’s just like Florida – I do NOT like Florida, and yet I’m always there for some reason or another. 


Well anyway, if you have any helpful tips for my friends, please feel free to pass them along, and I am sure that they could use all the help they can get.  I will miss them.


Army/Navy Game


I have weird hearing, and can hear things very far away, like music in restaurants that no one else can hear, and I can process three conversations at once. 


(Although if one conversation takes me away from the others, it can lead to a lot of confusion.  For example, yesterday, this guy Kevin was at my desk talking about how his hair was really long in the 80’s and then I noticed that the box marked “produce” which was delivered to the lady across from me was walking away.  I started chasing the box, not willing to miss out on the opportunity for free quality pears.  I tracked down the girl carrying the box, and expressed my concern, and she laughed and said we could open the box together.  We opened it, and lo and behold…. Cookies.  DARN THE LUCK!  I said how disappointed I was, since I really thought I was going to get free produce, and then it was noted that I was probably the only person in the whole office who would be mad about cookies not being produce.  As we were discussing this, Kevin slowly rounded the corner, with such a confused look on his face, and I just started laughing and apologizing.  He said, (whilst laughing) “I was in the middle of a sentence, and you just ran away…” I said, “Yeah, I know,  I’m sorry.  I tend to do that a lot.”  And he said he was used to it by now.)


So I heard what sounded like a bunch of low-flying helicopters in the distance yesterday, and I ran over to the window to see what was going on.  Turns out it was a bunch of low-flying helicopters coming over the harbor.  I also saw a ton of people gathering, so I grabbed my coat and went outside.  Army and Navy were outside having a huge pep rally for the Army/Navy football game today, and I gotta admit – I had SO MUCH FUN watching the pep rally.



Go Army!


Go Navy!



I usually would lean towards considering myself more of a Navy girl, but, when the Army band broke out into some Taylor Swift yesterday, I must admit that I was nearly swayed:





The pull-up challenge - Who can do the most pull-ups in 5 minutes?
Very fun to watch!





Now I REALLY want to go to the Army/Navy game.  :-(

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