Hello. This is my newsletter.: February 2015

I feel like we have not talked in FOREVER!!!

Since I have so many things to tell you, I’ll just have to tell you in small doses, since I don’t want to overwhelm you, and because I have a hot date in a couple of hours.

I have two happy things to report.

Number one, I have finished writing the MD Archery Guide! Hoorayyy!! I was staying at work till 9 PM 4 nights a week the past few weeks to write the darn thing. (Okay, sometimes I left at 8.) (And sometimes I went to happy hour and had a few beers, and then came back to work, so hopefully that made for an interesting guide.)

Number two, I changed desks at work, so now I am so far away from chewing and clicking. It is wonderful. Others are envious and sometimes just come and stand at my desk, because they are going through withdrawal. And I get lots of e-mails.

12:34 PM Colleague

hello

if you're interested in hearing food being chewed

please drop by

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From: Miglin, Veronica

Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 11:44 AM

To: Same Colleague

Subject: Hello.

Do you want to join Leo and me for lunch at Brio? We are leaving in like 15. Hello.

From: Same Colleague

Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 11:45 AM

To: Miglin, Veronica

Subject: RE: Hello.

No, I’m poor.

And I want to listen to food get macerated here.

Hello.

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Also the temp that used to be here misses me, too. Sometimes he just IMs me random yelling. They all have a weird way of showing it, but the boys miss me when I am no longer available.

9:45 AM Temp

Ugh [[ new temp ]] got an internet posting of his arrival

I ONLY GET A WELCOME BREAKFAST

you guys really rolled out the red carpet huh

9:46 AM Miglin, Veronica

You are ridiculous

9:46 AM Temp

I see how it is

9:47 AM Miglin, Veronica

you are lucky you got a welcome breakfast

I don’t think he got a welcome breakfast

9:47 AM Temp

On my first day, I got asked if my family was in the Salem witch trials.

I hope you know I’m kidding.

My bagel was delicious.

9:49 AM Miglin, Veronica

btw, WERE your ancestors in the Salem witch trials?

9:49 AM Temp

We’re done here

9:49 AM Miglin, Veronica

still never got a solid answer on that

I went to South Carolina.

I saw on my handy-dandy custom-made-by-Kake calendar that Melissa’s birthday was coming up, and so I asked her what she was doing for her birthday. She said she was watching TV and working. Realizing that this was a milestone birthday, I found this to be completely unacceptable, so I rounded up some Maryland folks, and we went down to South Carolina to surprise her. It went off really well, and it was really awesome of the other Maryland folks to take the time/money to fly down to see her, and to The Boyfriend for helping coordinate.

Kate and I drove down from Maryland. It took about 10 hours and it was a beautiful drive, complete with a stop at The Apple House and a beautiful sunset.

Not to mention, a definite vocal workout due to having Pandora set to Disney songs for 6 hours straight.

It turned out that all of us, the drivers and the flyers, arrived at the same time. Kake and I picked up the friends from the airport and went right to Melissa’s and it was awesome. We went out to dinner, and had a great visit.

Kake and I did some exploring while we were there, and ran into a little town that has my alias’s namesake.

We found a park called Paris Mountain, and did some light hiking. And selfie-ing.

As we were driving down Paris Mountain, repeatedly singing “Colors of the Wind,” (naturally,) there was a very Kate & Veronica moment. We were mid-word in the song, (I believe it was right after, “how high does the sycamore grow, if you cut it down, then you’ll never know, and you’ll nev…..”) and we both turned into Twilight vampires when at the same exact moment, we both caught a waft of a campfire fire.

Then we laughed and we laughed and we laughed.

When Melissa got off of work, we went out for dinner and I will bless your eyes with the sights of our food, you're welcome

Definetly a better way to spend your birthday than on the sofa watching TV.

And then we finished the evening by playing a bunch of rounds of Cards Against Humanity, which btw is hilarious. I believe Kate went home and ordered her own set immediately.

I will say that the popcorn game is real in South Carolina. They have a couple of popcorn stores who sell every flavor of popcorn you can think of: watermelon, sour cream & chive, jalapeno, cotton candy, birthday cake, and on and on. I walked away with some pizza popcorn, and it made the boys at work very happy.

It was a very nice little weekend road trip, fueled by the largest cups of coffee Sheetz sold. I think we each had a cup of coffee in our hands all of the waking hours. Well, coffee or beer. You know how it goes.

Here’s my conclusion:

I do not want to move to Greenville, South Carolina. There are lots of reasons, but it’s enough that there is no alcohol served on Sundays.

It's okay for a short visit, but we were ready to get back to Maryland.

The ride home was just as beautiful, paired with hours of praise and worship and Britney Spears and Disney. Alas, home is where the Smidgen is. This land feels like home to me.

So does Washington State. And a few other places. But not SC.

I have not received your text messages, and I am sorry.

I don't know how long this has been going on, but my suspcian is that it has been at least a month and a half. My phone has been receiving about half of the messages that people have sent to me. I am so mad about it that I just want to scream and punch things. I also am missing calls, and people are being sent directly to voicemail.

I tried to do a hard reset while I was in South Carolina, because I was missing important texts from the people I was with in SC.

So, I lost all of my contacts, for naught, as it were, because it did not help at all. I just got a ton of text message notifications at the same time that said this:

I am allegedly getting the replacement phone in the mail today, and my hope and prayer is that all of the messages that I have not received are still alive in cyberspace, and they will all be delivered to my new phone. I know it won't happen, but I can dream. After all, I am now on bad terms with a lot of people, and it's possible that it is all over not having received some important communications.

Therefore, if you have sent me a text in the past two months, and I did not respond, it's because I never got your message. Please try again.

On the ride back, Kake and I discovered that this song should be my Tinder tagline.

Btw, as Melissa's birthday present, I reactivated my Tinder, and let her play on it for a while. NEVER AGAIN. :-x

But there will be more Tinder episodes on this blog in the future, based off of your feedback of wanting more. :-)

Until next time... take care of yourself. <3

Hello. I should not be writing this blog, because I need to write the Maryland Archery Guide right now.

Do you have a passport? You need to get your passport!! It makes me nervous when people don’t have one. You just never know what is going to happen. What if you meet a very wealthy and handsome and eligible bachelor who wants to take you to Rome for dinner tonight?? WHAT THEN, I ASK YOU??? I can be ready and at the airport in 45 minutes. Let’s go.

Tinder

I deleted my Tinder account for now because I don’t care anymore, but here are some things that were lingering:

I knew this convo was gonna be good - I was waiting for it, and he delivered:

Ready for the answer?

You're welcome.

And then there are some people like this:

Okay, listen, you have given no reason for anyone to care about your existence.

Oh, and this sweet treat:

Clearly a kosher situation.

This guy gets straight to business and knows what the ladies like:

Actually, a lot of guys are just holding cash. It happens a lot.

Maybe I’ll reactivate it if you want me to and you come and play it. I never remember to, and it’s boring. Also, I keep running into people I know, and it's awkward.

Bryan Adams and Ed Sheeran

I love it when people just get me.

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From: Miglin, Veronica

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:31 PM

To: Katelyn Sullivan

Subject: ed

Ed Sheeran tho.

Seriously.

I’ll have it.

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From: Katelyn Sullivan

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:33 PM

To: Miglin, Veronica

Subject: RE: ed

Only bc of his voice.

Kate Sullivan

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From: Miglin, Veronica

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:33 PM

To: Katelyn Sullivan

Subject: RE: ed

Yes. It’s like Bryan Adams… I just want to rub their voices all over my body.

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From: Katelyn Sullivan

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 2:34 PM

To: Miglin, Veronica

Subject: RE: ed

That’s acceptable.

Kate Sullivan

It's A Strange & Magnificent World

Do you have any outrageous experiences? Experiences which when you reflect upon them, you think, “How the actual heck did that even happen? Who DOES that?” I have so many of these – far too many to recollect at one time. Really. Any of my very good friends can attest to the peculiarity of all of my strange encounters – it seems unbelievable at times, and more frequent than the average person.

Last night on the drive home (I was at work until 9:30 PM writing the aforementioned archery guide) I was remembering this one flight I took when I was a kid. I used to travel back and forth to L.A. as a kid. My dad lived out there, so I would spend time in the summer with him.

My dad used to fly a whole lot, and so he had a whole lot of frequent flyer miles with whatever airline it was (I think it was American Airlines.) He would use his points to fly me out there sometimes (east coast to west coast – lots of points.)

One time, he cashed in all of his points on a first-class ticket for me. I remember being super excited about it, and how he would say, “Everyone should fly first class at least once in their life.”

It was really a fun experience. I was probably 11 or 12 years old at the time, but I was used to traveling alone by that point. I sat in my fancy, gigantic seat, and couldn’t believe that I was able to get orange juice, and an omelet! And when they were handing around the hot towels, I had no idea what to do with it. I watched the guy next to me and figured it out.

After a while into the flight, the guy next to me looked over at me, and smiled. He stopped what he was doing, and turned to me. I distinctly remember his voice, and what he said to me; how kind he was. (Funny how the memory works, n’est pas?)

He said, “I’m sorry, I’ve been working, and I should have been paying attention to you.” He asked me some questions, where I was from, where I was going, how I liked school.

He asked me if I would like to see what he was doing, and I said sure. So he turned his fancy, state-of-the-art laptop (okay, they probably just invented them that year) to me, and showed me all sorts of things. He told me that he runs football games that we watch on TV.

He showed me sheets with tons of budget information, and how much things cost. I, being 11-12 years old, had never thought about things like how much money it costs to light a football stadium, how much spotlights cost, and how much it costs to run TV cameras. But he was walking me through all of this information, and I thought it was very fascinating.

He told me that his job was to make sure that everything was well lit, and the TV cameras were okay, and that everything went well with broadcasting the NFL football games. I really enjoyed talking to him, a total stranger, for the remaining 3-4 hours of the flight. Here I am 20 years later talking about it, so it obviously left an impression on me.

When we landed, he handed me his business card, and I kept it for several years in my jewelry box. I forget his name now, but he was some executive at NBC. I used to video tape football games, just so that I could pause on his name when it came across the screen at the end of games. He might have been something like Production Executive… I would probably recognize his name if I saw it. I doubt I still have that business card, but I’ll be checking my jewelry box tonight.

The point is, you never know how some small act in your day might actually stay with your fellow human forever.

Side note: do not eat chips around Cow. She loves chips, and I have no idea why. Her favorite chips are Tostitos, but she likes everything. Potato, tortilla, spinach chips, even flax seed chips. I don't get it. She's so rude about it - she goes right into your bag; she does not give a what how many times you push her away. She waits until you drop one, like a dog. She will wait all day. If you drop one, you don't stand a chance at picking it up before she gets to it.