Happy People

This has been an awesome couple of weeks for me.  First there was Tommy's wedding.  Next was my own delayed birthday celebration at Mongolian Barbecue and Adams Morgan; I saw my old college roommate Willis for the first time since 2003, and hung out with Katie/Jared and crew.  It was a fun night. 

But that can't be all -- otherwise, I wouldn't have named this post after one of the few good songs by R. Kelly.

On Saturday, I went up to NYC.  Dave offered to get me up to New York as a birthday present.  I got to hang with Paolo, Chris, Virve, Tara, Sunita, Pooja, Anna, Chad, James, Tom Kim, Caroline...just a ton of people, some of whom I hadn't seen since I left New York in 2003.  Chad had a birthday party Saturday night, and Dave and JuAnne organized a barbecue on Sunday.

On top of all that, Dave had a slew of random shit waiting for me.  One of the companies he works for has a clothing division, so he gave me a bunch of free summer shirts from their discard pile.  He also gave me a two-volume copy of the first 21 issues of X-Men. 

Then there was the icing on the cake.  You know how I've been complaining that I've totally missed out on all non-hip-hop music because of my time in South Africa?  How I haven't been able to collect music for the past year, and haven't been able to change that because I haven't been paid at all yet? 

Well, it just so happens that one of my friends has basically every new popular CD that has come out since I was gone on his shared drive.  So his roommate burned me Mp3 discs of all the new albums I'd been wanting to hear from 2004-2005.  Among the loot:

• Velvet Revolver


• Franz Ferdinand


• The Killers


• The Game


• Cake


• Ray Charles (2)


• Coldplay


• The White Stripes


• N.E.R.D.


• Jin (Chinese freestyle rapper)


• Queens of the Stone Age


• System of a Down


• Rob Thomas (solo - he's got talent, even though I despise Matchbox 20)


• Tenacious D


• Snow Patrol


• Dave Matthews Band


• Fiona Apple


• Missy Elliott


• Beastie Boys


• Nine Inch Nails

At this point, you're probably thinking: this is the peak, right?  It can't possibly get any better than this, right?  Wrong!  The cherry on top of all this is that my agency interview -- which I feared would be a waste of time -- actually went extremely well.   The interviewers seemed to be won over as advocates for me.  After I took the assessments for Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Spelling/grammar, the receptionist told me I had the highest scores he's ever seen. 

And as an added bonus, I got a call from another agency on my bus ride home.  They want to interview me this week for a position working directly for them, as opposed to trying to find a client company for me to work for.  Nothing may come of any of it, but just the fact that potential employers are actually showing interest in me is a huge victory.  It allows me the chance to get my foot in the door.   

As you can imagine, I'm in a spectacular mood today.  Besides a new suit, I couldn't have asked for much more over the past twelve days.  I'd especially like to thank Dave, Chris and Paolo for their generosity -- and for putting up with me.  I appreciate everything more than you know. 

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