amanda’s mom got laid-off/fired from the college of wooster earlier this week, so she came up to ithaca for a visit and to work on her resume, do some networking, and other job search activities. since we were flush with cash from our spare change adventure the other day, we took her out to eat a few tapas downtown and followed it up with dessert at madeline’s. the dessert was undoubtably not good for her weight-watchers daily point counting, but we were celebrating her soon-to-be new direction in life, so she let the calories slide.
one of my coworkers got “redeployed” last week, too. that’s hr-speak for exactly what you think it means. not good.
anyways, as usual, i saw a couple of coworkers downtown (carolyn and mark with his kids) and assorted other people than i knew in various degrees. i am always shocked with how many people know me, since i am a pretty nonsocial guy, but i guess ithaca is a pretty small town (if one excludes the separate cornell and ithaca college ecosystems where everyone is perpetually 17-21). just the other day, the guy at the door of the chapterhouse brewpub remembered me (and i him), even though i enter the place maybe once or twice a year and he see countless students all the time. i also ran into one of the guys who fixes our cars; he always remembers me, my car models, and even type of car (toyota cressida) that i used to have that died a long time ago.
i will be sad when i finally leave this place (even though technically i live most of my life in buffalo now) as it is so comfortable and familiar, but when amanda finishes med school, we will go to wherever she gets a residency position. which could conceivably be near here, but that seems unlikely. by that time i will have lived in ithaca exactly half of my life; the other half i lived in virginia beach, virgina. time sure flies.