What made you smile today?

johnboy requests permission to tell a long story about what made him smile today. A rather twisted story with not a a lot of laughs, come to think of it. Perhaps this thread is meant to be trivial. I can live with that.

go for it.

trivial - and what this thread isn't meant to be about are fine, I think. It's supposed to be about things that make YOU smile, hello.

Johnboy, please tell me .. what made you smile today?

and, by the way, requesting permission without a mistress is TOTALLY pathetic. (word for the day: pathetic)

Or it could be, like, wry and low-key.

Pathetic, nah.

(Where's that story?)

<smiles> I AM a bitch. <shuts up>

Don't mind me, I get protective.

That's good. Some quote-unquote pathetic guys need that. <nods>

Bedtime for the pathetic, mistress-less realjohnboy. The story bounces around in his head as he drifts into sleep. Tomorrow.

Btw, sozobe, what has made me smile so far today ... is that the pic in your avatar is the pic on a coaster of my (other) best friend has - the caption says "chicks kick ass"... she's got others ... the one's caption is "being unpredictable and bitchy is part of my mystique". I can't steal them - she's my BEST friend!

Need? Nah.

Anyway, what made me smile today was sozlet coming out of her classroom in full warpaint -- her entire face was covered, lurid pinks and yellows and blues. She was proud of her handiwork, "I painted my face!" Uh, yeah, I see.

(She later scrubbed it off herself but didn't quite get all of it, and there are pink smudges in weird places that make her look invalid-ish.)

Aw, will look forward to it tomorrow, rjb.

Cool caption, arji. :-)

didn't do it myself - I'm in a mood and a2k did it for me. <smiles>

small people in warpaint DEFINITELY make me smile. <nods>

Als alle gekken konden vliegen hadden we een permanente zonsverduistering - maar, na regen komt zonneschijn" :wink:

Seeing that the report we released last Tuesday has been covered by a (to me, not yet used to this kind of thing) stunning range of media. From the WaPo, LA Times, ABC News and Washington Times to Die Welt, Le Nouvel Observateur and BBC and from Radio Prague and the Polish News Company to China Radio International and the Iran Press Agency...

I mean hell, The Romanian President was on TV being interviewed brandishing our report, and saying, "and as this report says... and we will do something about this"!

congrats, nimh. is that what the procrastination was about?

Yep. <crazy grin>

Everybody's really happy here today. (And about the small part I did too.)

If there's any concern right now, it's that the report may have had such an impact that we threaten to get imbroiled in Romanian political disputes, for example.

Yup, that's how world domination begins. Congratulations, nimh, I'm happy for you!

I'm looking forward to your story, rjb.

I have an employee who has a standard-issue first name and middle name like most all of us. But after dabbling a bit in Hinduism he informally adopted an Indian name. And that is the name by which he is now known. He told me what it meant, but I forget what he said.

A couple of weeks ago he asked me if he could have 10-12 days off, beginning as it turns out, tomorrow. I only have about six or seven folks working for me in my Charlottesville store and it took a lot of calendar checking amongst us to cover for his absence from his normal time-sensitive chores. But it got worked out..
He later said to me, and I hear to some of the others, that this is the first job in his life that he ever felt really needed.

Tomorrow he will begin the drive from Virginia to Louisiana. New Orleans.
With him will be his wife (his third) and his two sons (by his second wife) who are twelve and thirteen or so. Going home; going home for the first time since he came back briefly 15 or was it 18 years ago to bury his mother. He wiped the Louisiana mud from his hands after that weekend chore and hitchhiked back out of New Orleans, just as he had done when he was 16. Back to San Francisco.

San Francisco when he first got there in the late 1970's was winding down as the hip place to be. The flower children had dispersed and a lot of what was left were the dregs. The dregs, those whose brains had been fried by too many drugs.

His parents divorced when he was three and his sister was a couple years older. For a while there was an attempt at normalcy but that collapsed when his father stopped sending support checks and his mother sank into depression. He had not talked to his father in something like 30 years until a couple weeks plus a few days ago. Please come to Louisiana and please bring my grandsons. Going home he is, going home.

He set his two sons down the other night and told them a bit of family history that they are now old enough to perhaps appreciate. They will be staying for a night or two in Tennessee with his sister and her husband, a fire and brimstone preacher who believes that pretty much everybody is going to Hell and probably deserves it.
His grandmother (the kids' great grandmother) is 100 and is in failing health and they will visit her.
And then he told his kids this story about his father (their grandfather) when he stayed with him one weekend when he was four or so. He was taken to a Ku Klux Klan rally, complete with white robes and a cross-burning. When he was dropped off back at his mom's house at 9 pm he ran into the house and shouted out that he wanted to join the Klan. She grabbed him by the seat of his pants and the back of his shirt and tossed the four-year old out into the yard, locking the door behind her.

The two sons listened in stunned silence.

Katrina and Rita devastated much of the Gulf Coast. A lot of people lost a lot and may never be made whole. But for this one family maybe, just maybe, there will be something positive. And I reckon that made me smile.