Better today

Yesterday's post was pretty cathartic for me. Thanks to everyone who commented and e-mailed me. I really appreciated the words of sympathy and comfort. I was able to reflect a bit more positively today. Though to be frank, I steered clear of his empty cubicle. I didn't cry today and I didn't stare down at my work and think, did I just print this?

To be honest, until a work trip to Sacramento, I really didn't know Kyle that well. We're in different departments but for this trip they were pulling folks from all different departments to interact with participants. He, I, and four others traveled up to the capital for two days, and since we had a bit of down time we got to know each other a lot better. He was the only male in the group but he fit in easily because he's laid back and didn't have a need for macho pretense. You know those movies where you're rooting for the funny, nice guy? Think John Cusack in Say Anything, Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, Ben Stiller in There's Something About Mary, Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin and even Michael Cera from SuperBad. Kyle was a curly-headed half-brother of these guys.

Nice guy exhibit A: the book he was reading for the plane ride: "The Front Nine: Nine Fundamentals of Golf That Will Improve Your Marriage". His fiancee had given him this book that translated golf concepts into marriage fundamentals, like, "Loosen Your Grip" and "What feels natural isn't always right". As anyone can imagine, it was vaguely corny and silly, but he was reading it. He didn't leave it in a bag in his closet like Seth Rogen's character in Knocked Up. He was reading it with a bookmark and everything. Kind of refreshing.

In comparison, what was I doing on the plane? Working on my "Not List" of things that drive me crazy:

And, doodling robots:

Yes, I know, not so refreshing.

Anyhoo, we had a couple of funny incidents that happened on this trip and when he heard that I had a blog, he was like, you've got to post about this! As you can imagine, I'm kicking myself that I didn't post about it.

I'm trying to collect my memories about this trip a bit more clearly because I'd like to post them still. What I do remember was that we were up there on my birthday. I've said before, I'm not lucky when it comes to the lottery, but I'm lucky when it comes to people.