June 23, 2010

Past Midlife

Two months ago we talked about high school the way we were and the way we are. We compared notes about life, about children, and where our separate roads took us. There were about 40 of us then, and we laughed well into the night.

Today, a fourth of that group sat in stony silence as Msgr Pax echoed our collective--if unspoken--goodbyes. We had come to pay our last respects to one of our own, in a reunion that had us weaving past and present and the myopic future.

Reunions--planned or unplanned--have a way of making us stop for a moment, look back and take stock of our lives thus far. If 75 is a lifespan, we are way past midlife. We have in fact the license to take it slow.

And so it is that we have come to this: jumping from weddings to funerals, seeing the wisdom in buying surreal estate, giving up jobs, honoring tradition. We are neither too young--nor too old--for superstition and so we let it be. We go with the flow. We circle and cycle.

And, we make plans to meet again.

June 1, 2010

Go Figure!

My head is swimming in figures right now. With budget season almost up, I am literally drowning in forms, payrolls and numbers, numbers and more numbers. To think I barely squeaked past Math 101!

And so pardon me for thinking in numbers. Unless you want to put up with (boring) bureaucratic jargon, I can only think in terms of the tangibles.

My life thus far:

1. As of 4:19 pm, I am 22,557,618 minutes old.

2. 9 is supposed to be my lucky number. But then again it takes six numbers from 1 to 49 (or is it 55 already?) to win the lottery.

3. I am Employee No. 218 in an office with 355 permanent employees.

4. Today, I clocked in at 7:42 a.m., logged out at 12:01, clocked back in at 12:25 and will probably clock out at past 5. But of course the biometric thingamajig doesn't know how to compute beyond the regular 8 hours.

5. My "winning" stats in the 2010 elections: 4 out of 12 in the Senate (and no, they're not Tito Sotto, Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla and Lito Lapid); 1 of 5 in the Provincial Board and 2 of 12 in the City Council.

6. Next week, I'll be "principal sponsor" at a wedding. Yay! Second time, and just as uncomfortable.

7. I love, love, love Pablo Neruda's Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair

8. I've had 14 bosses, lived in five cities and moved house 14 times.

9. At one point, we had 18 dogs. We're now down to 7. And the daughter wants more.

10. As of last count, I have 446,655 XP and 6,417,608 Farmville Coins. Which is the main reason I haven't been blogging as frequently :p