Dude, two emails to Todd today and NO response. They are SO having that baby right now, I just KNOW it.

Squeal!

B talked me into taking the Metro downtown with him tonight to return his loaner camera to Penn Camera (since he woke up early this morning for a photo shoot to find that his D70 had just "stopped" working.) He coaxed me out into the crowds and cold with the promise of Ben's half-smokes and an indie movie at the Landmark E Street Theatre.

But once we got downtown and returned the camera, we swooned over the idea of made-fresh-at-your-table guacamole at Rosa Mexicano instead. We sat in our prime window seats and watched the fancy ball-goers walk from the Gallery Place Metro to their gala of choice, many stopping in to have a cocktail in the restaurant. B's favorite part was the man nearly run over in the middle of F Street and the driver brought to tears by the incident. My favorite part was winning a game of rock, paper, scissors to determine who would pick up the tab (scissors rule!).

We skipped dessert and the movie in favor of one of my favorite new evening rituals: curling up on the sofa with B's French pressed coffee in adorable little white cups. TiVo has a way of making homebodies out of homebodies.

So I used to read a lot of total-stranger-blogs when I started blogging back in 1999. I stumbled on one, found eerie parallels, and then one led to the next and then the next and then she told two friends and then they told two friends and... you get the picture. I really don't read many now because my favorites either disappeared or got too monotonous or we just grew apart ("it's me, not you"), but my guiltiest pleasure has got to be dooce. B's been reading her site for years-- and while at first I was jealous of his constant dooce references (at the time most often referred to by me as "your other girlfriend, dooce") and envious of her consistent ability to whip up charming anecdotes out of something as mundane as three used match sticks and an Orbitz gum wrapper, I soon found myself an invested fan, complete with my own "dOOce" link button on my browser.

If you follow the link and get even half as sucked into dooce as I have over the past year, you will quickly learn that dooce was not only fired from a job in LA for the contents of her blog, but that the term, "dooced" has found its way into UrbanDictionary.com meaning "losing your job for something you wrote on your online blog."

I'm pretty conservative when it comes to discussing anything work-related on whirlygirl-- a transition I made around 2000 about the same time I quit my job at MEDITECH and starting working for a small consulting company. In the early days, I used to refer to the consulting gig as Lois, but now I try to refrain from mentioning it at all. And all of this is really just an extremely long introduction to the fact that this week two events made me realize just how conservative I've been over the past four years and how I probably would have been dangerously close to being dooced myself had it not been for Bruce's paranoid words of wisdom back in May of 2000 about keeping a lid on whirlygirl as I hunted for a new job.

The first one was a reminder email from Todd in response to my "cube mates 4-ever" post about this story which was a companion to this story which we wrote for whirlygirl circa Fall 1999. This certainly doesn't blow the lid off work indiscretion, but it is a prime example of exactly how many credit hours we were not taking around that time.

But the second one completely blew my mind. This week I have been forced to go through all of the whirlygirl archives to fix a hack that was appended to all of my published files via some kind of virus/Trojan horse thing that made its way onto my host server (thanks for the warnings, Dave!). And in doing so, I found the very first two "unpublished" whirlygirl wonders, manifestoes and bobstoppers. I can remember writing these during the creation of whirlygirl 1.0-- a sort of "trial-run" to familiarize myself with blogging the day's non-event events as well as give me a few content pages to play with during the design/development phase-- but I forgot just how "out there" they were. I'm left (a) trying to imagine my shortened MEDITECH career had I decided to continue in this direction once I started publishing the site, and (b) laughing... really, really, really hard.

I'm slowly getting back into this The Office existence with all of the birthday cakes and David Brents. It's serving as a good transition for a few months down the line when I'll bid my 4pm pajamas and happy laundry Mondays farewell and reenter my veal-fattening pen full-time.

But I must say that all of the quirky things that happen here only make me homesick for my partner-in-MEDIcrime, Todd, and our ridiculous office discussions and antics. Today he reminded me of "hiding the bricks" and "stealing the stereo speakers out of a car" and "balcony days" via one hysterical email that forced me to laugh out-loud in this moderately-quiet-but-in-no-way-as-pristinely-silent-as-the-Documentation-group-at-MEDITECH workspace. Once we're back in Boston, I'm thinking of relocating my part-time home office to Todd and Hayley's UrbanCamo room, preferably on Mondays when Todd telecommutes and we can scare up the most trouble. New baby, schmoo baby-- we'll be the ones who need nanny-like supervision.

After dinner at The Jefferson tonight, B and I hopped on the red line at Farragut North and took it just one stop to Metro Center and the E Street Theatre. As the train glided to a stop, I noticed another girl and her boyfriend-- she in pointy black shoes, dark, pressed jeans, and heavy pancake makeup. Then on our way home, via the red line again it was around the Dupont Circle stop that I noticed her standing a few feet away from us-- same pointy shoes, same pancake face, same clumsy granola boyfriend. I got that same freakish feeling that I get when waiting at the gate for a plane to board-- looking at all of the other passengers who at some point were making the exact same plans as me to get on that specific plane.

I think parallel lives are supposed to make us feel less alone in the world, but they make me feel like an insignificant speck. And tonight, Miss Pancake made me feel pretty darn small.

Tonight feels like a celebration-- and it would even if you took away the three glasses of Pinot Noir and the eggnog creme brulée. Just another perfect example of friends and conversations and enlightenment and Epicurean delights, topped with the resolution of a permanent move back to Boston.

At HQ today, after our Comcast brainstorming session, I talked to my boss about our intentions to relocate to Boston within the next six months-- a topic he met with ease and enthusiasm and opportunity. And so a last obstacle feels hurdled and our future here now seems incredibly tangible. And my relief and jubilation was the perfect lead-in to my evening with Erika and Debbie-- pre-dinner cocktails at Umbra Café and dinner at Union Bar and Grille on the South End's oh-so-trendy Washington Street. It was a perfect toast to so many more nights with our family of friends in our new hometown.