|
Sunday, November 3, 2002 |
Say what you mean, mean what you say
On my way back from California today. After Internet2 I flew up to the San Francisco bay area and met my friend Mary. I got to meet her sweetie and spend a lot of time with them; he's a great guy and we got along, in many ways, as though we'd known each other for a long time. Mary's the sort of person who is exceedingly honest in her personal relationships (she points out that she is just no good at being deceptive); she says what she thinks or feels, even if it's not what you necessarily want to hear. She doesn't say that she's having fun when she's not, or tell you everything's fine when there's a problem. She accepts the reciprocal honesty as well: you can always tell her that something is not going right, and she'll take the time to listen.The result of all this is that we were a lot more open with each other than two guys usually are when they first meet each other. She'd set a standard with each of us, and we chose to let it carry over from how we each related to her to how we were going to relate to each other.
Thursday night we took the BART into San Francisco, had dinner, and then joined a crowd of 300,000 people, most of them in costume. The crowd was cheerful, the costumes fun. Friday and Saturday we just hung out, had breakfast and coffee for a couple of hours so we could talk, then went hiking in the afternoons.
Friday night we went to Chabot Space and Science Center and looked through both their telescopes, plus a couple of smaller ones that volunteers had brought and set up outside. I'd forgotten how much fun stargazing can be.
This has been a great week: wonderful professional stuff at the start, balanced by important fun personal stuff at the end.
