The End of 2017
The trouble with writing about 5-6 letters to Jon O in the past 2 months is that they basically turned into my journaling, and so I don’t have any record of things on here. On the plus side, he seemed to really appreciate my letters. So the question of, “what has happened since I last wrote?” is essentially equivalent to “What did I include in those past letters that I wrote him?”
Since my birthday, I have been putting in quite a few hours at the job. I’ve learned a bunch and it’s quite challenging. The last week of the semester was a challenge on top of making final’s week breakfast for the students as per usual - my boss called me up on a Saturday and told me to drop everything and develop a whole new app, which I did. The following Monday, he said that this was my chance to demonstrate my internal impact to the CEO after being at the company for 2 months. Strange that this didn’t manifest, you know, over the previous 2 months of me slaving over this company. I still think it may have potential though, and the series A estimates are exciting.
Anyway, besides work, Mark and I went down to NJ to see the family for Thanksgiving. On the way back, we moved Aunt Joann out of her house.
I had a tournament on 12/3 at MIT, where we made it to semifinals. I met up with an attractive Italian guy named Chris on Sunday, 12/17, in my office. I saw Star Wars the Last Jedi on Saturday 12/16 by myself. I met up with Nadia at some point at Explorateur again.
We left early on Friday, 12/22 to drive down to Richmond, VA with Ditty and Nikita for James' wedding. It wasn't as bad of an experience as I had feared, though I still would've preferred flying. We got to the wedding 2 minutes late after 2+ hours of extra traffic, but then missed the reception by 1.5 hrs after a miscommunication on timing. It was at a southern plantation/mansion, which was elaborate, cozy, and beautiful, food was good, but I was made uncomfortable by the fact that the entire wait staff was black. Got an early uber to GSO on Saturday morning and flew to Chicago for Christmas with Mark's family.
His cousin Alex picked us up from ORD in the middle of a snowstorm with his gf Lauren. We went to his aunt Nana's wonderful home in Orland Park, and had a ton of tasty appetizers and drinks while meeting Mikey and his new fiancee Lisa (with her 4-year-old, Hunter). Mark was emotional most of the time before, during, and after this occasion. They grilled her a good amount - I dunno, she seems like overall a positive influence on Mikey's life so far, but we just don't know how sustainable it will be.
On Christmas Day we went to his aunt Joann's house for more desserts, drinks, and food, with more family, including people I really like, like his cousins Dave, Katie, Milana, and Nikola. We played CatchPhrase.
The next two days we mostly worked on our laptops for the company. I was feeling pretty negative about the whole thing, especially because I haven't worked out in over a week and we just keep sitting and eating for long periods of time this whole week. UGH. The underlying tension about Mikey's situation isn't helping - there have been a few blowups between their family members while I've been here.
I just got a call from Daphne that her mother is expected to die in the next few weeks.