A little Cheese with your Valentine's Chocolate?

This is simply too precious not to share with the world (even be it the mini cyber world that reads this blog).  My dad is adorable.

He wrote:

Dear Kates,

                      I'm glad that you are seeing life

                              in places old and new

                     but it seems so long since you've been gone

                             and I miss my Katie Lou.

                     I marvel at how well you meld into

                            a world where blondes are few,

                     but when, oh when, will you come back

                            and lift my heart from being blue?

                     Your enterprises and creative ventures

                           are amazing and give us all a clue

                     of how talented and sharp you are though

                           I've known forever this is true.

                     How I wish we could sit together and

                          talk as we sometimes used to do.

                     I wish I would have done more of that

                          and maybe you do to.

                     My hope and prayer to God above,

                          from whom all blessings must come through

                    is that one day soon you'll come home

                          and I'll be there to hug you when you do!!

                    Until that day, I'll have to be content

                         with asking you this plea;

                   "Please, oh please, my Valentine's will you be?"

                           

And I respond:

Dear Dad,

Although quite far I have sailed away

To seas seemingly beyond the light of day

In what appears to be a vessel untethered

Drifting along at the mercy of the weather,

Unanchored I am not.

Despite relentless tides carrying me horizonward

Towards waters unnavigated by traditional cartographers

Through vast expanses of dizzying possibility

The fog of indecision causing low visibility,

Lost I am not.

Though perilous storms and fearful gales

Crash upon the starboard tearing my sails,

Oft threatening to swallow in merciless thirst

My courage to face demons accursed,

Helpless I am not. 

For my anchor finds hold in the rock of my home,

In the love unconditional I’ve always known.

My compass points steady to a North innate

Instilled in me from a very young age.

My rescue has never failed to heed my call

Even in tempests of pride and rains of gall.

So I fear not voyaging into the unknown,

Even as I venge forth alone.

Because just as my eyes are blue,

I know the best of me has come from you.

So in your response to your plea, I reply,

Yes, I will be your Valentine.

Me and Steve

I’m too lazy to cook, too cheap to eat out, and I’m getting tired of empanadas and pizza.  So I decided to become a restaurant critic.  It was a foolproof plan.  

Domain name: $9.99.  Business cards: 5.000COP.  Tall black boots: 20.000COP.  Playing dress-up as a professional journalist and eating free food: Awesome. 

It was all fun and games until I started listening to the audiobook of Steve Jobs’ biography (ironically I’m listening to it out of order because my iPod is broken).  There’s something about listening to books that makes the ideas seep deeper into my brain, as if the headphones are a direct portal infiltrating straight to the core of my cerebellum, bypassing the filter that my eyes would normally put up if reading in the traditional way.  When holding a book in my hands, I am the reader in the audience and the author is on stage--we are two separate identities.  But when a book is in my ears, and its words are passing through my mind while I’m walking down the street or riding on the bus, I become enveloped.  The line between myself and the story blurs.  

Over the past five days, a small voice has inhabited the top of my spinal cord constantly musing about things like perfection, design, creativity, integration, minimalism, greatness, and beating out the competition.  So my little side hobby of masquerading around Bogotá as a restaurant connoisseur  quickly evolved into a slightly obsessive mission to become the Zagat.com of South America.  It seemed doable.   Of course it was a crazy idea, but in Track 17 Steve Jobs had just released the iPhone and he whispered to me, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.”

Skip to Track 12.  Steve gets ousted from Apple.  I do a more thorough Google search of online food guides for Bogotá and find that there are hundreds.  Pop! goes my balloon.  Some of the sites are stupid and ugly, but there are three or four that are beautiful.  Simple, elegant interfaces, search bars by categories, maps, comment windows, and professional photographs.  When I reopen my page, it looks like an 11 year old drew it on Paint.  The pictures are fuzzy, the fonts are mismatched, there’s no search bar, and I have a grand total of four restaurants listed. 

Skip to Track 24.  Steve is dying from cancer.  All of the sudden my hobby becomes an existential crisis.  Do I want to spend the rest of my life doing half-assed mediocre projects that are erected, deflated, and never remembered?  I’ve never stuck with anything long enough to be excellent or perfect. I’ve spent 22 years just floating around from one thing to the next, never really failing, but never achieving greatness.  What impact will any of this have on the world?  Steve is reflecting on his work revolutionizing six industries but worrying about how long his company will survive without him.   I am reflecting on my happy-go-lucky life and wondering how long it will be before I get serious about something. 

Skip to Track 5.  Steve is building Blue Box telephones with his friend in his garage.  I have my first meeting with a restaurant owner.  I do an interview, take some photos, eat on his tab, and walk away feeling like a million bucks (or at least the 30.000COP that my meal was worth).  Everybody’s gotta start somewhere. 

Skip to Track 1.  Steve is illegitimately conceived by two unwed 23-year-olds.  I guess you never know what will come out of unexpected accidents.