And then Clay Aiken gave me a facial tick

From my perch at my Triangle, it was easy to watch for the arrival of Clay Aiken today. By my watch (actually my iPhone), he was 6 minutes late. Not cool, Clay Aiken. I was always on time. He also wasn't wearing a tie. I was 100% positive that it was Clay Aiken because of my stalking him on LinkedIn.

I did pretty well at work today. No throwing up. I had plenty to do, so I stayed busy and tried not to think about it. No one mentioned Clay Aiken's interview to me today. I wonder if Mr. X figured that I put two and two together, given how many times a day I need to look at his calendar. Once Clay Aiken actually entered the building, I did get really nervous, like anxiety attack nervous. I have an eye tick that only shows up under extreme stress, so it showed up this afternoon, which was really cool. Everyone likes a girl with an eye tick. I really hope that this is over soon.

In other news, Vaclav Havel (former president of the Czech Republic, Cold War Activist, playwright, humanitarian, all around good person, and someone that was always on my list of people I wanted to have over to my house for dinner) died on Sunday. If you remember learning about Charter 77, the Prague Spring in 1968, or the Velvet Revolution, this is the man who was their architect. I've read several obituaries today and was going to link to one, but I can't pick. Just Google him and you'll find lots to read, including his early plays. The House at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which is now a museum of both the Berlin Wall and social activism throughout the world, has the typewriter that he used to write many of his early plays and also Charter 77--you can actually sit down at type something with it.* When I lived in Berlin I wrote lots of people letters on his typewriter. (I was kind of a hog in the museum.) When I was visiting Prague it was Wenceslas Day**, so I got to see him (from very, very far away) giving a public address. I didn't understand a word of it, but it was like seeing a rock star to me.

While I was Googling him, I found that he wrote a lot about hope. I guess looking back at his life, he had to hope for something better, and then once he succeeded he got to witness all that hope having come to fruition. I like to think that we would have been friends, if we had ever met. I don't usually get sad when people I don't know die, but I feel like his passing should be mourned. The world lost a great citizen.

So, to end today, I am going to try and relax enough so my face stops ticking, and think about hope...

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons ...Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

-Vaclav Havel
1936-2011

*Because people in Europe have respect for stuff and don't trash it. If you go to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam you can also sit down in her chair at her desk and look out the window. There's no plexiglass or velvet ropes.

**Wenceslas is actually "Vaclav" in Czech--isn't that cool