{"id":980,"date":"2020-10-03T10:26:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T17:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/n2rh.com\/?p=980"},"modified":"2020-10-03T10:26:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T17:26:27","slug":"the-stars-aligning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/?p=980","title":{"rendered":"The stars aligning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hey look at us &#8211; we totally made it to October.  Go us!  Just a quick story for you all today that I hope you enjoy.  I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be able to tell it without kinda spoiling the punchline, but that&#8217;s ok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nearly five years ago, my company was having a holiday party.  Back when gathering crowds was still a thing, we tended to do parties on Fridays.  This meant people would spend part of the work day talking about said party, what they were going to wear, what freeways they&#8217;d take to get there, etc.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On this particular Friday, the party was a little farther away so people were leaving early to go home and get ready first.  I was in the kitchen, and a co-worker said he was taking off for that reason.  I was about to say something normal like, &#8220;Ok, see you there&#8221; when I realized something and paused.  A lot happened in that pause.   The stars had just aligned perfectly and in a way I may never witness again.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You see, this gentleman&#8217;s last name was Richter, and there&#8217;s a line from &#8220;Total Recall&#8221; that my favorite brother and I quote in which Arnold says, &#8220;See you at the party, Richter!&#8221;  Naturally, the line is accompanied by Arnold throwing Mr. Richter&#8217;s no-longer-attached arms at him.  And here I was, actually going to see someone named Richter at &#8220;the party,&#8221; and I couldn&#8217;t believe my luck.  But in the pause, I also realized that not everyone shares that reference, so if I just blurted that line out in an Austrian accent, the odds are it would be met with a metric shit ton of confusion.  But at the same time, I owed it to the universe to use this opportunity.  What, I told you a lot happened in the pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I ended up saying something like, &#8220;This might not mean anything to you, but I&#8217;ll explain right after,&#8221; and then I said the Arnold line in my best Arnold impression.  He didn&#8217;t get the reference but appreciated it once I&#8217;d explained.  Or acted like he appreciated it.  Either way is fine with me.  It wasn&#8217;t the most obscure reference in the world, but still pretty rare to have the quote line up with my reality so perfectly.  It would be like teaching a class on pool safety to someone named Rose and getting the chance to say, &#8220;I need you to swim for me, Rose.&#8221;  Or making an 80s playlist and getting to say, &#8220;And Toto too.&#8221;  Or opening a fridge and using Gabriel Byrnes line in &#8220;The Usual Suspects&#8221; to yell, &#8220;There&#8217;s no&#8230;fucking&#8230;coke!&#8221;  Nah, those are too easy and have totally happened before &#8211; this required the name, a type of event, and for the event to be in the near future.  I&#8217;m proud of my brain for realizing it in the moment, even if I didn&#8217;t handle it that gracefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s it, told you it was a brief story today.  Have a great weekend, and stay healthy and safe. (And I&#8217;d love other versions of being able to put movie quotes into real-life scenarios if you&#8217;ve got &#8217;em, so comment away!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey look at us &#8211; we totally made it to October. Go us! Just a quick story for you all today that I hope you enjoy. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be able to tell it without kinda spoiling the punchline, but that&#8217;s ok. Nearly five years ago, my company was having a holiday party. Back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":981,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}