Letter Never Sent

…don’t let it kill again. We had the McRib Challenge yesterday outside the building of the video game company I used to work with.

I was glad to see all my old coworkers. It’s amazing how people can look different after six months. The latest contender against the McRib was Casey from QA. He ate about four and a half McRibs then he puked into the handy blue bucket.

Disappointing results especially since my friend, Mr. X, ate eight of them a year ago before breaking out in a sweat and succumbing to the dark McRib power. Jeff filmed the whole thing for posterity, and I took a few pictures of Casey against the McRib. I also made a design for the t-shirt in Illustrator. Now I just have to find somewhere to get them done.

Later in the day, I emailed Kyle and he replied back from his Blackberry that he was at Dave & Buster’s, so I ran out there and we hung out and drank beer for the next 5 hours. I hadn’t done that in a while, so it was fun.

I had a great conversation with Mariano, one of my clients out in California. I had never gotten a chance to speak with him much before, but when I returned his call about an email problem the first thing he asked if I was related to “Big-head” (I forget the Spanish word he used) Sivori, Enrique Omar Sivori, one of Argentina’s most famous soccer players, named by Pelé as one of the ” top 125 greatest footballers”. He pronounced Sivori as “sivery”, which seems to be the usual Italian pronunciation despite the fact that my family has always pronounced it as “sivoori”, which I think is the proper Klingon pronunciation. He gave me the whole run down on Argentine soccer and how there are so many Italians in Argentina that it is more like Italy than Italy is, especially the north of the boot, which he said has become very commercialized and fast-paced like America. All the talk of soccer and Italy made me want to buy a Juventus replica jersey.

Another bit I learned while researching: “oriundi” is a word meaning South Americans of Italian stock. I created a wikipedia account just to make a minor edit to the sparse english language version of the Omar Sivori article, and to add a stub for a definition of “oriundi”. Watch out Internet!

Added to my enemies list: Goobers who wear their bluetooth wireless headsets when they’re not on the phone. It’s an epidemic. This is worse than the tendency to wear cellphones on the belt.

Consumerism / frugality: Both Colgate and UltraBrite toothpastes are made by Colgate-Palmolive and have nearly identical ingredients, yet UltraBrite is half the price of the equivalent Colgate. I have been a sucker.

A couple of years ago I figured out that there was another guy out there with the same name as me, Chris Sivori, some distant cousin of mine I imagine in Louisville, Kentucky where my father’s family is from. It galled me that he was popping up first in Google searches when I searched for my own name. This search result is not surprising considering he played/plays college football, and I am just, well, me. A person of no consequence, especially in the world of college sports. Now I have finally made it to the top of the list and I can cross another pointless, petty crusade off my list. This would be more difficult if there were more than two people with my name.

I beebopped out to my car this fine, crisp like an apple morning and noticed the back right tire was flat on my car. Hey, no problem! I’m an expert at changing tires. It’s one of the five essential manly skills, second only to bug squashing. Ha! I laugh in the face of the whole concept of flatness.

I took all the crap out of my trunk (why are there Christmas lights in there?) and pulled out all the odds and ends necessary to get the job done. Spare… check. Tire tool… check. Dinky scissor jack… check. Then I loosened the lugs and starting jacking that bad boy up. I got the flat tire off and pushed the donut onto the hub. Then I started the lugnuts back on. Wait a minute, that spare looks a little low. Jesus, it’s completely flat. That means I did all this for nothing. Oh, you have won this time, flat tire, but I’ll be back.

The lesson here is always check your spare before you get too excited.

Today I received the best form letter ever. I’m thinking about getting it framed because things like this never happen. It was completely unexpected in the sense that I have never heard of this. Read the full letter below.

Dear NTHEA Borrower:

North Texas Higher Education Authority (NTHEA) is a non-profit student loan secondary market. Because of our non-profit status we are able to offer our student loan borrowers benefits that other agencies / lenders may not. One of these benefits is rewarding student loan borrowers by forgiving the remaining balance on their student loan(s).

We are pleased to inform you that the remaining balance on your student loan(s) owned by NTHEA and serviced by Nelnet, Inc. have been forgiven. Your loan(s) are now considered paid in full and will be reported as such to all appropriate parties.

Because this forgiven amount is less than $600.00 you do not have to report this amount as income to the federal government, and you will not be receiving a form 1099 from us.

NTHEA thanks you for your business. If you have future student loan needs we encourage you to choose an NTHEA lending partner.

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-366-4372 or metro 817-461-2333.

Sincerely,

North Texas Higher Education Authority
www.nthea.com

This means I am completely without debt of any sort, which has not been true since I started college almost exactly ten years ago. That’s quite an anniversary present. Thank you, student loan gods. I only had the equivalent of two payments left, but this is a very welcome surprise. I had been doubling and tripling up my payments so much that my next loan payment was not due until June of 2010. The funny part is I just started snowballing on the student loans as soon as they had online payments. Before that I just waited for my statement each month. What’s my secret? I made it a habit to pay a little more each time I thought about it, even if it was only $25. That adds up.

What does this mean for you? Pay off your student loans ahead of time and you’ll pay less in interest and maybe even get a little parting gift at the end of it all.

Josalyn came down for the weekend and it was relaxing. We were able to visit with a few of our friends, something that never seems to happen enough but is always beneficial. Saturday night we went over to Mike’s, who was in town from San Mateo for the game conference. I used to work with him over at Origin Systems / EA before they closed the studio and shipped everyone out to California. It was great to see him again and I enjoyed meeting his friends from Austin. It’s nice to go to a party where people nerd out and have intelligent conversation about topics like the differences between the various Protestant denominations without it descending to close-mindedness or polemics about faith or the lack thereof. I’ve reached a point where I can respect political or religious differences without judgment for the most part. I just try to listen what people have to say, and if I find myself in disagreement I try not to make an issue of it since everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how ridiculous.

It just so happens that two of Mike’s female friends attended seminary, one as a Presbyterian and one as a Baptist. I learned a lot about the Presbyterian belief system, which is very different from my experience being raised as a Baptist. They actually do communion and have creeds, which is something you don’t hear about in Baptist church, not to mention the fact that the Baptists do not have female ministers. The party was the perfect opportunity for my well-worn Baptist joke: “Question: Why do you take two Baptists with you when you go fishing? Answer: If you take one he’ll drink all the beer.” If you don’t get it I can explain. All in all, it was a lot of fun even though we just sat around the kitchen table and talked.

Sunday we called Sab and woke up the hungover Courtney and Phillip for lunch. We ended up going out for coffee afterward and talked until four or five in the afternoon. It was very nice. I’ve noticed that I’m in a lot better mood if I spend time hanging out with people and talking. We humans, as social creatures, have a need to rub our brains like stones against the brains of others.