My first visit was up the road to an old warehouse that was the home of United Oil Paintings. My job, over the course of my college days, was to touch up, stretch and keep tabs on tens of thousands of
decorative oil paintings sent from overseas to a plethora of galleries up and down the Eastern Seaboard. When I made my unannounced visit (is there any other way?) the holdouts from my days were shocked to see me. They all thought I grew taller, and we exchanged stories about the past few years since my last visit, all supported by the all too familiar classic rock soundtrack filling the cold space around us. I ventured back to EMC,
my after college home for three years (and one in Ireland). I asked for an old co-worker at the front desk out of the blue, finagled a badge and headed on my way to the endless maze of grab drab cubes that was made up my own Office Space role. After the tech bust and a monumental number of layoffs and corporate reshufflings, my fellow cast was stripped down to a bare boned and tired looking crew, faced with mountains of work and the barest of tools to accomplish the job. We quickly caught up on old times, couldn't believe how long ago
it was that I had worked there. My friend set up a lunch with about nine of my co-workers, and we ate at an out of the way casual Italian restaurant on their lunch break. We laughed a lot, and everyone was amazed at just how young I still looked. I laughed, knowing about the miles I've put on my body over the past few years and just how un-glamorous the reality of my life is, despite the attraction of uprooting and quitting working for the man may seem. After catching up, there was still a
couple spots of business left to tend to. I wanted to hang out with my friend Mike, who was my closest friend at EMC over the years, so I met up with him in Worcester, Massachusetts' dirtiest and loveliest old city, and he took me on a mad dash through the city. After chilling out with his wife and grown kids, we ate a great Italian meal (sense a trend? I miss Italian food dearly.) and then barhopped across town through a series of gritty little blue color bars without the slightest sense of hipster irony within 10,000 feet. I
mistakenly ordered a Miller Lite at one pub, frequented by old cops and old drinkers, and the gruff aged New Englander next to me corrected my order by saying, 'It's Lite, by Miller'. Scared, I never made the same mistake and soon was talking to a friend of Casino's who hits Austin on occasion. After making the rounds, my all too short visit ended and I was now watching the clock tick down on my visit. I made plans to catch up with a couple of other
old friends on my visit - so I swung by Tom and Jill's house and wasn't disappointed when they horrified me with a Mexican Christmas video that has become a time honored tradition in their household. After the quick visit, I also ran into my old friend Sarah, whom I had known since first grade and I even delivered newspapers to her house. We ate at an authentic Massachusetts Mexican restaurant where the salsa, which actually was ketchup cleverly renamed, was served
in carafes and parmesan cheese was sprinkled onto the nachos. Afterwards, I did my best to continue to dispel any glamour about my life despite having written and published a comic book and being interviewed by the Onion over some drinks at the local airport's bar. After all this running around, I couldn't help but feel an odd kinship to Scrooge in Christmas Carol, visiting the past and seeing what would've happened in the future if I hadn't made the choices I did. It was great to catch up with my old good
friends and see they were all doing well, but I was just as happy to get back to Austin and on with my life.
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