multiball

look at Carol the pinball wizard

Last week I had a little get together with everyone from work. You see, Dusty, pictured in the blurry cellphone pic is broke down in Boise at the moment on his way to his new home in Portland and this marks the end of an unlikely, but productive office partnership. I am really going to miss him... you get to know someone over the course of three plus years sharing a 10 by 10 workspace. That was one of my favorite things about going back to grad school and teaching. I felt young again... intimidated, competitive, creative. I was awestruck by the crazy talent of these young folk, Dusty especially. I will miss his playlists, and for that matter his lists, his tidiness, his advice for how to handle teenaged boys, his work ethic, his integrity, and his view on life. We overlooked our individual idiosyncrasies and respected and teased each other relentlessly. We have some incredible shared memories that cannot be replaced, notably the night at the Green Mill in Chicago with Motoki and especially the day we picked up Karim Rashid in Salt Lake and drove him to Logan for his presentation. We were both extremely nervous. We had studied everything about him... how to pronounce his name, his design biography. I knew about his tatoos and their secret language meaning, I bought some of his O chairs off of Craiglist and put them in the office. Dusty knew he was a DJ. We talked the entire way. Karim thought Dusty was amazing, he kept forgetting my name (he did say my face was familiar). Not many people can say they have driven for a couple hours with the designer of the Dirt Devil Kone.

Anyway, back to the get together. We all came with a presentation of advice for Dusty. I showed him how to fold a t-shirt like they do at the Gap and then we autographed it jr. high style with Sharpies. We had a great dinner and then played a heated round of pinball. I reprimand my son's for participating in "imature" guy talk. Well, it disinegrated into "imature" jokes... mostly about balls. I laughed hard. Good Riddance Dusty (in the good green day time of your life way, "not in a creepy weird way").