Separation Anxiety and Other Astronomical Phenomena

So once again, today we had the semi-regular gathering of the old employees of the Unit 4 computer (or “computing”) center back at Berkeley. It seems that through some weird sort of cohesion, we still manage to stay in touch and try to organize events to get everyone together.

We actually got a significant percentage of our number this time around, only missing the two who moved out of state and the two who had plans that evening. After driving to the city (That’s San Francisco for you non-Bay Area people) and having Mexican food, we were standing outside the restaurant having a conversation on the sidewalk, wondering what to do next. Aside for the $6/hour parking spot I was in, I was perfectly fine with just standing around talking. We decided to actually do some sort of activity, and ended up at karaoke. I think I scared them with how familiar I was with the whole karaoke thing. I also learned that one of the other people who worked at the CC, but the year before most of us, is currently in Antarctica. We then joked that we knew someone who was on every continent…

After karaoke, we had the same sort of lingering. I guess that’s what you get when you haven’t seen each other in months and you know it will be months until you see each other again. It took at least three different attempts at “okay, I guess we’re done and we should disperse” from different people before we actually left. And then I managed to see every single one of them driving back down Van Ness. Only one of them saw me back, though.

Then, driving down 101, I happened to look up and see a shooting star.

Yes, I made a wish.

No, I’m not going to say what it was. But you can guess.