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Most of you know I was doing this Kickstarter project thing and made my goal, yay! Thank you so much to all who helped. Check out kickstarter.com for other great projects to fund.
Anyway, I was giving out rewards for certain levels of donating. I know I’m just like Public Broadcasting but without the tote bags! One of my “rewards” at certain levels was to have a blog written about the person. I have about 9 of these to write, bare with me. But trust me, they are all incredibly lovely, wonderful, amusing people.
The first person I’m going to blog about is my very dear friend Jeff Hansen. Or as we like to call each other BFF. Jeff has been a wonderful supporter and dear friend to me for several years now. Jesus, it’s been that long? He is proof that long lasting friendships can be made on the internet.
My first interaction with Jeff was when I had a blog on Myspace. It was probably about 2006. He would leave comments that were sometimes pretty bitter and instead of fighting with him I tried to soften him up. Knowing the story now, I know why he was so bitter, he was going through a nasty separation. Hey, it happens to the best of us.
I don’t remember the timing, I moved back to Rochester in November of 2006. I eventually find out he’s in Rochester. At some point, I don’t remember if it was 2007 or 2008, I remember it was February though. lol I decided to have a Rochester, NY MySpace blogger meetup. Mainly because there was a huge MySpace blogger meetup in New York City happening like a month later or something, it’s all a blur now. And some of us were going to travel together down to NY so we decided it might be good to meet beforehand. I wrote an open invitation on MS.
About six of us were there and all of a sudden in walks this other guy and he’s like “Are you Madge?” and I’m all like “What’s it to ya’?” No, I just said yea and he told me that he was Jeff. I’m like “THE Jeff?”. We were all shocked because well he just acted like he was the guy that would never show up to anything. Then he gave some grumpy sarcastic remark like “yea, I’m here whatever”. And looking back I give him shitloads of kudos for coming blindly to a function like that because well, he’s kind of shy. I mean there are people who can go to places alone and try to meet new peeps and there are people that just don’t care to do that.
So anyway, thus began a beautiful sarcastic friendship. With our other friends Pat, Theresa, and Allison we used to have regular outings. I remember one ending up in a dive-ish bar singing karaoke which ended up with pictures being taken of me humping the leg of a cardboard cut-out of some NASCAR driver. Oh yea then there was the group field trip to the “Barrel of Dolls” the local D-list strip club where C-section and knife wound scars abound. Ah, those were the days.
Then as Pat and Theresa coupled off and were busy with kids, and Allison moved away, Jeff and I become a gruesome twosome. We have less frequent dinner dates now since our kids are all teens and custody schedules have changed. OK, both of us basically have our kids all the time. But we still manage to have our dates which I truly look forward to and they gave birth to my love of dirty martinis. We have our certain go to spot which is a high-end steak place where we pretend we are living the high life for a night. Jeff is incredibly generous and thoughtful. I can’t even begin to tell you but I don’t want to embarrass him.
Ok I will a little. When my book cover came out last week he asked me to go celebrate. I get there and our fabulous bartender friend James told me to come around to the end to give him a hug. Well this was all part of the plan as when I came back to the bar where we were sitting, Jeff had them put out a lovely lemon display on a cloth covered plate, in honor of my book. Honest to God, it was the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me in my life. This big ole hockey playing chemist is quite the softie. I mean like he’s sweet and loving. I can’t tell you how much he means to me.
There are many tales to tell but I’ll leave them to mystery. I give Jeff tons of credit for waiting out his fate as his career of 30 years may soon be obsolete. See, Jeff is a… well they’re are always changing his job but he is a very senior chemist at Kodak in the motion picture film department. He has made it past 912 (a little exaggerating) layoffs at Kodak since 1989. You know Kodak’s story, you know what’s happening to film. So yea, it’s like waiting for the buggy whip to go away. Sorry for painting such a dismal pic, Jeff. I’m just saying I feel for you. So if anyone has any suggestions for Jeff? And no suggestions similar to “Breaking Bad” ok? Cooking meth is not an option.
So I loves me some Jeffy… and our quests for the perfect dirty martini. I couldn’t have gotten through the past 7 years with out him, literally.