TMI: On the Blog Again

A few weeks ago, I had a rare opportunity to cross paths with the globe-trotting Tom Kyte. The meeting went down like this:

Me: Hi, Tom.
TK: Hello. brief pause Are you on strike from you blog? another brief pause... and at this point I get the sense he is accessing his L2 cache The last thing you wrote was about a Backyard Bellagio about two months ago.

He was, of course, absolutely correct. At this point, there was an awkward silence as thoughts raced through my head.

#1. Wow! Tom recognizes me; I didn't have to introduce myself. He pays attention to my blog. And remembers the details!

#2. I'll come back with a snappy remark, "Yes, I'm on strike until I get proof that Suri Cruise actually exists." No, wait! Maybe I should save that for a blog entry. But what's wrong with saying out loud first and then writing about it later? Um, it's a moot point now, idiot. You've been silent for too many microseconds for any sort of witty repartee. In comedy, timing is everything.

#3. Okay, Plan B. Say, "I haven't had enough time to post anything lately." Dude! Are you nuts? Tom's the guy who finds time to post via his cell phone while waiting to board a plane. You need a better excuse now, and make it quick, you're already losing what little attention you had in the first place.

#4: Why am I referring to myself in the second person?

Finally the pause ended with me making a sheepish grin and mumbling something lame. This is all I can remember almost a month later. Things get very fuzzy after that. Normally, I'd still be able to recall rest of the story in excruciating detail, but the exchange wasn't salvageable enough to be worth replaying 100 times in my head and over-analyzing how I could better handle another meeting like this in the future.

As best as I can recall, I said something about being too busy and Tom's reply was pretty much what I had anticipated in thought #3.

Interestingly, I also anticipated everything that would happen in that brief conversation during the last step I made towards Tom and before I said, Hello. It was the same "Spidey sense" that made me see Joe Carter hit a home run off Mitch Williams to win a World Series, and blurt out, "Game over." in a room full of people moments before the ball was actually pitched. It's not that I believe in ESP. It's more like recognizing the rare case where I can perceive all the variables that go into calculating the odds of something happening. Unfortunately, it's never far enough into the future for me to call a bookie and make any money out of it.

.. and while I don't know exactly why it has taken me months to write into my blog again, it is mere coincidence that it finally happened on the night after the first pictures of Suri Cruise were published.