A good evening or: how I feel asleep 20 minutes after downing 3 shots of espresso.

Today was a miss. In a life of hits or misses, this was a definite miss. Except for a few sparse and far-in-between instances of "whoo" and "yay" and even "hell yeah", this was a day to be erased. Sad and depressing are two words to describe it. Finally, to get over the failure that was today, or just to do something, I went to Tully's at around 8:10. Got there at around 8:20 and noticed that they are open until 10. Whoo. I'm still sick, so I decided to skip the usual bi-monthly espresso-and-Oreo shake and went with a large mocha. Good stuff, too. So, there I am, relaxing in front of the fire with Vonnegut's "Timequake". I begin to feel tired. And I fall asleep. I gotta say, this is one of the best sleeps I've ever had. I woke up warm, not knowing where I am and genuinely content. What else can you ask for?! Then, I had that shake that I first skipped. That sleep did wonders! I forgot about all my troubles and could concentrate on the moment. By the time they began to kick us poor bastards out, I put away a few more chapters of Vonnegut's strange-but-entertaining book.

I took the long way home. This included the 520, NE 8th street, NE 148th street and then 520 again. Did I mention that revving up my car makes me happy? While I was driving around, I came up with a few more things to say.

In "Replay", Jeff marries Diane, a socialite, born into old money and brought up with the explicit understanding that she was to be the wife of a rich man with excellent standing in the local country club. There was nothing else. She was brought up in this environment, taught, parallel to learning to walk, to think and act like what she would become later in life: the exact copy of her mother. She would have no "real-world" talents. Her hobbies include socializing, shopping in Paris or New York and arranging parties. Perhaps she would be slightly knowledgeable in the first profession. This is largely irrelevant. The point is that she is a wife that a member of the upper echelon is expected to marry.

Fast-forward from the late 1960's to 2006. My team is made up of a variety of family men. Men, because unsurprisingly Microsoft is a male-dominated community. My boss, Nik, has a baby on the way, due in February. Tad's first child was born at the beginning of September. Dan, my mentor, has two girls, ages 5 and 8. Chuck has a daughter who is 17. How many of the girls born into these families will be geek-wives? Similar to the nausea-inducing debutantes of high-society, these women can hold a game-themed conversation, are well-versed in high-tech lingo of the day and display an almost-real dislike for the competition of Google or IBM. Their knowledge of the first profession is most likely not irrelevant.

I am not suggesting that this is all but inevitable. But maybe it's already happening, right now, all across the Puget Sound area and Silicon Valley. Actually, what I speak of is not some fantasy or little bits of nothing that I happened to imagine. Doesn't the world abound with "trophy wives"? Maybe someday geeks will draw the attention of gold-diggers just like actors, sports stars and rappers have managed to do.