mother adobe

adobe was a huge. it's where we met. it was first "real" jobs out of college for both of us. to this day, we still measure every work environment we encounter against it... besides letting me "fish off the company pier" for a husband, mother (as we liked to call her):

• sent me to school to become a "real engineer" (as opposed to a sanitary engineer)
• taught me how to be a technical writer ("2 atila records, hold the prose, please...")
• gave me my first introduction to corporate office politics (pretty girls get better computers)
• beer at work meetings? (i'm seeing matthew turning around and saying "welcome to software!")
• tried to teach me and kelly how to waltz (there were a lot of sore toes at the "ballroom dancing for nerds" class)
• taught me to sing hanson's mmmBop in german
  
• "you're going to hell for that jim looker!" (god bless you pat wiedmeier!!)
  
• showed me that there are buttheads even at the coolest places: the flap over kelly's anti-aids t-shirts and posters, scott interrogating and screaming at me over my new york trip, deb threatening to fire randy because "your personal homepage is 3-clicks away from a porn site!", "due to the severe snow storm everyone gets to stay home for personal safety reasons -- unless you have a phone shift, you red-shirts still have to come in..."
• but it also showed me that the good people outnumber the assholes about 200 to 1. jimmy, sau, kathleen, jenn, jen, randy, victor, nina, erdman, matthew, paul, barbie, hawkins, mikey, frank, kevin, linda, drew, jane, jaxon, barbara, brie, susan, cam, nona, meg, angie, rick, abbo, jason, nick, christian, doug, johnny, jeyen, kate, peggy, donna, steve, emily, denis, stan, roger, te, eric, mel, and of course, randy-fucking-pickle and madge bowes -- where would we be without you!?

[ yes tom, i still have her! ]