CAPTAIN STARBUCKS

Captain Starbucks.

I've written about my childhood. I've written about my health. I've written about diets and cooking. I've written about my mistakes. Now I want to write about my best friend.

I was fortunate in this life to find someone who's personality beautifully compliments mine. People look at us and wonder how we get along. We do. It's a perfect mix of two people; one thinking in a linear progression and one who thinks in the abstract. A person who accepts my sometimes very unlovable personality just as I accept his. A person that has helped me grow both personally and professionally in ways that he doesn't even know. I've listened and learned and found someone of true integrity that you don't find very often in this world. A person that lives by his principles and convictions and will not allow anyone or anything to compromise him.

Life has sometimes not been fair to him but he's come through it all with a quiet dignity and grace. He has a heart of gold that he fiercely protects. It's been broken by the people that he trusted the most and he won't let it be broken again. Even with the high walls of protection he's built around it there are time's he'll let his guard down and you can see a glimpse of the tenderness inside. He'll get a gleam in his eye and a slight smile and just for a moment you can see inside. His eyes are clear and they shine with truth and a clarity of vision. His intellect is truly on another plane. You can talk and he looks like he's not listening but he can probably recite what you've been rambling about for the last half hour. He's just sifting through the information so that it's in order and he can make an educated and logical comment or decision. I just love coming up with something off the wall and watch him look at me with an incredulous look and then break into laughter. It's not often that I can do that but I love watching him shake his head and looking at me with a look that says, "what did you just do?"

We've spent hours and hours on Napster and ITunes. We've sifted through 7000 songs and make road mixes and highways songs. We've searched out song titles to the point of embarrassing ourselves in front of DJ's and radio stations. I mean, when you go to a radio remote and sing "people forget" so off key that they start breaking up and politely tell you that they have NO IDEA what song you are singing or call a radio station and sing to a secretary who actually figures it out, that's going on a mission. The song? Was it Living in the Funk? Nope. Wrong again. Emminence Front by the Who. Then there was Tempted by Paul Carrack. Are you sure it isn't Chain, Chain Chain?

We can quote North Shore, Aliens, Eddie Izzard and most disaster movies. Somebody wake up Hicks! Thank heavens they didn't put Dante's Peak on the TV's at work. The managers would have walked in and found us snoring. That wouldn't have been so bad but drooling all over the desk could have been a little embarrassing. We have a love for Hell's Kitchen and Gordon Ramsey.

Through him Squirt will be immortal. Actually Squirt is probably at the Bose Factory somewhere in Sweden on a CD of her favorites. They've gone to the pork farm in the red wagon, they've invested in the Cafe de Tout, S and H Enterprises and Sonic. They've gone to the Savannah and the Serengeti and taken down zebra.

He's saved me in ways that he'll never know. I wrote an email a long time ago called the one. It was true then and it's true today.

I still say it's living in the pork.