Can’t believe I totally overlooked her birthday last year! It’s right there in my Now Up2Date calendar with an icon of Melissa Joan Hart as Sabrina Spellman! Well, I probably forgot then because I was busy helping Somara install our ceiling fans on the same day.
A while back Kris had “retired” from Apple and I hope she was enjoying it. Thankfully she is back; it’s nice to see a familiar, friendly face anywhere, especially at work. I’m sure the people who hired Kris back needed her expertise and “can do” attitude. In all the years I’ve known Kris, she has always been in demand so I’m confident it took mucho convincing to have her return, unless retirement was dull.
Anyway, I have mentioned my friend Kris before, namely in the tenth anniversary stories regarding PowerComputing. She was definitely one of the instrumental people in making my time and career there a good memory. (Never thought any of us would ever be writing such a thing when the Dark Times began.) Even outside of PCC, Kris was a great friend. She sold me one of her PowerBook 5300s for a nice price and let me pay her in installments. While I was “exiled” for a year in North Carolina, she wrote me back frequently to tell me how she and her daughter Kelly were doing. Best of all, when Apple needed to ramp up its support for the new iMac’s launch, Kris called me right away to see if I was interested. All was forgiven between Apple and PowerComputing’s support techs and she knew I wanted to return to Austin. The rest is history as the cliche goes. I would like to add that she saved my life personally: I seriously missed Austin’s features.
Outside of her incredible diligence at work, Kris is the only person I know who comes back ahead every time from Vegas. We’re talking seriously ahead, not chump change or enough for one-plane-ticket-ahead money (what I always consider a victory). I think she has more expertise at video poker than she knows. Not like Rain Man, intuition describes it better.
How hold is Kris? You’ll have to ask her. Remember my rule never to disclose a lady’s age, something imdb.com doesn’t seem to follow. Then again, celebrities’ ages must be for the public record or under FOIA. Observation aside, wish a happy birthday to Kris if you see her around physically or online. If you don’t know her, you still should because this nice person has been one of my guardian angels and I owe a big part of my life in Austin to Kris.