I had a lot of survival jobs. One was for the Witty Ditty singing-telegram company. I was in the red-and-white stripes with the straw boater hat and kazoo. Balloons. Even when you're sleeping on a friend's couch, you have to pay some kind of rent.
Alphabet would be a holding company to house its wackier or noncore efforts - like its Verily life sciences, Waymo self-driving cars, and Loon Internet balloon projects - while Google's advertising-oriented business would stand apart and continue to drive the company's finances.
My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.
I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn't allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn't allow them to play with rope, string, balloons - anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes in half, avoid lollipops, eat only when I could watch them.
I'm focused on leaks that hurt the institution of the president and the president himself. I understand we have to leak things to reporters to help shape policy or try to balloon things or do tests on ideas or people for different jobs. I'm talking about nefarious, unnecessary, backstabbing, palace intrigue-like leaks.
My mother praised me when I did something good, and then the next moment, she would say, 'Don't float.' She put me in a balloon and then pricked it.
I saw a concert with Nena singing '99 Red Balloons' on TV and I said, 'I will also go onstage and sing.'
I did a lot of magic shows growing up. My dad is a graphic designer so he helped me brand myself and create a logo. So I was just rollin' with the magician crowd for a while. But I was really young, 10 to 13, doing table magic and balloon animals at this Italian restaurant.
I once threw a water balloon on a girl because I caught her cheating on me. She was kissing my friend and I thought, 'Oh, this can't be happening.' It was bad and I was much older than you think throwing a water balloon. I was 14.
I don't think I've ever worked on anything that wasn't way bigger than we expected. That's all the way back to working on fighting games at Paradox. Everything seems to balloon when more and more people get involved.
