Please stop raining. Just for an hour. Please?

I have this nice afternoon to myself and I just want to go drill holes in pieces of plywood as planned - but I figure I shouldn't do that if it would mean letting the powercord for the drill go straggling through a puddle. But I can't glue and nail until I drill! And I can't assemble until I glue and nail! And I can't start using until I assemble! 

Grumble, grumble, grumble. 

Please? I don't think I can take any more hot tea and being productive with a notebook. I spent two hours on that. It was a good, useful two hours. I have an outline that will take me at least twenty pages into my post New Year's project - that's pretty good. Now I want to go make something a little more physical and then I'll get back to the notebook. Really. I will. I promise. Ok, universe? I will. Really. 

Just ... stop ... raining ... ! 

Or ... could it be that the universe is trying to tell me which project to prioritize? Sigh. 

Cake in a mug

This is too cool not to share: cake in a mug (from Wired). I may have to request that the break-room staff start stocking eggs & flour.....

My first official launch!

When I switched into my new job role, I also took over a couple of projects from other people. 

And one of those projects recently launched! There's even an offical product blog post about it: search for my name with the name of my company and it should come up. 

It's pretty cool to see my name online in a non-social-networking kind of way, I have to say. In this case, I came late to the project, so I can't take credit for a lot of the design work - but I handled the launch, made sure it happened, enforced various small decisions...and it's out there in the world!

Euphoria

I've never gotten chills listening to a politician's speech  before - but last night I did. I've never said I'd be OK with it if my taxes go up because maybe, just maybe, this time I'll get value for money - but this time I voted in line with that hope.

I know that no new president, even an inspirational president, can make all the kinds of difference our nation needs right now. No single person can have that kind of impact. But a single person can, absolutely can, inspire a whole lot of other people. Just look at how many people voted - if Obama can mobilize all that energy on an ongoing basis, just think what might be possible. 

As my friend T suggested last night, maybe the US flag can stop being a Republican symbol and instead become American. It's a small thing, just a symbol, but I'd like that. A lot. I'd like to start saying "I'm from the US," when I travel, and being proud of it, instead of vaguely ashamed. 

Here's to grace in the White House. It's been way too long. 

Fingers crossed

I thought politics was a heated subject in California, but wow, in New York it's even crazier. Waiters remind you to vote when they hand you your bill. Airline attendants say "did you vote?" when you check in for a flight. And everywhere on the streets are guys selling buttons, and stickers, and flags. I talked for a few minutes with one guy - an artist selling canvasses on a SoHo street - who said he'd stopped painting Obama because it was getting "so overdone." Bars are having election-night parties and I really, really wonder how many people are going to call in "sick" all over NY tomorrow because they stayed up "drinking till Obama's president." 

In this election there are three results I care about: president; prop 8, because I'm married so I'm in favor of more people getting to get married, and against restricting people's options for who to get married to; and that crazy one about teenage abortions, which I really hope gets shot down because if you are a teenager, and you want an abortion, and you don't want to tell your parents about it, there is probably a very good reason, and the end result of parental notification requirements is likely to be teenagers looking up how to perform abortions on themselves on the internet, which will result in emergency room visits, etc. etc. etc. 

Can you tell from the writing style that I'm on the edge of my seat here? The only way I'm getting myself not to just watch TV straight through from now until whenever is that I've got my War & Peace class to attend. 

The more I learn, the liberal-er I get....

Over the next couple years...design!

... if the economy continues to tank, I swear I am going to try at least half the projects listed in Geeks Getting By: Zero-Cost Gadget Upgrades for the Next Great Depression.

Combined with the fabulousness of Ponoko and the Sketchup-Inkscape pipeline plugin from FlightsOfIdeas.com, this could keep me busy for a long, long time. 

Once I get some projects up on Ponoko I'll post links here. I've got a couple halfway completed so far, to the detriment of the hours I'm working, my efforts to read War & Peace, and the amount of sleep I'm getting - the only reason they're not already up is that they don't currently fill Ponoko's full sheets of material, and to keep shipping & materials costs down, I want to change that. So I'm waiting to order till I get a few more pieces going.  

The only downside to all this is that the name I dreamed up for my design-making alter ego is already taken: Marq Design (or DesignMarq), RIP. Back to the brainstorming table. 

Back to school

Last week, on a whim, I signed up for a class on Tolstoy's War & Peace. Last night I showed up at Stanford, 10 minutes late, having missed the first class, and behind on the reading. 

Sounds like college, right? But the feeling's totally different: there's no negative or positive externality that can result from anything about my involvement in this class. If I never show up again, the only impact is that I don't hear the lectures. If I show up every time, do all the reading, and learn the history, the only reward is that I did it. 

I'm not sure if this is more weird or more cool. 

Gift-giving

[ Warning: this is way sentimental]

Once upon a time I desired specifics:
a twenty-one-speed mountain bike sized to fit,
a doll’s house for plastic ponies,
a silk-textured sleeping bag okay down to freezing.

Once upon a time I gave friends specifics: a much-wanted movie,
the latest CD, a particular book,
a favorite wine.

But this year it’s different.

The people I love now don’t really need anything:
we know how to shop. If we want it we buy it,
on credit or salaries our folks disbelieve.

There’s no Christmas list, no birthday wishes -
so nothing to give.

Yet birthdays and Christmas and babies keep coming:
occasions for presents and things to unwrap.
After all, we don’t care any less than we did years ago.

This year for my birthday:
ten emails with wishes, six pings to say ‘hi!’
four voicemails,
two different-styled notebooks,
two books on spec,
one weekend with beach-hike,
one bag for my travels,
one necklace that gleams.
None of it needed, none of it wanted - until I received it,
when everything changed.
All week I thought, Hey, they remembered!
and said, “Oh, I love it!” and “Thank you so much.”

This year, like most others, I try to plan presents,
but I’ve given up on details, on things people need.
Instead I arrive with gift bag in hand:
a teacup, some tea, a card in green paper. I have no idea
if my friend will like these. But they’re here and I’m here
and I clearly remembered enough in advance
to find paper and a bow.

We hug, drink champagne, wish “Happy birthday!”
and I think about presents:
what’s needed, what’s not, and how little it matters
compared to “Hey, they remembered!” and just showing up
to talk and eat cake.
Presents prove memory, offer later reminders:
“This was from... who remembered! It’s my favorite now.”

Turning 31

On Friday I turned 31. “You ready to go?” my guy asked when he walked in the door after work. He tossed groceries in the fridge and started changing from work clothes into something that looked more like weekend-wear: jeans, a t-shirt.
“Yeah,” I said. “Do I need a sweatshirt?”
“Yeah.”
We headed out the door. He drove me out to Half Moon Bay - the nearest beach. We watched the sun set behind the hills, multiple times, as we drove. HMB was foggy, but we walked through the sand anyway, before dinner at Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. This is one of my ongoing favorite restaurants, largely because it has firepits and live blues/rock bands. It also cards me every time I go there. This time was no different. It’s not all bad to get carded on your thirty-first birthday, but I do wonder - where was all this rigor when I was underage? I didn’t have ID, so I ordered hot tea and sneaked sips of my guy’s beer when the server wasn’t looking.
On Saturday we hiked out to Tennessee Beach. When we got home my guy started dinner. I messed around with the stereo and the computer, not paying any attention. “OK!” he called a while later. And we sat down to perfect steaks - grass-fed, since that’s my newest food-kick, and with a sauce that my guy, in his first attempt at steak, adjusted wildly from the recipe with noticeable success.
This is an awesome birthday.

Rapidly becoming addicted to Twitter

So I haven't posted in a while - but yesterday I gave in and finally signed up for Twitter. So far it seems strangely addictive. Right now I'm in a meeting, so in a few minutes, I'll probably add some sort of Twitter gadget to this page.

Lack of willpower

11pm: I decided I didn't have the energy to work on my trashy novel tonight. Before that I had a good evening: made carrot cake, investigated the tax consequences of buying a house (wow, it's enough to actually offset the property taxes!), read part of a book about emigrating from the United States (Canada? No, not seriously considering it, but the idea does every so often come up). My next plan was to curl up in my big armchair with Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, read for an hour or so, then go to bed. 

And yet I gave my husband a kiss and said, "I'll be out in a bit," as I headed toward the room that holds my writing desk. I sat down and took out my laptop. I'm procrastinating a little now, writing this, but I think I'll still get my 500 words in spite of myself. Yesterday I didn't intend to go to the gym, either, and yet half an hour later there I was upping the stack from 50 to 70 pounds while listening to an actor with a pretentious English accent read The English Assassin  on my headphones.

And now I'm finishing up this entry, and now I'm off to the manuscript...my good intentions are sneaking up on me. 

That's the city in the distance

View from Tiburon - it would be hard to leave California.

Good things: fog in Fort Bragg

And on top of all that ...

... I'm super happy with my first official project. Woo-hoo!

Finally!!! Good news!!!

On vacation last week I got a cryptic email with the subject "All set!!!" 

Yesterday I got a phone call to say, "We're just finishing up the paperwork!"

Today I got the paperwork. And I signed it and sent it back and ... 

As of next Monday I'll officially have transferred to a role of Business Product Manager!

I'm so excited I can hardly type. 

And every time I get a chat that says something like, "sanity prevailed! Congratulations!" my grin gets a little wider.

Home again

The great thing about returning home in the afternoon is that I still have most of a day to laze around - and since I've been up since 2am California time, no pretention to doing anything productive.

And the weather's perfect (if a little smoky - California is still burning).

All that, and the backyard plums are still ripe, and tastiest when they've just had the dust (ashes?) washed off them with the hose. Bliss.

"Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts"

I ran across this article on Friday and saved it as a draft post to write about when the clutter of the week had cleared from my mind at least a little. It’s Saturday night, we’ve got Dartanian playing on the stereo, and I’m holding a truly great cup of decaf coffee, so here goes:

My summary: we* now have more access to more information than ever before. That sounds great, but what no one predicted in the internet’s early years was that more access to information would also lead to taking less of that information in in depth. Interestingly, as we lose the skill of in-depth information processing, we become expert skimmers. This may be good or it may be bad, but it is a distinct and measurable change.

Comments & anecdotes:

On Tuesday evening I met T at our usual coffeeshop. We talked each other through our latest plot developments and T commented that she’d started yet another disconnected piece of writing. “I’m too scattered,” she said. “I spend all day at work jumping around from project to project. I can’t focus.”

I spent two hours at work on Friday working my way through a couple hundred emails. I sorted them into ‘Actions’ I need to take, projects where I’m ‘Waiting’ for someone else to do something, and some I just trashed. A few I filed in ‘Read,’ and spent another two hours attempting to do exactly that while camped out in the massage chair in the lobby. Every time I hit something longer than a single screenful of text, I found myself sighing and flipping back to my Inbox to see if there was anything new.

Friday night I spent two hours with my drafting board, figuring out the proportions for an Ikea hack I’m working on.

Earlier this year I did some reading about the so-called ‘flow state’ of concentration, where you get so involved in something that you lose track of time and become entirely ‘present in the moment.’ You’re not thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing, or what you need to do next or failed to do yesterday. This is one of my most enjoyable ways to work, whether it’s for my day job or not, and my reliance on it probably explains why I instinctively assume that rewiring my brain for skimming would be a bad change to fall victim to.

Neal Stephenson reportedly claims that all fiction can be written in Emacs; Stephen King says that if you don’t have time to read, then you don’t have time to write. The guru of Getting Things Done exhorts us all to make lists of all the little nagging questions and to-dos, getting them out of your head and freeing up space for the ‘flow state.’

There’s a way that fits together, but right now I’m too scattered to see what it is. If you can see it, maybe you haven’t been skimming.


*We: this isn’t explicitly called out in the article, but in this context ‘we’ can only mean heavily internet-based cultures. These are mostly Western, and in the US I suspect mostly coastal. It would be interesting to see how cellphones compare.... The effect is probably magnified for so-called ‘knowledge workers’ such as yours truly, which makes me wonder whether that job description will in 10 years seem ironic or prophetic.

...and no, I didn't keep The Vegetarian Epicure

I was tempted, I admit, but I eventually decided that since I’d end up editing most of the recipes pretty heavily, it was easier to just write down the best titles and use them as an idea list. There’s only so much bookshelf space I’m willing to give to period pieces, and Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook has dibs.

Housework June 22-28: do I do anything that isn't food-related?

The list of housework items below leads me to believe that no, I do not. Things are a bit skewed at the moment, though, because my guy is in the middle of going through a bunch of his stuff (5k books - I am not exaggerating) and since they are in stacks all over the floor, I’m suppressing what would otherwise be a powerful urge to mop. As it is, I’m wearing slippers indoors because the floors are slightly gritty (you wanted to know that, didn’t you?) - less the result of real neglect and more a reflection that since it’s summer, we tramp in and out a lot from the back yard.

Soon this will all be resolved - or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

June 28: 3.5 hours
I always spend more time on housework on the weekends - partly because I cook, partly because I garden, and partly because I like going through things and throwing them out (you would think this would mean I have nothing left, but no).

1. 1.5 hour: French toast with fresh plums for breakfast, and two loads of dishes
2. 1 hour: going through my three-inch-high stack of old Cook’s Illustrated while chanting my cooking-magazine mantra: “You don’t need the hard copy! That’s why you have an online subscription!”
3. .5 hour: rescuing the wisteria, cilantro, and fuschia from crispy sunstroke death in too-small pots
4. .25 hour: dinner prep: leftover vegetable soup from two days ago plus a frozen pizza contributed by my guy

June 27: . 5 hours
My guy went out by himself to a David Sedaris book-signing, so I got self-indulgent for dinner and ate a bowl of straight pasta sauce. Yummmmm.....OK, I also had some of it on toast with mozzarella. Grand total: 15 minutes. I’m sure I also put something away (mail?) so chalk that up for another 15 minutes. No time on breakfast prep due to the awesomeness of Donut Friday, which my friend B was kind enough to put on Calendar so I’d actually remember to go.

June 26: .5 hours
... all of which was spent making bruschetta.

June 25: 1 hour
Made vegetable soup from scratch. It rocked, in spite of my initial skepticism of shredded carrots and grits (grits?!) in soup. This was my first recipe from Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way, which for years I’d thought was actually my guy’s cookbook rather than mine. The flaws in my mid-term memory leave me wondering how I get anything done at all; the cookbook is actually inscribed to me (it was a gift), so there really shouldn’t have been any doubt about whose it was.

There’s probably 5 minutes in there to pour a bowl of cereal for breakfast, too.

June 24: .5 hour
Was out late with T for our weekly commiseration about attempting to write while holding down a full time job. Topic for discussion: how damn hard it is to keep focus when your whole day is spent skimming, rather than focusing on, data and stories.

June 23: 0 hours
Which matches up nicely with going out to see Sex and the City with a good girlfriend, which is how I spent my evening. Really no one should do housework on a day when they go to see Sex and the City.

June 22: 2 hours
Split up somehow between picking plums from the trees in the yard, a couple of loads of dishes, and making breakfast and dinner.

"If you have passed a joint around before dinner..."

I recently looked at my cookbook shelf and realized it needed pruning: not all the cookbooks fit on the shelf, so they're in a bunch of miscellaneous piles. I hate miscellaneous piles. Something had to go. The question was, what? Clearly I must keep the Gourmet cookbook and the Santa Monica Farmers Market cookbook; I use those all the time. Clearly I must also keep the Betty Crocker cookbook from the '40s because where else can you get two-tone sketches of wasp-waisted women in shirt-dresses & heels, cooking enormous turkeys while pondering whether a story about a kitten up a tree is appropriate for mealtime discussion? The Joy of Cooking is a staple and I learned to cook from the New Vegetarian Epicure, so those both had to stay. When I want something particularly interesting I turn to the Turtle Bay or one of several New Mexico cookbooks, so those had to stay too. 

Eventually I spotted the original Vegetarian Epicure. Once upon a time I bought this because I liked the New Vegetarian Epicure so much - but I have never actually made anything out of the original Vegetarian Epicure (except for cornbread, and that was in college). It seemed like a reasonable candidate. I took it into the backyard to read through it and consider whether my cooking repertoire would be seriously hampered by its disappearance. And that's when I ran across the quote that forms the title of this post: 

"If you have passed a joint around before dinner to sharpen gustatory perceptions, you most likely will pass another one after dinner, and everyone knows what that will do - the blind munchies may strike at any time."

This is embedded deep within the otherwise-completely-serious chapter on how to design menus. It forms the backbone of the author's argument for why you need to have a two-hours-after-dinner course in case anyone gets hungry again. 

Not only that, but about half the soup recipes call for 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream. And there's a Roquefort Mousse that lists the ingredients as "2 envelops gelatin | 1 cup light cream | 3 eggs | 10 oz Roquefort cheese | 1/2 cup heavy cream." 

I think the '70s must have been much, much, MUCH stranger than any of us born too late to remember them clearly realize.* 

* Yes, I know, I was born in the '70s, but my focus was more on my sandbox and blocks at that point, so it doesn't count for purposes of this post.  

Housework June 21: 3 hours

I know, huge jump. Here's how it breaks down: 

1 hour: general kitchen-cleaning-up + breakfast-making (tea, toast, fruit). Yeah, that's a long time, but there were a bunch of piled-up dishes kind of everywhere. 

2 hours: more kitchen-cleaning-up + dinner-making (curried cauliflower & sweet pea soup, with a side of sauteed beets with lime; very yummy, but the first time I'd made either one so it took forever). Then after dinner I decided this was a good time to clean all the counters, the stove, the pans I didn't get around to earlier, etc. I may be overestimating slightly but not much. 

What's not included: the hour and a half or so my guy and I spent figuring out what pieces of art we want to hang. We've been in the house a year and a half so it seemed like a good time to sort out our interior decor :) Also not included: the time I spent in the yard mulling over why exactly the gardeners saw fit to remove my grapevine, while leaving intact the giant palm-like shrub with sharp poky fronds which extends threateningly halfway across the front walk. Yeah, I know, that's what you get for such a lazy, bourgeois setup as having gardeners, but it's not my choice; we rent, remember, so it's a property management co thing. If it was up to me I wouldn't have a gardener. I'd have one of those no-electric-power push lawnmowers and develop an incredibly buff upper body by manicuring our tiny lawn half to death.  

Housework June 20: 15 minutes

... which I don't actually remember so I'm estimating. I think I put away some laundry. I had breakfast at work since it was Donut Friday (mmm, donuts) and then dinner out in Half Moon Bay since it was The First Day of Summer. The First Day of Summer meant that my guy was ridiculously miserable in town - he hates heat - and I get cold easily, so I figured the hot weather would be right in the middle if we headed to the beach. For the record, it was perfect. I also love that the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co allows dogs on their patio. It seems so friendly.  

It occurs to me that if I ate at home more often there'd be a hell of a lot more housework. And that people with kids generally eat at home more often, since (I assume) packing the kids up to a restaurant is a pain, and anyway they might scream once they got there. I have no kids + I eat out a lot, therefore minimal housework. 

Interesting. 

Housework June 19: 15 minutes

... which consists of pouring myself a bowl of cereal for breakfast & offloading the dishwasher. Not bad. Again, though, I had dinner out: an alumni thing for the University of York. This leads me to wonder why I find it sweet that York includes me in events, and annoying that Columbia asks me for money. Maybe I just answered my own question. York is so eager to get an alumni group going over here in the Wilds of the Western US that they're ridiculously excited when I respond to them in any way - whereas Columbia wants cash. Sigh. In contrast, York spotted my drinks and calamari at the Thirsty Bear: "It's on the Uni!" said with the big smile that always seems to accompany someone who doesn't often get to expense things and is just thrilled to have the chance. Sweet indeed. 

More thoughts after reading comments: 884 pages of housework instructions? Maybe I shouldn't admit it, but I didn't know it was possible to clean drains before they were clogged. What do you, pour down soap? That can't be right. I may not know what I'm doing but I have at least noticed that one of the primary ingredients in drain-clogs is soap scum. 

And multi-tasking housework is still housework; I'm not trying to optimize my life (that would be too much like work), I'm trying to figure out what it takes, measure the status quo before considering whether I care to adapt. 

One interview down, X to go

I wish I didn't have this nagging feeling that the value of X depends on how the first interview went. I mean, it seemed OK, but who can really tell from the interviewee's chair?

Housework June 18: zero hours :)

I had a rotten day at work yesterday (no, not bad news, just another stall), so I insisted on going out for Mexican food and margaritas for dinner, hence no cooking time. And curiously, the idea of tracking housework made the idea of emptying the dishwasher before I went to bed pretty damn unattractive, so I skipped it.

I also noticed another interesting stat in the same article: lesbian couples with kids (no data yet on gay men) do a total of 31 hours of housework per week - about a third less than straight couples. 

Wha... ?! Clearly the lesbians are on to something. 

So of course I brought this up with my guy over dinner. Our guesses: 1) women and men traditionally notice & care for different areas around the house, but a lot of housework isn't strictly required. So in a lesbian relationship, maybe the "guy" things just don't get done - which makes me really, really curious about gay male relationships and housework load! and 2) a lesbian couple is already outside society norms in some senses, so maybe it's easier to avoid getting your ego caught up in having a perfectly-kept house. 

Which leads to the question, what is housework? For purposes of tracking it, I'm figuring it's things I do in the house (or yard), which benefit both me and my guy. That ropes in cooking, cleaning, yardwork - but no errands, and no time spent setting up our various networking gadgetry needs which are totally gratuitous, really, and fun anyway. 

And for today's count (as yet incomplete of course): I spent 10 minutes emptying the dishwasher and pouring myself a bowl of cereal this morning....

Housework: are you *!?%$** kidding me? (part 1)

This weekend I read a New York Times Magazine article about couples who attempt to achieve 'equally shared parenting.' Ok, fine, that's nice - but what really stood out was this statistic: 

"the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14"

That's appalling from a gender-relations standpoint, it really is - but right now I'm not thinking about that. No, right now I'm thinking, "45 hours of housework PER WEEK?!" No matter how you divide it up that's just awful. That's more time than I spend at work. If I hired someone to do all that I'd be paying them overtime! 

And so I embark on an experiment. For the next week or so I'm going to track how much housework I actually do and report back here. And it had better not be 31 hours - or anything approaching that.

I might actually interview sometime ...

... because I just got approval to do interviews. This is the next to the last step on the transfer process (the last step being all the relevant people agreeing that the interviews plus resume etc look good enough for it all to go through). Keep your fingers crossed for me. 

And no, of course I don't know the timeframe! Why would I know a wacky thing like that? 

For all those who are wondering if this means I'm leaving my current Big Tech Company: nope, not at the moment. I've got lots of reasons to stay, the main one being that I like it here. All the talk of recruiters and resumes and interviews is just what our internal transfer process looks like. Makes you want to apply from outside, doesn't it? 

The black hole speaks

... and says I might know something by the end of next week. Gasp. Dare I believe it?

No, not really, no I don't. I'll believe it when I see it. But it was pretty funny that the recruiter actually referred to himself as a black hole, without my doing it for him!

Money shock

My guy and I did some financial planning this weekend (reallocating a 401k: such an exciting way to spend a Saturday morning!).

This morning, my brain still wrapped in numbers, I plugged some data into the crazy rent vs buy modeling spreadsheet one of the guys at work created and helpfully shared.

And for the very first time, the model shows that it might make sense to buy.

Wait, what?

I have no idea what to do with that. I've been happily using "it makes no financial sense to buy a house!!!" as the unassailable justification for my geographic commitment-phobia. If that's no longer the case, then [gasp] might it actually be time to think about where I want to live?

I dunno if I'm ready for that. Maybe AMT will make all the numbers change again, and I can procrastinate a little longer.

Marital differences

Saturday night, as my guy and I were making a pizza:

Him: I'm done with the tomato sauce; it's ready to put away.

Me: ok, hand me the spoon.

Him: the spoon?

Me: so I can take a big scoop of the sauce and eat it before I put the rest in the fridge.

Him: EWWWWW!!!!

Me [pondering whether I will still be able to eat pizza if I first eat the entire contents of the jar of marinara sauce]: what? What? Doesn't everybody do that?!

Then again, he also likes Brussels sprouts. Weird.

Are we there yet?

This is the year of transitions. My friendships shift in response to major life changes, both mine and others': one friend's 3 months in Japan, another's 6 months' leave, new babies everywhere, job changes, house changes, finishing up or preparing for grad school.

And for all of these transitions, I have the same conversations: "is it OK if I..." and "is it normal to..." None of us know what's expected. I think maybe nothing is expected. I ask K if it's OK not to want a baby; she asks me if it's OK to want a house. B asks whether to join his wife on her two-month trip to Paris. T wonders if it's OK to deprioritize work if you're preparing for grad school: "I'm leaving too soon to be promoted again, so...what would I be working toward if I keep putting in the hours?"

None of us knows whether to say yes or no. None of us knows who to ask. None of us knows what's OK or what's normal.

"Isn't it crazy?" said T last night over coffee. "By the time my parents got here, they knew what the next 20 years looked like: kids, work, the town they'd live in. I don't even know about next year."

"I think they had fewer options," I say. "And options are good, but...."

As I ponder what to do with this long weekend, I also ponder when it is that I'll stop trying to decide what the best thing is. Will a time come when we know what's expected of us, when we stop looking for permission or the go-ahead to make decisions on our own? Or is uncertainty the new normal?

No, not yet

No, there's no update yet on the job front. Sigh. I love recruiting. I just love 'em.

About time: State Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't affect me personally, but ever since the anti-gay-marriage folks insulted my love life by claiming that gay marriage threatened straight marriage (excuse me?! my marriage is at risk because someone else got married?! are you kidding?!), I've taken it personally anyway.

So I was very very happy when a friend pinged me this link this morning:
State Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry

Yay! Yay! Yay!

Almost home

I drove north on 101 yesterday, three hours on the gorgeous stretch from San Luis Obispo through Salinas. The temperature was in the 90s and the road was mostly empty. I played Astaire and Metric on the radio and my husband and I alternated the a/c on, off, on, off according to whim. My husband read me real estate ads from the Central Coast Homes and Land magazine: 280 acres of rolling hill country with expansive views and hundred year old oaks; 150 acres lakeside. "Now that's worth one-point-five million," I said reflectively. Could I give up tech and switch to farming, or would I get bored?

And as we drove on, as the lush green around San Luis flowed into the harsher hills north of Paso and the afternoon winds kicked in around King City, it occurred to me that perhaps I haven't bought a home because in many ways I already have one. On long drives it stretches out in front of me, graceful in black pavement with a yellow line down the middle, and I rarely feel better than when I have a full tank of gas and a suitcase in the trunk. Could I settle to just one view, no matter how expansive, or am I better off leaving my options open as I have done so far?

Observational skills

People who have noticed that I lopped off my hair:

Women: 7 (including one woman who I haven't otherwise interacted with in maybe 4 months)

Men: 1

And due to the way my Wednesday meetings are set up, I've seen a bunch more men than women today.

Hmmmm......

The most I've ever paid for gas

I don't know if you can read the receipt in the photo, but it says $51 and change. This is the first time I've broken the $50 barrier, so I'm commemorating the event (in horror) here.

Starting to seem real

For the past week or so the whole "new job" (albeit at the same company) prospect has been sneaking up on me: a conversation here, an email there, a "how's it going?" or a "good luck!" spoken with particular intent.

But it didn't really seem real until I started putting together my resume. I've got mixed feelings about this: creating a resume is a lot less emotionally scary than it used to be. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's gather & format data. On the the other hand, there's so much data involved that I started a stack of sticky-notes just to keep track of all the places I should look. Imagine: I've been here for almost 5 years. I've worked on 2 teams in 11 buildings and when I made a list of everything I did last quarter it was a full page long. I've been gathering information - just gathering it, not thinking about whether I should include it or how to present or format it or anything like that - for the past two hours.

I have no idea what to think about this. I'm kind of amazed. And I'm kind of excited. And I'm kind of curious to see how it all turns out.

Up to bat

This morning I met again with the head of the team I want to join. "Is there any news on my transferring in?" I asked. "Sorry to push; it keeps coming up."

"I know I know!" he said. "There's some good news, and some things I still don't know. I got my boss to write a recommendation for you, which may help but I don't know how much. It has worked at least once in the past. I should let you know you shouldn't get your hopes up. I put your name in for the first step, but ... wait a second, we may be able to get some real-time feedback." He paused to type something into a chat window. I fiddled with a sticky note.

"Right!" he said. "As of ... twenty-five seconds ago, you're officially in the process. Start thinking about who you want your internal references to be."

And then we went back to business as usual: what's launching, and what's planned, and why, and what we need to do about it.

Tax-induced grouchiness

Why, why, WHY does the AMT require an entirely separate set of calculations than normal taxes?! WHY?! Isn't it bad enough that we live in one of the very few places in the US where real estate is still so expensive that my "I could support a four-person family on this anywhere else in the country" salary here requires two incomes to cover renting? And on top of this I have to CALCULATE MY TAXES TWICE!??! And pay more in Federal taxes simply because California has a high state tax rate?!!!?? And pay more because I'm MARRIED?!

Bastards.

I got TWO HOURS of sleep last night, and I blame the Feds. Grrrr.

Why San Francisco is hilarious

The greatest quote ever for a human rights event:

We already have a quorum for a nude torch run to happen after the official run. We are inviting you and your nude friends to join us. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make an indelible statement for human rights.

I translate this as, "Hey! A chance to get naked! And oh yeah, human rights are important! C'mon NAKED, baby, NAKED!!!"

The current temperature in SF is 51°F (Cloudy). I hope they have a fabulous time :)

Evil poison death gas

Last year, the termites in the garage conducted a heavy attack on a couple of C's books that were boxed up in the garage. The termites went straight through the covers and on into the pages. They were embedded (like reporters in Iraq? They certainly faced instant death once we found them.).

Ewwww.

I previously thought that termites were small and hard to notice. I was wrong. They're maybe 3/4" long. They're brown and shiny, and when they die, their wings fall off and drift down onto whatever's underneath them: some bikes, some books, a drill, a box of sandpaper, some furniture... the usual garage stuff.

When the termites ate the books we decided it was time to do something. We called the property management co; they sent out an inspector. The inspector said, "yup, termites." (We could have told them that). And after the holidays, and some confusion, and so on, we finally got the house scheduled to be tented.

Then we read up on the chemicals that would be blown into the house to kill the termites. And we realized there weren't really any good non-scary solutions that we could find.

So we moved out C's books. And most of both our clothes. And all the food in the kitchen. And the cast iron griddle, because it's porous. And all the wooden spatulas, for the same reason. And the seeds I've been meaning to plant. And the cushions & slipcovers from the furniture. And the comforters and blankets from the bed & linen closet.

And we picked all the lemons, so they wouldn't be within reach of the fumes (the only upside here is that B. still owes me lemon bars).

And we went to stay in my in-laws' guest cottage (thank you!) which is only a few minutes away from our own house, so not too much of a hassle.

And I pulled off all the weatherstripping we added last winter, so that our house would once again leak like a sieve, letting fresh air in and (I hope) helping the gas dissipate.

And I decided I wasn't going back in that house until a full four extra nights after it was officially cleared for safety by the termite-tenters, because that will give the gas still more time to get the hell out.

And I'm still trying not to think too hard about chemical half-lives and rates of dissipation and all of that, because the air has been tested and it's OK, and tenting is normal, and this chemical has been in use for sixty years, and one version of it is used on food for crying out loud, and I'm sure half the buildings I've lived in have been tented, and this is normal, and there isn't any other good solution.

But why isn't there?

This is why I'm not even trying to work for Facebook

Facebook is getting a lot of buzz around Silicon Valley lately: it's in the news, it's on people's blogs, I keep getting invites, blah blah blah.

And yet so far I haven't even attempted to get a job there. It comes up every so often as a "would you ever" kind of thing, and my stock line is, "well, it's walking distance to my house, which would be nice, and they give you an extra $600 a month if you commute on foot, which would also be nice, but yeah, I just don't get it. I think I'm too old!" Whoever I'm talking to laughs, and I laugh, and we get on with whatever we have to be getting on with.

This morning, however, I am justified! Ha! And here's the title that tells me I'm not a complete idiot for passing up the not-yet-public, run-by-a-23-year-old, highly-visible startup that would let me multi-task my exercise with my commute:
Facebook-for-Profit Apps Echo with Sound of Silence

Enjoy! And cross your fingers for me that two or three years from now I'm not wishing I'd made the move.

Maintaining standards

Why is it that, my guy being not home for the evening due to a fantasy baseball draft, it suddenly seems normal to eat only an enormous bowl of edamame for dinner, with chocolates for dessert?

saturday

happiness is reading elizabeth hardwick while eating truffles in the backyard on a hot spring day

The ride home (II)

Distance to bike from home to work: 6 miles
Distance to bike from work to home: 6 miles
Distance to bike from work to home if you take the oh-so-attractive, unpaved, windy path through the wetlands that actually comes up over by the airport: 8 miles

Level of leg-soreness the next day: AAAARRGGGH

Level of incredulity that you did this kind of thing in high school all the damn time: !!!!!!!!!

The ride home

Funny money

Some days (like, oh, today) I look at my bank account and think, "Huh. Where did all the money go?" 

Then I realize that I have $678 dollars of expense reports still to submit, after which point my bank account balance will go up rather noticeably. 

Maybe it's not all about the shopping after all....

More about babies

On my mantelpiece right now are two new-baby announcements. Both babies look, um, like babies: they're cute (but then, would anyone send out a new-baby announcement that wasn't?).

But the real point of this post is that both babies have the middle name Elizabeth! Just like me!

Clearly these babies' excellent middle name makes them way cuter than they would be otherwise.

Gadget love

"I'm going for a walk," I said to C. It was Sunday afternoon, nice weather; our original plans to termite-prep the house had stalled out when the property rental place failed to tell us when the termite-tenting would actually occur.

"Where to?" he asked. Sunday afternoon: there's doubtless some kind of sports on TV, but then, it's a nice day....

"Maybe the Apple store," I said. This of the danger of living in downtown Palo Alto: the ever-seductive Apple store, so shiny, so silver, so ... tempting.

"Hmm," said C. "Think I'll pass."

So I went for a walk. I felt the warm sun on my shoulders; I admired the newly-budding cherry & plum trees that give the neighborhood a sudden, unexpected grace in spring. I watched some bikes speed past, since this was the first day of some kind of major bike race I'd never previously heard of. I bought lemonade from a hopeful kid selling it in front of his mom's store.

And then I got to the Apple store.

I've been eyeing the MacBook Air (3/4" thick! silver! not Windows, so it won't "feel" like work!) since it was launched. I've been telling myself firmly that I'll wait till it hits V2 before I buy one - who wants to be a beta tester for $1800?

But then I saw it. It was sleek and lovely and the rounded edge fit nicely in my hand. It was light enough that I could imagine myself carrying it around in a backpack while I was travelling. I hesitated for maybe 3 minutes before letting my credit card leap eagerly out of my wallet.

I took my new gadget home, installed a bunch of writing software on it, and started playing. And I love it.

Cheddar Cheese Soup

This was the first weekend I'd been home in a while, and it was about as perfect as a weekend can get.

Things that contributed to my happiness: a new Italian place that turned out to be great; warm weather (Saturday was my first hammock day of the year); buying an empty barrel from a winery to use as an herb garden planter, which my guy sawed in half for me and which cost less than a quarter as much as buying a pre-made planter in a garden store; sleep; and last but not least, cheddar cheese soup (yes, it can be vegetarian, just switch the stock).

Of course, when I woke up this morning, I thought, "Why do I hear a garbage truck? The trash pickup is on Monday." Pause while the sleep clears from my brain. "Oh. Today is Monday."

Commentary upon Facebook

Since joining Facebook, I have noticed:

- A search for "literary" or "books" in network "Silicon Valley" gets zero hits
- A search for "literary" or "books" in network "Columbia" gets 3 pages of hits
- My friends' photos are niftily color-saturated. How do they do that?

Grrrr.

Presidential Paintball - Miniclip Games - Play Free Games

Presidential Paintball - Miniclip Games - Play Free Games

Victory lap

"What's on the agenda?" asked our tech lead. I paused, waiting for someone else to speak. It wasn't my meeting, and I'd only attended three times. They must have agenda items already.

Our tech lead looked at me. "I'd like to look at our list of projects and assign owners," I said.

"Great," said our tech lead. So we did. One person even volunteered. The meeting ran overtime because we started talking about exactly how to implement changes, and what kind of data we need to get back from the experiments we're running.

Toward the end of the meeting, I asked whether we needed to meet once a week or once every two weeks. "Once a week should be fine," said our project manager.

"You know who the individual engineers are," said our tech lead, "so you can talk individually about the specific projects."

"Sounds good," I said. "I'm sorry I sit so far away." It's a side-effect of my unofficial role: my office is with my current team, rather than with the team I'm aiming to join.

"We have some visitor desks," said the engineer who'd volunteered for my pet project. "You know, where the UI designer sits." I walked back with them, so they could show me where the visitor desks are.

"If you don't mind working on your laptop...." said the tech lead. A couple of the other engineers nodded.

"Sure," I said. "I can spend some time here."

Maybe it's going to work out after all.

Mexican restaurants to try

There was a very active discussion about this at work, so I'm noting down the best-sounding options before I forget 'em:

• La Fiesta, in Mountain View
• Estrellita
• Los Charros
• Los Portales
• La Bamba

Though of course, nothing will ever replace my favorite Palo Alto Sol.

Flood?

Out here in California we don't get what you Easterners call real winter weather - at least most of the time.

So I'm just here to tell you that today, it's raining. It's raining so much that the creek depth near my house, which was 0.0 feet yesterday, is 7.0 feet as I write this.

And how do I know that? I know that because Silicon Valley likes its toys, and so the City of Palo Alto has installed an electronic Creek Depth Measurement Gizmo somewhere in the actual creek, and the resulting data (complete with Creek Cam views!) is available on the Palo Alto creek monitor website. I can check it obsessively from my desk at work as often as I like! Oh goody!

Will my house flood? Will it not? Only time will tell!

A year abroad

If you have a credit card, you probably got a claim form for a class-action lawsuit wherein MasterCard & Visa owe lots of people money for fees charged for international purchases.

I like money as much as the next gal, so a couple of days ago, I started filling out the claim form. To fill out the claim form, I needed to estimate the number of days I'd spent abroad from 1996 - 2006.

And I wound up with 334 days.

This prompted the question, how much total time have I spent out of the US? If I include travel before 1996 (my first trip to England with my mom; my high school musical's exchange program with other schools in Europe; last spring's business trip to Hyderabad; this past summer's trip to France for a friend's wedding), I get to over 400 days.

In case it wasn't obvious, that's more than a year.

Huh. A year abroad. I have spent more than a year abroad. I don't know why I'm surprised - after all, I knew I spent six months in the UK during college, I was there - but I am. Isn't a year abroad supposed to be the sort of thing that one works toward and dreams about, rather than a side-effect of other experiences?