The Mandelbear's Musings

Long month, the last week and a half. Let's see. A week ago last Thursday I got an offer of a 3-month contract at Amazon, which I took immediately. Since it's through KForce again, I had very little paperwork to do and everything continues much as it has been. Colleen got her diagnosis of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, which is associated with immunosuppressant drugs, hypertension, low K and Mg. All of which she had.

Friday I cancelled my Norwescon concert -- I really wasn't ready, and was already under too much stress.

Saturday it looked as though Colleen was coming home, but by the time I got there her blood pressure had gone up to really scary levels, and they decided to keep her until it stabilized.

I spent most of the weekend shuttling back and forth between North Starport, Rainbow's End, and the hospital in between. I slept at RE, with Naomi and I keeping one another company.

Monday I picked up Chaos and Emmy, and went out to dinner for Emmy's 21st birthday. Blue C Sushi, which was expensive but able to satisfy the YD's craving for plum sake. I have two drinking-age children now.

I didn't notice any hill.

Tuesday Colleen came home. KForce called and told me I was supposed to start Wednesday.

As it turned out, my boss at Amazon had been expecting me to start on Monday the 1st (i.e., today), so things weren't quite ready for me. More or less ok, though; they were at least able to get me a badge and a laptop. (A Thinkpad T400, which isn't half bad.)

Last weekend was Norwescon. The "surprise open mic" that took the place of my concert was Saturday night, and I gave a perfect demonstration of exactly why I cancelled. GAAK. I should know better than to try to sing anything off book. Especially when I'm unprepared and stressed.

I was plagued by charger problems all weekend, but at least my computer charger worked most of Saturday when I really needed it to. The "geek toys" panel was a lot of fun. I read off the specs for the Cray 1 from the web browser on my phone, which had it beat by orders of magnitude. (How many orders of magnitude depending on which spec you looked at. 8MB of RAM? How... quaint.)

Sunday we had dinner at Romio's in Kirkland, on the way to take Chaos home.

Aha! moment -- I figured out that apologizing (which drives Colleen crazy) is my way of trying to make myself feel better after screwing up (especially in a way that hurts somebody else). It mostly doesn't work very well, and if Colleen tells me to stop, or I'm afraid she will, I can spiral downhill very quickly. (Started to write "downhell", which is actually a pretty good description of it. What was I doing in that handbasket, anyway?)

Didn't do a lick of open filking, but I enjoyed the concerts, and spent a fair amount of quiet time in the Green Room. Which was good for (introvert) me, even though I didn't realize at the time that it was what I needed.

Colleen's still in the hospital, at least until tomorrow. Her BP's doing really well, though, so there's a good chance she'll be going home then. Basically they wanted to make sure she's stable on the meds she can go home with.

She's in pretty good spirits, and looking much better than before, but of course she's bored and would welcome visitors and calls.

I'm holding up fairly well, but it's still tiring and frustrating. I'm getting a certain amount more stuff down to the house, though; that's good. 9 boxes yesterday, and 8 this morning; I have amost all of the boxes out of the middle of the living room floor now.

So, welcome to 2013. So far it's starting out pretty well, with three very productive days at work, and spurts of productivity at home as well. I've done some walking, though not as much as I'd like, and even a little practicing. Colleen and I went to our doctor's appointments on Saturday. I get to stay off my morning BP meds! Colleen, OTOH, needs to go back on hers.

And Thursday was our 38^th wedding anniversary! We celebrated by going out for dinner-for-two at Anthony's seafood restaurant in Alderwood. Dinner consisted mostly of molluscs - a double helping of oysters, clams, muscles, and clam chowder. Plus drinks and dessert.

The free test coverage tool in Eclipse is pretty good. Fun!

We had house guests on Sunday; anyone in the Seattle area who wants to visit is welcome to come on over, given a few hours' notice.

Quote of the week:

Colleen: What are you depressed about?
Me: Depression doesn't need a reason.

As well as the year is going, I'm still apparently feeling pretty depressed and very, very stressed. I think I'm trying to do too much, but there's no helping it. I was kind of shocked to find that Colleen's last hospitalization was in 2009, only a little less than 4 years ago. It feels longer.

For you TV fans out there, here's a great write-up about the plot holes in WWII on the history channel.

While I was on the bus to work I got an unexpected call from the YD, saying that the fire alarm in our apartment building had gone off.

Colleen parked her scooter in the third-floor elevator lobby and walked down the three flights of stairs to the exit, between the first and second floors. Whereupon she plunked herself down in a half-barrel planter (next to the door and conveniently empty) to await developments.

It turned out that someone had burnt their toast, then opened the door to the hallway. I got the news before the bus reached its first stop in Seattle, which saved me the trouble of figuring out whether to turn back.

The neighbor who had gone downstairs with Colleen, encouraging her all the way, went back and retrieved her scooter. The YD, too, kept her head and made sure to take her keys and Colleen's cane along.

More adventure than we needed, but it's good to know that Colleen can get downstairs under her own power in an emergency.

A good day.

Went out to Japantown with Colleen so she could pick up the yukata she'd ordered for me. Gorgeous -- black with white and gold dragons and pine needles. Much gaudier than I would have picked for myself. It needs to be shortened by quite a lot. We met jilara in the parking lot. Fun!

I made a very bright guacamole, followed shortly thereafter by carnitas. Yum. I saved the liquid in the crock pot and tossed in a quart of water and some yellow split peas, for tonight's soup.

When we got back, we went for a st/roll around the Rose Garden. We stopped in Goodwill on the way home (always dangerous) and spent about $20 on an off-white silk jacket and a green cotton Hawaiian print shirt for me, and half a dozen little vases for Colleen.

As for links, a comment on my Signal boost for the underground_rail (you will note that it now has a community) links to this short story: ILU-486 by Amanda Ching. I hope it doesn't get that bad.

And here are 5 Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search (Even if You Have Nothing to Hide), via thnidu.

A good, quiet day. After taking the chaoswolf to the airport, I woke Colleen a little after 8am so we could watch the Rose Parade. Some amazing stuff this year.

We went out around 3:30 on a shopping expedition that ultimately turned into a drive through downtown Los Gatos, Saratoga, Los Altos, and Menlo Park, ending with dinner in Iberia. We arrived a couple of minutes before it opened, on what turned out to be a very slow day, so we got excellent service to go with the excellent food. So we had our 37^th anniversary dinner a day early.

Today's link is for computer geeks, woodworkers, and artists: Jeffrey Stephenson's handmade wooden computer cases. I've been admiring this guy's work for a long time.

It's been a short week. Busy, exhausting, occasionally frustrating, sometimes spectacularly wonderful. I don't think I can sum it up.

We flew to Seatac on Thursday, picked up our rental car -- I'd been worried about getting to their offsite lot, but one look at Colleen and they had someone drive it over for us. Total win. Drove up to Bothell for our one night at the Country Inn. Not as good as I'd hoped, but the room was huge, the WiFi was free, and the bar had bar snacks. Then we headed over to the Herb Farm for dinner.

I took a wrong turn and got us thoroughly lost. We finally pulled in to the parking lot, after an hour on the road, just as dinner was starting at 7pm. I was able to answer their call and walk in the door just moments later.

I was sorry to have missed the garden tour, but dinner's awesomeness was not really diminished by this. It was just as gloriously awesome as my last visit, but totally different. Which, as Angela (one of the staff) told me, is what they aim for. I found myself talking to Angela after dinner because she looks remarkably like a shorter version of Cat Faber. But anyway.

I only got slightly lost going back to the hotel. The breakfast buffet was free, but not really worth it, either.

I got us lost again trying to get to Central Market in Shoreline. I got us there, but it took a while. (You may start to notice a pattern here.) We were, however, in good humor, and Colleen enjoyed Central Market as much as I'd hoped she would.

I got lost again getting to the hotel. The overflow hotel, since the Hilton was full when I went to make our reservations. Only slightly lost -- I found Google's directions rather unhelpful, as they had been on the way to the Herb Farm. I was already low on spoons when we got to the Clarion and realized that Colleen's scooter was going to have problems on the hills between there and the con hotel.

Then I forgot which was the con hotel, or rather hadn't bothered to write it down. The desk clerk at the Clarion called and found a room for us in the Holiday Inn next door, which is where Conflikt had been last year. I got suspicious when the front desk hadn't heard about the con. I called over to the Hilton. They had an accessible room, and I booked it. By this time I was totally out of spoons. I had, by this time, put Colleen's scooter in and out of the trunk 5 times, at something over 100 pounds each. That's half a ton of lifting, total. No wonder I was tired!

I had a delightful, if somewhat expensive, dinner with Colleen and Chaos in the Hilton, then headed North to Promusica for two days of music. Via the wrong freeway, of course. Fortunately I was able to find my way there. Did I mention that there was a pattern?

The Tempered Glass rehearsal weekend was wonderful -- a relaxing, comfortable two days, and some amazing music-making. Amazing in part because of the speed at which we were able to pick up on the new material. I felt like I was doing a lot better than usual, and found myself getting back my old skill at figuring out chords. Wow. Some good catching-up, too; a lot has happened since Reno.

Sunday evening I drove back to the hotel for another dinner with Colleen and Chaos, and I drove the Wolfling back to Marysville in the morning. Without getting lost in either direction, I might add. We had a father/daughter breakfast, and I got to see her current digs and talk briefly with Steve Dixon.

The whole week has been kind of a blur. There was a little work in there, too.

But Colleen had a wonderful time, which is the main thing. She handled the travel much better than I'd feared she would; she really is getting stronger and more independent even though it's hard to notice from close in. I had a wonderful time, modulo a meltdown and a couple of almosts. I'm going to declare it a Good Week.

Oh, and our concert at Conflikt in January is going to kick ass. Just thought you ought to know.

There are links. A lot of them have to do with politics. Sorry about that.

... so what was I doing while LJ was down? Mostly system administration, I suspect. Between making the YD's Windows 7 computers print on our home network, and backing up the failing backup drive, it's been a long week. Oh, and replacing ink cartridges and cleaning print heads.

I went to Fry's and got a couple of hot-swap holders for SATA drives; I'll use one of those for the backup drive. Once I get it loaded. It would have gone a heck of a lot faster if I'd figured out that I needed to transfer the monthly incrementals last if I wanted to restore hard links correctly. *sigh*

Meanwhile, the good news is that the UBF had a hearing yesterday and got slapped with a restraining order keeping him out of a 300yd zone that just happens to include our house. So he won't be staying over any more.

Just one walk, on Thursday. This was partly due to getting a severe leg cramp last Sunday. But I did get in some singing, which was good.

And a lot of puttering in the office. A pretty good week, modulo the pain.

Lots of links in the notes. xkcd: Lanes is the one to go to; may be triggery if you have cancer. The debt limit fiasco continues to be top news; solarbird has been writing it up. Go look.

Not A Good Day. It got off to a mediocre start when I lost track of time ordering some otterboxes off Amazon, and came in late to work. (No harm done, since the Thursday am diagnostics scrum was basically a no-op, but I don't like doing it.)

I went out for Thai food with 9 other coworkers. The food was good. But the service was slow, and the noise level was simply intolerable -- I couldn't even carry on a conversation with somebody sitting right next to me. And of course no walk (though I got some exercise later). Next time I'll eat at my desk, as usual, and take my walk and stick to my diet (such as it is).

When I came home from work I woke up Colleen (who had been spending the day sensibly in bed) to find that her splint had shifted by about 3 inches, and hurt like heck. Naturally this was after the orthopedics clinic had closed for the day, so we had a quick dinner and took off for the ER. Again. (The splint, her second one, was supposed to go around her elbow to keep it at a right angle. Apparently she straightened her arm in her sleep. The doctor advised her to sleep in the sling.)

I don't think they charged us a co-pay this time. But we went in around 7pm, she fell into a shift change around 10:30, finally got pain meds at 11:30, x-rays a little after that, the new splint at around midnight, and home around 1:30. Meanwhile I had picked up a back spasm lifting her transport chair into the car trunk, and totally lost it a couple of times. I don't have much, if any, control over my speech when I'm sleepy, exhausted, and in pain.

June is officially fired.

On the plus side, we now know for certain that hydromorphone (dilaudid) is ok for her to take. She reacts very badly (i.e., was in a coma for three days) to cocaine or hydrocodone. I looked them all up online while waiting for the pharmacy to come to the same conclusion. We came home with a new prescription for percocet (ocycodone, also ok).

Colleen and I are both feeling much better this morning. See some of you at Westercon!

... to snowishness and my lovely, loving, and greatly loved wife flower_cat!!!!! Have a great one!!!!

Yesterday was mostly pretty quiet, hanging around the house and eating leftovers. The entire afternoon was eaten up buying the YD a TV, as a combination Christmas present and good grade reward (which normally would have been sushi). It took two trips to Best Buy -- the first one was dead on arrival.

The best part, though, was going to bed early and snuggling until midnight when we could finally wish one another a happy 35^th anniversary. Hard to believe we've been together that long.

The GaFilk video that peteralway posted includes a clip of me performing "Uncle Ernie's", which made kind of a nice anniversary present.

It's been quite a busy week -- I've been Getting Things Done. Mainly booking our flights and hotel room for Conflikt (and getting Chaos a membership, and all three of us brunch tickets). I was sort of on a roll Monday. And I "inherited" a Dremel lathe from Kayta.

Monday I had what felt like an anxiety attack; it wasn't until sometime late yesterday that I figured out that similar symptoms can be caused by breathing through a straw. Which is effectively what I was doing, thanks to my persistent nasal congestion. Bletch.

The good news for the week -- Colleen has switched from the bedside commode to the back bathroom (the one with the ADA height toilet). She's also switched to the little folding walker, because it fits through the bathroom doors and the others don't.

A reasonable number of links under the cut.

Monday was wonderful. I went for a walk around the Rose Garden in the morning before Colleen got up. In the afternoon, we went to San Francisco for the newly-rebuilt California Academy of Science and Steinhart Aquarium, and the DeYoung art museum across the street. Ended up buying both memberships; we'd had a DeYoung membership, but it had lapsed several years ago. But well worth it.

The Academy of Science/Steinhart Aquarium is a simply wonderful space. The rain forest exhibit is a helical path through a spherical enclosure that takes you from the forest floor to the canopy, from which you can look down into the segment of river three floors below. The elevator then drops you into the aquarium's Amazon River exhibit, looking up into the rain forest. Unlike the rain forest, the aquarium is highly non-linear -- we kept turning corners and running into new sections that we hadn't seen and hadn't realized existed. The only problem is that, being highly nonlinear, there isn't a clear path through it that guarantees that you'll see everything.

Over at the DeYoung, we managed to catch the last day of the Birth of Impressionism exhibit. I ended up pushing Colleen through it because the scooter's batteries were flagging; this was probably better than her trying to motor through the crowd, so it all worked out.

I was pretty damned tired by the time we got home, though, and my left hip was hurting. We picked up a bucket of KFC for dinner on the way home.

Tuesday was pretty good, too, but I didn't have time for a walk. Probably just as well. The main event was a code review. It ran late (three hours rather than the scheduled two) and only got through half of the four projects, which didn't surprise me. But I had fun, as well as learning a lot. The gimmick was that everyone had to learn someone else's code well enough to present it. This was brilliant, because it not only got me familiar enough with Joe's code (for example) to work on it, but meant that one was less likely to get defensive about it.

I brought my netbook in for the presentation, and it worked perfectly. Emacs makes a very good code browser. I used the Mac laptop for notes; I had one terminal window open on my file of pre-review notes, and a second for live note-taking.

The catch is, now I get to fix the bugs we found. But I expected that, and it'll be a good way for me to learn PHP.

The bear is going to go fall over now. Lots of good links under the cut.

A very good day -- crab and eggs for breakfast, a st/roll through the Valley Fair mall with Colleen, salmon and roasted roots for dinner, and a short bike ride. I'm long out of practice (at most a handful of rides in the last quarter century, and none in the last decade or so) and out of shape. And the knee I damaged nearly 40 years ago still hurts when I apply too much pressure with it.

Which makes me very happy that I went for 21 speeds -- I can find a gear that doesn't make my knee hurt. Hopefully that will continue.

I also found a price for the specially-designed suitcase -- it's as much as I paid for the bike. So forget that; we'll see if it fits in a large suitcase, but I'm not going to be flying with it anytime soon.

And my new wireless router actually routes; next step is reflashing it with DD-WRT.

Good article on how to crowdfund. And now... back on my head.

A pretty good day; rather uneventful except for getting the tax forms resubmitted (after correction) and chaoswolf's taxes filed. (I had her 1099's and the software, so it was kind of a no-brainer, though not quite as trivial as I expected.)

I forgot to mention yesterday's big event, though: Colleen took a bath, with no assistance needed getting in and out of the tub. The new ramp and platform that I installed a week or so ago really helps.

Some links under the cut, as usual. Pretty! Shiny!

... to elishabet and most of all to my own lovely and loving flower_cat!!!!! May the next year be fantastic and joyful!!!

A long day, and very like a roller-coaster. Got some system administration done in the morning, a good walk, and some working. I called my broker about getting cash out of my account, to pay credit card bills. It took me most of an hour to work myself up to it; I was still keyed up hours later. Still not clear on just what I was afraid of, but afraid I was. But I have a pretty clear idea of what fear feels like, now. That's something.

I was still keyed up, and very much looking forward to a quiet evening and a drink, when I got a call from Colleen, who was on her way to the ER with an injured foot, from a near fall getting out of the shower. Luckily Marty had been there to patch her back together and drive her over.

She was glued-up and out in time to watch the ice dancing, which was spectacular, with me. So the day finished well.

I guess the thing that scared me about calling the broker was just doing something I'd never done before, and had no idea how to go about doing. Put that way, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But a middle-sized bear's mind is a very odd place. One can't expect it to make sense.

A rather low-key day, but good. The really big happy thing happened 34 years ago, at about 2pm, when we got married. The man who forgets his anniversary is something of a stock character, but I really did spend most of the day not thinking about it. Of course, the party had been on Saturday.

I got in a good walk, a couple of times around the Rose Garden. I suppose that if I walked more often, it would hurt less.

I tracked down all the begging letters, and got a good start on writing the checks (a process I finished this morning). Should have been done in mid-December, of course; this year I didn't even sort them in December. I figure as long as the checks are dated 12/31 and in the mail on the first business day of the new year, ... I really need to start spreading them out, two or three per month.

Of course, that would require being organized.

While tracking down the charities I found a rebate form (that I hadn't thought I'd printed out) that had to have been mailed by December 8. Grrrr. I also now have a big pile of stuff that needs to be looked at Real Soon Now.

Colleen, Chaos and I went out to Mongolian Barbecue for dinner, after which we dropped off the Wolfling and went to Barnes & Noble. Then I dropped Colleen off and went to the airport to pick up the YD.

Then I wrote checks, until finally falling into bed around midnight. The snuggle was nice. If I'm going to take benedryl at bedtime, I need to make that no later than 11.

The big news from yesterday was that Colleen walked from the toilet to the bathtub without using the walker! (She was presumably holding on to the tub for most of that, but it's not the same as the two-handed support that a walker gives.) This is major progress. She also had me haul out the rolling walker, which is also progress. It has a seat, so she can use it for more extended strolls.

I'm still having issues with my knees; I would probably have had to cut my walk short even if I hadn't thought that I'd have to leave early for an appointment. It's next week. But even five minutes in the fresh air and sunshine helped.

I've already posted about my success in upgrading the hard drive on my fileserver. It goes nicely with cflute's finally getting the external drive I sent her to work. The problem turned out to be a connection that got shaken loose in shipping.

On the down side, the buyer at Batteries and Bulbs called to say that the bulb in our fan is indeed made of unobtainium. In a way that's OK; the problem turned out to be in the fan. (We have two; I have verified that both bulbs work in the front fan, so we have a spare anyway.) The options for the back room are: A. replace the whole thing, and B. keep the fan (which is working for now) and install some extra lamps. We'll go with Plan B.

In connection with my weight, several people suggested exercise. That's probably worth a separate post; it's not simple: in addition to time and motivation, I have problems with both knees and ankles.

I have added embarrassment to the list of emotions I don't feel -- several times recently people have told me I'm blushing, usually in response to an unexpected compliment. I wouldn't have noticed if nobody had mentioned it. It does make me wonder whether it's a good idea to go messing with what's obviously an effective defense mechanism.

And I need to go back and work on my list of affirmations, which I've been neglecting of late. I need to add a rather obvious one: I am a Middle-Sized Bear.

Links later, I think.

The day was mostly taken up with two shopping trips. The first was Fry's, where I found that, not surprisingly, the $89 1.5TB drive advertised in their flier had sold out by 11am on Friday. Got a couple of other useful items, made one more stop on the way home, and got home very low on blood sugar. It was, evidently, a good thing I hadn't gone for walkies first.

The YD wanted to bake; we sent her across the street for eggs. She came back with 5 dozen.

After lunch Colleen suggested a Costco run -- her first with the scooter. That was fun. I never did get a walk in, but we probably did a mile or so in the store. Go Rocket-Snail!

By the time we got back, the YD had made two dozen yummy, if slightly small, gluten-free cupcakes. I win. She also offered to make devilled eggs for dinner, if I boiled them. Colleen suggested making 2 dozen, which was probably excessive for three people. But pretty tasty.

I probably don't need to wonder why my triglycerides are too high.

We went for a drive in the evening; very pleasant. More conversation than usual.

An IM from pocketnaomi telling me that she simply can't make it to OVFF this year. She was afraid I'd be upset over losing my backup singer; I was much more concerned about how disappointed she is. She charged me with running the "Just Plain Folk" circle. Must remember to pack a copy of Rise Up Singing.

I am so ready for this last year to be over. Going by the Jewish calendar it already is; by the usual pagan one we'll be sending it out the door at out Halloween party. I'll take one of those, thanks.

When I went out to take the Younger Daughter to school this morning the air was cool, moist, and crystal clear; there were beads of rain on the windshield of the car. Overhead the sky was magical: grey clouds with little patches of blue-grey sky between them, edged in the East with shards and streaks of golden sunlight.

It was exactly the kind of sky that I had in mind when I wrote "Eyes Like the Morning" all those years ago.

Hmm. After taking out the summaries of a couple of long but private conversations, there isn't a whole lot left. I spent almost all of the evening out in the living room, mostly geeking about Linux and programming languages with various people. A lot of the regulars weren't there, but andyheninger showed up, which is rare. We go way back; he was a coworker at both AMI and Zilog.

The other conversations were mostly about the problems that Colleen was having over the weekend around feeling excluded, and more generally the way she falls apart when things aren't going her way. It's taken me a long time and a lot of help to both understand a little about what her problem is, and to understand that it's her problem, not mine. That was the hardest part -- my natural tendency is to blame myself for anything that goes wrong.

Many thanks to pocketnaomi for finding the perfect word for "the way she falls apart". Once Colleen heard it she understood much more clearly what was going on and what she needs to do about it. I've seen that same look of determination quite recently, when she's been stretching her physical limits. She said something to the effect of: "I have 35 years of bad behavior to unlearn... You'll have to kick me in the ass when I need it. And I'll kick you in the ass about your problems."

So it's a deal. And I have to credit Colleen not only for her understanding and willingness to change, but for giving me the perfect straight line I needed to drive the point home: "You never have that kind of conversation with me." "I'd love to, but I can't -- you keep falling apart."

During the afternoon Colleen and Marty made huge progress re-arranging the sewing corner based on my realization in the morning that it would work better if the sewing machine got moved from the North wall (the window facing the driveway) to the East along the large window that faces the porch and the street. The front window is enough wider that it actually fits, and the rolling storage units that were crowded into the space in front of the built-in shelves are now neatly arranged along the corner wall. Impressive.

Along the way Marty also completely re-arranged the front closet, making it an actual walk-in, with all the contents accessible. And Colleen went through four boxes and sorted the contents. Wow!!

A somewhat tiring day and a little rough in places, but any day when you get a breakthrough on a major problem is a good one. Add the sewing corner and the closet, and it was a very good day indeed.

In the kitchen! On her scooter! She uses the walker, which is more manoeverable, to line up ingredients and tools and put them on the center island, which has been cleaned off. Then she goes back out to the living room, transfers to Rosebud, and scoots back to do the assembly. She still needs help with a few operations, and is still getting used to the fact that she's been out of the kitchen for the better part of a year and things aren't necessarily where she remembers leaving them. But, still, she's cooking!

The Cat's in her kitchen, all's right with the world.

A good day. Busy. Some free-floating anxiety in the afternoon.

Lunch with kaath9, harmonyheifer, and Colleen. At Arya. Yum! Lunch at Arya isn't all that expensive.

Thanks to Paul for fixing the YD's bike. I am a bad father -- I haven't taught the kids to fix their own bikes. :( (Of course, my Dad didn't teach me, I just started with the assumption that one could learn that kind of thing from books, and taught myself.)

Got a call from Callie in the evening, and sang my setlist for her, Chaos, and Colleen. I even went so far as to print the setlist lyrics and put them in the set binder. A few packing-related things didn't get done, but I've gotten a lot more casual about dropping items off the to-do list if I don't have time for them and they aren't actually critical.

Went to bed before midnight, as I recall, but apparently not enough before -- I'm wiped.

A good day. A walk, a couple of good insights, new meds for Colleen, music, conversation about poetry, music, and growing old... yeah. Good day.

I've already posted about the insight.

Naomi suggested that a lot of my free-floating anxiety (also see the Wikipedia article) may be due to the fact that I'm getting old, and starting to deal with a transition as unfamiliar and scary as becoming an adult in the first place. Yeah, there are probably some songs about growing old in my near future. They're my way of coming to terms with reality.

For today's link sausage we have Siegfried Sassoon -- a selection of his poems can be found here. He started out as one of the WWI poets, and later wrote about growing old. Detect a theme here?

Also, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know - it will eventually become a book; right now it's a wiki, with the list of edited contributions here.