The Mandelbear's Musings

We're moved. I moved the last two van-loads of stuff out of the apartment Friday (twice as much as I'd anticipated), and turned in the keys. Exhausted. I ended up working only about a half week last week.

Saturday, Colleen moved (or was moved) from the hospital to a nursing home: Park West, on California Avenue in W. Seattle. It's about 5 minutes' drive from the house.

The cost of 6 weeks in a nursing home, even with insurance, is terrifying. I am all out of spoons, and right on the edge of overload. If I sound snappish, please forgive me.

In other news, Rainbow's End is full of boxes. A pot of gold would come in handy, but I don't think we packed it.

The last week was dominated by the prep for my colonoscopy on Monday. This involved a week's worth of a low-fiber diet, which was highly annoying. The procedure itself went as well as could be expected, and I was able to have Naomi pick me up about the time they let me go. I understand perfectly why they don't allow people who have been drugged into unconsciousness to drive; after I got home I put the dirty laundry into the drier and came within a second or so of adding the soap.

Mom says that after 85 they don't bother, so assuming I don't need one more often than once every decade or so I only have two more to look "forward" to. The results will come back in a week or so.

Friday the stairlift arrived, and on Saturday I took Colleen down to check it out. She loved the master suite, especially the shower. I expected her to like it, but it was nice to have that confirmed.

The yard work was pretty much done by then except for the last of the planting -- it looks fantastic. Work inside the house is progressing; there's a lot of dust. It's going to be a bit dicey with credit until my tax refund comes in.

Lots of good links, many of them from the footnotes in ysabetwordsmith's latest serial fanfic, "Coming Around", and her (related) "three weeks for dreamwidth" posts.

More, as usual, in the notes.

Side note -- I'm considering putting my "done" posts somewhere else, in favor of somewhat irregular postings with more substance. Anyone not bored by the detailed notes? Inquiring minds need to know.

So... this update includes the entire month so far, and my first full week at Amazon. Don't expect me to say much about that; they're sticky about that kind of thing, with good reason. I can say that it's a very steep learning curve.

I've been carpooling with Naomi a couple of times a week; her school is an easy walk from work. It also forces me to get out of the apartment earlier, which is a Good Thing even if it does mean that I have to leave some of my blog-reading for evening.

Nothing like feeling overwhelmed at work, plus having unpaid bills come home to roost, to make me feel stupid. I know, that's the depression talking. But it'stalking really loudly! Which makes it kind of hard to ignore.

Hmm. OK, so here's the problem. Thinking about an expense like a parking ticket, some bills, etc. reminds me of how stupid I was to have incurred that expense in the first place. So I don't want to think about it. Which means that it goes unpaid for a little longer, which makes me feel even more stupid... See how that works? Feedback. :P

I've also been chronically sleep-deprived for most of the last couple of weeks. The fact that I *hate* going to bed early isn't helping.

Links in the raw notes, as usual.

I had a long week the last two days. Tuesday evening, Colleen scared the heck out of me, driving off the path in her scooter, and reporting blurry vision and headache. She seemed really confused, as well. I gave her some aspirin, sudafed (she's been fighting a cold all week), and nose spray. It passed in about an hour, and she seemed perfectly normal by the time we went to bed, except for the headache.

I woke up at 3:30 am and was scared enough to dial 911.

(TL;DR:) The most likely diagnosis at this point is something called Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (PRES) - a rare side effect of some immunosuppressant drugs, including the one she'd just increased the dosage of for her Crohn's disease, augmented by hypertension and low magnesium and potassium levels.

She's recovering well, and is currently in room 341 of Northwest Hospital in Seattle. She can have visitors. Norwescon is iffy.

But I was able to take a phone interview in the waiting room, and the interviewer said that he was going to recommend hiring me. So I have a 3-month contract at Amazon, Starting sometime next week.

WE GOT THE HOUSE! It was really down to the wire; I think the underwriter got the last little detail confirmed with my bank on Friday morning, then closed at 11am. The realtor came by to drop off the keys at about 2:30, and I left Disney at about 3:30, having gotten my last bit of work signed off and my timecards put in.

Big sigh of relief.

Backing up to the previous weekend, I spent a lot of time at Consonance catching up with friends, doing a very little singing, and showing off pictures of the house while continuing to worry about whether we'd actually get it.

At Saturday's open filk I sang "Middle-Aged Bear" (it was a good follower to something else with a bear in it), and swan-songed on QV. Quite a few people didn't seem to have heard it before. Some of them looked kind of stunned, and Colleen sent a box of tissue around.

We discovered Saturday that Colleen's scooter charger had a broken wire in the connector -- I went to Fry's Sunday morning to get a battery-powered soldering iron and some assorted tools, including a nice little Gerber multitool with pliers.

Spent a lot of time Monday doing laundry. I'm pretty sure I don't have the stamina -- or the budget -- for flying to more than one con/year with Colleen. It's a much bigger production than going solo.

Tuesday through Thursday passed in something of a blur. Friday Naomi picked me up after work, with her kids, and we spent some time in the house. Our house.

Saturday involved a lot of driving, between getting three loads of stuff down to the house, taking Emmy down to Seatac for a Norwescon staff meeting, picking up her and Chaos afterwards, driving Colleen down... Susan made dinner for us, all very improvised, and Colleen and I, our kids, and Naomi spent our first night at Rainbow's End.

Colleen declared afterward that she wasn't spending another night there until it's all accessible -- that won't be for another month at least, when the stairlift gets installed.

More in the notes, as usual.

It's been a long month this past week. Our mortgage broker failed to get us a loan -- we didn't get this finally confirmed until Thursday, but it had been crumbling for a week. Our realtor, who obviously has a considerable interest in our closing the deal, found another mortgage broker. She claims, on the company website, to have a 100% success rate. Still waiting.

(Meanwhile, interest rates have gone down a little. Every silver lining has a cloud around it?) And my tenants at the house formerly known as the Starport asked whether I might be interested in selling the place. To which the answer was hell yes! (I'm looking at adding over a half megabuck to my debt. Yes, I can use it.)

This Saturday we went to the Seattle Home Show with Naomi and her new GF Susan. Lots of fun, and a trifle expensive. But we found what looks like the right gardener, and spoke with what looks like the right contractor. And found what looks like the perfect power lift recliner. Now all we need is the house to put them in...

Sunday I actually got in some good walking -- home from N's after taking the Honda back.

There are links in the notes, as usual. I'm going to post this and try to get to bed; I've been sleeping badly recently.

Almost a week. Starting out rather rough: the YD was injured in a near-accident on the bus on Monday, Colleen had an endoscopy appointment on Wednesday (mine is this week), and in between I was very stressed and close to overload. This makes bears grumbly. Grumble.

On the other paw, the house gets closer and closer to reality. It's going to be a strange household -- strange even by Seattle polyamorous fandom standards, I suspect -- but it'll work. It'll work precisely because of its strangeness. Hmm. That really wants a separate post, doesn't it?

It's not something I ever expected. Living with kids younger than my younger brother's grandkids? Taking on over half a megabuck in debt when I'm old enough to retire? Am I crazy? Of course. And I have the prescriptions to prove it.

Quite a few excellent links, spanning much of the Space Marine kerfuffle.

Not such a long week. But both productive and exhausting in its own way.

Sunday of Conflikt was pretty good, especially Jeff Bohnhoff's "Alternate Guitar Chords" workshop, and some great music. But around, what, 4pm? Colleen's scooter abruptly stopped working. Dead in its tracks, with the battery indicator happily stuck at the halfway point, where it's always been for the last several months. The YD, who was accompanying Colleen between buildings, proceeded to panic. I talked her through pushing the scooter back indoors and plugging in the charger.

As soon as I could, I got down there, to find that there was enough charge in the battery to move slowly, but not fast -- push too far and it would simply cut off. So charging helps. I had some difficulty persuading the YD to help me get Colleen all the way into the conference center and up to the Conflikt lobby, where she would be warm and have music and company while the battery charged.

At which point it developed that the YD needed to get home and finish her homework. Due Monday. Oooooookay then. I drove her home, which gave me the opportunity to drop off most of the luggage, swap vehicles, and snag a walker at Naomi's in case charging the battery didn't help.

But of course it did help -- the battery finished charging, and the scooter was just fine. I still don't trust it.

Monday was reasonably productive, plus the inevitable odds and ends of paperwork. Despite coming down with the con crud. The chills came on the way home; I went to bed early, under a pile of blankets.

I woke up feeling as though I was swimming in sweat, of course, and wisely decided to work from home. I got through two new API methods that had been scheduled for two days each.

Which was a good thing, since I wasn't quite as productive Wednesday, when I had a urology appointment in the morning and got to sit around while Colleen had an MRI in the afternoon. All afternoon, as it turned out. So much for going in and pushing my changes to the local github in mid-afternoon. I started writing functional tests.

... but all in all not that bad a week, considering.

The main event this week was the arrival of the storage towers and lamp I ordered from Best Buy. There were also health worries, and my stuff is being moved into a new cubical over the weekend. I think about half the people in the Seattle office are getting shuffled around.

I get two nice things out of the move. First was having to leave at 2pm on Friday, which meant I could walk to REI -- about half an hour's walk, on a beautiful clear day -- and buy a hat. It's called a "Seattle Sombrero"; I'm hoping it will be waterproof.

The second is a lockable cabinet where I can stash my (non-lockable) laptop. That means I won't have to lug the darned thing to and from work five times a week. I don't need the extra weight.

My back was hurting quite a lot by the time I got home on Friday. And I've been having some sharp pains when I lift things that make me worry about developing a hernia -- this is something I *do* *not* *need* right now.

Also I'm still gaining weight, and I get very stiff in the evenings.

I got my lab results back; the doctor noted that she was worried about my triglycerides, which are 186 (normal 150 or less). When I see her next, in a couple of weeks, I will tell her that it's the second-lowest number in a decade. Probably time to increase my niacin and linseed oil. (Ok, the bottle is labeled "flax oil". Same thing. It's a dietary supplement and a furniture finish.)

About those CD towers. When I ordered them and looked at the shipping tracker it said "4 boxes, 76 pounds". Shipping was free. What I didn't realize was that the weight given wasn't the total, it was the weight of the heaviest package. Of which there were two, plus two smaller boxes of 36lbs. Gleep. The Younger Daughter was *not* pleased, even with access to my hand truck.

I took it nice and slow, and put one together over the course of three days. I had figured on it taking two people to flip the thing over and drag it into position, but it glided easily over the carpet, and was actually quite easy to lift. Yay trigonometry!

As for links, I have been eagerly following the poems from YsabetWordsmith's January Poetry Fishbowl, and especially the ones in her new series, An Army of One, which is science fiction about a society of autistic people. Very cool idea.

It was rather an expensive weekend, but worthwhile. I really needed a break, and had dozens of things to do -- I'm glad I took the two days off again this week.

Saturday I ordered new batteries for Colleen's scooter. It turns out that they're available in 17, 18, 20, and 22 amp-hour in the same package. I got the big ones. Meanwhile, the old batteries are still working after a fashion. I'm reasonably certain that only one of the pair is dead.

We went out to Costco, where we bought a 32" TV. Samsung. It's only 720P; although abstractly I might have prefered 1080P, it really makes no difference at a 20' viewing distance. It fits neatly on the shelf above the printers, and I got it hooked up to both the BD player and the Mac mini. So, YAY!

Sunday, in addition to setting up the TV, I drove over to Naomi's and we went out for a walk. Nice! We'll have to do that more often. We had turkey for dinner -- Albertson's had 14lb birds for $.69/lb. There were 4lb turkey breasts in the same section that cost 50% more than a whole bird. Unfortunately, in spite of being labeled fresh, the bird was actually partly frozen. I scoched the top and set off the fire alarm. Fortunately just in the apartment; we had sense enough to open the porch door, not the hallway.

Monday, I went online and bought some furniture: two "Spinning Multimedia Tower"s, and a "Media Storage Lamp". The towers hold a huge number of disks -- over 1000 CDs each. We'll need both of them. The lamp is just the right size to stand in the space just in front of the recliners, and hopefully contain the pile of clutter that invariably accumulates there.

I went out for a walk in the late afternoon, and stopped in at Fred Myers to look at electronics. (Nominally, an ethernet switch, since I'm out of ports on the WiFi router.) While there, I saw a familiar figure heading toward the back of the store, and joined forces with Naomi. She drove me home, and stayed for a little while.

After N. left, James and Chaos arrived; I took them back to J's around 11pm so as not to have to drive with the drunks. I came back, and Colleen and toasted the New Year.

I also went online and made last-minute contributions to Planned Parenthood, Carleton College, and Heifer International. I have someone a goat for New Year's, which made Naomi (whose totem is a chamois) very happy. It was contagious, making for a particularly happy New Year's Eve.

Links in the notes, as usual. Hippo Gnu Ear, and may 2013 be a huge improvement over 2012.

OK, I guess that could also have been "done this month". Felt like it, too. Between a dentist appointment (crown prep, only I think I also ended up getting a root canal out of the deal), and some unexpected errand-running, I ended up missing about 6 hours worth of work. Managed to make up most of it, but not all. PTO would have been really nice to have had.

On the other hand, it was a pretty productive week, both at work and at home. So I'm not going to complain too much. I am going to complain, though. I Do Not Need the many kinds of stress that I had to deal with. No, I'm not going into details; you can probably figure most of it out from the notes.

There were some good things, though. Went to Alderwood Mall with Colleen, Emmy, and Naomi. Oysters for lunch at Anthony's -- yum!

On the gripping hand, with several restaurant meals under my belt (literally), my weight has crept up over 200. Do Not Like. And my blood pressure is edging up into the Not So Good range; both of these are probably related to my having run out of my BP pills, which include a diuretic. (Not to worry -- I'm still on one of my two BP-related meds, and will be setting up an appointment soon to deal with the rest of it.)

Found out that one of the developers in my "pod" is 25 years old. That's younger than my older daughter! No wonder he seems a little inexperienced...

Um...

The YD's laptop wasn't charging. She was freaking out about it for a day or so, until she noticed that the charging cord was badly frayed just at the strain relief. Problem solved, since it was a 19V charger and I had another in my Big Box of (power) Bricks. Win.

Quote of the week: "[I have] started thinking about the contradictions inherent in the fact that I like learning things, but am very uncomfortable when I feel that I'm out of my depth. Fallacy somewhere, I fancy."

Link of the week: The Wordsmith's Forge - Poem: "The Formless Ones". Very powerful; possibly triggery (nightmares and PTSD following rape). Part of Ysabet's "Path of the Paladins" series; I think it stands pretty well on its own, but you might want to chase links from her serial poetry page to the rest of it.

I'm also intrigued by the idea of An asexual YA heroine? Why not?. As I said in a comment there, " I have no idea where I am on the a/sexual a/romantic spectrum -- alexithymia will do that -- but it's more on the a- side these days, and a book like this would probably have done me a lot of good when I was a YA."

We had eight people for Thanksgiving -- the three residents, Naomi and her kids, and Chaos and her BF. I made the turkey; the kids and Chaos peeled the potatoes, the YD cut them up, I mashed them, and Colleen made the dressing. The YD had made pumpkin pie the night before. Yum. We have a fridge full of leftovers; a 20-lb bird, a huge bowl of dressing, and a 10-lb bag of potatoes will do that. That's ok.

We do have to remember that the turkey takes more like 10 minutes/lb when it's not stuffed. I used the meat thermometer and cooked it to 165; there were a cuple of spots that were just barely not umdercooked, but it was all tender and juicy.

Gratitude in the next post.

Having to squeeze 8 people into the living room made for a good excuse for cleaning. I put several boxes of books onto shelves, and stacked the remaining boxes (mostly not books) along the walls, with only a smallish tower left standing at the end near the desk. We set up our folding chairs, and it worked.

I worked 3 hours from home yesterday, which was enough to compensate for the time I took off Monday for a dentist appointment, but not for the two days' worth of unpaid vacation. :(

Working from home will get easier, now that I have the RSA software token working for VPN access. It uses Wine, but the app works, so I'm not complaining. VPN isn't working yet, because I neglected to bring home the how-to documents. but I'm hopeful.

I've been sleeping altogether more than I'd like, and not all that well. Thursday night especially -- I crashed a little before 10pm, woke up at 1:30 with my left knee painfully locked up and covered with sweat; went back to sleep and didn't get up until 9. Apparently I needed the sleep.

My Nexus 7 arrived Wednesday, and was waiting for me when I got home. Cool. A little heavy, and I'm not certain it's going to be readable enough to serve as a phone book, but definitely a slick piece of gear. I'm loving the soft keyboard, which combines click and swipe action; I'm going to install the backport on my phone.

That reminds me; I still have to upgrade the phone to Android 4.0 (ICS).

I really should spend the rest of the day sorting stacks of paper, some of which is important. Donwanna.

OK, a weekend short of two weeks. Too much to summarize. Elections happened. (You'll find a bit of analysis in the links.) Work happened. Looked in several of the local stores for a Nexus 7, and didn't find one. Guess I'll have to order online. Upgraded my netbook to Ubuntu 12.04, and Colleen's to 12.10 because .04 was a disaster. .10 isn't perfect, but at least it supports the Dell's stupid Poulsbo video. Sorta. Still doesn't suspend properly, which sucks.

There also seems to be something majorly wrong -- it can take up to 20 minutes to boot! I suspect disk, but it could be something even more serious. We discussed options; she may be better off with an Android tablet or chromebook. I forwarded her email to her gmail account, which pretty much takes care of the only reason for connecting to the in-house network. That's still flaky, probably because of interference.

Last weekend also included a massage from N, who is studying massage therapy at Cortiva. She's *good*, and I especially enjoyed having her talk through what she's doing and observing. It also started me off on a week's worth of link-chasing around anatomy, and especially muscles.

I ran out of my morning BP pills (lisinopril/HCTZ) on Sunday, so have been watching my blood pressure. Unfortunately I didn't get a couple of baseline readings last week. It's marginally pre-hypertensive now, but not worrisome; I'll see what happens in the next week. By which time the supply I mail-ordered from Kaiser should be here, assuming they ship to ex-members. One reason I'm not particularly worried is that I'm still on doxazosin for my BPH, and was noticing occasional dizziness on standing up. Which suggests that it may have been too much before.

Noteworthy quotes:

"Hmm... my panic attacks feed on fear, they lie all the time, they try to control me, they threaten me with dying and going to hell, and they don't care in the slightest for logic. They can be defeated by ridicule, because for all their bluster they aren't very bright, but they don't admit defeat; they just regroup with another dirty tactic and try again. Maybe they're Republicans?" --Nora Rivkis in Facebook

Colleen: I hate it when my Kindle freezes.

Me: Speak sharply to your little toy / And boot it when it freezes. / It only does it to annoy / Because it knows it teases.

All the horrible details, plus bonus links, in the notes below. Feel free to give them the tl;dr treatment. I need to start doing this more often.

Well. This was my first week at work in six months. It'll take a while for me to get the hang of it, and for the stress to go away. It's demanding, and promises to stay demanding, and I'd gotten very used over the last 6 months to having lots of free time.

The whole week was mostly paperwork and setup. It's my first encounter with development using Windows, Eclipse, and Maven. Plus Rally. Confluence is familiar, at least, and along with the two other new guys I've made a few edits to the "new developer setup" page. So... yeah. Steep learning curve. I hope to be writing code next week. I'd better be.

I like commuting by bus. This is a good thing, because as a contractor I don't get free parking. I don't get a lot of things. Like paid vacations. Orycon is going to be a weekend blitz this year. Fortunately it's only a 3-hour drive; we'll be able to drive down after work on Friday and come back Sunday night.

My stupid body seems to have decided it wants at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Do Not Have The Time! I especially miss having an extra hour or two to myself in the morning. One hour (if I get up at 7 and leave at 8) is barely enough for the usual round of drugs, nose-watering, tooth-brushing, and a quick breakfast. A shower is pushing it. Well, maybe I'll get into a stable schedule eventually.

Apropos of tooth-brushing, we went to Costco and I found a two-pack of Sonicare teethbrush (that's the plural of toothbrush, isn't it?). They'd been strongly recommended by my new hygienist. We did end up spending quite a lot more there than I'd intended.

I also spent more than I'd intended at the Container Store, getting tracks and standards for the living room. I finally decided not to try anything fancy. I have one, 4' shelf up, for the guinea pig cage. It's a huge improvement. I also got a pair of stacking bamboo shelves to go between the chairs - the stack is low enough that it fits under the overhang of the arms, and I've clipped a pair of drink holders onto the end. Big win.

Today I may have time to buy wood for the bookshelves.

Colleen had wanted to check out Bellevue Square, which is next door to Lincoln Square (where the Container Store is), so we did that. Ghastly. It's laid out so that you have to do a lot of backtracking if you're on a scooter, plus it's noisy and crowded. We didn't even bother with the first floor -- there was a long line for the elevators. If it wasn't for having the only Container Store in the state I wouldn't go back there at all.

I did some cooking -- Polish sausage with beans, carnitas soft tacos, ... The really huge thing this week was that Colleen cooked dinner on Friday! That's wonderful progress -- it's been a really long time since she was able to do that. The fact that our kitchen is almost an ideal layout for scoot-through cooking helps. She only needed help a couple of times; getting a hot pot of pasta between the stove and sink for draining is still well beyond what she's capable of. So far.

Some links. Watch out for the first one -- it's going to be very triggery for some people. Harrowing and heartbreaking, but you need to see Amamda Todd's video if you can handle it.

Feeling good, and even optimistic, is something of a new concept for this old bear. I am having a little trouble wrapping my fuzzy head around it. Does that make sense?

There is still the nagging worry that, now that I've turned in the last of my paperwork, $K or $D will reject me at the last minute. I don't really believe it'll happen, but we're not talking rationality here.

The dresser arrived Saturday. It's lovely, and large, and went a long way toward organizing the bedroom. Now it's my side of the bed that's still a mess. That'll be harder, because there's noplace to put a dresser there.

Having given up on the foolish notion of putting a desk next to the bed on my side, I went over to Naomi's and gound the pieces for my old computer desk. The one I made a couple of years before Chaos was born, and put into storage when we remodeled the Starport the first time. It's now on the short wall of the living room next to the sliding door onto the balcony. I'm gong to put an Elfa track over it this morning, and have already moved the printers and strung Cat-5 over to the phone jack in the kitchen.

Putting the rolling file under the desk where it belongs naturally adds a fair amount of space -- it is now possible to walk to the gray recliner when people are sitting in both facing chairs. Which is good, because the corner by the desk is still pretty crowded.

Now I just have to move the computers: nova and the inside router (starport) to the desk, and the outside router (polaris) to the kitchen. Unfortunately, there's no phone jack in the area that is pretty clearly meant to be the entertainment corner. Not so odd, really; the apartment building predates DSL. I might be able to summon up the energy to do it this morning -- it has to be a morning when the two women are asleep so that nobody wants to use the net connection.

Oh, and I used my SAD light Monday, for the first time since the move. Maybe it'll help. I'm also trying to shift my schedule back to waking up at 6:30 instead of 7:30 or 8; I need at least an hour in the morning to get out the door in reasonable working condition. Preferably two, but that will take longer, I suspect.

Links, as usual, in the notes. Check out "It’s Opus, it rocks and now it’s an audio codec standard!" and The Wordsmith's Forge - Unsold Poetry from the October 2-3, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl. I put money on two poems from this: "The Cybernetic Sorcerers" (co-sponsor because of net-lag) and "Promises to Keep" (which combines global warming and sea monsters).

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment at 11am, to get my teeth deep-cleaned. As I was pulling in to the parking lot I got a phone call from $K (the contract agency) saying I'd gotten the contract at $D.

In spite of the fact that I think I'd probably prefer a full-time job at $T, which is a smaller company with a really cool product that I actually want to use, the timing for that just isn't likely to work out -- I haven't even had a phone interview yet (I expect one this afternoon, but still...) So my mood has been distinctly mixed -- it was something like depression last night. (I'll get to that later.)

The teeth-cleaning went very well -- the hygienist was surprised that I was able to handle it with just a topical anesthetic. Yeah, there were a couple of twinges, but I often get worse from my arthritis just getting out of bed in the morning, and much worse after sitting with my legs crossed for half an hour.

Which brings us to the evening, when I was feeling depressed, and made a joke about something I thought was unrelated that N. misinterpreted as sounding suicidal. And then couldn't get back in touch with me.

Apparently several of my followup IM messages simply got dropped on the floor between here and there. And she couldn't raise me by phone or text, apparently because I was reading a book in the Kindle app! The text, in fact, finally arrived a minute or so after I exited the app. WTF?????!!! Anyone ever encounter that one?

OK, getting back to the down mood. I don't know how much of that is due to uncertainty over $D vs. $T, how much is due to simple relief, and how much is due to the fact that I've gotten used to being "retired". Have I mentioned alexithymia lately? It means that, very often, I don't know what I'm feeling. It's a problem.

A few links in the notes, though nothing exceedingly noteworthy.

I finally made the call to my benefits people that I should have made two months ago, to find out what the options and prices were going to be to keep my medical and dental COBRA coverage going. I was not expecting the total to be more than the mortgage on the old house! $2100. I am *so* *screwed*

And I actually have a gap in coverage, between the end of this month (when Ricoh stops paying for it) and the time I pay my first bill. At which point they cover me retroactively. I went ahead and got my crown started before I knew the details, but that'll be ok.

I still have a month, I *think*, to sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan. Anyone have recommendations re: GroupHealth vs. Blue Cross/Blue Shield? If I can get into that now, I can drop my COBRA coverage and just go with Colleen and the YD.

On the job front, $A3 looked at my resume and said "other candidates are more qualified". So much for that. $A also rejected me -- that was actually a relief. On the other hand, my interview at $D was the easiest so far -- I think I have a good chance at that.

And on the gripping hand, the CTO at $T wants to talk to me on Wednesday. Looking at the company and what they do, I *really* *really* want it. And I think I'm a good fit. And it's a cool product -- I signed up for a month's free trial, and at $40/year may very well keep it. Unlimited file sharing from your own computers, with nothing stored in the cloud.

Only problem is the overlap with $D, which I expect to hear about next week. They'll probably want me to start on the 15th. Tight.

I went to my interviews by bus again. I *love* being this close to the bus line and downtown.

Links in the notes, as usual.

Bad week. No biscuit.

I went in to my interview on Tuesday with $COMPANY feeling very optimistic. I was wrong. Thursday I found out that they didn't want me. CRASH.

Now, of course, I can see all the ways I screwed myself over. Going back years, to not being more involved in open source projects and not keeping my skills up-to-date. And back six months to the layoff, not keeping office hours and browsing the web instead of working through the skill-building list I set up right at the beginning. And back one month to the interviews at $COMPANY, not starting in right away playing with their software. Sure, I spent a lot of time reading the documentation, but I didn't have anything to show for it.

That was stupid.

I get my last severance check at the end of next week. Damned if I know what happens to my COBRA health coverage -- they were paying for it up until now. I'm going to have to spend all next week scrambling.

Um... in other news, I've been doing a fair amount of walking, finally. Including a nice ramble around the Convention Center and Freeway Park, after my interview.

Lots of good links, including the awesome xkcd: Click and Drag (zoomable view and more in the notes) and some great open-source stuff by way of Linux Weekly News, which I'm finally catching up on.

Another week gone by. Do people prefer the weekly dumps, or daily dribbles? Inquiring minds and all that.

Worrying news on the job front -- $COMPANY, which last I heard was about to hire me as soon as they got through some back-office stuff, has re-organized. There's a new hiring manager, and apparently he has some concerns. AARGH! I have a new set of interviews on Tuesday. If this falls through I'm unlikely to get anything before my severance pay runs out.

In retrospect it's a good thing I couldn't get a Friday slot -- I apparently came down with a 24-hour virus of some sort. With luck I'm over it now, but I was pretty miserable yesterday afternoon and evening. Went to bed 10:30ish and slept for 11 hours.

In other news, I've done a little music with Naomi, and fixed a mysterious problem I'd been having with my mail reader.

I have been realizing more and more how much we'd been relying on Colleen's support network back in San Jose: Liz (and Marty and Alison before her), Safeway.com, ... Housekeeping, shopping, and driving Colleen places are nearly a full-time job. I'll be happy when the YD gets her license.

Speaking of the YD, she's an official AVON Representative now.

I want a Nexus 7 and a pair of Want. Also want Equator D5 Studio Monitors. Grump. When I get a job, damnit...

Since the Hugos were announced, I've been reading Digger by Ursula Vernon, the winner for best graphic story. Go read it -- it's amazing.

Lots of links, as one would expect for a week's worth.

Well, it's less than a week since my last update; must be getting a little better. I've made slow but steady progress on unpacking and setup -- there are shelves up over the bed now (still room for one more, but I can't find the necessary brackets -- they must still be in a box somewhere). Probably one I didn't pack, which will make it harder to find. But progress.

I had several phone interviews, and a full day of interviews at $COMPANY on Wednesday. That one looks like a great fit for me, and I'm told they agree, but until I have an offer in hand I'm still officially looking.

Many thanks to egoldberg.

I took the bus to my interview -- major win. Yesterday, when the YD wanted a ride to the convention center to meet somebody who was there for PAX, I pointed her at the bus. It's under half an hour on the 522, which compares favorably to my commute by car from San Jose to Menlo Park. One thing I'm still getting used to is how much smaller Greater Seattle is than the SF Bay Area -- it's 50 miles from San Jose to San Francisco. I like being this close to downtown.

I also took a couple of nearly-three-mile walks. Go me! Now let's see whether I can do that more often.

Not surprisingly the links down in the raw notes are full of political crap and job-search hints.

Good grief, indeed! It looks like this post is going to try to cover an eventful two-and-a-half weeks; there's no way I can do it justice.

tl;dr: Our Stuff arrived two weeks ago, I flew down and got the Honda and more Stuff, and we're gradually getting unpacked and settled in. I still don't have a job, or even any interviews scheduled, so I've decided to offer dinner at the Herb Farm to anyone who finds me one.

And now a few highlights.

The movers arrived on Wednesday, having had another stop along the way because our 17,000+ pounds of stuff only filled about 2/3 of their big-rig. Props to Billy, who managed to get the rig parked next to our entrance, which the apartment office staff had assured me was next to impossible. Billy and Pam were the husband-and-wife team of drivers; I can't praise them, United Van Lines, Chipman Relocation, and the loading and unloading teams too highly. A very smooth, painless, hassle-free operation.

... that left us with an apartment full of boxes, of course. We still have more Stuff than space, even after paring down a lot and storing almost half of it in N's garage. Well, we knew the job was impossible when we took it.

Speaking of jobs: I got my rejection from EnergySavvy, so I now have nothing on the schedule because the move totally ate my brain. I have until the end of September before my severance pay runs out.

I do not like it, Sam-I-Am.

Two weeks ago (Monday the 30th), something finally clicked in my head, and the apartment felt like home. I was in the kitchen; I knew where everything was, it was small and comfortable and convenient, and I felt like I belonged here. It's still scary, but only because of the job problem, not the move. I like it here.

I discovered something else about myself: I like giving stuff away to people who will give it a good home. More than like it -- it's *wonderful*. I'd been talking with Nathan, the guy who owns the painting service that did such a good job on the interior. I'd been referred to him because he's in a Christian group with Liz. Anyway, the conversation turned to music, and the instruments we play, and he asked about the beat-up old mandolin in the "what the heck do I do with this?" pile by the garage door. And then the balalaika, which I'd bought on a whim in high school and never learned to play.

I ended up giving them to him. I felt both relief in simplifying them out of my life, and joy -- mudita, actually -- in seeing how happy the gift made him. A very middle-sized-bear thing, I think. And I realized that this was one of the things that was making the move an enjoyable experience.

I also realized how much I enjoy traveling by myself.

One reason I haven't been posting has been the difficulty of connecting to the fileserver from outside the firewall; I think I've finally fixed most of that, but also copied my emacs-based posting client onto the netbook. We'll see how that works in a few minutes...

Loads of links in the notes, of course.

Oh, good grief! An entire week... maybe I should just give up and post weekly. It's been a long month since last Saturday.

The big news was the bad news from Google: they don't want me. All my "cautious optimism" collapsed in a heap Thursday evening, leaving me to wonder how in hell I'm going to pay for the move, the house improvements, and Colleen's ferociously expensive meds. Two months of overlap between work and severance pay would have covered it.

I'm probably screwed. I have one set of interviews scheduled for Friday, but I've been letting the move (and the web :P) take most of my attention. I decided Thursday night that the move had better take all of it for now -- the movers come Wednesday.

*sigh*

I am getting the packing done, at least. A little belatedly; and I'm probably going to panic tomorrow night. The office still has seven boxes and a handful of flats to sort through, and the tools in the garage and bedroom need to be boxed. Gleep! We'll manage, though, because we have to.

"You do what you have to" is familiar, at least -- it was my mantra all through the year Dad was dying and I was flying back and forth to Florida to see him as often as I could. And again, the six months Colleen was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes and I burned through my sick time, most of my vacation time, and about 150% of my cope visiting and taking care of her.

I had help then, and I do now. Liz, Og, and Devon are awesome! And Colleen keeps assuring me "we'll make it." I hope so.

Lots of links. Many of them, unfortunately, are also bad news. Can't be helped.

When we left our intrepid, if somewhat reluctant, adventurer he was in the process of moving in to his new apartment in Lake Forest Park. (When the rest of the family arrived on Tuesday it somewhat inevitably acquired the name North Starport; the only other serious contender was Starport North, but that doesn't have the built-in pun that justifies the new URL.)

Tuesday the 3rd was busy. I had an interview at Facebook (that resulted in a rejection, and a severely dented passenger-side front door thanks to a concrete post in the parking garage) in the morning, came back to Shoreline for some badly-needed rehearsal time, then down to Seatac to pick up Colleen and the YD at the airport.

That's when I found out that Colleen was en route to the ER, having gashed her leg on a closing fire-door coming out of the jetway. GLEEP! (And someone dinged the front bumper of my car in the Lowes parking lot.) By the time we finally got everybody back to the apartment and got settled in, I was pretty thoroughly frazzled.

Internet turned on sometime Tuesday as well; it was supposed to have been the previous Thursday, but I'd given them the street number of the office rather than of the building. Oops. But at least I could be frazzled with a live net connection.

I'd brought up quite a lot of stuff in the van, but there were still some omissions. Like, a phone cable and a computer power cord. Minor -- I made do quite well with the netbook, though stuff like posting on DW went by the wayside. Oh, and pillows. I borrowed a set from the Wolfling, who stayed with us in the apartment Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Tuesday evening we had dinner with Chaos and her new BF, Rabbit (James).

Wednesday we made our expedition to Central Market. Thursday we had dinner with Naomi and her kids, then made our way to the Seatac Doubletree for Westercon.

Saturday was my concert. Formal setlist and recordings later, one hopes; for now, the set was The Fox, As You See, Wheelin, The River, Riverheart, Boom Gone To Bust, Kitchen Heroes, and Inherit the Earth. The first half was something of a minor trainwreck, but I felt good about the second half.

A few good conversations at the con; nothing very deep, but people are glad to see us moving up to the area.

Monday was a full day of interviews at Google's Seattle office. I really hope I get that one.

Yesterday noonish we set out for finally set out for home. Old home? The apartment -- and the PNW -- is already starting to feel a lot like home. There's nothing like a couple of drives through the desert to make one long for a place where it's cool and moist a lot of the time.

Things are proceeding apace. We had our first home survey by a mover (we had our second today, and there's one scheduled for tomorrow and two on Monday). I was rejected by Zillow, which hurt a bit -- they were my favorites of the ones I'd interviewed at so far. I got the van serviced (the Honda will have to wait until I get back from Westercon). I packed quite a few boxes (though not as many as I'd like).

I received a coding test from EnergySavvy (which I finished a couple of hours ago), have a phone interview with Google scheduled, and things are moving along with Isolon and Facebook.

I had lunch with Colleen at Buck's on Tuesday.

Yesterday I noticed a couple of instances of slowing down and feeling overwhelmed. They've been going on for a while; I'm not sure whether I'm more disturbed by the instances themselves, or the fact that I haven't really taken note of them until now.

No music to speak of beyond a little noodling, but at least it'll keep my fingers tough and nimble. No walkies. Growf.

Some links.

No walk. Hot. Not much else, either -- read SF short stories online, and watched bits of the ACM A.M. Turing Centenary Celebration webcast. It's archived, so I don't feel bad about missing most of it. When I'm physically attending a conference I can stay focussed; there appear to be too many distractions at home.

Quotes of the day:

Vint Cerf: It's like raising teenagers. You don't know how to do it; you just live through it and one day they turn into people.

Paul Saffo: In 100 years we still won't have a computer that can pass the Turing test, but we will have proved that most members of Congress fail it.

Two boxes of books packed from the office, and three boxes of recycling accumulated. The third is still in the office because the recycling bin is, as usual, full.

Linkie: Linus Torvalds Wins Joint Millennium Technology Prize.