The Mandelbear's Musings

It's been a long month so far, but not nearly long enough. We've been packing the apartment, and running a van-load of boxes down to Rainbow's End nearly every day -- we're just having the movers take the furniture from the apartment. We'll have the Memorial Day weekend to clean up. Oh, did I mention the movers? Right.

Moving day for North Starport is this coming Friday. GLEEP! House! Move! Yard! The other reason I've been down at the house nearly every evening is to water the newly-sodded lawn. It's gorgeous. And the deck. And...

At the same time, I'm worried. There's no turning back from here -- this had better work. I think it will. That doesn't keep the late-night doubts away completely, but it helps. I'll probably still miss the Starport from time to time, but Rainbow's End is wonderful.

Lots of great links; I don't really have time to go over the list. That's what happens when you don't post for nearly three weeks -- I have to get *out* of that bad habit.

Somehow it doesn't seem as though much happened. A quick look at the house shows that this is not entirely true -- huge progress has been made on the improvements, tens of thousands of dollars have been flung around with abandon (including a 50% down payment on the landscaping, and starting a household checking and savings account), the front yard, massage studio, and lower front bedroom have been torn apart, several new holes have appeared, and so on.

None of this was my doing, of course, except for the financing. I have merely been plugging along at my job, filing the inevitable extension on my taxes, and generally muddling along considerably more slowly than I would like.

This week's quote/self-observation comes from Friday: "Middle-sized bears are extremely timid creatures, but are occasionally so oblivious that it doesn't matter."

Meanwhile, Seattle has been declared #2 among the 12 best places to live in the U.S.. San Francisco is #1. I think the Twin Cities cheated, with Minneapolis nabbing 12th place and St. Paul coming in 10th. (The differential doesn't surprise me -- St. Paul is a university town.)

Other good links amongst the 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.

Did I mention that I hate roller coasters? This last week has been one.

Tuesday started out great -- Naomi picked me up and drove us down to Cortiva, her massage school, which was having a free clinic day. I had two lovely massages, concentrating on my back, shoulders, arms, hands, and calves. N's new GF was there, too. We had a couple of nice talks.

Then at 4pm I was in a suspiciously small meeting with Ryan, the manager in charge of the Disney ID group, who had hired me back in October. Sure enough, there had been a surprise budget cut. My last day will be March 8th.

Same day as the house closing. Oops.

From there it was all downhill; I gave the bad news to our real estate broker, who at first said to go through with it anyway, and then had second thoughts. Thursday I spent packing, trying to work from home, fielded a phone call from a headhunter and a phone interview with Limelight Video Platform. (I now have three headhunters and one company recruiter working on the problem, and it looks as though there won't be much more than a few weeks of gap between jobs.)

I also spent Thursday getting more and more fragile and frazzled; by the time we got to the airport I was pretty much a wreck, and by the time we finally got in to the hotel and got to bed I was seriously depressed.

Sometime Friday morning, while I was out at Fry's buying a new power brick for the netbook (I'd brought one; I just didn't realize that it was still set up for Colleen's Dell), I got a call from the mortgage broker, Kathryn, who said that the deal was still on. She'd explained to Dave that, although Disney had terminated my contract early, I was still employed by the contract agency, KForce. SHE UNDERSTANDS!

Now, if only the underwriter understands. That's still a risk, and I'm not going to be comfortable until I have the keys in my hot little hands. It could make my last day at Disney rather interesting.

And we could still end up with no house, and a pile of new furniture in our living rooms. If that happens, Naomi wants to build. I think that could work, but only if we can figure out ways to cut the price drastically; a first cut put the construction costs at around $700K, which is about twice what I'd feel comfortable with.

This old spectacled bear is, I'm afraid, also a skeptical bear.

But, after spending much of Friday afternoon chasing down pay stubs and bank statements and emailing them to Kathryn, I felt much more relaxed. Margaritas, prime rib, and hugs from friends completed the process, and it looks like I'll actually be able to enjoy the con.

Did I mention that I'm at Consonance this weekend? I apparently hadn't mentioned it before, leading to several people wondering whether we'd show up this year. There were times when I had my doubts.

... so it looks like the loan will go through for buying our dream house, Rainbow's End. This last week was rather hellish -- among other things, the appraiser transposed some digits, and came in with an appraisal for 434 Leigh in San Jose, rather than 343. Cue huge kerfuffle and a quick-turnaround re-do. It was still lower than we needed, apparently, so we can't count the rental income toward my income, and my required mortgage insurance will be higher. We'll refinance when we sell the Starport; hopefully it will be worth more by then.

In other news, I had a colonoscopy (routine screening; nothing to worry about; recommended for anyone over 50) which will have to be re-done because I was too full of sh*t. I.e. the laxative didn't work well enough. WTF?

As usual, there are some links in the notes.

It's been a * l o n g * week, bracketed by cons. Last Saturday we day-tripped Rustycon (and decided that we probably won't bother next year -- it's small. This weekend was Conflikt. Which we will *definitely* be attending next year, but probably without the YD. She went this time because she was writing a term paper on it, but it didn't really seem to be her thing.

Last Sunday we put an offer down on the West Seattle house. It was down to the wire -- when we got there after having seen two places that were obviously unsuitable, we found that they were having an open house and had already received two offers. We offered $10K over the asking price. Monday was a nail-biter, but we got it! It's gorgeous. A full 2-bedroom apartment downstairs in the daylight basement, plus a 4-car garage on that level. Three bedrooms upstairs. And a great hall on top of the garage. I forsee parties, house filks, and house concerts in our future.

Needless to say, my work productivity suffered, as I spent far too much of my time on the phone or tracking down paperwork. The loan paperwork finally all came together at 4:45 on Friday, about the same time I got my functional tests running and marked "ready for QA".

Did I mention the lack of sleep? Mostly due to waking up at unreasonable hours with house worries. So we went into Conflikt already sleep-deprived.

I may have to leave most of Conflikt until later, but the music was fantastic and the Interfilk auction was one of the must entertaining in years. Even if I did end up winning a $100 bid to give the horrid wall-hangings, Harry and Henrietta Hemp, to Seanan. Who said she'd burn them in the parking lot. (The deal with the Hemps is that the winning bidder gets to say who they go to, and somebody had fingered us as people who hadn't had it yet.)

Health. We both had follow-up appointments with our PCP, Dr. Chopra, Saturday morning. Colleen had a dentist appointment Wednesday morning, I had an appointment with the sports medicine department Thursday morning. I got my SSRI dosage raised, and was told that my assorted joint, etc. problems would be solved if I lost (rather a lot of) weight. Thanks; I knew that.

I'd probably better go splat now (10:51 pm). Before I fall asleep at the keyboard. Again.

A fair amount of packing. Bought more book boxes. The woman who came over this morning to give us an estimate on moving said we have over 400 boxes worth of stuff. I gather that this is atypical.

Some more work on the router configuration, which finally appears to be working more-or-less properly.

I made another batch of black bean and corn salsa. Yum.

I ended the day feeling reasonably contented. That's probably mildly unusual; noticing it is even more unusual. So, yeah.

Quite a few links in the notes.

Monday I read LHH's book, Managing Your Search Project, did a little walking (in a mall, but it was so deserted that I could mostly walk in my usual pace), and spoke to my insurance agent. Determined that we're actually covered at about the right level, but that after we move we'll be paying quite a bit less because we won't be needing nearly as much coverage for liability or the contents of the house. So that'll be a net win. He's also getting us a referral to an agent in Shorline.

Yesterday, I went in to LHH for a class, and worked on my resume (which is now down to two pages, plus a 2-page list of projects. I also worked on my LinkedIn profile, though that still has a ways to go.

I spent a little time noodling on my guitar Monday but, as with walking, I've been neglecting it. Need to work on that, don't I? Music and walking are really about the only kind of regular self-care I'm at all interested in -- I should be doing them daily. :P

As for links, well... Daily Kos: 30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died kind of nails it.

Just Friday I wrote "ideal would be to rent the house to fans/hackers. It's perfect - server closet, 2 physical phone lines, shelf space... By Saturday evening we had a household lined up. They're fans, and want to carry on the Grand Central Starport traditions. The rent will cover the mortgage and insurance, and if we're lucky the market will bounce back a little over the next few years.

I spent a goodly amount of time Saturday working on my LinkedIn profile, and a little on my resume and portfolio site (at Stephen.Savitzky.net), and updated some of my other sites.

I took a walk on Friday -- a full three miles. Felt pretty good. And Saturday, after looking at quite a few alternatives, we ordered Colleen a new scooter, the Pride Go-Go Elite Traveller Plus HD. It's about an inch longer than her current scooter, and the deck is about four inches wider in front, which means she can get into it more easily and have a place to rest her feet. The wheels are bigger, too, so it will have less trouble with the kind of obstacles one encounters indoors and on the sidewalk.

Did I mention that I finally dealt with the $1K denied claim in my FSA account last week? It'll help.

We have started to friendcycle cookbooks. Fiction, and the nonfiction books in the office, will have to be tackled soon.

For today's link, see ysabetwordsmith's poem: "Ari and the Atheist" What does it mean to be an atheist in a world where everyone can see that the gods exist?

A fairly busy day, mostly spent doing cleanup of various sorts. I started by trimming my beard. I wrote a quick but passable index.html for Stephen.Savitzky.net, with links to my resumé and patents. I did some file and desktop cleanup at work.

Colleen contributed to the spring cleaning effort by acquiring a Dyson DC-26 vacuum cleaner and a Bissel SPOTbot. The Dyson is canister-style, small and light enough for her to wield from the scooter. Fairly expensive, but she used 20%-off coupons at BB&B, and they should last a long time. When she took the old vacuum in to a repair shop last week they told her to just put it out of its misery.

I also added a new tag, albatross, which refers to the house. It joins 8.3% (job search) and trainwreck (finances).

Hmm. Not a bad day, I guess, but no high points that I can remember, either. I had fun showing off the iPad cover I got over the weekend; it fits our new tablet almost perfectly. Stopped off at Central on the way home to try to find more, but they only had one left. Bought it, along with three zip-up cases that also work.

Did some work to prepare for our weekend guests -- mostly tracking down (and in some cases washing) bedding. The sewing-room closet has been reorganized recently, unfortunately not in a way that put the blankets anywhere reachable. They are now strewn about in the room, but easily tossed in when necessary.

Oh, and a 3-mile walk -- that's always good.

Plenty of links. Check out xkcd: Password Strength and the lovely Voyage-Air folding guitars.

So we had a party. It wasn't publicized nearly as well as it should have been (my bad), but we got three new adults and two kids, from fliers passed out at Baycon. So that's a win. Jilara and Andrew turned up a few minutes to midnight and we didn't get to bed until after 1. That's a win, too.

The eQuill tablet I brought home was a hit -- everyone I showed it to (which was, like, everyone) liked it. I'm glad I brought the earlier prototype, though; it still has better pen tracking (because the display driver for the production hardware is still being optimized). Altogether a win, though I wish I'd thought to put a long document on one of them to show off the fast page flipping. Next time.

I made what everyone agreed was a good chili, and got in a little noodling. No singing; I didn't get any requests, and didn't want to interrupt the ongoing conversations. That's ok.

One fascinating link: Shock: Windows 8 optimized for desktop tablets - Computerworld via The Mad Filkentist - Microsoft jumps the shark "Interestingly, the Metro UI handles files like the iPad -- documents and data files are associated with the application, and will be managed only from within applications. But in the Windows 7 window, you'll still have old-fashioned file management, where your data file locations are not associated with specific applications and can be moved copied, deleted or modified without reference to specific applications."

Yup, the shark is well and truly jumped. I think that the thing that's going to bite them in the end is that they still think that the user interface is part of the operating system. In fact, for them, the UI is the operating system -- they still call it "Windows", for goodness sake! Now, they've even moved the file system out of the OS and into the applications. In the Unix/Linux world I get to choose my UI, and share files between applications. Which means that I can script complex processes involving multiple tools.

Fun times ahead.

Another day that seemed pretty lazy, although signing papers for the refinance made a pretty good excuse for it. No walk, unless you count going from one end of El Paseo de Saratoga to the other and back, as part of the day's shopping expedition.

We can haz (yet another) mortgage. It's our second refi, but it consolidates the existing first mortgage with the equity line of credit, and saves about $750/month on payments. So much for going into retirement (if that ever happens) debt-free.

One of the links in this post of mine has inspired some good discussion on The future of the internet. I'm always happy to see my links getting out there. I need to write up some of my own ideas on the subject; I got stalled/sidetracked a few years ago and never finished the paper I was writing on secure document distribution.

We're looking for a loveseat/recliner for the living room.

The dinner I made was something approximating chicken piccata with rice, salad, and artichokes. Tasty.

I also did a fair amount of puttering/cleanup both in my home directory, and in the office and other parts of the house.

A reasonable number of links. See How to Read Ebooks | angelakorrati.com if you're thinking of getting an ebook reader.

I discovered, when I went to record a vocal track, that Audacity appeared to be seriously buggy. And that I didn't have a package for Ardour. It's possible, though, that Audacity's hanging was due, not to software problems, but a bad disk. It started getting odd errors in the middle of an upgrade a little later, and the fsck on the later reboot had a bundle of them. It still booted, but things were distinctly weird.

At this point I decided to replace the fileserver, as planned, and use the old box as my new desktop. I went out for a walk and a trip to Fry's (for a missing 20-24-pin power adapter). The upgrade went smoothly except for a bad or flaky KVM switch. :( But the office is a lot quieter now -- the nearest fan is the ceiling fan in the living room. (That'll change once I get the new desktop configured, of course. For now I'm on my netbook in the living room.)

Quite a lot of puttering, too, mostly having to do with lighting. Tossed the last of the incandescents from the lighting box into a bag for recycling, except for two appliance lights and a heat lamp. Somehow I don't think they make compact fluorescent heat lamps.

Some links, as usual.

ETA: I should add that no data were lost in the the wreckage of Dorsai's disk -- all of it lives on the fileserver, and a desktop machine has nothing but its installed OS, applications, and config files. The config files had been backed up Friday evening.

Sunday's main accomplishment was finishing the bedroom makeover by putting up the shelves on Colleen's side of the bed. Go me! Also some configuration work on Argo, the newer of my two Thinkpads.

My pedometer turned up -- it appears to have been found amid the clutter next to Colleen's chair, so it must have fallen off my belt during a kiss. So there's an umimpressive step count again.

River content: a random observation, a month or two after the conversation that it would have been in context in: I'm not so old that sex doesn't matter to me, but I'm old enough that love and companionship matter more.

Mom bought herself an iPad. She downloaded and printed the 150-page manual; it's apparently pretty useless. I'm not surprised.

A couple of links under the cut, as usual.

Yesterday was mostly about getting the bedroom done, or at least to the point where the new beds were in by bedtime. With help, I did it. Go me!

In the end I was pretty pleased with the accomplishment, but hurting and emotionally fragile. I slept well; a combination no doubt of tiredness, a hot bath, and cyclobenzaprine.

A couple of links under the cut.

Normally I would have posted a "Wishful Wednesday" last week. I didn't. I did post about The Great Bedroom Makeover last Saturday. Well, it's still on for Saturday (and probably Sunday as well), starting around noonish.

I'll be making big pots of chili and rice, and probably some guacamole. I'm afraid it conflicts with Kanef's housefilk, but I really don't expect people to stay all evening.

Also, signal boost: pocketnaomi's friend jackien1968 is looking for a place to live in the East Bay.

The dressers in our bedroom, though lovely, are about 20 years old and are starting to fall apart. (In particular, the back of Colleen's has cracked and partially popped off due to constantly trying to cram too many pairs of pants into it.)

Also, while there was plenty of room for a queen-sized bed, there's less room for a king. The plan is to replace them with Elfa shelving, possibly with some home-made additions. This will eventually be moderately expensive but can be done incrementally.

The room -- especially the carpet -- needs a thorough cleaning. And we need to swap the rented hospital beds for the ones I purchased recently.

So there's quite a bit of work in the offing. I'm pretty sure I can get the dressers emptied over the course of the week. Getting them out of the house is another matter. Swapping the beds also looks like a big job, though I've seen it done by one person.

Anyone feel like coming over next weekend and lending a hand? I'm planning to make a big pot of chili.

I got a very solid night's sleep, thanks to Bayer PM (aspirin and benedryl). Should probably not use that stuff too often.

I walked down to Safeway and back the long way; a decent walk, but I'm noticably out of shape after a weekend on my arse.

I narrowly averted a scheduling disaster between work and life, by moving a teleconference from 5pm to 6. (Couldn't move it earlier -- the other end's in Japan.) That will let me pick up pocketnaomi at the airport this afternoon and still finish the testing I need to do.

The downstairs guest room is ready, after several evenings of schlepping. The upstairs guest room has guests in it -- they'll be going home tomorrow morning.

Mary Travers is dead.

The main thing I did yesterday was to finish replacing the shelf bracket in the bedroom, and putting up new shelves. There are now three or four more than there once were, and a lot of the junk and clutter has been dealt with. There were a few treasures, like a picture of the YD taken at Baycon X, the year she was born.

I got in a 3-mile walk by Los Gatos Creek; my calf muscles were a bit sore, and were still a little tight when I got to the park, so I turned back. They were fine when I got back to the car. I should stretch more.

An unexpected call from Callie and a drive with Colleen ended the day on a calm, happy note. I should also mention that, in between other things, I ripped about a dozen CDs over the course of the weekend.

A lot of things still aren't getting done. Grumble.

It was a fairly productive day: puttering around the house, directing traffic as screaming_angel and the YD shuffled beds around, and chili verde for dinner. The latter was particularly well-received.

My shopping expedition with the YD to buy a bed frame and bedding, on the other hand, was something of a disaster: she was whiny and sullen; the whole thing left me exhausted, drained, and distressed. Her mood improved considerably after dinner when I suggested that she could work off the price of the bedding she wanted by picking up and vacuuming the guest room upstairs. She said, "I thought I might have to do something for that." Well, why in blazes didn't she offer instead of spending the entire afternoon glaring at me? Teenagers!

I'm told they grow out of it, if you let them live that long.

As is becoming normal for me, I had very little time to myself, and no walk. I don't know what to do about that: there simply isn't time for all the urgent stuff that has to be done, let alone the less-urgent stuff.

Yesterday morning the bedroom was cold and practically empty, with nothing on the newly-cleaned carpet but our two dressers, a chair, and a single hospital bed. This morning it's nearly as empty, but there's a second hospital bed with my wife sleeping contentedly in it. That makes all the difference in the world.

I told several people yesterday that Colleen's homecoming wouldn't seem real until this morning; that the new arrangement of beds wouldn't feel like our own bed until we'd slept in it together. I was right.

My sister-by-choice pocketnaomi said yesterday, "Welcome home to you too, mdlbear, since if you're anything like me, it becomes home for you when and because your partner's in it." She was right, too.

And hospital beds are lovely for breakfast in bed.

Colleen's home at last!!!

Even going to Cosentino's on the way home I was strangely anxious. It wasn't until we got home and ate lunch that I started relaxing. The house has its Cat again, and everything feels right at last.

I'm still worried about care. But we'll deal with it.

Meta: the discerning reader will note the transition from the colleen-200904 tag, which I used for planning the Cat's return, to colleen-200905, which will be used for health-related issues now that she's home.

The second hospital bed arrived about half an hour ago. I get to sleep with my wife tonight!

Happy Bear.

I am a tired but contented Bear; I have just finished clearing out and picking up the bedroom and sewing guest room.

The back bathroom is currently all but unusable because of pieces of bedframe parked in it, but I'll be able to move those into the guest room after it's been cleaned. Both rooms' closets are full (the boxes are all in the bedroom closet, because the guest room's closet was full before I started). There's a pile of boxes in the living room as well. The corner where Colleen's desk was is now empty; I have installed a temporary shelf there to get a few more things off the floor.

Basically I took it in small pieces: work until I got tired, then have a snack or some coffee and read LJ or email. I'm still tired, but I never overloaded or fell apart. Or even came close.

Lunch so far has consisted of string cheese, tofu (with horseradish and sweet onion relish on the side), salami, pepperoni, Greek olives, and pickles. And Green&Black 85% chocolate. With coffee.

The Stanley Steemer cleaning team will arrive sometime between 2pm and 6pm, with the hospital beds arriving sometime around 8pm. I expect to do a reasonable amount of working from home, starting about now.