The Mandelbear's Musings

For the first time in a couple of weeks. Anyway. Today I am thankful for...

• My financial advisors.
• Employment.
• Rainbow's End.
• The people and cats of Rainbow's End.
• IEEE 802.11N
• RFC 1149
• Whimsy

Hey, it's actually Thursday this week! I'm thankful for...

• A city that knows the difference between a victory parade and a riot, and goes with the parade.
• Mudita, especially for the local sportsball fans.
• Occasionally being able to identify feelings. Especially when they're not the familiar ones, e.g., depression.
• Commuting by bus.
• Weather.
• Cats.
• Cuddles.
• Peculiarity.

Today I'm thankful for:

• Progress (work and real estate, mostly).
• Family.
• Truffles. The Herb Farm. Sense enough to book us a room for the night.
• A *lovely* room.
• Coffee. Gin.

Hey, it's Thursday! Today I'm thankful for...

• A well-timed first paycheck, with welcome sign-on bonus. I'll have to save most of it; I'll probably need it for taxes.
• Paid vacation.
• Cats, and especially Curio-snuggles.
• Kitties and bears and goats, oh my!
• My younger daughter's new boyfriend. I love seeing her happy.
• 38 wonderful years, as of tomorrow.
• A party here on Saturday. See the Rainbow's End site for directions.

So, today I'm thankful for:

• Snow!!
• A job with flexible hours that I can commute to by bus. See above.
• Employment.
• Home and family.
• Colleen doing better, even if only a little -- sometimes that's all it takes. She's well enough and strong enough for car trips and shopping, which is *fantastic* for her morale and my budget.

I'm still having a little trouble getting back into the swing of Thankful Thursdays, but fortunately Colleen reminded me a few minutes ago. So today I'm thankful for:

• Colleen, first and foremost.
• An adjustment in her medication, going back to something that worked before and finding that it still does. The rest is TMI.
• Sleeping in Our Own Bed again.
• The stairlift, and warranty repairs made promptly and easily.
• Hugs.
• Cat cuddles. Cuddles in general, actually.
• Emmy taking a cooking class and doing her homework for the family.
• Interviews that appear to have gone well; interviews scheduled.
• Commuting by bus.

A lot to be thankful for. It's been a while.

• HOUSE! We're buying a house!! We found the right house!!! Burble.
• Having an income and credit score that made it possible to put in an offer and get it accepted. My credit score just squeaked by; things have gotten a lot more difficult since the days of sub-prime mortgages and easy money. Not complaining.
• The multifunction peripheral at work, and especially its fax function. I am not grateful for the paperwork, only for its ultimate goal and the ability to handle the stuff expeditiously.
• Colleen.
• My sister and soon-to-be-housemate, the amazing pocketnaomi. Who found THAT house, made arrangements, greased skids, made molehills out of mountains, and generally made things happen.
• My health, and the ability to continue coping when it breaks down somewhat.
• The git distributed version control system, which made it possible to work even in the absence of a VPN connection.
• Gainful employment.
• The filk community, and most recently Conflikt.

Yay! It's actually Thursday! And I'm thankful for...

• My dear sister-of-choice pocketnaomi, visiting from Up North.
• Tasty, inexpensive Indian buffet food.
• The internet, which makes it possible to research jobs in Seattle from my living room in San Jose, and keeps me in touch with far more people than I could possibly call or write letters to.
• That CRAY-1 in my pocket.
• Minions Friends.
• Fish.

I didn't exactly forget Thankful Thursday this week; I figured it might be sensible to wait and see what else I had to be thankful for. So, here we go:

• A good, long run at a good company.
• A final paycheck with over two weeks of vacation pay in it.
• Six months of severance pay, with full benefits.
• Moving to where there's no state income tax.
• Lots of fond goodbyes, and a card covered with good wishes.
• Early retirement, even if it's only hopefully for a few months.
• Renters for the house, at a rate that will cover the mortgage.
• Cope, including cope in a bottle.
• Little boxes.

A very special Thankful Thursday today. Today I am thankful for:

• Three weeks' notice and 6 months of severance pay
• Friends
• A great set of soon-to-be-ex coworkers
• My skill as a programmer and software architect
• My 65th birthday, in less than a week
• The Starport's annual "It's Green" party on Saturday.

Yup. Laid off, after 19.5 years at Ricoh. It's been a good run. I can't afford to retire; I took about half the equity out of my house, and the housing market has taken almost all of the other half. I'll consider work either locally (Silicon Valley) or in the Seattle area, broadening to include Oregon and Utah if it becomes necessary in a couple of months.

I'll have copies of my resume at the party on Saturday. See you there?

Hmm... Today I'm grateful for:

• Colleen.
• Naomi.
• 21^st century technology.
• Moore's law.
• Concert slots.
• Cyanoacrylate glue.

So, today I'm thankful for...

• Rain in a drier-than-usual season
• The same, only metaphorically
• The ability to make music
• The artists who hang out in crowdfunding
• My friends
• The Internet

So, on schedule for once, I'm thankful for...

• My family, both of blood and of choice. I lucked out.
• My friends. Yes, there's plenty of overlap.
• Cygnus (my netbook). I love her dearly, especially her keyboard.
• Good Drugs (better living through chemistry).
• The pjsua command-line SIP client.
• Ginger.

Today I'm thankful for...

• My family.
• Close friends (no matter how far away they may be physically).
• Home.
• A second home with my sister-of-choice.
• A new musical group coming together.
• What passes for my sanity, and a comparatively sane household.
• My new netbook.

Today is Thanksgiving. Second Thanksgiving, for those of you north of the border. And I'm grateful for

• Nearly 36 years of happy, stable marriage to the lovely Colleen.
• Colleen's continuing improvement in health. A special mention to her cane and scooter.
• My kids, who seem to be turning out ok in spite of all the mistakes we made raising them.
• My sister of choice, Naomi.
• My friends.
• The filk community.
• 19 years of stable employment with a company that gives a damn, doing something I enjoy.
• The Occupy Everywhere movement.

Thursday already! The week has flown by. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Anyway, here goes. I'm thankful for:

• Feeling better, both physically and mentally. (I'd feel better still about the latter if I knew why.)
• Hospital beds at home. (Elevating the head probably accounts for the "physically" above.)
• Eventually figuring things out. Especially when it's laryngopharyngeal reflux.
• As runnerwolf said, forward momentum.
• runnerwolf for mentioning forward momentum and reminding me that it's Thursday.
• A multifunction machine that's perfectly happy to answer unsolicited calls from telemarketers and make rude noises at them.

So I'm a confuzzled bear, but I'm traveling tomorrow, and it's going to be Thursday in less than an hour anyway. Anyway, I'm thankful for...

• Debian.
• Naomi and Callie, my partners in crime harmonic mayhem.
• Colleen, and slow but continuing recovery.
• OccupyWallStreet, and the fact that Occupy San Jose is cycling distance from the house.
• Employment and health insurance.
• Cope in a bottle.
• People who love me.

Hey, I actually posted on Thursday for the second week in a row! I know -- not much of an accomplishment. Onward! Today I'm thankful for:

• Being employed, and working with cool people.
• A killer having been tracked down.
• Cooler weather.
• "Afterlove", ysabetwordsmith's response to my Poetry Fishbowl prompt.
• People who give a damn. Yes, I'm thinking especially of you, sister-of-choice.
• My 'ohana.

So now that I'm done with my Invisible Illness Awareness Week post, it's time for a Thankful Thursday.

Today I'm grateful for...

• My faithful facehugger.
• Citalopram.
• Grains without gluten.
• My health. Really.
• Colleen.
• Moore's law
• Music.

I think I missed last week. Um... yes. And the one before that, too. Of course, two weeks ago I was at Worldcon, with lousy connectivity, and last week I was kind of recovering from Worldcon. But I can't really make excuses, and I won't. I just didn't do it. Anyway...

Today I'm thankful for...

• Opportunities to learn.
• Terrific coworkers both at the place I'm leaving, and at the place I'm going back to.
• The opportunity to work on a fantastic product.
• Not having to worry about the release schedule any more.
• Moving boxes that don't require tape.
• Exercises that fix my shoulder pain. My PT, Christina.
• A home state where all public spaces in hotels are smoke-free.
• Being older and wiser.
• My health.

Yeah; I missed it last week. *shrugs* Gotta keep on keepin' on, I guess. Today I'm thankful for...

• alt.callahans
• My friends, and renewing connections.
• Again, a special mention to Liz and Og.
• Transitions, and the flexibility to handle many of them with a modicum of grace.
• My once and future boss, JB.
• A court order that greatly simplifies an unpleasant task.
• Replacing a failing disk before it starts losing data, and saving a few watts and decibels in the process.

... and it's actually Thursday! Will wonders never cease? Anyway:

• Turning infuriating stupidity into humor and flame mail into blog posts (coming soon).
• Vacation plans.
• Getting off my arse, both literally and figuratively.
• Family.
• Debian.
• Gin, naproxen, and cyclobenzaprine.

So here it is, on same day as the last launch of the shuttle. And the same day as a dear friend's divorce becomes final.

• A successful last launch for the poor old Space Shuttle.
• Horatio (Colleen's four-footed) cane.
• eInk displays.
• QA departments everywhere.
• Our loyal washer and drier.
• Endings that are truly new beginnings.

Well. It's still Thursday! I'm thankful for:

• Continuing employment at an interesting, socially- and ecologically-conscious company...
• ... with interesting coworkers
• Tasty dead sea-creatures, and stores that sell them, conveniently close to the house.
• Sale prices at Southwest Airlines, just when I need them.
• Colleen's improving health.
• Friends and family (including family of choice)

My! I seem to have missed a couple of weeks. Well, I'm thankful for

• it being only a couple of weeks and not a couple of months since I posted one of these
• sleep
• the voices in my head (and starting to recognize them)
• software that works (finally, and we'll see how my test run did last night).
• my friends, and my family of choice
• Colleen
• the YD's UBF moving back to Simi Valley