The Mandelbear's Musings

Today I am thankful for...

• My favorite cats, Curio and Colleen.
• My family. The whole, crazy, loving bunch of us.
• My massage therapist.
• A buyer. (If you want to buy the Starport, this weekend is your Last Chance!)
• Good weather.
• Good Drugs. Especially ethanol, caffeine and theobromine.

Ok, so it's past due. So are a lot of things. I'm thankful for

• Chest and arm pain turning out to be muscle aches and anxiety. I should learn to listen more closely to my body -- if I can walk half a mile to work without things getting worse, my heart is probably ok.
• Insurance.
• Income, even though there isn't quite enough of it.
• Breakfast for dinner.
• My family.
• Plug-in hybrid car.

Hey! It's Thursday! Um...

• My family.
• Carpooling with my sister again.
• ssh [host] mv .zshrc foo # bears are easily entertained.
• Payday, not a moment too soon.
• A house on the market! Want to buy a Starport?

Hmm. *Makes effort not to think of problems.* *Fails and starts over.*

Today I'm thankful for

• Peace and quiet.
• Kids around the house. (Note that this and the previous item are mostly mutually exclusive in time.)
• Cats, both two- and four-legged.
• Leftovers for breakfast.
• Public transit.
• An operating system with free upgrades.

Doing somewhat better tonight -- it's hard to be depressed with a cat on one's lap. (I can do it, but it's harder.) Anyway, today I'm thankful for...

• A house big enough for concerts, like Tracy Grammer here this Saturday night!
• A cat who has finally decided that my lap is an ok place to hang out sometimes. Better than drugs.
• Friends willing to drive a U-Haul over 800 miles after loading it up with the last of our stuff from the Starport. Friends help you move.
• Not having a need for good friends from the previously-referenced joke.
• Nice weather.
• Not being woken in the middle of the night. (Not thankful for Monday night.)
• Refactoring operations in Eclipse.
• Leftovers for breakfast. Especially when they include something I can make into fried rice.

What do you know? Thursday! I'm thankful for...

• A well-run jury waiting room.
• An easy commute.
• Family.
• Geeks in the house.
• Walking more than a mile without getting tired or sore. Two days in a row.
• Eggs and tofu.
• Musicians.

So today I got a filk circle at Rainbow's End for my birthday. So... that.

• Friends
• Family
• Music
• 67 years

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.