The Mandelbear's Musings

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

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

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

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

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

I didn't notice any hill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This last weekend we went to Las Vegas and met Callie and Naomi there, celebrating our 35th anniversary and Naomi's birthday. (The joint vacation was N's idea, of course; she's good at coming up with evil schemes.) It was mostly good. Parts were very good. As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about getting enough walking in.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, of course. And when an ambitious list of "things we want to do" meets the reality of low energy levels, injuries and other physical limitations, sleeping in, missed connections, and the fact that slot machines no longer have coin slots, there are bound to be some disappointments. But it was good. The buffets were tasty and cheap, some of the restaurants we ate in were very tasty and not at all cheap, the scenery (architectural, natural, and human) was fascinating, and Cirque de Soleil's Zumanity was... interesting.

Zumanity was my first contact with Cirque; it probably wasn't a very good introduction. The acts that were supposed to be funny I found painful, and none of it was what I would consider sensual. Some of it was beautiful, though. I could have done with more of that.

The official birthday dinner was at Joe's Steak, Seafood, and Stone Crab in the Forum Shops at Caesars. It didn't help that we got a late start, went in separate cabs, and C&N ended up getting dropped off at Caesar's, a good block or so away. And owned by a different organization altogether. We had to send out a search party (i.e. me). But it was yummy.

A lot of st/rolling with Colleen. At one point Saturday night her scooter simply and suddenly died, with symptoms (including inability to charge) that indicated a bad connection in the battery box. Fortunately we were already back in our hotel (the Excalibur), and I pushed her back to the room. After calling up the house engineer with a cart-full of tools only to find that his four-in-one screwdriver was hopelessly short, I set out to Walgreen's (about 2.5 blocks away) and bought their only screwdriver set. Too short. But somehow the act of flipping the box upside down and shaking it a few times knocked the connection back together, and it held up through the rest of the weekend.

And we made some good music, especially Monday afternoon -- we extended our checkout times to 3pm so that we could have more time. I'd been afraid that Colleen would have trouble keeping herself amused, but as it turned out she needed the time to catch up on her sleep. I have half a dozen new songs to learn, and it put a great cap on a busy, exhausting, but basically good weekend.

Quite a few good links. A good 6-article series on the music industry. Among other things.

So, yeah, a good weekend for the most part, and awesome in spots. And a big success at work yesterday for the team that I'm part of. Can't say much about that, unfortunately, but it took a heck of a lot of pressure off. So I'm a well-fed and contented bear right now.

Didn't get a lot done, but Colleen and I spent the late afternoon investigating Sprouts, which just opened a store in our area. Somewhere between Whole Foods and Trader Joe's in terms of both price and selection. Came home with some nice mahi-mahi fillets for dinner. (With enough leftovers for two breakfasts.)

Quote of the day:

Colleen: Mood designer fabrics.

Me: Why would they make fabrics specially for mood designers? And what does a mood designer do?

Colleen was worried about how much space she had on her netbook for downloading things like quilt patterns. She has a 160GB drive, so I told her not to worry. But I have to worry now -- about backups.

A couple of really good links under the cut. (*waves at $boss*) I especially liked Estimates Say Fewer Jobs, Larger Deficits if Republicans Were in Charge, but Regrets of the Dying provides a lot of food for thought.

Saturday was mostly a day of quiet puttering and nostalgia -- the puttering turned up an alumni magazine from a year ago, where I found pictures from my class's 40th reunion, and an obit for Arthur Gropen, my favorite math professor. *sighs*

The insight for the day was that my problem isn't that I don't have enough time to do everything I need to -- that's a given. The problem is not prioritizing things correctly; doing too much of the fun or easy stuff before the hard, necessary stuff. And far too much time thinking about what to do next, instead of just doing it.

A very productive day. Go me!

There are still an unknown number of email bugs left, but I nailed a couple. I got in a short but very brisk walk (and paid for it later with some muscle aches). And got quite a lot done at work: a major decision about directory layout on the server, and some related CGI programming.

Work has just gotten very interesting and busy, but in a good way. Eeek!

I bought myself a cup of chili and a little container of raspberries and blackberries, excusing it as a reward for the weekend's system administration work.

Insight of the day: you're supposed to get out of breath when you're exercising. That's the point. Oh. Right.

Good day. Despite my weight being up to 199. Good day.

I went to the fitness center in our building, and spend about 10 minutes on a treadmill and 5 minutes on an elliptical. This may not sound like much until you realize that the last time I was inside a gym was back in the early 1970's, and the only time I've used either piece of equipment was for a treadmill test a couple of years ago at Kaiser. So, this was pretty major.

It seems rather anticlimactic now that I've actually done it, so I have to keep telling myself that it was a major victory over my procrastination, and that I should keep doing it. (Today's userpic is chosen with deliberately ambiguous malice aforethought.)

I also got in a good walk, so all-in-all it was a good day for exercise. And got some bills paid, and called a friend I don't call often enough. So... Go me!! but... weird.

The insight of the day is that I'd probably eat less if I was more aware of what I'm eating. Eating mindfully, rather than taking bites in between LJ posts. On the other hand, going off to putter in the kitchen while pondering what to say in a comment or post is a good thing, and in the morning usually includes making breakfast. So where does that get me, again?

Links in the usual place.

It was a pretty good Christmas day. Morning, especially, was delightful -- I woke up in a good mood, had bagels and lox for breakfast and had a blast watching the kids squee over their presents. I didn't even mind being woken up before 7am to go get the bagels and lox.

Afternoon was mostly spent making the borscht, that and the remains of the ham made up lunch and dinner. There were only a handful of people over besides the five currently in the house; even so, I spent a fair amount of time in the office.

Colleen gave a Creole cookbook to Chaos and Selkit; now she wants one for us. I should probably get a copy of There's a Wocket in My Pocket.

I made a couple of River posts -- I'm pleased about that. I'm also pleased about being pretty sensitive to my moods throughout the day. No walkies, though, and no progress on the FSA forms. I'm rather annoyed at myself for those. Still, a pretty good day.

Not a terribly productive day, so it had overtones of failure, but pretty good on the whole. Some very good spots: hearing that JRP wanted to keep the YD on for another year of modeling, etc. classes. A happy phone call delivering that news to Callie, while walking around the top of the nearby hill. (Not really much of a walk in terms of exercise, but it was sunny and pleasant.) Some conversation in the evening, though not as much as I would have liked. A little noodling on the guitar.

I finished reading The Highly Sensitive Person -- I'm still not sure how much of it is applicable, though certainly a lot of it is. Maybe I've just been very effective at suppressing a lot of what sensitivity I have, and never developed the skills to use it. It's certainly put things in a different light; there will be a River post once I've digested it more fully.

Too many projects I need to get back to.

Plenty of links up there under the cut.

... and it's too late to post a Wishful Wednesday, but not too late to wish you all a happy holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate.

A good day, though not a whole lot got done beyond chores and a walk. The walk was nice, though: about 3.5 miles by Los Gatos Creek, in my new Keen boots. Keen new boots? Right.

A couple of good insights, both related to The Highly Sensitive Person. The first is that walking with a friend is great, but it doesn't reduce my need to take frequent walks by myself. They're not just for exercise. The other was triggered by an argument between Colleen and the YD. My immediate reaction was to go out of the office and say "Calm down!" Um... HSP.

Booked plane tickets for a quick trip to Seattle for pocketnaomi's birthday.

Some good snuggle, but I slept badly. I did not get especially upset; sometimes I just don't need that much sleep. If I can get an hour or so of awake time at 3am without paying too much for it the next day, I'll take it. Last night, I spent the time trying to figure out why the Southwest website wasn't taking my Southwest credit card. Granted, I did miss a payment, but according to both my bank's website and theirs, it's been taken care of. Grr.

A few links in the notes, as usual.

It was foggy this morning and, while not warm by any means, at least warmer than the last two days. Above freezing.

The last two days saw a thick layer of frost on the car in the morning. After freezing my fingers Tuesday I remembered to put on gloves yesterday; they'd been languishing in the trunk for at least a season, and maybe several years. Casting about for a more convenient place to put them, I finally remembered...

the glove compartment.

Silly old bear!

A good day, even though it started out with the news that Liam Clancy had died. But I had a rare, good conversation with the YD on the way to her modeling class, and a great afternoon out shopping with Colleen. I got my exercise trying to walk fast enough to keep up with her scooter -- it's wonderfully different from the years when I had to slow down to stay with her.

A couple of good insights: Graham Leathers' song "Don't Swear at Machinery" is completely wrong for me. Swearing at machinery is safe -- it lets off steam, and lets me redirect the anger into an intense need to find the problem and fix it. (N pointed out that this isn't universally true; venting anger uses up spoons for her.) I usually find it counterproductive to vent anger at people; it could even be dangerous. (Although carefully-controlled anger can be useful at times.)

The other was noticing that, if social interaction is anything like a language (either programming or human), the only way to learn it is to get a lot of practice. Which, because I'm introverted and shy, I don't. It's another feedback loop: I feel awkward around people, so I avoid them, so I don't get the practice I need that would make me less awkward. :P

As for links, ysabetwordsmith posted about Role Models for Introverts. I'm finding her posts about loneliness and introversion very helpful.

(added 10:52) After noticing that Colleen was going through Amazon and Mobipocket looking for ebooks, I introduced her to Project Gutenberg". Happy Cat. *grins*

Another sub-par day, this time definitely due to simply not feeling well. I cut my walk short again because of leg cramps, and felt generally achy all afternoon. And the YD was feeling the same way -- I called her in sick. Hmm.

This lead to some useful links on the flu: What To Do If You Get Sick: 2009 H1N1 and Seasonal Flu and Taking Care of a Sick Person in Your Home at the CDC, and an entire official site at flu.gov.

A couple of interesting insights, that will eventually merit their own posts on the river:

• I often seem to avoid doing things that I know are likely to make me feel better after I've done them, like walks and music. This may be due to guilt over the less pleasant things I'm not doing.
• A lot of my discomfort with role-playing comes from the same root as my general discomfort with social interaction: not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing in a situation I'm totally unfamiliar with.

I went to bed early, and am feeling ok this morning. So was the YD. A very mild form of flu? Possibly.

More links:

Some half-formed thoughts on one future for bookselling - Boing Boing (Cory Doctorow) Why paywalls won't help most big newspapers - Boing Boing (from Techdirt). If You're Looking For The Open Source Business Model, You're Looking For The Wrong Thing | Techdirt.

haikujaguar's post on realizing that she's a professional writer thanks mainly to crowdfunding. Also her link to 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists (from this post). The web comic site it lives on is very deeply strange, and I could easily spend a whole lot of time there. Probably better not to.

It was a good day; basically in a good mood. I'm not going to try to characterize it beyond that -- I may not be completely alexithymic, but I come close.

I've already posted about the day's "aha" insight into my limited definition of "social life".

I had a good, if geographically-limited, walk. That's because I was on the phone with cflute, so I kept to the top of the hill behind work, where there's a good signal and very little traffic noise. Both of us were pretty cheerful, so that's good too.

Placed a book order with Powells, almost equally divided between self-help and fiction.

The day's link sausage includes An Argument for Friendship (in fiction; from haikujaguar), more profound whimsy from Tom Digby, and speaking of whimsy, Photos from Robolamp (from from gizmodo)

I see that not a whole lot got done yesterday, but it was moderately productive for all that. I booked our hotel room for Conflikt, bought a neck-roll pillow for Colleen (she wanted to steal mine, so I had to), and had two "aha" moments.

The first insight was realizing that I've been avoiding the (free to building tenants) health club in the building where I've been working for the last 17 years because "I know I'd hate it". Just how do I know that, when the last time I saw the inside of a gym was 35 years ago? Right. I should pay for a session with a trainer and get checked out on the equipment.

The second was realizing that having trouble meeting and getting to know people is a common problem. The reason why it doesn't seem to afflict many of the people I've spoken to about it is that the set of people willing to talk with me at that level of intimacy is a small, self-selected, biased sample.

And Colleen figured out how to make gluten-free bread pudding, using gluten-free stuffing mix, eggnog, and an extra egg. How cool is that?

I didn't sleep very well Tuesday night, and started flaking out around 10pm. Finally gave it up, took a cyclobenzaprine, and went splat somewhere around 11.

Hugs make me happy! That may not sound like much, but for someone who's been mildly depressed as long as I can remember, and can't think of anything I can do that makes me happy, that's a major discovery. Whimsy makes me smile, too. Snuggle makes me feel loved, and loving, and contented.

I'm gradually learning that even little things that are a little bit pleasant can raise my mood, bit by bit. I realized, as I was getting ready for my bath, that I expected it to be pleasant. And it was. That's new. I'm starting to learn that things that feel good are good for me even if they don't make me "happy" but only relaxed and contented.

I realized that things like programming, writing, and performing, where I'm in a state of flow while I'm doing them, give me a pleasant feeling of accomplishment afterward. I don't need to think of them as just a way to escape from my feelings.

... and I spent some time in the afternoon helping a friend understand herself and her fear better, and reminded her of what courage really is.

I can be eloquent when I'm trying to be convincing: "Both paths are painfully steep; go with the one that leads up-hill." "Remember, courage consists of pushing through in spite of your fears. You're scared, but you're going out shopping this afternoon because you know that the fear is transient, and the love and happiness will still be there when it's gone."

I'll have to be very careful, though; words can hurt as well as heal, and sometimes the word that seems most accurate at the time can bring up a lot of unwanted associations and cause unintended pain. Deeply regretting my words is all very well, but it doesn't undo the damage.

I've often tried to explain to Colleen, and occasionally to other people, that, no, I wasn't making an accusation, I was just trying to describe the situation. Maybe I need to pay attention, take a couple of deep breaths, and take the time to choose my words more carefully. I'm a songwriter -- I ought to be able to find words that get the point across without causing damage in the process.

A good day. Sometimes a little uncomfortable, but worthwhile.

Today's link sausage includes Wikipedia articles on positive psychology and flow, a program that composes images from sketches, the FSF's brief explaining why software patents are bad, Sanyo eneloop rechargeable batteries, and this fascinating list of possibly pleasant things to do.

I explain myself a lot. Too much for some people, Colleen among them. I realized that I'm so used to having my words and actions misunderstood, after decades of it, that I have an uncontrollable need to keep explaining until I get a response that indicates that the other person has, in fact, understood what I said or did.

Which would be a great idea, if the normal person's reaction wasn't to get angry and stop paying attention because, to them, I'm either repeating myself endlessly, or contradicting them.

... and in a somewhat different direction, yes, I did catch myself apologizing for a miscommunication between Emmy and Colleen. Possibly because I kept trying to ask questions that were intended to fill in the gaps, and they both kept brushing me off.

They really are, when you think about it, parts of the same problem. I can easily see the gaps in other people's logic (I'm not taking about my own logic, you'll note -- it's always easier to debug someone else's code than one's own), and they barge ahead anyway, either not noticing or not caring, and thinking they can easily fill in the gap with what they're quite certain the other person was trying to say.

I'm a lot less tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity than most people seem to be.

Mostly a work-from-home day, though I was able to squeeze in a very productive couple of hours at the lab between taking my car in for service and Colleen's follow-up appointment with her surgeon. At the former, I found out that my warranty will save me roughly a grand on repair to the windows, but that the parts aren't in stock. I think maybe I'll leave the car there, since the warranty expires in 500 miles. At the latter, we found that Colleen needs to see a gyneco-urologist to evaluate her bladder problems, which means more delay.

The big breakthrough came on the drive home from Kaiser, when I caught myself saying "I'm sorry" in a context where I could figure out what it meant. It meant "I'm sorry I can't pay attention to you right now; I need to concentrate on what I'm doing." In other words, an attempt to forestall interruptions at a time when they would have been dangerous. Of course, it didn't mean that to Colleen; I'm going to have to come up with a different protocol. Possibly something like "Concentrating now...OK".

I use "I'm sorry" in far too many different contexts. Drives Colleen nuts, and with good reason. More protocol development needed.

I also realized that my habit of repeating short commands multiple times comes from dealing with the kids when they were younger. I'd say "stopstopstop!" for example, starting when I notice a problem and repeating until the kid actually stopped doing it.

I am having a lot of trouble explaining some things to Colleen, and it made for some friction yesterday. One is the idea of making a 90-degree turn while backing up her scooter. I think I may finally have gotten through to her on that one. The other is the reason why I ask questions multiple times. Mostly it happens when I can't usefully interpret the first answer. Often that's because I didn't finish asking the question, so I need to make very sure she understands what I intended to ask. It's stressful. Grump.

Colleen spent most of the evening being understandably unhappy about the lack of a quick fix from her Kaiser appointment, and I ended up feeling unhappy and distressed as well. "Contact low?"

I also noticed that I'd eaten too much, but still felt "hungry" in the sense of wanting to eat. I didn't; I brushed my teeth instead. But it may mean that there's something in my diet that I'm not getting enough of. Just have to figure out what.

If time is what keeps everything from happening at once, does that mean that when I don't have any time I can get everything done right now?

Oh. Darn.

Yesterday was mostly spent puttering around the house; pocketnaomi and I carried on a very sporadic IM conversation egging one another on. Not as good as being there to help, but good.

The main thing was working on the SE corner of the bedroom. The goal is to replace the old shelf standards and brackets with Elfa, and add a couple of shelves to the South wall. I got the South wall done, and three shelves cleared on the East wall (leaving two more) A lot of sorting and recycling happened at the same time.

I went out for a walk (including some grocery shopping). The major insight was noticing how liberating it was to know that a lot of things simply are not going to get done. The more essential stuff still has to happen, but...

I bought some Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Extra tea along with the other things; it turned out to be useful when I had trouble getting back to sleep at 3am.

I ended the day with some singing (at Colleen's request): I sang "Gentle Arms of Eden" and "Where the Heart Is" for Marty, then Naomi asked me to call her and sing something, and Colleen suggested "The Mary Ellen Carter". Fun!

I do NOT like this "getting enough sleep" business. I'm not getting enough done.

I rarely remember dreams; this one must have come in just as I was waking up. Colleen was trying to give me detailed directions on making a fruit salad, only the details didn't make sense, like putting aluminum foil on the stove and using it as a cutting board. Very weird. The more general insight I got out of it is that it's better to tell someone what needs to be done, and let them figure out how to do it, and ask questions if they get stuck.

The high point, really, was finding out that Colleen used the toilet in the back bathroom (which I'd installed grab rails on over the weekend) rather than the commode. Major win.

Link of the day is this paper on copyfraud -- claiming copyright over material in the public domain.

I upgraded my work desktop to Lenny, finally. When I left yesterday it was only semi-usable, but I would have missed an appointment if I'd stayed to fix the ssh host keys.

It was a pretty good day yesterday: a CD order from a dealer, a good conversation with a friend, a little progress with my current project at work, and a potentially-useful insight.

I got off to a rather late start on my walk, after wasting about an hour browsing musical-equipment sites. I ended up spending my time outdoors (in beautiful walking weather) talking to cflute while standing under a tree on the hill behind our building -- I get the best cell phone signal there. But I was calm, and happy, and glad to be out in the cool, clean air after the morning's light rain. Win.

As for the insight: a lot of my behavior around procrastination, and not making phone calls to friends even though I know I'd probably enjoy the conversation, has been difficult for me to understand. It occurs to me that it sounds a lot like a child doing something bad to get attention, because even being scolded is better than being ignored. Hmm. Could it be that the bad feeling I get from avoiding something and beating myself up about avoiding it is at least a feeling, and a predictable one at that? It's under my control, as opposed to calling a friend, where how I'm going to feel depends on whether they answer the phone. Maybe feeling acutely lonely is worse than feeling vaguely lonely and disgusted with myself? Or it has been in the past? Now, I don't know. It's familiar, at least.

Raising the head of my bed a few degrees seems to help me sleep without my nose getting congested. Yay for that!

Not nearly as productive a day as I would have liked, but I did manage to get in to work in the afternoon after doing an almost-respectable amount of work from home in the morning. I also finished chording The Fox, and got a couple of new songs to the point where I can play them if I don't have to sing.

A couple of minor insights from a short walk and the drive home: I'm really sabotaging myself by procrastinating things. Why? Would it help to know why, or should I just concentrate on unlearning the behavior? Is it possible that I'm doing it to get back to a level of depression and anxiety that I'm "comfortable" with?

More questions than insights, I'm afraid.

I spent pretty much the entire evening in the living room with Colleen. That was good. We seem to have established a pattern of going to bed around 11 (we'll see how long that lasts this weekend -- HA!) and we're both starting to sleep better.

Yet another piece of the Rose Garden puzzle dropped into place this afternoon: I now know how I Never Promised You a Rose Garden made a journey into the unknown go from frightening to familiar.

It made it into a Quest. A fantasy journey.

I know this story. I love it, in all the hundreds of variations that I've read. Sure, the scenery is unfamiliar. You expect that in a fantasy. Sure, it's going to be tough going and scary at times. You expect that in a quest.

I may not have ever been on this journey before, but now I know what story I'm in.