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.

I am going to be in Seattle from Thursday, 4/5 through Wednesday, 4/11. I'll be arriving at my hotel, the Coast Gateway sometime after 9pm Thursday, and leaving on the 7:30pm flight Wednesday.

Friday through Sunday I'll be at Norwescon, but since I'm not scheduled for anything I'll be available for conversations or phone interviews on a few minutes' notice.

Monday noonish through Wednesday afternoon I'll be looking at apartments and, and hopefully, going to job interviews. You can get to all my relevant information, including my resume, at stephen.savitzky.net.

I'll be going up again in early July for Westercon; I'll take a trip up before that if there are interviews to be had.

We expect to be moving up permanently sometime between July and September, most likely sometime in August.

Oh. Right. The problem wasn't so much lack of time as lack of a decently large screen, trackball, and full-sized keyboard. Or so I tell myself.

But all the details and links are up there under the cut. Hopefully there will be a real Norwescon post soon, with links to the concert audio. No love for the hotel, who came in and set the clock ahead, then made us end early without our closer. What we did get to sing (everything except Landscapes and Gentle Arms of Eden) was good.

The hotel was too spread out, and the function space too crowded. Other than that I had a pretty good time. A few good conversations.

Going back in time a little, I flew up Wednesday, which gave me some time with Callie and Naomi and the kids, for rehearsals and just plain hanging out. So that was good. There aren't any PNW cons in the offing until fall, so the next visit or two will be just visits. That's a good thing.

It was a great visit, and a pretty good con, but I'm very happy to be home.