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mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

... so I still haven't done a full con report -- it's been almost a week -- so in the interim I'll just refer you to last week's "Done Since 2025-05-25" (posted on Monday) and "Thankful Thursday" posts. The only parts of the trip it doesn't cover very well are the songs we sang ( "Millennium's Dawn" deserves full S4S treatment), the hotel (the breakfast and dinner buffets, included in the room price), were noteworthy), and the travel.

Right. The travel. Tips:

  • Don't leave anything in (travel guitar)Plink's case -- it could delay inspection (and did, at Hamburg).
  • On arrival, stay in the plane until somebody tells you that your wheelchair is ready. Hamburg again.
  • If you don't look disabled (like m, for example), take a cane and hobble out of the plane with it. This is especially true for Schiphol -- the Dutch tend to be ablist.

Yesterday N, m, and I had a good band practice/conference, including more tweaking on "Millennium's Dawn", scripting for several songs that still had only two-person arrangements, and harmony arrangements because we finally have someone in the band who can reliably sing harmony. We're also going to want a keyboard. Or two, since m is leaving tomorrow for Seattle.

Health-wise, I don't think I'm doing all that well, so it's a good thing I have an appointment with a cardiologist soon, as well as with an oncologist.

If you're interested in word origins, check out the Online Etymology Dictionary, which includes some fascinating articles as well as the dictionary entries.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

It's been a surprisingly good, unsuprisingly short, and occasionally scary week; the second and last in my trip with N in The Netherlands. Quite a lot of back-and-forthing between Den Haag and Leiden. Yesterday I spent all afternoon helping j put flat-pack furniture together; we got a couple of pieces mostly finished, thwarted by the lack of a hammer for nailing on backs. (Cue obvious song.)

I marked the third anniversary of Colleen's death on Friday with a post and a cup of green tea. Also I miss my cats.

I've decided not to bother logging walking statistics for this trip, except to note that I went over 3,000 steps on five days in the last week, and actually got over 20 "heart points" on Wednesday. I might need to see whether $G Fit can export data in any useful format. Or switch apps. Or buy a ring or a watch?

Links this week include Daniel Simu And His Dancing Robot SURPRISE The Judges With Acrobotics! (with a tip of the hat to ysabetwordsmith), and Oxford University Mathematician REACTS to "Animation vs. Math" (the entire "Animation vs. {Math, Physics, Geometry} series is well worth watching, along with the corresponding reactions -- you can find them all by chasing links).

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

A pretty (surprisingly) good week. Considering everything that could have gone wrong... Okay, pretty good if you ignore US politics. But I've spent the entire week in The Netherlands, so I don't have to worry about it until I get back, except at night when I can't get to sleep.

Lots of walking. Which I haven't been logging for some reason; I may have to go back and correct that manually in the file (but not this post). But I've been getting in a decent amount every day except Friday. (My goal on $G Fit is 3,000 steps/day. I don't always reach it, and hardly ever hit $G's goal of 150 "heart points", which represent minutes of "vigorous" walking, but don't take hills and stairs into account. Seattle is full of hills like the one just east of our house, and Dutch houses are nororious for their steep stairs.)

Let's see... Sunday and half of Monday were about travel -- we arrived at 8:15, took the train to Leiden, and checked in at the Golden Tulip (within sight of the station) somewhere around 10:30. After dropping our bags there, we went with j to his new apartment. It's gorgeous vaulted ceiling, wood (pine?) floors, and up a flight of steep stairs.

Tuesday we checked out and dragged our bags up those stairs, then went out with j to buy housewares. Then we took an Uber to our hotel in Den Haag. Which was expensive, but we didn't want to have to get our bags on and off trains. It would have worked fine except that the hotel is on a street that's closed to auto traffic. Oops. After that we took public transit everywhere -- dead easy once we got used to it. The OV-chipkaart works sufficiently like the Seattle area's ORCA card to be familiar.

Wednesday we vegetated.

Thursday we went to Leiden and got j a nice used e-bike. Heavy, but that's what the motor is for. Good place.

We went out again for groceries, because j's Albert Heijn is better than the one across from the hotel. Still has some weird gaps. I have not been able to find either distilled water or chewable calcium carbonate antacid. Not at the local drugstore, either -- they carried distilled water but it's been out of stock all week, near as I can tell. WTF?

Friday we went back to Leiden to help j bring home a second-hand table. The shop is marvelous -- I'm assuming we'll be back from time to time. N and j carried the thing home -- a half-dozen or so blocks -- while I wrangled doors and so on. Naturally it picked that time to rain. Getting it up j's stairs was arduous (for N and j -- I stayed out of the way).

My bladder is behaving itself so far. My back and hips a little less so, but I'm managing.

Link of the week: David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive (2014) - YouTube (AKA "David Attenborough's "Night at the Museum".)

Not a link to the thing itself, but Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was a really fun movie -- I watched in the plane on the way over. Hard to describe -- just see it if you have a chance.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: (river)

Part 1.

Well, we're on our way to the Netherlands. We're somewhere southeast of Greenland as I write this. After a somewhat disorganized day of packing, during which I decided -- correctly, as it turned out -- that my nice new Travelpro backpack wouldn't fit under a seat, so I re-packed my drugs, headphones, charging gear, laptop, and shoulder bag(!) into my old red REI backpack (nicknamed Red, of course). Where they fit perfectly. And realized that the stuffable Eddie Bauer dufflebag I was using for my CPAP, jacket, etc. was going to be too awkward, so I re-packed that into my old MEI convertible backpack/suitacase, where it also fit perfectly.

That backpack is old. Older than my kids, I think. It holds about as much as my Travelpro 21" (or is it 22) carry-on. Which I checked. But it's a lot less densely packed, so it's manageable without wheels.

For some reason my laptop won't connect to the onboard WiFi. And N is borrowing my phone because she left hers charging in the car. So I'm getting by perfectly well on some preloaded DW posts, onboard entertainment, and emacs. I watched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which was just the right sort of madcap action and heartwarming ending that I think I needed just now. I decided on music rather than trying to break the mood by watching Dune. Maybe on the way back, two weeks from now.

The plan is to deliver j to his apartment in Leiden, where he will be attending University in the fall, spend the night with N in the Golden Tulip (where we stayed last trip), then spend the rest of the time in the Cove Centrum/Passage in Den Haag. (That's Dutch for The Hague; despite speaking less Dutch than a toddler at this point it's still easier to use Dutch for place names. Saves time in train stations.) We will be going back to Leiden occasionally -- j needs a new computer for school, among other things -- doing paperwork, and looking at houses. It's rather unlikely that we'll find anything this trip; we're booked into short-term housing in Den Haag starting in October.

Part 2

It's weird. As I mentioned last week, my brain seems to have turned a corner somehow, a couple of weeks ago, and a great deal of my depression seems to have lifted. I don't know how long this will last, but I'm not complaining. I don't think I know how to even talk about it. (See also, alexithymia.)

My cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatment may have something to do with it. I don't know long I can expect to live -- it could be anything between five and twenty-five years. Or I could get hit by a bus a week from now. But I've gotten used to the fact that I'm mortal. And, perhaps not entirely unrelated, non-binary.

We'll be flying over Ireland in a little while.

Part 3

... and now we're in Leiden, after a very long day. It's 10:30 am here. I'm going to post this and try to take a nap.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is New York and Leiden.

Naomi and M make it to New York. Things promptly go sideways...

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Sweet Home Chicago.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is In case you were wondering... (why the Chicago to New York post is late).

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Colorado and the Midwest.

N and m ride the California from somewhere west of Denver to Chicago. With bonus playlist of train songs. How many do you recognize? What have we missed?

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Oakland and the Zephyr.

Next, Colorado and the Midwest.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is The Coast Starlight.

Side note -- I rode that train from Oakland to Seattle 50-odd years ago. Beautiful route.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Who Knows Where the Time Goes?.

Yeah, I know, it's been a looooooooooooong time. We've all had other stuff to deal with. But N is going on a trip tomorrow -- across the country by train, then flying from New York to the Netherlands. So it's time to go sideways once again!

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is A Few Random Notes from Chance.

We said last week that If nothing else goes sideways, you’ll get a real post next Wednesday.. Well, the best-laid plans of mice and other vertebrates, and all that. Fortunately one of us is a crab. Who is feeling somewhat crabby...

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Postcard from Florence, July 2022. You're getting a postcard, a day late, because Naomi's been taking care of two sick kids and I spent yesterday as a zombie thanks to a COVID booster (Moderna, bivalent). Bivalent apparently means that it can kick my butt twice as hard.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Talking of Michelangelo. We resume coverage of the Italy trip in Florence, with a massage therapist's view of Michelangelo’s “David”.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Traveling With a Guitar. It's been hanging out on the sidelines since sometime in July, waiting for a day when the planned weekly post didn't get finished. That would be today, when two kids' first day of school and three cats' vet appointments collided somewhere along Aurora Avenue.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Desert Driving: Mesas and Mistakes, wherein N and C reach Albuquerque, N flies home, and C takes the proverbial left turn.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Ay-yi-yi-yi, The Open Road is Home.

We take a break from the Italy trip report to tell you about the road trip, which is finally happening even as we speak. I’m writing this from a Best Western in Barstow, California. If all goes as planned then we’ve got two more days till we get to Albuquerque...

It's immediately followed by a Bonus Post – Photos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, because the Aquarium deserved a post all by itself. If were reading this blog before 2012, you'll know that it was a frequent weekend destination for me and my family while we were living in the Bay Area.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is A Message From the Crab., written by Chance, (short for Crab Who Takes Chances) because he was the only one who actually went to the beach at Sorrento.

So now you know why yesterday's post included a picture of the Crab Nebula.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog (following last week's out-of-order interruption) is St. Peter and St. Christopher, recounting N and j's visit to St Peter's Basilica in Rome, followed by a bit of an adventure getting back to their hotel.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is United Breaks Passengers.

We interrupt the saga of our Italian adventure to bring you the horrific story of what has been happening as we attempt to finish the trip. Next week, I'll be back to telling you all about St. Peter's Basilica and our adventures in the subways of Rome, but I had to stop for a while to tell you about this. Because it's the worst airport experience I've had in almost fifty years of frequent flying.

In the unlikely event that you didn't instantly recognize the reference in the title, or if you just want to refresh your memory, here are the video, the lyrics, and the Wikipedia article.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Another Country. The world's smallest country, as a matter of fact.

I'm not sure why this is coming out so late -- the GoingSideways post came out Tuesday. Well, better late... It's been a weird week.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Of Things Colossal. N and j visit the Colosseum (which should be kind of obvious from the title).

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Scattered Chunks of Antiquity. N and j visit Rome's Jewish Quarter and Piazza Navona, and encounter random bits of history in between.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Fettered to the Foam. Naomi and her son j arrive in Rome at the start of their Italy trip.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Last Steps (Italy). Read about how N gets ready for a month-long trip.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Exploring at Home.

One of the most common pieces of advice travelers get is, if you can’t go anywhere right away, go traveling in your own town or city. There are reasons why people go to visit pretty much everywhere for the fun of it, from the wilds of Borneo to urban Seattle to small-town Iowa. Find the reasons why someone who isn’t from your city would go touring in your city, and do it yourself. Sounds easy, right?

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Traveling With a CPAP.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Frankly, It’s a Sick Truck.

Frank the Truck [which ... um... who?? you might remember from last week] is unwell.

The conclusions from the inspection were mixed, but worrisome. On the one hand, his body is in good shape, without any of the rust that ruled out one truck for us, and most of his systems seem to be fine as well. On the other hand, he’s getting engine issue codes that could mean anything from a cam shaft or timing chain problem to the need for an entire new engine. And right now, we don’t know which we’re dealing with, since the mechanic who did the inspection can’t diagnose him with more specificity than that. We need to take him to a Ford dealer, they told us.

This threatens to put a definite kink in everybody's plans for the next month or so. Look for an update next week.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Frankly, It’s a Truck, wherein C finds, buys, and names a pickup truck.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Racking Up the Miles -- the next installment in the continuing saga of C's search for a truck.

mdlbear: An orange cartoon crab with sunglasses and a camera, surrounded by a blue ring (gs-logo)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Putting It Together -- planning continues for both the Italy trip and the Colorado trip.

mdlbear: A bright orange crab stuffie, mascot of GoingSideways.blog (chance)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Things I Learned in Africa.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Lime Soda.

Am I frustrated at all of the obstacles? Yes and no. This kind of adjustment and adaptation is really the essence of my Going Sideways method of travel.

[...]

Travel plans are like battle plans: they never survive contact with reality. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

What does that have to do with lime soda? You'll just have to read it to find out.

[...]

Meanwhile, here's a bonus signal boost: Fiction: Mushroom Chat by dialecticdreamer, written in response to my prompt on her latest Magpie Monday.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is It’s for You! -- Naomi and I go to the Woodland Park Zoo to try out her new camera (with a phone wrapped around it, but that's kind of secondary).

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Catching Up to Now - getting caught up with the recent past, and plans for the near future.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Homecoming, wherein Naomi writes about returning home, and plans for future trips.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Shipping Out -- Naomi's visit to the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is The Dutch in the Ancient World -- follow Naomi to the Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

I don't seem to have signal-boosted the last few posts in GoingSideways.blog -- time to fix that.

Impenetrable is probably the best post so far:

It sounds so much like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? First there’s a long climb, high into the steep and scary mountains. Then you hack your way with swords into a place called the Impenetrable Forest. And it’s all in order to meet a kind of gentle giants who live nowhere else in the world… giants who are almost, but not quite, human.

Cut and Run, wherein the consequences of Breaking the First Rule finally catch up with her.

At that point, the determination which had kept me going through six hard days of illness gave out. Screw it, I thought — why am I still pushing myself? I’ve done all the things that were most important to me here. I’ve visited rhinos and I’ve boated on the Nile. I’ve seen chimpanzees up close, and gorillas have walked up and touched me. I’ve gutted my way through three different camps despite severe illness just because there were a few things I didn’t want to miss, and I haven’t missed a single one of them. Now I am DONE.

And today's post, On the Water, wherein Naomi starts the last leg of her trip, visiting her oldest friend in Amsterdam.

Right now, as I write, I am touring Amsterdam on a boat. I am also living, for the week, on a boat. Different boat. Amsterdam is very big on boats. This happens when your entire city is below sea level and therefore most of it’s built on piles just to keep it out of the water.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog isTrip Diary: For a Woman.

I had a date this afternoon with a very special organization, one I had particularly requested to see and I wasn’t going to allow sleepiness to get in the way. It’s an extraordinary community women’s group serving the villages surrounding Bwindi, and it’s called Ride 4 A Woman.

Ride 4 A Woman was founded in 2009, though the seeds were sown many years earlier when a remarkable woman named Evelyn Habasa was growing up, the youngest child of an equally remarkable single mother.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Trip Diary: Breaking the First Rule.

What first rule, you wonder? Well, they do depend on who you ask. My mother’s first rule was always, “Never hit anything that’s harder than you are,” and a good and sensible rule it is. Thankfully, I didn’t break that one; thataway lie broken bones and concussions. But I did do something maybe even stupider. I broke the first rule of international travel, the one every tourist hears the moment they announce their first expedition beyond the boundaries of their own country (at least if they live in the west)...

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The latest post in GoingSideways.blog is Trip Diary: On the Nile - Naomi's continuing adventures in Africa.

mdlbear: A bright orange crab stuffie, mascot of GoingSideways.blog (chance)

For the last couple of months I've been working with [personal profile] pocketnaomi on her next crazy project -- a travel blog called Going Sideways. It just went live about an hour ago (as I type this). You may have seen it referred to as GS in my weekly "Done Since..." posts. We're starting off with a bang -- Naomi's 6-week trip to Africa starts on Wednesday.

The blog is called "Going Sideways" because if you have chronic health problems getting in your way you may have to sidestep them, but they shouldn't keep you from having adventures altogether. (The subtitle is Epic Journeys with Medical Baggage.) Our mascot (see icon) is a crab named Chance, because crabs walk sideways.

Naomi is the principal writer. I'm the WordPress wrangler and social media manager, though I'll also write the occasional post, mostly about my travels with Colleen.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The week started with my 69th birthday, continued on through Pi Day and Colleen's birthday, and ended with dinner in Port Townsend celebrating Emmy's birthday a week early (to keep from being out of town for caucus day).

It was also a busy and productive week at work. Finally. Winding up in a corner with a window in front of me after the move seems to have helped; there is also more space in the new layout, and fewer TPMs, both of which reduce the cross-talk. I started working on my taxes, which probably won't be quite as bad as last year.

Pretty good week, considering.

Considering that I'm well over half a million in debt, in a house that is just what we want but which we won't be able to afford if I lose my job, which seems likely because I'm neither enjoying it much nor performing as well as I need to. I'm depressed and anxious, both with good reasons.

Looking back over years and decades of horribly bad decisions, and wondering whether there's any way out of the hole I've dug for myself. Probably not.

Notes & links, as usual )
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

The big event this week was Mom's 95th birthday party (her actual birthday isn't until the 28th). About a year ago, when it was still in the planning stage, she'd asked me to write a song for her. Needless to say, I was blocked. A few weeks ago, all I had were a couple of lines and a vague sketch for the rhyme scheme. I got on the plane Thursday with those two lines on a piece of paper. And no pen.

It actually went more smoothly on the netbook. By the time I got to Mom's I had two verses and the start of a bridge, minus a couple of lines. By Friday night I'd taken out the lines I was stuck on (having decided that trying to rhyme three lines in each vers simply wasn't working), finished the bridge, and added a repeat of the first verse.

The song, Ninety-Five Years, came off surprisingly well.

The plane trip was hard on my back; a hot bath and naproxen helped. (But I had neglected to refill my naproxen bottle, so I'm going to have to get through today and tomorrow on nothing but hot showers and stretches. Ouch.)

I've been having fun catching up with relatives (including several cousins once removed that I didn't even know about), and did a fair amount of singing last night after dinner.

Aside from that, it was a fairly productive week at work (what little there was of it), and I had a good night out with Colleen last Sunday).

raw notes, with links )
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

Home Depot was supposed to have delivered the washer and dryer yesterday. They claim that the truck broke down, and that they will be delivering this morning. We'll see.

OVFF was wonderful, as usual. I even went to the closing jam, and had a great time, mainly because it was loud enough to cover up my many chord flubs. Also of note was Kristoph's guitar workshop, which was mostly about moving chord patterns up and down the neck. He told me that he'd learned about finding the melody in the chords from me, which left me slightly boggled. But... ok. Maybe I am pretty good.

Lots of fun with git yesterday and Friday, splitting up my Lyrics directory to leave only my own songs (plus a couple of PD arrangements) in it. In the process I wrote a Useful Script for making it look like files in subdirectories have always been there, so that their history is complete when you use git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter to make them into their own repositories.

The goal, of course, is to put my lyrics up on GitHub, the way several authors already do with books. It'll be fun.

Moderately productive at work. In part thanks to a nice new set of Bose noise-cancelling headphones, which they're paying for. (Wish I could afford my own set; they're pretty amazing. Though the noise isolating phones I have at home work pretty well, and are better for recording and mixing.)

More links in the notes.

raw notes, with links )
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

Well, "Ship of Stone" didn't win Best Classic Filk Song (again), but it wasn't because of my performance in the Pegasus concert -- I turned in what was probably my best single performance so far. Hopefully I'll be able to post a recording soon. I'm still mildly boggled by the amount of positive feedback I got.

I need to practice more -- the fact that I was able to perform off-book helped a lot. And record. It's time I started working on Amethyst Rose again. Past time.

Not as many conmversations as I'd like, but a few, and a couple of new people. (Whose names I don't remember.)

Uneventful trip. I ended up getting a limo because there wasn't enough room in the van for five people, their luggage, and a scooter. We did manage going to the hotel, thanks to a full-sized SUV rental.

Packing was disorganized; I managed to misplace my laptop charger (in the side pocket behind my folding cane), so I bought an overpriced one in the airport. I don't mind too much; it's one of the new, tiny iGo's that I've had my eye on for a while. It has long enough cords that I can just leave it in the rolly. Next time I need to pack either a lightweight backpack, zippered tote, or sling bag to go under the seat with my laptop, magazines, and snacks; next to the CPAP. (Which gives me a good excuse to put both Rolly and Plink up in the rack.)

On the other hand, having Rolly partly packed ahead of time helped quite a bit; I'll be making that an ongoing practice.

Links in the notes.

raw notes, with links )
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

Strange week. The first half, at least, was terrific -- I was in New Orleans for a symposium at Pittcon | Conference & Expo. The symposium itself, sponsored by my mother in honor of my father, was Monday morning. Since everyone else arrived Sunday evening and I got in late Saturday, I had all day Sunday to myself to explore the French Quarter. Which I did.

I ended up walking six or so miles, which was surprisingly easy. Of course, it was all completely flat, but still. Spent about $50 buying CDs from street bands. I hadn't brought a guitar, and didn't need it -- didn't do any singing at all. Lots of good conversation, though. People I haven't seen in a decade and a half.

The symposium, Chemical Heritage Foundation - New Perspectives on the History of Infrared Instrumentation, was Monday morning. The high point was Foil Miller's talk: Anecdotes Involving Some Infrared Pioneers. At 99, he's "old enough to have known many of the pioneers of infrared spectroscopy personally", as it says in the abstract. It was followed by a luncheon at the Bourbon House. New Orleans is mostly about the food and the music.

Friday was my birthday. I turned 44 (hexadecimal), a number which contains two "1" bits, so I suggested that my cake have two candles on it. Saturday was, as everybody reading this probably knows, "The Pi Day of the Century"; I managed to get posts out at 9:26 on DW/LJ, Twitter, and Facebook.

The work week was short, frustrating, and unproductive even for a short week. The team I'm on loan to wants me to do my work in a new framework, which was only explained to me last week, and isn't even fully implemented yet, let alone documented. :P

I've been wondering why I always have so much pain when I get home from work, but not from walking all day in New Orleans. I'm beginning to think it's stress. Bletch.

And of course Terry Pratchett died. He was two years younger than me.

Links in the notes, as usual.

raw notes, with links )
mdlbear: portrait of me holding a guitar, by Kelly Freas (freas)

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.

raw notes )
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

We got up reasonably early on Wednesday, were on the road by a little after 9am after a huge breakfast at Black Bear Diner, and arrived at the Starport in time to order pizza and chicken wings for dinner. Not staying again at the Grants Pass Travelodge -- the 2-bed rooms are tiny, and even the ground floor isn't really scooter accessible. There's just enough room between the bed and the wall to drop my CPAP into.

Og has done yeoman's work on the living room floor; it looks terrific (as long as you don't look at the edges, which are ragged). Liz and Devon did great work packing, though they apparently didn't realize that we wouldn't want to use paper plates and plastic forks for the rest of the time we're here. Normally, you save things like the kitchen and bathroom for the last minute.

I spent most of Thursday and yestday packing. Thursday mostly the office; Friday included taking down one set of the garage shelves. I'm pretty sure now, looking at them, that the end bays were assembled on their sides and tilted up. I think I'm going to leave one set here.

I still have a huge amount of triage and packing to do, even though most of it is almost certainly junk.

Links, as usual, below in the notes.

raw notes )

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