The main event this week was the arrival of the storage towers and lamp I ordered from Best Buy. There were also health worries, and my stuff is being moved into a new cubical over the weekend. I think about half the people in the Seattle office are getting shuffled around.

I get two nice things out of the move. First was having to leave at 2pm on Friday, which meant I could walk to REI -- about half an hour's walk, on a beautiful clear day -- and buy a hat. It's called a "Seattle Sombrero"; I'm hoping it will be waterproof.

The second is a lockable cabinet where I can stash my (non-lockable) laptop. That means I won't have to lug the darned thing to and from work five times a week. I don't need the extra weight.

My back was hurting quite a lot by the time I got home on Friday. And I've been having some sharp pains when I lift things that make me worry about developing a hernia -- this is something I *do* *not* *need* right now.

Also I'm still gaining weight, and I get very stiff in the evenings.

I got my lab results back; the doctor noted that she was worried about my triglycerides, which are 186 (normal 150 or less). When I see her next, in a couple of weeks, I will tell her that it's the second-lowest number in a decade. Probably time to increase my niacin and linseed oil. (Ok, the bottle is labeled "flax oil". Same thing. It's a dietary supplement and a furniture finish.)

About those CD towers. When I ordered them and looked at the shipping tracker it said "4 boxes, 76 pounds". Shipping was free. What I didn't realize was that the weight given wasn't the total, it was the weight of the heaviest package. Of which there were two, plus two smaller boxes of 36lbs. Gleep. The Younger Daughter was *not* pleased, even with access to my hand truck.

I took it nice and slow, and put one together over the course of three days. I had figured on it taking two people to flip the thing over and drag it into position, but it glided easily over the carpet, and was actually quite easy to lift. Yay trigonometry!

As for links, I have been eagerly following the poems from YsabetWordsmith's January Poetry Fishbowl, and especially the ones in her new series, An Army of One, which is science fiction about a society of autistic people. Very cool idea.

OK, a weekend short of two weeks. Too much to summarize. Elections happened. (You'll find a bit of analysis in the links.) Work happened. Looked in several of the local stores for a Nexus 7, and didn't find one. Guess I'll have to order online. Upgraded my netbook to Ubuntu 12.04, and Colleen's to 12.10 because .04 was a disaster. .10 isn't perfect, but at least it supports the Dell's stupid Poulsbo video. Sorta. Still doesn't suspend properly, which sucks.

There also seems to be something majorly wrong -- it can take up to 20 minutes to boot! I suspect disk, but it could be something even more serious. We discussed options; she may be better off with an Android tablet or chromebook. I forwarded her email to her gmail account, which pretty much takes care of the only reason for connecting to the in-house network. That's still flaky, probably because of interference.

Last weekend also included a massage from N, who is studying massage therapy at Cortiva. She's *good*, and I especially enjoyed having her talk through what she's doing and observing. It also started me off on a week's worth of link-chasing around anatomy, and especially muscles.

I ran out of my morning BP pills (lisinopril/HCTZ) on Sunday, so have been watching my blood pressure. Unfortunately I didn't get a couple of baseline readings last week. It's marginally pre-hypertensive now, but not worrisome; I'll see what happens in the next week. By which time the supply I mail-ordered from Kaiser should be here, assuming they ship to ex-members. One reason I'm not particularly worried is that I'm still on doxazosin for my BPH, and was noticing occasional dizziness on standing up. Which suggests that it may have been too much before.

Noteworthy quotes:

"Hmm... my panic attacks feed on fear, they lie all the time, they try to control me, they threaten me with dying and going to hell, and they don't care in the slightest for logic. They can be defeated by ridicule, because for all their bluster they aren't very bright, but they don't admit defeat; they just regroup with another dirty tactic and try again. Maybe they're Republicans?" --Nora Rivkis in Facebook

Colleen: I hate it when my Kindle freezes.

Me: Speak sharply to your little toy / And boot it when it freezes. / It only does it to annoy / Because it knows it teases.

All the horrible details, plus bonus links, in the notes below. Feel free to give them the tl;dr treatment. I need to start doing this more often.

Saturday Colleen and I took a drive around Lake Washington (getting somewhat lost in a side trip to West Seattle), and when we got home I cooked probably the best salmon dish I've ever made -- pan-fried with butter, olive oil, and garlic, then added a little wine to steam it until done. Took a leftover portion over to Naomi's, and did a little music. And some thinking about my Orycon set, assuming I have one. Just finished the rest of the leftovers this morning. Yum!

Colleen said "This is what a Northwest dinner is supposed to taste like."

And I broke a tooth somehow - nice big chip off the side of a much-filled molar. Doesn't hurt, fortunately, but it'll probably need a cap I can't afford. Grump. My severance pay runs out at the end of the month (i.e., Friday), and with it their portion of my COBRA coverage. Grouch. Scared Bear. Set up a dental appointment for tomorrow.

Applied to three different positions at $A2 and one at $T; haven't heard yet. Finished coding homework for $D, and got an interview scheduled for Friday.

$D is going to present a difficult decision if I get it. It would be a great company to work for, but I wouldn't be working for them -- I'd be a long-term contractor, going through an agency, $K. $K's health care options look pretty poor, compared with what I've had and what most direct hires get. It might not cover either of Colleen's non-generic drugs. There may be workarounds, but if they don't work we'll be really screwed. TMI maybe later if comments ask for it. Sucks. Still, I'll probably have to take it. Both that and $A look like they're likely to be more pressure than I want, but...

If I hadn't been stupid over the last 20 years, I'd be able to retire comfortably now. As it is, I'm starting to think about how soon I can get away with it. Not now, though. Not yet.

I know, I know. Life sucks. Deal. Do I haveta?

I think I'm doing a little better -- I've definitely shaken whatever virus I had on Friday, and I took a couple of short walks (not wanting to overdo it while recovering). I'm still stressed over $COMPANY -- my new interview is tomorrow. It's 10am -- I'm hoping that the new hiring manager will take me out to lunch, like the previous one did. If he doesn't offer, I think I'll ask -- it's important.

I finally did something I should have done months ago, or even last week, and pulled up the ACM's "books 24/7" page. Currently reading about Hadoop and jQuery, with a Drupal book in the queue. I was pointed at the page by an update email.

Some progress on the apartment, with a couple more boxes collapsed and the spices sorted out a little better. We'll get there. I think.

Quite a few good links in the notes, including some of the results from a link-chase on St. John's wort, which I've been considering. Not going there -- it interacts badly with too many other things. OTOH I should probably try dropping my statin for a couple of weeks before my next blood work, to see if I still need it.

Quote of the day:

Colleen (raising glass): To the move!
me (raising glass): To adventure!
Colleen: To adventure!
YD (walking by): Hobbit!

Public Service Announcement: The Starport House-Cooling Party is today! Lots of stuff being given away, including books. Potluck, as usual.

I refreshed my job application at LabKey, this time via StackOverflow. And put in for a couple of jobs at Facebook. And did a little music practice in the morning, which is a habit I want to get back into. And a walk! I'm trying to get back into a productive routine, and not doing all that well at it.

I realized, during my walk, that I had probably made a copy of my pension paperwork. And indeed I had, so I'll mail that in today.

Did some more packing and organizing in the office.

Some links.

Good day. We have an apartment! It's not quite what we wanted; neither of the available 3-bedroom apartments is scooter accessible. But it's a big 2-bedroom, at Watercrest. And we'll have it before Westercon, so we'll have someplace to stay for a couple of days before the con, without needing to spring for more hotel room nights.

Many thanks to pocketnaomi for doing the necessary legwork in the morning. It wouldn't have been possible without her checking out the alternatives.

A 2.5 mile walk, following my (last) LHH coaching appointment. I have the same problem with coaching -- of any form -- that I do with therapy: I don't know what questions to ask. I'm pretty sure I have problems, but don't have enough of a handle on them to drag them out to be worked on.

Of course, when I am able to identify my problems, they often turn out to be fairly straightforward to solve. So, again, it's the ones I can't identify for myself that I need help with, but can't get it.

A phone interview with Tableau. This went much better than the one with Intentional on Tuesday.

ESR wonders whether the failure of Oracle's patent suit against Google marks the Beginning of the end for the patent wars.

OK, not all that productive. I spent much of my computer time converting more of my websites to the new Makefile scheme. Which, though somewhat tedious, was About Time. The largest and oldest are still to be worked on, of course.

About 2pm the family went out to the Great Mall for a st/roll. Kinda fun having the YD along. Made for a nice, relaxed, and inexpensive (since we didn't buy anything) Mother's Day, especially when combined with bagels and lox for brunch and a roasted leg of lamb for dinner.

Not all that many links, but a couple of pretty awesome ones. George Lucas takes revenge on rich neighbors - they won't let him put in a movie studio, so he's going to build low-income housing instead! And Marak/The-Git-Rap is just what it says on the label: a rap about my favorite version-control system. On GitHub, of course.

Well, all I can say is that it felt more productive at the time. Morning and most of the afternoon were taken up by an LHH webinar and filling out the job application for Planetary Resources – The Asteroid Mining Company. As it turned out, yesterday was the last day they were taking them, so I was cutting it pretty close. Grump.

And after dinner Colleen and I went out to the local mall for a st/roll. Which was probably healthier than it would have been going out in the heat during the afternoon.

Some work on self-assessment, more tweaking of the resume and various profiles, conversations about hard topics, and some tasty cooking. Wonderful hang-out time with Naomi and Colleen. One walk, and a lot of puttering. Lots of links. Which means I spent too much time on the web.

Saturday night I went out on the porch with Naomi to look at the "super moon". It was gorgeous and serene.

In other words, not a very productive weekend. Goal for today is to finish the self-assessment around career change.

Dice.com insists on a full street address. This means that they're always going to be showing me jobs in the San Jose area. Foo.

We sat down and realized that we really can't afford to maintain the YD down here for a year while we're up in Seattle. So we're back to looking at 3-bedroom apartments. If we'd had a chance to think it through, we might not have decided to move -- but that would have required finding a job quickly. The money will stretch farther in Seattle.

I still don't know my bottom line.

Amazingly enough, I keep running into people on my flist who haven't read The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino. Go read. It's about hidden disabilities, and I guarantee you know somebody who's dealing with that stuff; for whom counting spoons is a daily challenge. And along those lines, here's How To Illustrate Wheelchairs In Comic Books

WANT: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. First Android tablet I've seen that really does what I want at a price I can afford.

Anybody using Huntsy: A Dashboard for Your Job Search? Looks interesting, though I haven't decided yet whether it's worth the trouble.

I went out for a walk -- the Los Gatos Creek Trail out-and-back -- in the afternoon. For a while I was worried: it was starting to get mildly painful around 1.5mi; the endorphins kicked in at around 2.75 and I ended the walk with a distinct high. Perfect weather, too.

I made sangria (from scratch, using one of our lemons and 5 of Ken's oranges), and "chili dogs" for dinner. Actually, hot-dog sized Polish sausages split in half, with leftover chili, onion, and cheese on top. Yummy.

A great deal of progress is being made in the garage attic.

On another day, my highted link might have been More on DRM and ebooks in Charlie's Diary, but today Permission to Live: Unwrapping the Onion trumps it easily. You'd think an extreme fundamentalist couple's marriage would be blown sky-high by the revelation that the husband would rather be a woman. This is a heart-warming exception. 9 parts and well worth the read.