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Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
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4:01 pm
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Mom and Dad are at the house today, watching the baby. The day care lady has the week off, as she is allowed several times throughout the year, so we have recruited family to fill the gap.
There were some problems getting things engaged this morning. Our mornings are a well ordered machine involving me feeding, cleaning, and clothing the baby (and myself) in a set routine, then heading over to day care.
The important part was that last one. We leave the house and take the baby somewhere else. She does not stay at home all day without us. She goes somewhere that is equipped to care for her throughout the day.
We are prepared to care for a baby, as we have been doing it now for eight straight months. And our house is able to support the baby with minimal injury. However, our care for the child is holistic, where the house needs us to be there, and we need the house.
More importantly, our house needs us and all the crap in our cars. Strollers, car seats, booster chairs, baby slings and a bunch of other stuff for the amusement of the baby are strategically hidden in the car. The exact same car that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) blythefishy drove to work two hours before Mom and Dad showed up this morning.
So, Mom and Dad are not just watching the baby. They are stuck at the house watching the baby. I truly appreciate their effort. But I'm worried Dad will get bored and start searching through my crap. Last time he did that was in high school, and I was yelled at when I got home.
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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10:19 pm - oompf
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It is night two of a pretty good belly ache. I'm not complaining because I did it to myself. We were taken out to dinner last night, and I know better than to do what I did.
We ate at the Olive Tree which is a fabulous restaurant. Plenty of food. Tasty sauces. All around fine place to take people.
But they put mushrooms in pretty much everything. We've been there quite a few times, and know this. I got the sausage fettuccine in red sauce. With mushrooms.
I love mushrooms. It would be trite to say they don't like me. Mushrooms blame my stomach for losing the first World War and devaluing the Mark. They land on my stomach with the anger of a thousand exploding suns. And I'm left to lay face down on the floor for a couple of hours as the discomfort passes. It is from such a position that I type right now.
Of course, I didn't have to eat the leftovers for dinner tonight.
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| Saturday, June 13th, 2009
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6:15 pm
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There are a lot of television shows and movies that comprise my personality. I understand this and accept it. One day, I will be lounging around the Stonecutter's hall in some white face paint with a White Russian, advising my client to get himself a car without a roof, a Hattori sword, and guns. We will need guns.
But there may be no show that contributed more to my personality than Star Trek.
Why. Why is this stupid space opera, this wagon train to the stars, so fascinating and so insidious? I mean, can any acting be more stiff, or any story be more convoluted? Can any plot be more contrived or protagonist be more obvious? Why, apart from the narrative and for events I won't go into, Star Trek has steered my life.
Because, more than anything else, it is hopeful. It doesn't take place in a galaxy far, far away. It is not some rubber-masked alien trying to chase humans through a submarine. It is not some closed system fight between humans.
Beyond all other science fiction, Star Trek shows we made it. Until we get the message from afar, Star Trek is our only connection that shows we can get past this horrifying, harrowing, and awkward technological adolescence. We don't blow ourselves up, suck ourselves into a void, or simply fade off into oblivion.
Until then, Star Trek is our hook, that older brother that got to college, or the friend that lost weight, or the weird uncle that finally wrote that book. It shows there is light at the end of the tunnel. And, more importantly, when we get to that other side, we preserve our inherent humanness. We don't just make it because we luck out or because we overcome some character flaw. We succeed as a species because we are cocky, overwrought, flawed, and difficult, and snide at the same time we are emotional, smart, driven, and really really silly.
And yes, much as others who suffered much indignity on the path to salvation, I have finally seen the new Star Trek. After forty days in the desert, I have been witness to the reboot of history. I had to abandon the wife and baby to do it. I traveled far, and experienced much in the journey. But it is done. And it is good to know the universe is in good hands.
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| Monday, June 8th, 2009
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2:37 pm
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I'm debating about how much work I would like to get done this summer. I know there are
Of course, I should be so happy that I have a job that pays the bills and blah blah blah blah. But there is only so much psychic energy you can devote to your job on a sunny day when you are required to devote a particular number of hours to the office regardless of what work is being completed.
And there are such interesting things out there. Like this webcomic Nedroid, of which I may have just read the entire archive. (this one is my favorite) Or these accursed tower defense games.
So there are a couple of long-term tasks that need to be completed around the office. Many of them require me to just buckle down and grind out some work. It would be so much easier to have a couple of people buckle down and grind out parts of the work, then I can organize it and compile it into a presentable final product.
That's it. I need interns.
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| Thursday, June 4th, 2009
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12:56 pm - Why we can't have nice things.
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I have suffered a binge of clothing destruction lately. Two pairs of kakhis have begun to show tattering at the cuffs. Most of my undershirts are on the unfortunate end of the white-gray continuum.
Most destressingly, my work shirts are taking a beating. I put a large spot of red sharpie on the cuff of a green shirt. Yesterday, I caught the corner of a map cabinet and tore a hole in the sleeve of a pink shirt.
Then today, I thought I dropped a piece of food on my other green shirt. When I looked down, I found I had drawn a line with a pen right above the pocket. I pushed the fabric to one side and get a better look at the line, and deposited a chunk of stew on the shirt that had been quietly resting on the end of my fingernail. When I took out the Tide pen and started scribbling out the stains, the tip broke and dropped into my shirt pocket. Now there is a wet circle of Tide growing about tit high.
This is Heisenberg's Shirt Principle. If you are looking at your shirt for a stain, there will be a stain on your shirt.
Of course, this never happens to my old white or light blue work shirts. This process only annhilates new and colorful shirts.
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| Thursday, April 30th, 2009
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9:41 am - Dunkin Donuts tried to poison me.
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There are three drive thru Dunkin Donuts between home and work. I could likely withstand the onslaught through the first two. But the third is a little too much and I usually find myself pulling in each morning for a coffee with cream and sugar.
Today, all was not going to plan. The person in front of me was taking their merry old time. The clerk had to ask what my order was. It was the kind of dissheveledness that pops up at drive thrus run by teenagers.
But I finally got my coffee. Pulling away from the window, I flipped up the tab on my coffee lid and sipped. Then I screeched into a parking space, whipped open the door and threw up.
The coffee tasted like a urinal mint after a baseball game. It had no sweetness, only astringent burn and the hint of flowers. My throat closed and my eyeballs started to sweat. There was something added, something like paint thinner or antifreeze or polonium 210. The KGB had gotten me, those bastards. After all these years, the Reds had tracked me down.
Now, I'm normally very nice to clerks and managers of all kinds. But this was simply beyond the pale. I collected myself and stormed into the store.
"I need a manager" The stunned woman, the only one wearing a button down shirt rather than a slogan covered t-shirt, gulped and said "yes?"
"Taste this." I put the vat of evil on the counter. "Someone has poisoned this coffee."
She meekly took the lid off and sniffed the cup. "Oh." The boy next to her instantly recognized the fumes. "It's a raspberry."
"I'm so sorry. That is a raspberry cappuccino. We gave you the wrong cup."
"No. I have seen the wrong cup, and usually there are two girls involved. The contents of THAT cup are proof that God hates us and has let Satan and Jimmy Carter ruin the world. I mean really? You sell that? Sweet Jesus, that is awful. I thought you poured cough syrup into the cup."
"I don't like it myself," she said. She gave me a large coffee, that I watched her pour unmolested from the pot.
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| Friday, April 17th, 2009
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4:42 pm - That place with the steeple.
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Since we had Nougat dipped a few months back, we've been consistently going to services at the United Methodist church near the house. After so many years of anti-God and general religious malaise, it's interesting to return to church.
Growing up, church was stress. It wasn't just stressful, it was simply the source and the place and the event and the beliefs that represented stress as a whole. It was the cause of fights. It was a way of emphasizing how contrary I was. Church became a method of grinding down.
We're enjoying the new place because it has become a calming influence. There is no push by a priest to be perfect or prepare for Hell. There is no competition, particularly not against the super-godly members of the woman's auxillary or the religious ed board members. There is nothing about being a failure if you don't have a hotline to the Lord.
It helps to have a likeable pastor who keeps the even keel for the whole place. And she is sincerely interested in answering questions. Even difficult ones like "Did Jesus always know he was Christ? Even when he was an infant?" That wouldn't have flied with a priest.
It's also very odd to talk about God in public. We've spent so much time having that beaten out of us by friends and society. Self-identifying as a Christian comes with all the baggage and images of being a person that self-identifies as a Christian. It's still so difficult that the sentence comes out in the passive third person.
And maybe that's the biggest thing. We've found a place that doesn't mind having us stick around, and might like us at the beginning as much as they'll like us at the end.
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| Thursday, April 9th, 2009
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10:09 am
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I got a bit irritated last night. We had a window and door guy come over and give us estimates. Ten new windows. Three new doors. The possibility of expanding some of the basement windows from their little portholes to honest sunlight-in-the-room portals to the outside.
The total: $23,000. Breaking it apart, it would be ten grand for the doors, six grand for the upstairs windows, and seven grand for the basement.
Give or take.
What irritated me was not the cost. Sure, it was almost as much as we paid for the old house. It's more than we paid for the new car. However, it's good quality stuff and the company has a pretty good rep (except for one rater on Angie's List who completely nuked them for what appears to be no good reason).
It occurred to me that I was upset because my life is too stable. I don't have any opportunities for windfall money. It used to be that I could see some necessary expense coming and simply manufacture a way to get some money. (or, more likely, manufacture money to catch up after falling behind) Between research jobs, yard work for people, or simply copying twenty dollar bills at the 7-11, there were opportunities for more money. The cash would come just in time to pay for the expense.
Of course, my income now is approximately six times what it was when I could generate a windfall. But there is no feeling of infinite upside. I'm capped at the schedule of increases and raises that the office has adopted.
It's all made a little harder having left a job where I had the potential for commissions. Sure, I hated the job with the fiery passion of a thousand exploding suns. And I never actually made a commission since I was not allowed to take my own clients. But, again, there was the feeling of infinite upside.
Growing up is hard. Deferred satisfaction is hard. Living with the crappy front door and the busted ass windows for another year is extremely hard. (but forgetting about those out of work in this economy is quite easy)
And sucking it all up because I don't really have anything to complain about could be the hardest of all. Maybe that's the feeling I miss the most. Angst.
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| Friday, April 3rd, 2009
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9:08 am
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Recently, I've been trying to use my day planner a lot more. It's a very good planner, one received as a gift from the wife. She expected me to be a much more efficient user of the item, considering my career, my diploma and my actual job title include the word "planner".
But it's taken some getting used to. My old planner was a month-on-a-page job. This is two facing pages per day. A lot of space to fill.
So I've been getting better about filling the to-do list part. Now I have almost two months with pretty regular entries of things I got around to or didn't. And the facing page has been getting filled up with phone conversations. I can't take regular notes in the book because I like having my legal pad and I really like tearing out the pages to just stuff them into the file. However, the phone messages is a nice compromise. I'm feeling very efficient.
The next hurdle will be to try unifying my electronic calendar with my paper calendar. Our office does so much work through Outlook that there is just a massive volume of information that needs to be translated from bits to paper.
And yes, I did write "post to LJ" in my to-do list for today. See how well that works?
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| Friday, March 13th, 2009
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2:21 pm - Green parenting.
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We resist having Nougat watch television. While she enjoys The Office, she really shouldn't watch it.
But I do turn on the music stations while taking a shower so she can be entertained. The screen is pretty static, so she'll stare for a second and go back to what she was doing (usually eating her toys).
Today we enjoyed channel 1800 - "Songs of the Season" - which is playing traditional Irish music for St. Patrick's Day. I was thinking "Danny Boy" and the like. No.
After listening to some of the lyrics closely, we might hold off on any more of that for a while.
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| Sunday, March 1st, 2009
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9:21 pm - Fresh World - El Grande Supermarcado
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A few months back, a new grocery store opened up down the road from us. This is not usually cause for note, as the Greater Burnie Area has about a thousand grocery stores. We have our choice of twelve different ones within two miles. When you start to think about the how many grocery stores there are, it quickly dawns on you how many people live in the area.
But this new place is an international grocery. And it's awesome. First, it's cheap. Second, they have plenty of insane fruits and veggies. There are fish tanks where you can select your victim. A Korean lunch counter is between the seafood and meat departments. And there are women in the back stuffing kim-chi into things.
It makes one realize what is missing from normal supermarkets. Like smell. It would be easy to be disgusted that the place has a scent. But it actually smells like food. If there is a smell at a normal grocery store, something is wrong. Or, it's part of the manufactured supermarket experience. You walk into a Safeway and the only aromas are the coffee stand and the preserved flower cart. Kind of like a funeral home.
There's some weird things. They have the double aisle of woks and rice steamers. They have a big section of regular grocery stuff with plenty of items, but a limited selection of brands. And they have the insane selection of chips and snacks. blythefishy purchased some soybean pod crisps that are an unnatural color green and came in a bag that looked like a Tokyo arcade. Nothing too outlandish, and nothing that different from other international groceries in the area.
Bonus: there was a boy out front who helped put our bags in the car. We will be doing more of our shopping at this store.
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| Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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8:45 pm
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Today was a day off. Work did not expect people to move in Prince Georges County, so they didn't have their workforce show up either. I anticipated getting some of the house cleaned up for next weekend's guests.
Of course, like clockwork, blythefishy got sick with the stomach bug. And Nougat refuses to sleep unless she's wrapped up like a burrito and walked around. Not just held, but walked around. I've covered three miles today, all in the living room.
And now, I've burnt my grilled cheese. Back to work tomorrow.
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| Monday, January 12th, 2009
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3:01 pm - PSA - planning for the upcoming inauguration
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So, like a good American, you are heading towards the inauguration to see the dawn of a new era in American, nay, world history. Due to a heady mix of bad planning and poor judgment on your part, you decided to wing it and are left out in the cold. Now you find yourself well outside of the Inaugural Exclusion Zone, in the unfashionable backwaters of suburban Maryland. What do you do? What do you do?
Well, you eat. But you will not just shove food in your gaping maw. You will eat with purpose! Like kissing someone at midnight to positively establish the new year, you will spend the inauguration eating symbolically. If you are in town, here are some places to try and what they say about you and your outlook on the world.
( Kind of like Zagat's for wonks )
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| Thursday, January 8th, 2009
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9:21 am
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After a week of fighting with the computer, I am asking the IT department to re-image my hard drive. There is adware lingering on my system, and it's just not budging.
We have a really good computer department. They provide an incredible product to the community and a lot of support to a wide array of users. The folks in this department range from people who were trained using planimeters and light tables to employees who are immersed in computers. I'm at the computer literate end of the spectrum.
But the IT folks are so good that they don't listen to the employees, regardless of our abilities. I've been emailing the IT folks repeatedly about the problems (missing files, continually popping windows, ads showing up on my internal email window, etc.) I'm astute enough to know that there shouldn't be three copies of rundll32.exe running on my computer. I would wipe it out, but the Adminstrator is the only one allowed to add programs or alter the registry.
Regardless, the IT guys show up at my cube and start using little words to lead me through starting the virus scan. "Now if you click at the thing at the top - that's the tool bar - and it will open a new menu - that's called a pull down menu..."
I've had to start saying "Tell me what you want me to do. Don't tell me how to get there."
Now, whatever wad of digital phlegm inhabits my drive is not showing up on virus scans. This has me very concerned. So, we'll see if they believe me enough to wipe the drive and start over.
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| Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
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9:28 am - Week 52
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I had anticipated being alone at work this week, able to get some reading done and some drawers cleaned out. However, that is not the case. Everybody is here. Phones are ringing.
I'm off the rest of the week. Then it's two weeks of work and then another three day week. (I'm not risking life and limb to come in on Inaguration Day. The world will be heavy with crazy.)
But we will take a few minutes to think about the last year. Speaking about being heavy with crazy, this was it.
It has been:
51 weeks since my last birthday and our first anniversary.
50 weeks since my diet was painfully and irritatingly reset.
48 weeks since I took my brother out drinking for his 21st birthday and I started talking about government bailouts
46 weeks since I avoided going to the UBSPI Auction, as the immediate past president, so I didn't overshadow the new officers. They raised a ton of money without me.
45 weeks since Barack Obama won the Maryland Primary.
39 weeks since we gave my mom a picture frame that said "Great mothers are promoted to grandmothers". It took her a moment to figure out what that meant.
36 weeks since the first hints of my displeasure at work (friends only) rose their ugly heads.
34 weeks since we went to Disneyworld.
33 weeks since we started the Month of Weddings.
31 weeks since Fishy the Cat died and we decided it was best if her sister Pudge continued to live with Aunt Toni.
29 weeks since we became suburbanites.
28 weeks since I became one with the joys of lawn care and home maintenance.
25 weeks since the search for a new job began to gain momentum.
20 weeks since we started looking for a day care provider.
18 weeks since I quit my job and we threw blythefishya surprise baby shower. Totally unrelated events.
17 weeks since I discovered load bearing caulk and significant water damage in the new bathroom. A month later, we got TubFitter, as I was not trusted with another bathroom project. It only takes one 18 month bathroom project and you're labeled for the rest of your life.
15 weeks since I started the new job and the world didn't end. Totally unrelated events.
12 weeks since I got a new cell phone with - get this - a camera. Who ever heard of such a thing?
9 weeks since Project Nougat came to a conclusion, and my time as a perpetual slacker and professional narcissist came to an abrupt halt.
7 weeks since we were told that the world changed. It already had, but took two weeks for the rest of the world to catch up.
5 weeks since we first ventured to having dinner outside the house with the baby. Five Guys hamburgers never tasted as good.
4 weeks since she met her great-grandparents.
2 weeks since my first appearance before the Prince Georges County Planning Board.
1 week since baby's first Christmas. I was almost completely forgotten. I am okay with this.
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| Friday, December 12th, 2008
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11:32 pm - Twelve Christmas songs (good ones)
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| Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
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12:15 pm - Office of the Agency Administration Department
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We have an ongoing push in the department to engage the communities we are working for. This is important because a lack of engagement fosters resentment and resentment fosters distrust. All of that becomes a problem when we propose a plan that is in the best interests of the community. The community can come back with "how the hell do you know?"
I'm on a committee for community outreach. Our stated goal is "Strengthen partnerships with diverse communities that foster mutual understanding and support to enhance the provision of excellent customer service to our diverse customer base." The same people who gave us this charge also gave us the main task: develop and implement a community outreach framework.
Most of us on the committee signed up in order to get out to the community and talk with interesting people. Developing a framework is a very different beast, one that sits inside and reads twenty year old reports. We are expected to compile a method of engaging the community and then hand it off to others to implement.
But that's not going to be what happens. The whole committee agrees that we would like to see sunlight and fresh air. So my job is to unpack that goal and rearrange it in a way that puts us into the community (and sounds like reasonable English, to boot).
I really forgot how much fun it was to work in an office where people take the mechanics of working in an office very seriously. Part of it is being government. Part is being planners. Mostly it is a simple joy in the process itself.
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| Saturday, November 29th, 2008
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10:50 pm - On the economic utility of babies
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For the second time in two days, we took Nougat into Lowe's. Yesterday's trip was for ornaments, lights and Christmas accouterments. Today's trip was for stuff to repair the roof where damage was discovered while hanging the first round of Christmas lights.
On walking in, the clerk tried to get us to sign up for a credit card. I refused. Then her evil gaze settled on Nougat. "Oh," she said, "the holidays are so magical with a baby."
So, we bought more accouterments. Twelve more sets of lights. Spray-on snow. Plenty of tinsel. There may be an inflatable Santa and eight reindeer sitting on my lawn. Nine if you count Rudolph. He may be joined by a twelve foot tall, anthropomorphic Christmas tree that waves and plays "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" in four part harmony.
Having a baby has opened doors. People will literally open doors for you when you're carrying a baby. You get to the front of the line at restaurants. Clerks everywhere open new lanes for you. Hot chicks dig me.
But no door has opened wider than the direct link from the outside world to my hypothalamus. She is an exposed nerve ending ready to be pounced upon and tugged, with me following along like a neutered walrus.
About those Christmas lights. I now read the packages for lead content and go online for more breathless chatter about dangers. I have been drawn into the cult of the precious little snowflake. Last year, I bought Christmas lights with EXTRA lead, because I wanted the PVC shielding to be more pliable. Lights contain lead because they have to pass stringent UL testing, and they're not baby toys. Christmas lights will only hurt the baby if she puts the entire 200 light strand into her mouth, plugs them in, and sits there for three or four days. I still washed my hands, twice, between hanging lights and handling the baby.
On this week's episode of Bones, a private school was at the center of the plot. I thought, "could we get Nougat into that school?" Both of her parents went to public school and turned out alright. (disclosure: I was in parochial school through fourth grade) But don't we owe her more? What would I be willing to give up to make sure she had that opportunity?
And there was that story about folks trampling a man to death at Walmart in the Black Friday running of the sheep. I read online comments to the article where folks defended the herd mentality because she had to line up at the asscrack of dawn just to buy her children a Wii. I contemplated how much Nougat would have to ask me for before I was willing to stomp a man to death. It may be pretty low.
Of course, being the holidays, my mind turns to religion. Catholicism fundamentally believes a baby will not go to heaven until they are baptized. Among other things, this presents a departure of my opinion from that of the Holy Church of Rome. But if you buy into this, how negligent are you for waiting even an extra day to christen the baby? Nougat will be baptized, but we're looking for a congregation that has a couple of beliefs similar to ours: the equality of people, the dignity of the inquisitive mind, and the community of respect. No religion will force us to acclimate based on Nougat's damnation. But it's going to be a fight to get family and friends to wait until we find that place.
We talk a lot about the economics of children: the cost of education, the amount needed to raise the baby, the contribution of a new worker to society. But what about the other side of the economic puzzle? There is a baby tax parents must pay to keep their new addition as part of their existing groups. Babies make the cost of admission low - everybody loves a new arrival. But the upkeep is quite high.
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| Friday, November 21st, 2008
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3:44 pm - Lord help me.
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I have become That Guy. The one that talks about the color baby poop.
Apologies in advance.
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| Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
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10:34 am
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For no particular reason this morning, I ended up Googling myself. The usual suspects showed up - school announcements, articles, old jobs. Nothing from the new job yet, but I won't have a staff report posted for another month. Still have to get a few more things higher on the list to suppress the photos of youthful excess.
But I was irritated by the number of "business networking" sites that dredged up my name from one online directory or another. Worse, they are wrong. I have no reason to continue my connection to the old firm, so I emailed them asking to take down my name. If there is resistance, there may be further letters.
The hard one may be the Martindale Hubbell listing because that was actually an ad paid for by the old job. They are getting an email asking for some help. Unfortunately, that is the site which all of the other ones dredge for information. It's like a credit score where you can get one of the agencies corrected, but if you don't correct all three, you'll have to start all over again.
Side note: While I am really looking forward to the new Star Trek movie and enjoyed the trailer that was recently released, this video gave me the giggles:
current music: Pandora playing Counting Crows - Hanging Around
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