Wow, this is pretty amazing: Why I won’t be at my high school reunion. My high school experience wasn’t nearly as bad as this one, but I echo the sentiment at the end: Our kids will have some kind of kung-fu lessons and be able to finish physical conflicts on their own terms. I think that kind of self-confidence is essential in this day and age.
Monday night we spent a little time with some friends in the industry, trading gossip, war stories, and news, and it left me feeling a little sick to my stomach. I know that times are tough out there, but the more bad news I hear, the more discouraged I get. This business is cyclical in nature, and having lasted through three recessions since joining the full-time workforce (exiting college right in the middle of one, no less) I know that this will be the way of things until I retire or give up and go sell insurance.
This one has me more worried than the last two, and that’s probably because I’m wired into the scene a lot better than I was in ’93 or ’01, and a lot more knowledgeable about the economy, our country, and my insignificant place on the edge of the whole mess. Work is scarce, jobs are even harder to find, and the money that people are spending is net 120 at best, so I’m holding on to what I’ve got for dear life and hoping we can ride this one out.
Compounding my worry was a rough time I was having with a project at work, which seemed to be dragging onward with no resolution. I’d sketched and sketched and between fifteen or so pages I had three distinct approaches, but I was having a hell of a time getting them to flesh out onscreen. At times like this it’s easy to get into an “I suck” mentality, which becomes self-defeating (and self-prophesying), but I’ve learned the hard way over the years that time and a little perspective can be an ally. I came home, helped give the baby a bath, watered the garden, spent some time with Jen, and then took another look at what I’d done. Within an hour or so I felt the quiet, pleasurable shift of things starting to fall into place, and soon I had had one solution finished, the second on its way, and the elements of the third sorted out for the next morning.
I guess the upshot of all this rambling is that even though my chosen profession doesn’t have the stability of, say, law, banking (ha), or civil service, it’s more rewarding than anything else I can think of. That feeling of the gears meshing and elements clicking together is one of the best things in the world—I’d be hard-pressed to find something else so rewarding that I could get paid to do, even when it seems like the industry is groaning and creaking and imploding around me.
Nonprofit reverses plan to give injured veteran a home. Friends of ours spearheaded the effort to build and donate a house to an amputee veteran. But it turns out he and his family own two other houses and had a third built for them by volunteers in Georgia. What a sad, demoralizing story.
There’s been a lot going on around Idiot Central lately; too much to list here. Suffice it to say we’re all fine and running as fast as we can to keep up. More later, promise.
As noted elsewhere, this weekend was another milestone in Finn’s development: She moved into her own big-girl room on Friday evening, after a whirlwind installation of cardboard blackouts over the windows and frenzied crib relocation. She sat on the floor and played happily with her toys as we hustled around, moving and hauling and organizing, and seemed keenly interested in examining our pizza and beer when we finally stopped for dinner. Her first night was uneventful and quiet, and she slept through until 6:30 without an hour of talking and fussing like she’s been doing for the last several weeks.
On Saturday, Mama and I began the long and arduous task of planting asparagus in our garden. Planting asparagus sounded, at first blush, like it would be cool. It’s a native plant in Maryland, we like it grilled, and it’s good for us. This was all before we realized what a pain in the ass it is to plant asparagus. The best way I can describe this to you is that it was like burying giant prehistoric spiders in a drainage ditch.
Most of the soil beneath our ratty lawn is pure Maryland clay, so I had to dig a 12″ trench and throw the dirt/clay onto a tarp spread on the lawn. After installing the asparagus, we covered them over and watered everything heavily while Finn kept an eye on us from the comfort of her blanket.
Sunday morning we took advantage of Finn’s early breakfast schedule and hustled out to a restaurant for Bloody Marys and an anniversary breakfast before the church crowd set in; she was in a wonderful mood for our whole visit and crashed out on the car ride home.
Most of the the weekend was consumed with yardwork, from mowing the lawn for the first time in two weeks, cutting saplings down on the property line, fixing gutters, and repotting a ton of seedlings in the greenhouse. Two of my tomatoes and two of my eggplant have aphids already, so they got moved outside and away from the other plants. Four cucumber seedlings got their own tub of dirt, pepper seedlings got moved to their own pots, and the radishes (which are remarkably leggy) got placed outside so that they’ll acclimate quickly. As the sunlight dimmed and turned to stormclouds, we moved inside and began cleaning out the front porch, which was relegated to a dumping ground last year during the remodel and hasn’t been touched in months. There are about three Scoutloads of debris to be hauled to the dump next weekend, which will free up a ton of space around here.
Finn was patient and understanding throughout the entire three-day weekend, spending time on her blanket, in the backpack carrier, in her car seat, in the bouncy chair, and on the floor while we planted and weeded and mowed and cleaned and vacuumed and moved. While we were outside hauling dirt from one side of the yard to the other, she watched as I piloted the wheelbarrow back and forth, and each time I passed she smiled and held her arms out: TAKE ME FOR A RIDE. So I scooped her up off the blanket, placed her on an empty bag (and my folded up T-shirt) and she got a wheelbarrow ride around the back lawn while Mama held her hand.
Stop worrying about your children! My sister and I walked to school by ourselves when I was in the first grade, and often left the house for the entire day without having a cellphone, GPS tracking device, or RFID implant. Don’t believe the nobody-is-safe hysteria.
We’re in week 2 of the Great Deluge, and while my nose has stopped dripping, our gutters are still clogged. All this rain means I haven’t gotten a damn thing done outside on the house, or with the Scout, or in the garden, which is driving me batshit crazy. However, while feeding Her Highness the other morning, I noticed that our neighborhood currently resembles Ireland in its lush, green, foggy beauty, and that’s not a bad thing. When we are slogging through another oppressive brown August, I’ll look back and remember how vibrant all the plants looked this spring before they had the life cooked out of them, and that will make me happy until I can crawl back into the air conditioning.
We enjoyed a wonderful meal Saturday evening with Mr. and Mrs. Scout, who are possibly the only people in Maryland to have actually managed to sell their house this year, within weeks of putting it on the market, and who will be leaving the ‘Ville to move across the Bay where the traffic is slower and the sky is sunnier. Mr. Scout promises me he will be back in the area regularly, but I suspect this means we will now have to settle for long-distance bromance.
I took the time last night, in front of a roaring fire, to finally wipe my MacBook clean and install a fresh new copy of Leopard, a full year after buying the install disc. I’ve noticed a huge speed gain already, as well as access to modern conveniences I should have been enjoying months ago. The last 12 hours have been a whirlwind of new installations and digging through discs to find long-forgotten files, but overall it’s great to have a clean system for the first time since 2004 (I’ve done user migrations since 10.2, and it was getting very, very crufty under the hood).
And finally, after a month of fruitless listings, untold numbers of flaky, half-legible emails, and three no-shows, I sold my sidelined G5 iMac this evening—for exactly what I paid for it a year and a half ago.
“…one of downtown Baltimore’s main thoroughfares is filled with water after a water main burst just before 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. The break closed Lombard Streets from President to Gay streets, crippling rush-hour traffic, closing buildings, parking garages and the National Aquarium in Baltimore.”
70° days are rare in Maryland this early in March, so this weekend we tried to balance spending as much time as possible with Finn and as much time as we could outside in the fresh air. Saturday was dedicated to long-overdue yardwork, which consumed a good portion of our afternoon, but, what a beautiful afternoon to do it!
I made the mistake of wearing work jeans, and after a half an hour raking leaves off the foundation, I had to switch to shorts because I was too hot. We had five inches of snow last Monday. I am surprised I did not blind the pilots of overflying passenger jets with the sunlight bouncing off my pale knobby knees.
Anyway, while Finn slept off her second breakfast, Jen and I filled twenty bags of leaves from the back of the house, the driveway bed, and the odd area under our back porch, which seems to attract all of the loose leaves in this zipcode like a great sucking vortex.
Once that was accomplished, we three got a bite to eat, changed our diaper, brought the swing outside, and commenced to cleaning out the sad, dilapidated tangle of weeds that was our garden while Finn supervised. I cannot describe to you the sense of satisfaction it gives me to look out on that bare patch of earth and know the neighbors aren’t cursing us under their breath anymore.
While raking up the leaves, I reflected on the sad harvest we reaped last year (mainly due to the toll taken by varmints), and decided that this would be the year I modify our greenhouse to grow vegetables properly. Doing some research, I found online suppliers who sell polycarbonate glazing and ventilation systems, which will be an up-front investment and take some engineering to install, but should turn our useless sealed hothouse into a productive greenhouse.
Meanwhile, I straightened up the pots and barrels and soil and made way for seedlings.
Then, I moved out to the garage and straightened up as much as I could around the Scout without actually diving into doing something on it. I did break down and disassemble some of my new parts–but I’ll go into that elsewhere.
Sunday we got the girl up early—or is that the other way around?—and made preparations to take a long walk around a lake in Columbia before doing our grocery shopping. After her first bottle of the day, this child, who almost never stops moving, did something she’s never done with me before—she leaned her head down onto my chest, under my chin, and quietly nestled up against me for three of the longest and best moments of my life.
Once we got out onto the trail, she was fine for the first fifteen minutes or so, but soon decided she wanted to be facing forward, which meant we wound up carrying her like a football for two and a half miles. Once out of the stroller, she was her usual observant self, appraising each new passerby with a taciturn stare, careful to warn away strange ladies who, no doubt, were plotting to rush over and pinch her chubby pink cheeks. Touch my face and I will projectile vomit all over your track suit, that glare said. And it worked.
Jen and I are afraid nobody will ever see the inside Finn, the girl we get to see who is giggles and smiles and gets so happy her entire body spasms repeatedly like she’s hooked up to a car battery. When she’s around us, she’s Miss Congeniality, and when she’s out in public, she’s Steve McQueen, staring down a hostile world with those steel-blue eyes and a .44 magnum. I will show you proof that she can smile:
After our return to the car, we hightailed it over to the grocery store, where Mama stayed with her in the parking lot while I hustled around and got our shopping done. A quick trip to the health-food store, and we headed home for a three-hour nap and some more yardwork: the front hedge got cleaned out, the greenhouse got a final sweep, and the toolbench in the garage got cleaned off.
About the time I was finishing up for the day, Finn woke up for dinner: avocado and pears. MMMMMMMMM, avocado. And then it was bathtime, and as soon as she was diapered and dressed, it was time for sleep. I’m exhausted just writing about it all.
This weekend is supposed to be warm and bright, and it can’t come soon enough. The snow melted off in yesterday’s balmy weather, revealing piles of dead leaves I still have yet to rake. I’ve been ignoring the yard since last fall, and the bill has finally come due; doing some basement straightening last weekend, I found an entire box of yard waste bags just waiting to be used. I think we will also have to get Her Highness outside for an afternoon in the yard—maybe while we clean up the garden? I predict the fresh air will do us all good.
In other news, I traded some time with a long-time client for a used but shiny G4 tower that was sitting in their old production room, unused and unloved. After a five-minute drive swap last night, it replaced the ancient G3 tower we’ve been using as our music server, and now paves the way for future data storage. (The 11-year-old G3 BIOS doesn’t recognize drives over 120Gb in size, which sucks when I’ve got two 250GB drives sitting idle and in an age when terrabyte-sized drives sell for less than $100).
Finally, I’ve been obsessing over getting out into the garage and working on the Scout. I’m going to do some test runs with the wire wheel on some of the spare parts I got last weekend, vacuum the floors and bed, and take stock of what I’m working with a little better. My plan is to run up the engine for a while until the leak appears, then try to determine where it’s coming from. If it’s just the gasket, that should be easy to order and replace. If not, I’ll lay hands on a used a water pump in the next week and swap that out instead.