maenad.net : jnl

fiancé(e)

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 21:38:25 -0800

So much to be done -- invitations (find a stationer); website; send save-the-dates; caterer (tasting!); florist; schedule a fitting at Vera Wang for the dress; bachelorette party; who will do my hair? -- but we have a list, to which he's added the item "Have fun."

And we are: Ran off to Paris for our two-year anniversary the week before Christmas, where we spent a few days walking through the cold, gravelly Jardin des Tuileries (I in my new wool coat; he on his way to buy one), consuming art and macarons at the Musée Picasso, almost pretending to be locals in the Marais with falafel and a crowded wine bar with a sister restaurant that could have come straight off Valencia St. but for the language, and finishing off with a celebratory bottle of Veuve with dinner in Saint-Germain-des-Prés on the eve of the anniversary itself. Fiancé knows how to make a girl happy. (And to think I'd originally planned to be oncall that weekend.)

Then Seattle (engagement party!), Tahoe (Christmas with all the families!), San Francisco (New Year's party! Back again, after last year's forced cancellation due to my tour of civic duty with Obamacare), Tahoe again (snowboarding; snowshoe up Castle Peak; æbelskivers). Then drop into the first work week in four, the first of 2015.

So much on the list, but a reasonable amount of time to get it done between now and April. And -- sparkly ring; trips to Paris; the word fiancé(e) -- did I mention I love being engaged?

engagementmoon

Both of our upgrades came through. I take this as a good sign for our shared future. We're on our way back from Frankfurt -- actually, Innsbruck, from which we took a Tyrolean Air puddle-jumper, drinking pre-bottled Aperol spritzes from the only airport cafe while watching intense mist gather over the surrounding mountains -- actually, San Cassiano, from which we drove this morning down a mountain and through twisting roads (that chip-and-signature credit card paid for itself at a toll booth), leaving our adorable Südtirol hotel after five nights of engagementmoon.

I'd gotten a gel manicure last Friday, ostensibly for my birthday (though I was aware that we'd been dating for 21 months as of that day, and that a planned European vacation held, shall we say, possibilities). Dragged (I thought) Jack to the opera that night (Norma, which (do you need a spoiler alert for 180-year-old operas?) is hardly the most romantic, ending in a fiery double suicide); decided on a whim to get a half-bottle of the nicer champagne for intermission ("it's my birthday!"). Leaving our seats at halftime, I tried to slide my hand in his pocket, and almost ruined the surprise. Standing on the balcony, City Hall's gilt dome lit up across the way, chimes ringing to begin going back to your seats ... and he's down on one knee, there's something sparkling, I've said yes! I glance down at my finger as we rush back to catch the second half of the opera, and notice an Asscher cut (technically, a Royal). Well done, now-fiancé. We inappropriately canoodled through the Druidic priestess's excommunication and suicide, much to the consternation of the elderly patrons behind us.

Saturday -- my 34th birthday, and the first day of our engagement -- we spent wandering around the foggy city, lunch and pink bubbles at a cafe in North Beach, calling and texting and snapchatting friends and family. Catered birthday dinner that night doubled as an engagement party -- Sierra shrieked when she saw my hand; even the sous chef needed a tissue as we told our friends. Then Sunday, having boarded a plane to Madrid, I popped above the cloud layer for the first time since the opera, and HOLY REFRACTION, BATMAN spent the next good while engrossed by the small rainbows my finger now casts in direct sunlight, 74 little facets of how much he loves me.

After my work trip in Spain, and his in Zurich, I flew over to join him; we took a train to Innsbruck, and then drove down into the Dolomites. Apfelstrudel; pastoral cows ringing with legit Heidi cowbells; mountain Hütte that would serve you polenta after a 10k hike: It didn't feel like Italy until last night, when we crossed the border from Sütirol into Belluno, and, kicking around Corvina, didn't hear a word of German until back across the Falzarego Pass that night. The Alps, it turns out, are every bit as stunning as legend would have it -- die schönste auf der Welt,, as a widower eating knödeln next to us at the Lavarella Hütte put it. Tahoe, plus mountain huts with wine, gnocchi, and Sachertorte; septuagenarian hikers who lope out of the hills, have a coffee and admonish you to enjoy this post-engagement time ("diese Zeit zu geniessen"), and stride back out into the next valley.

We're taking his advice: The flight attendants are already teasing us, asking if we're on our honeymoon. Not yet -- first, to enjoy this time.

the last 8 months

Dispatches from 30,000 feet: I am so done with this trip. Thankfully, I'm on my way home -- well, immediately to Tahoe after landing at SFO, but that's home, too, these days.

What news? Somehow I've fallen off updating. In the fall, there was only so much that could be said about the ever-worsening commute down 101, and then my bus being blockaded, the city suddenly finding a new symbol of systemic inequality and 30 years' worth of piecemeal Californian ballot measures in a bus I already disliked riding. To post my feelings about that would have been to stir the pot; Facebook had already made it quite clear to me how welcome my views were. And then in mid-December, after Mikey had already been out in Washington for several month and after Cody mysteriously missed my Thanksgiving, I too received a call of duty, and went out to live in DoubleTree in Columbia, MD for the next month (much to the forebearance of long-suffering Jack, who flew out to join me for New Year's -- the first of my annual parties in 8 years I had to cancel). Though it's now a matter of public record that several dozen of us dropped everything for periods ranging from 4 weeks to many months in order to save healthcare.gov (and thereby get my sister, among others, reasonably-priced care), it felt somewhat clandestine at the time. What could I post -- "I'm out east, saving America"?

And then things picked up speed enough that it seemed any one post could never catch up: The long-awaited kitchen remodel completed in about 10 weeks (that orange backsplash!!); the SRE team I've been on for the last 6+ years absorbed another, resharded, and I ended up both Tech Lead and manager of the San Francisco-based shard, commuting on MUNI (love it or hate it, I'll take it over 101) and responsible for 8 people's careers; Obama invited us out to the White House for a thank-you party with a Marine band and a private handshake; Katherine moved out, making way for Jack to not only give up his rent-controlled apartment and move in, but also give up his KitchenAid (we each had one), which is how I know he really loves me.

With a new role, responsibilities, kitchen, and live-in boyfriend, it would make all kinds of sense to stay home for a while. But of course I've been off to Austraila (Simon & Lisa's wedding), DC again (Ari & Rebecca), and now London & Zurich for a work trip, which, at 10 days, is about as brief as you can reasonably make something transoceanic. London I love, and spent a glorious weekend kicking around Clerkenwell and Islington in the mild weather with my new gold leather tote (at once ridiculous and practical); Zurich, I haven't truly been back to since 2004, and can most favorably say that it's the place I met Tee mit Rum 10 years ago, that the Google office there is very, very pretty. Switzerland is cute, and the Swiss have their moments -- at twilight yesterday, running along a trail bordering the Zürcher See, I watched two middle-aged women strip down to bathing suits and climb into the lake via an unmarked ladder, breast-stroking out toward the paddleboarders and exclaiming Das ist herrlich!; the hotel left a cough drop instead of a chocolate on the pillows whose down puffiness almost made up for the lack of real air conditioning during the Alpen summer -- but I am so done. We've been in meetings straight for the week, arguing about priorities and team structure and -- nothing, really; just so much negotiation, frustrations coming out over longstanding technical debt and the difficulty of communication across even the leadership of a three-location, 50-person team that now has 5 tech leads and 4 managers. I abruptly left our last meeting yesterday, collected my laundry from the hotel and went for an evening run to replace cortisol with endorphins; and then took an Uber (which apparently exists everywhere!) to a Delfina clone for dinner: Warehouse-chic, thin-crust pizza, glasses of Lagerin (including an extra from the waiter to apologize for having initially blamed me for a miscommunicated order -- my German is rusty, but not that bad), and a novel on my kindle. My only solo dinner of the trip; I probably should have taken more. Extroverts learn these tricks slowly, I guess.

Nine long hours left on this flight, followed by the drive up to Tahoe. And me here in row 39, karmically compensating for my lie-flat business class seat out to London last week. But this is the home stretch: Jack will be waiting for me with kisses and the car, and even if I sleep the whole way up, I'll finally be home, with him.

better than commuting

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 19:49:05 0100

I've somewhat intentionally been away from my desk for most of October so far. Before mid-September or so, I'd forgotten that the commute on 101 traditionally becomes a complete nightmare during the "back to school" period (is it people driving their kids in in the morning? Everyone just coming back from holiday and remembering they should go to work?), but if I'd remembered, I couldn't have run away from it better. On the first of the month, I flew to Minneapolis for my annual ritual of angstily trying to engage with the topic of women in computing -- but this time, with pre-set boundaries! At the Grace Hopper Celebration (not, natch, Conference) for Women in Computing 2013, I gave interviews, worked the booth, ran into both of my female CS professors from Swarthmore, and said hello to an acquaintance who happened to be holding a microphone and working for TechCrunch. The result of the latter was several videos on their website in which I managed to not sound either evil or stupid (my colleagues shuddered in the corner as I eagerly spewed party line for the camera about why diversity ultimately is good for teams); the result of the overall engagement is hopefully an intern or two for Google next summer, some good experiences for undergrads, a bowl of late-night gin punch with Connie-Lynne and others at a fantastic hipster bar, and four glorious days of not having to slog through the molasses of Northern California autumnal traffic.

Weekend oncall shift. Laundry; boyfriend; yoga. Monday morning, off to London to see the team there (and to meet half of them -- so fast they grow!), drink tea from adorable China cups, see some Shakespeare at the Globe with Eddie, give a presentation, eat Szechuan and Israeli-vegetarian food by turns, and expand my knowledge of the British cocktail scene. Daily commutes were happily made via Tube (perhaps the most efficient mode of moving massive quantities of humanity ever), instead of 101 (possibly the least).

The main parameter for the following week was, where in Europe is a direct flight away, and will have nice weather at the end of October? Answer: Lisbon (I flew down; Jack flew over). It rained last night -- dumping buckets in the Bairro Alto neighborhood as Jack & I shielded under the hotel umbrella, dashing over wet cobblestones from dinner (Thai food, traditional Portuguese fare not really being an option for two vegetarians) to the wine bar we'd come to trust. There was also a steady drizzle the day before, as I'd driven our rental Fiat up a tiny cobbled pathway to a Port-focused winery that dismissively shuttered their doors ten minutes earlier than advertised. Gales in coastal Porto on the drive back, my idea of exploring the northern city's azulejo tile-work scuttled by the difficulty of holding both a camera and an umbrella, and the dampness of our shoes.

But the above was basically the sum total of adverse weather we got during the whole of last week. The forecast looked dicey in west-Lisbon Belém, but the umbrella stayed folded while we figured out how to assemble packets of cinnamon and sugar on top of still-warm, custard-filled pasteis; the only drops we felt in the adorable town of Sintra were on the main sidewalk leading up to the Palacio -- none at all in the woods and bramble behind a 8th-century Moorish castle, as we hiked along an ancient, moss-covered wall: A pathetic siege-laying party but a serendipitously awesome hike in flip-flops. There were pink cotton-candy clouds overlooking Lisbon's Ponte 25 de Abril (the twin bridge to our Golden Gate) the first night he arrived, as we sipped few-euro drinks on a patio with a miradouro and a view of the sunset; those pink fluffy clouds showed up again from the balcony of our hotel at Quinta do Vallado up in the Douro Valley when we arrived Tuesday evening, finding a half-bottle of the house vintage and two deck chairs waiting for us on a private balcony with a view of the terraced hillside opposite.

It took us ten months to finally spend a whole week together (not entirely counting the two weeks -- May; September -- we spent in New York, working from the office there). He gives me these melty looks over dinner from time to time. Changed his Facebook profile photo to a new one of us together during our assault on the Castelo dos Mouros. Still seems to like me. I'm still pinching myself.

So, yes: I have successfully avoided my commute down 101 for four straight weeks. But what I'm even happier about is this boy, still smiling at me and still holding my hand.

year of the house

Wed, 04 Sep 2013 17:51:34 -0700

It's been the summer of houses. Mine, in which the so-called "summer kitchen remodel" will be lucky to be done in time for Thanksgiving. In June I temporarily moved into Jack's tasteful one-bedroom in the Haight during the structural work -- a welcome respite of minimalism and bright rugs surrounded by the smell from the sidewalk below of incense and weed, whose foggy quiet is regularly punctuated by foghorns carrying from the much-nearer bridge. He patiently watched as I filled his closet with shirts and a number of fancy dresses (operas, and all those summer weddings!), filled his bathroom cabinet with feminine ablution paraphernalia, filled his fridge with weekly vegetables we didn't always make it through. We played house (a lovely, time-limited experiment). And, though the structural contractors only slipped schedule by one day, somehow I failed to account for the patching-up process, and for anything remotely resembling the lead time for designing and fabricating cabinets. Which is why I'm still coming home daily to a house covered in lath-and-plaster dust, navigating plastic partitions hung up around the living room as the only way to avoid coating the couch in a fine white powder. I bought a proper, grown-up vacuum cleaner, and have been nightly wielding it somewhat neurotically -- Lady Macbeth if Duncan had been a Victorian ceiling medallion.

But the house is slowly taking shape. Cool as it was to see the steel beams in the ceiling that replaced that one little structural wall, it's surprisingly comforting to have them hidden from sight behind some properly redone wiring and new drywall. Medallions have been rehung, a new light fixture for the hallway run, hanging bits of molding sawn off and the corners finished. Next week we should be able to remove the dropcloths and give everything a good scrubbing. And then the kitchen itself will still be several months out.

Jack, too! Without abandoning his cute, rent-controlled 1br, he closed on a house two weeks ago in North Lake of Lake Tahoe, adding him to the ranks of the landed gentry (albeit landed a three-hour drive from the city). We went up last weekend, taking Friday off work to make an extra long holiday weekend. I'd bought him a pie plate, measuring cups, spatula, and a small bucket of colored chalk for the blackboard wall enclosing the pantry -- outfitting the house with the few items it didn't already have, since it was sold lock, stock, and barrel, sheets, towels, and half-drunk bottles of good sherry included.

This is more than playing house -- more than merging my clothes into his drawers, more even than ripping up walls and reinforcing the foundation of my 1885 condo. This is a house. Freestanding, surrounded by tall pines and aspens, looking into the mountains, a full wall of windows, a fireplace, an entry way with ski and snowboard pegs, a hot tub. Trail heads just down the road, leading up into Granite Chief Wilderness, to a cluster of small pretty lakes. No check-out time; just another hike on Monday, watching the sun go down behind the mountains from the couch, a beer in hand; then a late drive back to SF, across the brand-new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Amazing and luxurious, and it's his to keep (well, to keep up the payments on), and mine to visit through him -- to hike with him and to kayak leisurely around the lake, to adjust pie-baking temperatures for altitude, to snowboard with him when the snow comes, to cuddle up with him after the last lift closes. We bought season passes Sunday morning over blueberry pancakes. Deeply luxurious.

And once my cabinets are done and the ceiling dust settles, I'll go back from worrying about my house to luxuriating in it, too. That part just may take the rest of the year.

home away from home

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:43:00 -0700

Helstroom poured me some Cabernet into my sippy cup (okay, travel mug), for a brief Whiskey Thursday between finishing interview feedback and getting on the shuttle to rescue my veggies (and this week, summer fruit! Peaches, a watermelon!). But this week, instead of walking the 2.5 blocks home from my CSA drop-off site on Guerrero, I'll jump on a 33 and ride up to Jack's place -- lovely Jack -- which I've moved into while seven burly men knock out my walls and ceilings. My house is temporarily a ripped-apart ghost condo, plastic sheeting hung over everything, plywood lining the softwood floors, drywall dust everywhere. All this to remove one tiny, load-bearing wall, so I can remodel the kitchen as I've wanted to ever since I bought the place, just over two years ago.

(Seeing the place mid-surgery, as I've gone back in the evenings this week to fetch opera tickets or an extra pillow, makes me almost glad that my upstairs neighbor's shower leaked through my ceiling last year, just so that I've already had the experience of watching someone take a knife to my walls and then put them back good as new.)

And may I tell you how lovely it is to have a place to come home to in Jack's apartment? I brought my teapot and loose-leaf; he wordlessly made sure I had a supply of nutritional yeast for my morning bagels. I got in a cab Monday morning, having just handed over a set of keys to the structural contractors and packed a suitcase, with my arms full: Clothes for a week (construction will take 4), including a skirt for our 6-month (!) anniversary dinner and a dress for the opera this weekend; half a vegan birthday carrot cake in the portable cake dome; frozen bagels and the odd packet of still-fresh herbs from my fridge; toiletries; the bottle of cask-strength bourbon I bought him for his 28th on Friday. A brief moment of limbo as the cab drove over the hill of 17th St., and then arriving home at a tastefully-turned-out 1-bedroom in the Upper Haight.

I love it -- love the feeling of being headed first to pick up my veggies, then home to meet Jack, with plans for making dinner and a peach pie. We'll fall asleep, each go to work in the morning. Joy in the quotidian, where there is love.

gratified

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:04:20 -0700

On the one hand, I've submitted very few lines of code recently.

On the other, well, first there was New Orleans: A work offsite to which I didn't bring my laptop; teammates from Cambridge and London; beignets raining powdered sugar down the black geek uniform of SREs and devs at Café du Monde; I sent my mother prailines; pilgrimages via taxi to check out where Nick was behind the stick (a dive tiki bar the contents of whose Easter-Island-faced cup did me in that Tuesday night; posh variations on a Sazerac the next); and the jazz club Ryan, rda & I found serendipitously, I still hungry after the vegetarian dinner unsurprisingly failed to satisfy, looking for a slice of pizza and finding instead a woman who wailed on her oboe and then put it down to sing with a voice like Billie Holiday, and a pianist who matched her move for move.

I had 48 hours back in San Francisco with Jack. We did nothing for an entire glorious Saturday; Sunday, I sang a matinee of Bach's tricky Jesu Meine Freude chamber-choir style in Davies with a pared-down Symphony Chorus, skipped out on the Clavierübung whose length I didn't realize ahead of time would have prevented me from making the international bag-check cutoff), and fled town to Venice. I closed my eyes and paid euros for a water taxi into town -- the driver put on a soft-rock station playing covers of 80's ballads as he cut the motor and we drifted through the Grand Canal, taking the scenic route, my jaw hitting the bottom of the boat. I've read countless novels about, and seen as many operas or more set in this city, but the meaning of "built on water" doesn't become apparent until you're dropped off at the dock of your palatial hotel, and remain unsure if there's a sidewalk (alleyway, really) out back until hunger overrides Trisha's sleepiness and we ventured out to an enoteca for dinner. Completely surreal.

I got the call from stc as I was on a vaporetto dock, still luckily on my American SIM card: My promotion was successful. I probably shrieked after I hung up the phone.

What did we do in Venice? Why, what any two Staff SREs and TPMs with fancy cameras and fabulous dresses would do in the most picturesque city in the world: Ran all over (rain or shine, and we had both) and photographed each other jumping in the sculpture garden of the Guggenheim collection; swinging colorful bags on tiny, opera-set bridges; throwing our hair energetically in various directions against crumbling brick backdrops; swinging out precariously over canals while swishing our skirts; drinking €18 Negronis at twilight on the three-table hotel patio (what do you call the tiny strip of flooring supporting a few chairs between the marbled hotel lobby and the canal? "Patio" is too lawn-like in implication; "dock" too rustic) as tourists crowded into passing vaporetti leaned over the railing and snapped photographs of the glamorous expats with their cocktails. I even dragged Trisha to a Titian or two. And, dio mio, the Michelin-star restarurant right on San Marco Square we ate at one night, with its hand-blown champagne flutes and wine-colored velvet damask wallpaper, pairings from a generous som of Franciacorte and a supertuscan that came in a glass the size of my head (there is photographic evidence), delicate flavors, and somehow four ordered courses morphed into seven with amuses-bouches. Was I wrong to later tell JennyBeth that Ristorante i Quadri was the highlight of the trip? It certainly eclipsed nearly poisoning Trisha with Soave twice (a shellfish-containing fining agent in the Veneto wines, perhaps??), or the lackluster Don Giovanni in the disappointing La Fenice operahouse -- yes, yes, the degree to which I am spoiled was made so apparent in Venice, in preferring the Met or the Staatsoper to the house where Verdi premiered; in, over a solitary dinner on a canal served by a waiter who called me principessa while Trisha slept off the allergic reaction, mentally enumerating the restaurants within a square mile of my house that all do Italian better than this. I am aware. Aware, and pretty happy about my sitaution.

The Beethoven Missa Solemnis, which took up the entire following week, was sublime. I may have even done some work that week, caught up on email. I put Jack on a plane to Brazil for a conference, and then slept like a rock for what felt like two days. I've spent the entirety of this week studying documents, meeting with people, asking questions, researching, complaining loudly on public forums. Not much by way of coding, but differently productive.

Today, I went to my second ever Pilates class (I suspect laughing will hurt tomorrow), unpacked and then re-packed my suitcase, and stuffed my new, absurdly-Nori-colored purse full of eyewear and cameras. I'm now halfway to New York with a redeemed upgrade, the cloud formations at 30,000 feet always brilliantly sunlit, flying to meet Jack, whose plane from Rio gets in tomorrow morning. I can't wait.

When I say that the decade I've spent since graduating from college (I'll be skipping my reunion in two weeks to go to a yoga retreat in Hawaii) has been well-spent investing in my career and my friends, this is what I mean. This past month. Now.

Farouk

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:28:39 -0700

Farouk died almost two weeks ago. The proximate cause was cardiac arrest, brought on by pancreatitis; the underlying, of course, his long-term alcoholism which, just because he could "quit" for weeks or months at a time to produce one of his many and acclaimed translations of Arabic novels into the English (he worked longhand; drinking made his hand shake too much to hold a pen), didn't mean he didn't suffer from. We knew it wasn't good for his health, and yet didn't see this coming. 70 is always too young.

Mom's dining table in Chicago -- in the 4br, 3ba condo overlooking Lake Michagan, now just hers -- was piled with flowers and cards. Students sent quiches; Fred invited himself over and made lentil soup; phone lines and email saturated. Mom & I ran errands around the city on awful errands, to a probate attorney about the will; to the cemetery where the Muslim Community Center had reserved plots and which did Sunday burials; out to an early dinner (respite, despite the too-hipster, loud atmosphere), where I made her try radishes with butter and sea salt -- bitter tops and all, nonetheless a bright spot in the day.

For fuck's sake -- she just sold the house in Madison (in contract at the time and closed last Friday). After 35 years! Suddenly, to find yourself not only fully and solely a resident of Chicago, but sole owner of the spacious condo on Lake Michigan, and heir to the apartment in Cairo with the balcony overlooking the Nile, too. All the transitions at once!

The department, the community, came out in droves. More quiche, flowers, invitations to future dinners. I saw her eyes light up at the mention of colleagues bringing their young children over to play. She was either too sad and/or too tactful to point out that my own ovaries aren't getting any younger, but Ahmed promised me that, when I had children the ages his are now, I could reinherit the books donated from my and my sister's childhood library to his. I'm going to take him up on that.

The day after arriving back in San Francisco, I'd never been so happy to be back at work, even with 18 promotion packets to read before yesterday's committees. It helped, too, to be picked up at the aiport by the smiling J., driven home, absolved from the first day of my oncall shift, and to go read Beethoven fugues with the Symphony Chorus.

I've had at least two dreams that this was all an elaborate prank; I'm sure Mom's are worse. It's an odd thing to say about an atheistic Egyptian, but Christmas this year won't be the same without him.

keep the laptop closed

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 12:28:13 -0800

I very nearly didn't bring my laptop with me this morning. I stood looking at my packing list, still debating computer vs. tablet, even after I'd called a taxi. Mostly, I didn't care -- I just wanted to get back into bed, a small sleep-purring radiator of down duvets and still-dreaming boy, in which I'd want neither. But the flight said it had wifi on board (lies, it appears), and I figured I could at least reply to emails, stare listlessly at timeseries unit tests, dig through binary logs to figure out why my half-launched project isn't immediately doing what I want it to, or at least muse into my terminal screen about the dreaming boy over a glass of free wine with lunch.

On the one hand, I feel like I don't really have the time to be flying off to Minnesota for the weekend to make winter-thematic cocktails for old Madison friends and to partake of eggy stuffing and maple-syrup pecan pies until either I fall into a food coma or Jim declares it to be Hammerschlagen time, in which case the act of pounding nails into a stump in 10-degree weather ought to wake me up. Which is the plan of record for the next 48 hours. My work time has been whittled away recently -- holidays; next week's annual 3-day ski trip (the planning of which which appears to be impossible to disentangle myself from -- "no, I am not organizing food this year" turns into a 10-minute conversation anyhow; somehow I've been sucked into grocery shopping for it anyhow); the week after's planned excursion to snowboard in Breckenridge with the Q's and the dreamer -- all my own doing, but it means a full slate of 3- or 4-day work weeks right before the spring promotion cycle. And I've suddenly landed on a list that's made my interview load skyrocket, another public good that feels zero-sum with the personal good, at least until Q2. Hiding at home to work from my couch doesn't help, even though it spares me the commute -- too much an extrovert, I get bored and lonely, and find myself to actually be more productive working from a loud office an hour south.

On the other, I have too strong of a work/life division in place for my well-intentioned idea of submitting changelists from 30,000 feet to ever really have happened, at least today. I reluctantly left the boy asleep and took a towncar to the airport, bought a new hardcover novel (allowing myself to take a break, perhaps indefinite, from my public-domain kindle edition of paid-by-the-word Dickens), and the in-flight wireless isn't working anyhow, which feels corroborative. Even daily, I pretty well resist the bleeding over of one last commit. Getting more done in the same amount of time is therefore requiring greater efficiency -- always a challenge; more so when I suddenly again seem to have exciting extracurriculars: The boy above -- sweet and 27 (oh so much older than 25!), attentive and handsome -- is fast becoming a welcome fixture. Why would I work late instead of going out to mostly-vegan dinner with him, or simply slowly sipping bourbon together on my couch?

I have cardamom bitters in my suitcase. Who was I kidding? I'm really not going to to open this laptop again until Monday.

new year's lull

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:15:24 -0800

It's as if the new year shouldn't have started yet -- I'm puttering at work, as yet unmotivated and so churning out small-fry changelists; the shuttles are on a reduced schedule; half the team is still out of the office; lunch at Crittenden, the new campus, remains lackluster and un-veggie-friendly. I'm still engaging like it's still vacation, my attention scattered, posting on Facebook and waiting for the minute glow produced by each "like." Yesterday I restocked on flour, sugar, and eggs, having blown through my earlier supply in the New Year's Eve creation of peppermint bark shortbread and very spiked eggnog. I tried to roast acorn squash and failed (I should learn my lesson: Kabocha, butternut, delicata or nothing). Folded my laundry.

The dip in mental engagement makes sense, I suppose -- my 2012 projects are all either done or punted to 2013. Things that are over: Visiting family over Christmas in the Midwest; my relationship; the Nori-and-Emily spectacular of New Year's Eve, with sequins and cocktails and hairdos and glamor shots in front of the damask wallpaper and chandelier in the showpiece closet, and then coffee and slow-moving brunch and mopping the floors the next day. So many horizons, all now behind.

Not that I'm upset about any of this. (Really, anymore.) Rather that my usual vigor lacks a focal point just now, and without more projects than I can reasonably handle at any given time and people with whom to do them, boredom quickly creeps in around the edges. I was bored by the unit tests I wrote today (but pleased by their greenness). Bored by my laundry. Bored with the half-bottle of wine waiting for me on my counter; bored with the prospect of another evening roasting vegetables (fennel tonight) and telling myself to go to bed early. I went to the gym to unspool some of this directionless energy, which will probably keep me un-bored until this shuttle arrives back home.

And it's not as if I don't have projects -- a couple of large-scope ones at work; a kitchen remodel on which to move forward; the Symphony Chorus will begin making me pleasantly insane with mid-century French modernism soon enough; there's even a suggestion (well-timed) of someone new to be excited about. Plenty to begin, to resume, to run with, just as soon as I feel like running.

Maybe I'm just low on serotonin. I prescribe myself a weekend, yoga, friends' cocktail parties, and as many projects as I can fit into two sunny January days. Then I'll start 2013 for real on Monday.