Archive for March, 2006
Welcome to the Crazy
My sister is a special person. Okay, I admit, I am special too. Special runs in our family. I wanted to share some special with you, so I am going to show you some insight into what could have been a quick IM conversation between my sister and I.
[Editor's Note: The text below has been edited for spelling and content. I left my sister's love of lowercase letters alone, though.]
her: what the hell, the world is upside down
me: And inside out
me: You should dance now.
her: that too
her: no
me: Wiggle your butt
me: Go on
her: no
me: Do the duck!
her: i am sitting on my butt
me: Then no one will know you wiggled it!
her: it is occupied
me: I’m gonna go, chickie
her: have fun at the gym
me: I want to get to the gym and get home and shower and do laundry
her: i went this morning
her: can you read roman numerals?
me: that’ll be expensive
me: Yes
her: MCMLXXXI
me: 1981
her: marcies [Ed: this is how my sister always spells the French word for thank you, mercy.]
me: No problem
me: M == one thousand
me: C == one hundred
her: i knew that much
me: L == fifty
me: X == ten
her: i got lost in the xs
me: I == one
me: Why do you care, by the way?
her: copyright date
me: For a footnote or something?
her: i am looking up history of a piece i swear just appeared out of nowhere
me: ok…
her: so far my historical analysis is written in 1981
her: thanks for helping me out on that by the way
me: I was written in 1981
her: ill give you credit if you want
me: Ooooo… are you going to be published?
her: is your name ‘firefly lullaby?’
me: Hahahaha
me: No…
me: Though I like fireflies and lullabies
her: no i am researching a piece that we are teaching to a 5th grade choir…
her: 5th grade choir pieces just simply appear out of nowhere
me: Okay
me: I’m gonna go now
her: bye
her: the composers name is biff fink
her: i am not making that up
her: kinda wish i was
me: Well, you know, fireflies…
me: I’m really leaving now.
me: Bye
her: bye
So, as you can see, neither one of us lives in the same reality as the rest of you. We don’t even live in the same reality as each other. What you really should know is that this conversation is pretty tame compared to the ones we have out loud on the phone or in person. Over AIM, we can’t just read each other’s minds…
When my sister was little, it took a long time for her to speak. This was most likely my fault. She blames me, at any rate. I was the official Sarah Translator. I knew what each syllable of nonsense meant. I think she appreciated it at the time…
Funny thing, though, my sister still occasionally drops back to grunts and goos. Lucky for my parents, though, I still have the skills, and I can still turn her babble into English.
This is for you, Sa:
:-P
As Keanu Would Say…
Woah.
My dad juggles. He doesn’t juggle particularly well… but he juggles. He is fascinated by juggling and flying objects in general.
I cannot juggle. I can pretend for a second or two, but really all I am doing is gently throwing some objects at the floor. The Klutz juggling book, which my dad totally owns, actually recommends you start that way…
Other pointless things that my dad has taught me to love include slinkys, yo-yos, and plastic toys in general. My dad, who is retiring soon, has never grown up, and I hope to mimic that. Toys for ever!
Anyway, my dad sent me an email this morning with an awesome link. You absolutely must check it out. And you must do so with speakers or headphones on.
Edit!
After posting this, I did a technorati search to see who else was talking about that video. Turns out someone who calls her site the “Inner Bitch” posted about an augmented version of the video.
Apparently the juggling community is upset about the ease of the first guy’s moves. So, a different juggler dissed him in this video. Definitely go check that out as well.
My take on this is probably different than members of the “juggling community” would feel. I understand that most of the moves the first guy did are somewhat basic (although I can’t do it, so what do I know). I understand that jugging five, or even ten balls, is probably more exciting than just the three.
However, I really think the first guy was a better showman. He looked like he was having fun. Also, it was his idea. It was a new and creative type of performance that I had never seen before. Add to that some impeccable timing (that the second guy couldn’t quite match), and it really is a better show.
That’s how I feel, anyway.
I also feel like this:
I wish I could juggle.
Clarity
Just a quick clarification:
A couple of my coworkers read my blog. That’s cool, yo. *wave* One of them thought that my references to my dentist’s visits were euphemisms for interviews. This is not true. I feel the need to express openly and truthfully:
I never once said I was going to the dentist and went anywhere else instead. I really have had six dentist’s appointments in the last month. I really do have another two in the next two weeks, and at least three more following soon after that.
I would feel badly if anyone thought otherwise. I generally try not to care what people think about me, but most of the time I fail miserably at that task. So, in this case, I was concerned that people thought I had lied about something. That concern ate at me for a little while, and I’ve decided to use this public place to state in no uncertain manner the truth of the situation.
You may now go back to your regularly scheduled green debauchery.
Everyone is Irish on St Patty’s Day
I wrote a poem two years ago that I thought I’d share with you. Of course, because I’m excitable, I decided to change it up a little bit. I first published the original version in my LiveJournal on the appropriate day in 2004.
Everyone is Irish on St Patty’s Day
No, I am not Irish.
No, I’m not wearing green.
And no, not orange either -
Don’t want to get kicked in the spleenMy breakfast was of granola -
So sweet, and crunchy, and good.
I don’t even own Lucky Charms
And I’m not even sure they are food.I do like to drink alcohol,
But green beer – no
That does not appeal to me,
My beverage need not glow.I like to say, “Hello.”
“Top o’ th’ Mornin’,” what is that?
“Blarney” and “Luck o’ th’ Irish”
And what’s with the big green hat?Clovers aren’t that special,
They’re just a pretty weed.
When there’s a mutant four leaves
I still don’t see the need.No, I am not Irish -
I don’t much care what you say.
No, I am not Irish.
Not even on St. Patty’s Day.
Aw, Man!
Yesterday was totally the Ides of March, and I forgot to celebrate by stabbing my favorite king!
What’s Going On?
I had an epiphany in my car on my way home last night. I thought of the most awesome blog entry ever. I remember the idea occurring to me. I remember coming up with a title. I remember writing the first paragraph in my head.
But I don’t remember a thing about what I was going to write.
Oops.
So, I guess you get a little metablog there… and now onto the babbling!
This part of my life is turning out to be somewhat interesting. Everything I do feels just a little bit different than it used to. Change. Change is not my favorite thing. But here I am, actively changing my life. By the time the next three months are over, I’ll be working my new job, living in a new apartment, taking a new public transportation route, listening to new things on my iPod, and generally just being new.
But, really, it’s still the same old, same old. I’ll still be watching too much television, caring too much about the Red Sox (not that that’s even possible), eating too much cheese, running too fast to breathe, and singing too loud.
Speaking of singing (I told you this would be a babble), it looks like I’ve gotten myself nominated onto the music committee at church. It’s a three-year sentence term, during which I will meet monthly with other church people to talk about music. I like music. I like church. I guess it can’t be too bad.
Someone at work got it into their heads that I’m going to sing some German opera at my going away lunch next Friday. This will probably haunt me. I’m thinking I may need to dig up something, just in case. I really hope they didn’t mean it, though.
My ex-interim-boss’s-boss reminded me of something last night, at his farewell party (he’s going back to his regular job). At my interview with him, he told me about some other interview where the applicant had written that he can sing a perfect fourth. That caused the interviewer to ask him to do so. I volunteered to do it too.
Since he brought that up last night, my brain just keeps singing it. Mostly in the form of the beginning of the Mexican Hat Dance. I doubt that will go away quickly…
I don’t know what much else to say. I didn’t bring in my lunch today for the first time this week. I’m sick of zucchini casserole. It’s good stuff, definitely, and any day I can get Mike to eat pasta is a good day for me, but perhaps I overestimated the sheer amount of food I should make. Seven servings came out of that pot.
I guess it’s good for me, though, that I don’t eat so much pasta as I used to. I used to be able to easily eat a quarter of a box, if not more. My mom would make more than a pound of pasta for just the four of us, and there were rarely leftovers. Pasta was totally my stomach filler.
I still love pasta. Just, I can eat a sensible amount at a time now, rather than wanting the whole damn box.
Thank you Donna!
I’m not going to see her tonight. I have to behave all on my own and do my own workout like a good little girl. I’m hoping to come back to her next week missing large amounts of fat. :-D
I think perhaps I should be done with this drivel now. You all have a great day, kids.
Why do I call so many people “kids,” anyway? A question for another day.
The Beginning of the End
So, you may be wondering why I haven’t been posting lately. Or maybe you weren’t wondering before, but you are now. Or, well, you know.
I’ll tell you.
I’ve been busy. I’ve been driving in and out of Boston a lot, and spending a huge amount of time at the dentist’s (BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! — woops, I’m not supposed to talk about the dentist!). “But, why Boston, Diane? Why would you be driving in and out of Boston so much?” Well, voice in my head that I use for imagining what my audience is thinking, it’s because I’ve been looking for, interviewing for, and accepting a new job.
“Oooo!”
I don’t talk a lot about my job on this blog. That is on purpose, for a variety of reasons. Mostly because I’m a software engineer and my job is pretty boring to non-technical people. Let’s just go ahead and say that this is still going to be the case – I have no intention of talking about worky-work-work-work on my blog.
But changing jobs is a huge life thing. Huge. Giganto-huge. Oie.
The whole ordeal is somewhat surreal (how icky and rhymey!). I’d been doing a pretty piss-ass job of looking for a new job for a while. I think I wasn’t mentally prepared to leave a job that I didn’t fully hate. I got two offers early on that held little interest for me, and I rejected them. Obviously, I wasn’t desperate.
I am finding it difficult to write this post, really. I don’t want to accidentally insult any of my current coworkers. Really, they are awesome – great people, from whom I have learned a lot.
But one of them said something to me this morning, when I mentioned that the whole process was difficult. He told me that there’s no easy way to say, “I’m leaving.” No matter how much I emphasize that I’m thankful (because I am) for the learning I got here. No matter how much I talk vagaries about the new opportunity (as advised by various online help sites). No matter how gently I break it to people (some people were more upset than I expected, some were less). Anything I say will come across as, “I hate this place, and possibly you, and so I’m outta here.”
That isn’t even close to the case.
This was my first job out of college at the first company that gave me a real internship (because, seriously, working at the campus web office typing HTML tags around globs of text provided by my boss doesn’t really excite the brain juice). I’ve really only worked here. I really like the people I work with. Some of them, I’d truly consider friends, and I have no intention whatsoever of losing touch with them. These are good people.
I have learned so much working here. I’ve learned how not to be an idiot. I’ve learned how to communicate better. I’ve learned how to get along with a team. I’ve learned how to lead a team. I’ve learned to love the process of creating. I’ve learned how to code better. I’ve learned how to design better. I have become a better engineer and a better human being for having worked here.
But the time has come. On Friday, it was the beginning of the end. I put in my two-week’s notice with my manager (who, poor thing, had only started that Monday… his boss, who actually kind of knew me, though he started only two months ago, was taking a day off to receive a furniture delivery). I did the official thing. I listened politely while I was told that they were sad to see me go. I listened to him tell me stories about how his first two tries at working for a small startup didn’t work out.
I’ll take this opportunity to let you all know that my new company is not technically a startup. I mean, they once were, but at this point they’ve been around for a long time, nearly twenty years. They’re small because they want to be, not because they’re unfinished.
Anyway, Friday continued as a difficult day. I tracked down my group leads (having to call my current one at home, as he was home sick – I felt like such an ass!), I tracked down some guys from other departments that I’ve liked working with, I tracked down as many of my department coworkers as I could stand. I cried.
It’s really hard to say goodbye to people you liked working with.
But the dust has settled, today. I sent out my email to everyone I could think of. I talked to a couple people who I didn’t get to on Friday out of exhaustion. But today, no tears.
It’s just business.
Everyone moves on. (Okay, maybe not everyone, my dad is totally retiring from the only company he ever worked for next month. But most everyone moves on, okay?) It was my first time saying goodbye. It was my first time nervously knocking on my boss’s office. It was my first time explaining to some of my friends at work why I didn’t tell them I was looking earlier. It was my first time hearing people say, “I thought, maybe,” and my first time hearing people say, “Oh no!” It was traumatic.
But it’s over now.
Now I finish up what I’ve been doing. Now I write emails to bosses and leads with lists of things I do. Now I package up the work I’ve been doing. Now I pass out other peoples’ names for people who can do what I was doing. Now I wonder what they’ll have me do after I finish with these lists.
Next, I start looking for a new apartment closer to Boston. Next, I start planning my temporary long-ass commute. Next, I start meeting new people, making new friends, and learning new things.
Life moves on. Things change. People evolve. Breaths deepen. Nerves heighten. Things calm down. Things speed up. Things Change. Life moves on.
Today will soon be yesterday.
God that sounded stupid. This entry is getting far too ridiculous. It’s a piece of crap. But it’s what I’ve got, it’s how I feel, so I guess I better publish the fucker.
Here’s something fun to close out with. See if you can find the embarassing grammar error in this email I sent out to over 70 people:
Hi everyone,
I wanted to let you all know that I am taking a new opportunity and am leaving [company]. My last day will be Friday, March 24.
Thank you to everyone one of you who has helped me to learn and to grow during my three years here. It has been awesome, and I will miss you.
If you need or want to get in touch, my permanent email address is [email]. (That address should work for the rest of my life, if WPI wasn’t lying to me :).)
Thank you again
Good luck to all of you~diane
Email entitled “Thank you and goodbye” sent at 8:32 AM on March 13, 2006
Flashback or Nostalgia
I had yet another of my endless supply of dentist visits today. Actually, technically I didn’t see the dentist today; I only saw the hygienist. She’s nice, too, though, so it was tolerable. Actually, after yesterday’s visit (fix broken tooth and replace crappy old filling), today’s was practically a walk in the park. Well, not a real park. Actually, there was pain. But I lived to tell the tale (using the word “actually” far too often).
But who cares about that. The important thing was that I stopped for lunch on the way back to the office. There are three Subway restaurants between my dentist and my office. I chose to go with the first one, the one in my town’s “quaint” downtown. Downtown is so quaint that the sign isn’t in green and yellow, it’s in gold and brown. Classy.
After the very helpful sandwich man helped me through my indecisiveness, I decided to go with a 6″ turkey on hearty Italian. I prefer the hearty Italian, probably because it’s a bit crustier. I like crusty bread. Really, though, before they had the options, I still liked Subway bread. Fresh bread is awesome even if it’s boring old white.
After I paid for my meal-deal (complete with baked lays and my famous mix of Sprite, Fanta, and pink lemonade), I chose a seat in the booth by the window. I was unfolding my paper wrapping when a pile of moms and kids poured through the door. There were three moms, two daughters, and two sons. I’m not sure even they knew who belonged to whom.
Three of the kids were more or less the same age – walking, talking humans who haven’t quite figured out how to take care of themselves yet. Also known as preschool. They were relatively well-behaved, with the worst of it being one of the girls who said only, “I want a cheese sandwich.”
Somehow, all their food got ordered, and the kids selected a table. After some concerned statements involving the location of one girl’s chips, they settled in to eat. Little miss “I want a cheese sandwich” politely waited for her mom to open up the wrapper. She was not excited by what she saw. In a much smaller voice than she’d previously been using she whimpered, “I don’t like the white kind.”
Her mom did her best to convince her that white American cheese tastes just the same as yellow, but I think everyone in the restaurant could tell she wasn’t buying it. Eventually, her mom placated her when she opened the other paper package, which contained a handful each of pickles and olives. “Yay! Olives!” She went on to eat the sandwich and her snacks without noticing a thing being wrong.
All of this sent me flying back to my youth. My parents often took us to Subway for meals. It was easy, it was cheap, and it was more-or-less healthy (depending on the number of slices of cheese). I went through phases as I grew up. For a while, I was all about tuna (with American cheese, tomato, and just a little bit of lettuce – which I always picked off anyway). Later, I discovered meatball subs (with provolone cheese and extra green peppers). That led me through to High School, where I got sick of them after eating them during every evening shift I had working at Hallmark. After being thoroughly sick of their meatballs, I picked up my current taste for the turkey (with or without provolone cheese, depending on the mood, and with nearly every vegetable they have, except only a little bit of lettuce – which I still pick off).
My sister, however, always wanted only one thing: a cheese sandwich with pickles on the side. Everyone in my family can accurately reproduce my sister’s voice saying “on the side.” It probably drove her nuts. She doesn’t say that anymore. Actually, I doubt that she goes to Subway now, though I’ve got no evidence to back up that theory.
So, as I watched this young girl eat her pickles and “veggie delight hold the veggies,” I thought back to days in our Subway, in the strip mall down from the Hallmark store, eating our sandwiches of choice. I think I’ll go with flashback.