I just realized it's been three months since I last posted here, so it's time for a bit of catch-up.
I spent a weekend in DC visiting a new friend of mine who I met in Miami, and visited some college friends, too. It was nice to go country western dancing, get some yummy bubble tea, go to the Roosevelt memorial and generally have a lovely weekend.
I went to see mostly short films at the North Carolina G&L film festival here in Durham. There was one short film ("Tristan", specifically done without words) that was particularly moving.
I spent a week and then a weekend at Easton Mountain for a couple of retreats. It was nice to spend the time there, meet some lovely people, and relax, reflect, grow.
After being away for a week, I came back to our office having moved to a new office building about 15 minutes away. It's a nice building, but it's disappointing to have to drive to work after being able to walk for six minutes to work.
Good college friends bought a house outside Seattle and the timing worked out that I (and some other good college friends) could go up for their housewarming. Great to see them and their new place.
After the weekend in Seattle, I was in Las Vegas for a trade show for work. That was our debut show (we came out of stealth mode the week before an announced our product). It went well, and we were honored as a finalist for best software in show. Just this week we got another honor as one of the 10 new management companies to watch.
I went to New York city for the Improv Everywhere MP3 Experiment, Olaf Eliasson waterfalls installations, a visit with a college friend, and an excellent grown-up and risque Spiegelworld circus show.
I also went up to Hanover for Dartmouth Homecoming. The event was to honor the retiring band director, and there was also a 100th anniversary celebration of the humor magazine that I wrote a bit for. On the way, I got to visit mom Burlington.
I made a big decision: to move to Boston February-ish. Mostly, I want to be there for the recreation (rowing and hiking) that I'm missing here, and for the more concentrated urban concentration of people social life. Things have been fine here, but I do really want to live up there, even though I have some trepidation about not continuing to work with my colleagues and giving up chances to do some cool work with the people here. On balance, though, it feels right, and has for the last couple of weeks.
Closer to home, I bought a down comforter. I wonder why I didn't do that before. It's delightful.
In the last couple of weekends of much less travel, I've done more reading. I just finished Doug Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop, which was a nice read.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Early summer in N.C.
The weather here has been pleasant. Often warm and humid, sometimes delightfully beautiful, and occasionally pretty hot. I haven't yet had the experience this summer of opening the front door and feeling like I was going to wilt right away. That's a relief. For years I didn't want to live anyplace but New England for the climate. But it's manageable here.
I got a pleasant new roommate who moved in on the same day in June the old one moved out. We get along fine, and we have different schedules and don't see that much of each other.
Also in the place, I finally got kitchen stuff to actually be able to cook reasonably -- good pots and knives and staple food. Not that I've been doing much cooking, but at least I know it's an option.
Work has been quite busy with finishing up for a release soon. To carry on the architectural analogy I made last time, instead of figuring out where walls and doors are, now we're getting trim right, getting fixtures in such. We're also growing and hiring, and will move close to RDU airport in a few weeks. My commute will be 30 (!) times longer -- from 0.3 miles to 9 miles. I have enjoyed being able to walk to work, and I'll still be able to walk to the store and gym, but for a driving commute, it shouldn't be bad at 10 minutes.
For work and pleasure I've taken a few trips. I was in San Francisco twice, once for the Maker Faire, which was kind of cool and fun, but didn't knock my socks off, and aother time for work, visiting and two-stepping. I went to Texas twice for work and got to visit a high school friend and his great family. I went up to Washington, D.C. for the Fourth of July, but didn't end up going to the fireworks (the occasion for my trip) between the weather being iffy and actually really enjoying myself with my college friend and his wife hosts and their fun friends over dinner and games and talk.
The chorus has been fun. We performed in Greensboro, Raleigh and Chapel hill, and the highlight was the big gay chorus convention in Miami a couple weeks ago. Thousands of singers and well over a hundred choruses sang just about every day for a week (I only stayed for a few nights until we performed), some of which really impressed me. I also got to visit with friends who were down from Pittsburgh, got to see a couple people I knew who I wasn't expecting to see, and made a nice new friend who'll be down to visit next weekend. We have the rest of the summer off from singing, except, I think, for a few songs at the pride celebration in Raleigh.
I've been seeing shows, too, most notably Pilobolus and Avenue Q again. If you're interested in that kind of thing, I keep a list of upcoming and past stuff here.
I've been getting to the gym more often (adding Pilates to my workouts -- with a really friendly crowd, too), and I ran for the first time last weekend since last summer. Clothes still fell tight, though, even though I think I've been cutting back on the sweets (darn the free M&Ms at work!). Rowing has been too far to get excited about going early in the morning, and I've missed hiking in the mountains, since they're about four hours away from here.
In August I'll be going to a week's retreat in New York north of Albany. This summer I'll be a participant, as opposed to the assisting that I did last summer. I'm looking forward to it.
In September I'll be going to Las Vegas for our big launch trade show. I'm looking forward to the work and to seeing a Cirque show and having some other fun, too.
I got a pleasant new roommate who moved in on the same day in June the old one moved out. We get along fine, and we have different schedules and don't see that much of each other.
Also in the place, I finally got kitchen stuff to actually be able to cook reasonably -- good pots and knives and staple food. Not that I've been doing much cooking, but at least I know it's an option.
Work has been quite busy with finishing up for a release soon. To carry on the architectural analogy I made last time, instead of figuring out where walls and doors are, now we're getting trim right, getting fixtures in such. We're also growing and hiring, and will move close to RDU airport in a few weeks. My commute will be 30 (!) times longer -- from 0.3 miles to 9 miles. I have enjoyed being able to walk to work, and I'll still be able to walk to the store and gym, but for a driving commute, it shouldn't be bad at 10 minutes.
For work and pleasure I've taken a few trips. I was in San Francisco twice, once for the Maker Faire, which was kind of cool and fun, but didn't knock my socks off, and aother time for work, visiting and two-stepping. I went to Texas twice for work and got to visit a high school friend and his great family. I went up to Washington, D.C. for the Fourth of July, but didn't end up going to the fireworks (the occasion for my trip) between the weather being iffy and actually really enjoying myself with my college friend and his wife hosts and their fun friends over dinner and games and talk.
The chorus has been fun. We performed in Greensboro, Raleigh and Chapel hill, and the highlight was the big gay chorus convention in Miami a couple weeks ago. Thousands of singers and well over a hundred choruses sang just about every day for a week (I only stayed for a few nights until we performed), some of which really impressed me. I also got to visit with friends who were down from Pittsburgh, got to see a couple people I knew who I wasn't expecting to see, and made a nice new friend who'll be down to visit next weekend. We have the rest of the summer off from singing, except, I think, for a few songs at the pride celebration in Raleigh.
I've been seeing shows, too, most notably Pilobolus and Avenue Q again. If you're interested in that kind of thing, I keep a list of upcoming and past stuff here.
I've been getting to the gym more often (adding Pilates to my workouts -- with a really friendly crowd, too), and I ran for the first time last weekend since last summer. Clothes still fell tight, though, even though I think I've been cutting back on the sweets (darn the free M&Ms at work!). Rowing has been too far to get excited about going early in the morning, and I've missed hiking in the mountains, since they're about four hours away from here.
In August I'll be going to a week's retreat in New York north of Albany. This summer I'll be a participant, as opposed to the assisting that I did last summer. I'm looking forward to it.
In September I'll be going to Las Vegas for our big launch trade show. I'm looking forward to the work and to seeing a Cirque show and having some other fun, too.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Spring in NC, Conference in Italy
The days are long and the weather growing warm here in North Carolina. Most trees are green now and it seems that the lovely dogwood blossoming has peaked. I'm grateful for allergy medication as there's often a thin yellow dusting of pollen on flat surfaces inside and out.
My mother came to visit for the weekend around my chorus's fund-raising pirate-themed silly singing show. It was nice to see her, for her to be at the show, and to go back to places where she had been when she was here.
Singing with the chorus has been nice, though challenging to memorize music for a show -- something I don't remember doing, or at least doing with so little rehearsal time before. We've switched to performing material that's also much more familiar-feeling to me in preparation for our June concert and for our appearance at a big chorus conference in Miami in July. We also were able to reprise the pirate show and do some of the concert pieces in Greenville, N.C., home of the Eastern Carolina University Pirates (tee hee).
Work has been engaging. We've gone from vague ideas and hopes through setbacks and reconsiderations to having a pretty clear idea of what we're doing and how and when we'll get it done with a good chunks of real progress, including working software and clearer and clearer designs for how we want the software to look and work when it's released. There's still lots of details to work out, but the foundation's set and we know where the walls go and most of the doors and windows.
Carrying on the architectural analogy, I've also been happy to get to work with a design consulting company that I worked with before on the detailed visual design of what we're building. It's akin to the architectural detail work of specifying the overall color scheme and finish materials and the details of how exactly door and window openings will be trimmed, what we'll use for fixtures and such. I've also been pleased that the rougher, tentative sketching that I've been working on is right in line with what full-time professional designers elaborated on (rather than gutted and replaced). I have a bunch more confidence in my own skill in that area now, too.
(I realize in writing this that it may not make any sense, particularly without concrete examples of what I'm talking about. I'm hoping to take this early state experience and design work and put it in the form of a case study -- after we're shipping products and aren't keeping what we're building so secret. Until then, sorry what I write is vague and hand-waving.)
Relating to work, too, I went to the big international conference of researchers and practitioners in human computer interaction in Florence, Italy. The conference was good for me and inspiring for the way I think about and actually do my work. I've devoted more time to sketching and talking with people about alternative approaches to a design problem for one thing, and that's already started to pay off in terms of me being happier doing work and, I think, better designs being created (and soon built and used). I also got to talk with interesting people, most of whom I met for the first time there.
While in Florence, I climbed to the top of the cathedral, went to the Uffizzi and Pitti and Academia galleries and walked around the city and Boboli gardens. There were so many tourists -- it often felt like Disney property. I was particularly struck by the immensity and height of the dome, the ceiling paintings ('grotesques') in the Uffizzi and the David in the Academia gallery. Of course there was lots of other loveliness, and it was neat to see rowers on the river, but those are the things that I still think of.
I'd hoped to do some 'couch surfing' (through a hospitality exchange community/site/system called Couch Surfing) while I was there, but staying didn't work out. I did meet a nice couple of people to walk around and go out for a bite and drink and stroll, and they invited me over for a simple and yummy perch dinner. There was also a happy hour kind of event for local couch surfing hosts and people in town. Nice, friendly people there.
Between the trip to Italy and all the stuff going on at work, it's felt pretty intense. I was happy to be able ease up a little bit the end of this week and not have anything big going on this weekend. Fortunately, there is definitely not a culture at work of long hours or weekend work. Just focused, productive time during the week, working on the most important stuff as well and quickly as reasonable.
On the domestic front, I'm still not quite settled furniture-wise. The big missing things are a dining room table and a platform for my mattress. I'm hoping when I have the table to go through Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food with friends bit by bit at least once a week.
Socially, I've been meeting more and more people through the chorus and through monthly happy hour events here in town and nearby. No close new friends or romantic interests yet, but I am getting to know more and more people. I'm also still enjoying the social time I spend with people from work.
I've been getting to the gym a couple of times a week for step class, which I've enjoyed, and I'm feeling pretty good about. I've also noticed that my clothes are feeling tighter, which I'm not feeling so good about. I'm hoping with warmer weather I'll get some rowing time and some time jogging or something. We'll see...
Lastly, I've been able to see a good number of shows, particularly in the week. I saw Spamalot and Verdi's Requiem last weekend, and this week I saw A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (a comedy) on Thursday and an intense play called Bent set in Nazi-era Germany (a tragedy) the next night. Quite the range, and I'm pleased again that there's at least enough stuff going on here to keep me interested. (Actually, there's more than enough: I didn't have time to see two other musicals that I really wanted to see before they closed.)
I'm looking forward to a trip to San Francisco next weekend with some visiting and a trip to the Maker Faire to be inspired and amused. The Chorus is singing at pride celebrations in Greensboro the following weekend. I'm hoping to get up to NYC for an Improv Everywhere event the following weekend.
Take good care.
My mother came to visit for the weekend around my chorus's fund-raising pirate-themed silly singing show. It was nice to see her, for her to be at the show, and to go back to places where she had been when she was here.
Singing with the chorus has been nice, though challenging to memorize music for a show -- something I don't remember doing, or at least doing with so little rehearsal time before. We've switched to performing material that's also much more familiar-feeling to me in preparation for our June concert and for our appearance at a big chorus conference in Miami in July. We also were able to reprise the pirate show and do some of the concert pieces in Greenville, N.C., home of the Eastern Carolina University Pirates (tee hee).
Work has been engaging. We've gone from vague ideas and hopes through setbacks and reconsiderations to having a pretty clear idea of what we're doing and how and when we'll get it done with a good chunks of real progress, including working software and clearer and clearer designs for how we want the software to look and work when it's released. There's still lots of details to work out, but the foundation's set and we know where the walls go and most of the doors and windows.
Carrying on the architectural analogy, I've also been happy to get to work with a design consulting company that I worked with before on the detailed visual design of what we're building. It's akin to the architectural detail work of specifying the overall color scheme and finish materials and the details of how exactly door and window openings will be trimmed, what we'll use for fixtures and such. I've also been pleased that the rougher, tentative sketching that I've been working on is right in line with what full-time professional designers elaborated on (rather than gutted and replaced). I have a bunch more confidence in my own skill in that area now, too.
(I realize in writing this that it may not make any sense, particularly without concrete examples of what I'm talking about. I'm hoping to take this early state experience and design work and put it in the form of a case study -- after we're shipping products and aren't keeping what we're building so secret. Until then, sorry what I write is vague and hand-waving.)
Relating to work, too, I went to the big international conference of researchers and practitioners in human computer interaction in Florence, Italy. The conference was good for me and inspiring for the way I think about and actually do my work. I've devoted more time to sketching and talking with people about alternative approaches to a design problem for one thing, and that's already started to pay off in terms of me being happier doing work and, I think, better designs being created (and soon built and used). I also got to talk with interesting people, most of whom I met for the first time there.
While in Florence, I climbed to the top of the cathedral, went to the Uffizzi and Pitti and Academia galleries and walked around the city and Boboli gardens. There were so many tourists -- it often felt like Disney property. I was particularly struck by the immensity and height of the dome, the ceiling paintings ('grotesques') in the Uffizzi and the David in the Academia gallery. Of course there was lots of other loveliness, and it was neat to see rowers on the river, but those are the things that I still think of.
I'd hoped to do some 'couch surfing' (through a hospitality exchange community/site/system called Couch Surfing) while I was there, but staying didn't work out. I did meet a nice couple of people to walk around and go out for a bite and drink and stroll, and they invited me over for a simple and yummy perch dinner. There was also a happy hour kind of event for local couch surfing hosts and people in town. Nice, friendly people there.
Between the trip to Italy and all the stuff going on at work, it's felt pretty intense. I was happy to be able ease up a little bit the end of this week and not have anything big going on this weekend. Fortunately, there is definitely not a culture at work of long hours or weekend work. Just focused, productive time during the week, working on the most important stuff as well and quickly as reasonable.
On the domestic front, I'm still not quite settled furniture-wise. The big missing things are a dining room table and a platform for my mattress. I'm hoping when I have the table to go through Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food with friends bit by bit at least once a week.
Socially, I've been meeting more and more people through the chorus and through monthly happy hour events here in town and nearby. No close new friends or romantic interests yet, but I am getting to know more and more people. I'm also still enjoying the social time I spend with people from work.
I've been getting to the gym a couple of times a week for step class, which I've enjoyed, and I'm feeling pretty good about. I've also noticed that my clothes are feeling tighter, which I'm not feeling so good about. I'm hoping with warmer weather I'll get some rowing time and some time jogging or something. We'll see...
Lastly, I've been able to see a good number of shows, particularly in the week. I saw Spamalot and Verdi's Requiem last weekend, and this week I saw A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (a comedy) on Thursday and an intense play called Bent set in Nazi-era Germany (a tragedy) the next night. Quite the range, and I'm pleased again that there's at least enough stuff going on here to keep me interested. (Actually, there's more than enough: I didn't have time to see two other musicals that I really wanted to see before they closed.)
I'm looking forward to a trip to San Francisco next weekend with some visiting and a trip to the Maker Faire to be inspired and amused. The Chorus is singing at pride celebrations in Greensboro the following weekend. I'm hoping to get up to NYC for an Improv Everywhere event the following weekend.
Take good care.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Settling in
In the last couple of weeks I've started to settle in here. I've gotten my footing at work, found a roommate I like and get along well with, joined the local gay men's chorus (and am planning to go to a big convention with them in Miami in the summer), and have at least some of the place furnished. There are still lots of boxes since I collected my stuff going back to elementary school from my mother's basement on the same trip that I got my stuff out of storage in New Hampshire.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Homeless and Unemployed no more - Durham, N.C.
Last week I got a job offer to work at BlueStripe Software in Durham, N.C. (official title: Product Manager; effective role: interaction designer focusing first on user research and requirements definition). I start on the 22nd. Looking forward to that.
I found a townhouse to rent within walking distance of the office and a shopping center with a Harris Teeter grocery store and nice gym and pretty decent Japanese/Thai restaurant. I'm very happy I won't need to drive most days (at least until we outgrow the office).
So I've been busy with details getting the moving taken care of, shopping for furniture, arranging utilities, and all that.
And again, as of Tuesday, my long sabbatical will be over and I'll be home-ful and re-employed again. Yay!
I found a townhouse to rent within walking distance of the office and a shopping center with a Harris Teeter grocery store and nice gym and pretty decent Japanese/Thai restaurant. I'm very happy I won't need to drive most days (at least until we outgrow the office).
So I've been busy with details getting the moving taken care of, shopping for furniture, arranging utilities, and all that.
And again, as of Tuesday, my long sabbatical will be over and I'll be home-ful and re-employed again. Yay!
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Happy 2008!
I hope 2008 is a year in which you find yourself and those around you becoming happier and happier.
2008 started for me at a retreat just outside of Santa Fe, the highlights of which were a New Year's Eve midnight sweat lodge (with snow on the ground, bright clear stars in the sky, and the air a cold 5 degres Fahrenheit). On New Year's Day, we went to the New Year's dances at the Santo Domingo Pueblo south of Santa Fe, which was mesmerising and beautiful as hundreds of singers and dancers danced corn dances on the plaza.
The rest of December before that was pleasant, with a return to my mother's in Burlington, Vermont for Christmas Eve dinner at the neighbors' (with the 7-ish granddaughter the center of attention) and Christmas day at mom's.
Heading back to my mom's, I got to spend more time with friends outside of Washington, D.C. and go to the moving Holocaust Memorial Museum. Then I visited a friend in Philadelphia and finally went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art up on its little hill. The last little highlight before Christmas was getting caught on an icy road, slowing down but not enough in time, and needing to get towed off the shoulder. Getting onto the shoulder is excitement I'd rather not repeat on open public roads again. (Fortunately, there were few other cars out and NY State Park Police and then the tow truck came quickly, and the local Ford dealership was able to take care of ice-caused damage promptly. And now I have even more systems in my car replaced -- there's not much left to replace but the transmission.)
After Christmas, I drove back down to Raleigh (for $500+ cheaper air fare to Albuquerque), visited more people in Raleigh who I hadn't seen in years, visited my brother and saw his new land in rural Virginia, and saw my aunt and uncle and a cousin and his family in Philadelphia. I'm pretty sure it's been over ten years since I'd seen them, and it was great to see them and meet my cousin's middle- and high-school age daughters.
Now I'm back in Hanover again catching up on mail and bills and accounts and stuff, visiting people, and getting ready to head down to New York this weekend for a bit of museums, opera and an Improv Everywhere scene on the subway (No Pants 2k8). I expect it'll be fun!
2008 started for me at a retreat just outside of Santa Fe, the highlights of which were a New Year's Eve midnight sweat lodge (with snow on the ground, bright clear stars in the sky, and the air a cold 5 degres Fahrenheit). On New Year's Day, we went to the New Year's dances at the Santo Domingo Pueblo south of Santa Fe, which was mesmerising and beautiful as hundreds of singers and dancers danced corn dances on the plaza.
The rest of December before that was pleasant, with a return to my mother's in Burlington, Vermont for Christmas Eve dinner at the neighbors' (with the 7-ish granddaughter the center of attention) and Christmas day at mom's.
Heading back to my mom's, I got to spend more time with friends outside of Washington, D.C. and go to the moving Holocaust Memorial Museum. Then I visited a friend in Philadelphia and finally went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art up on its little hill. The last little highlight before Christmas was getting caught on an icy road, slowing down but not enough in time, and needing to get towed off the shoulder. Getting onto the shoulder is excitement I'd rather not repeat on open public roads again. (Fortunately, there were few other cars out and NY State Park Police and then the tow truck came quickly, and the local Ford dealership was able to take care of ice-caused damage promptly. And now I have even more systems in my car replaced -- there's not much left to replace but the transmission
After Christmas, I drove back down to Raleigh (for $500+ cheaper air fare to Albuquerque), visited more people in Raleigh who I hadn't seen in years, visited my brother and saw his new land in rural Virginia, and saw my aunt and uncle and a cousin and his family in Philadelphia. I'm pretty sure it's been over ten years since I'd seen them, and it was great to see them and meet my cousin's middle- and high-school age daughters.
Now I'm back in Hanover again catching up on mail and bills and accounts and stuff, visiting people, and getting ready to head down to New York this weekend for a bit of museums, opera and an Improv Everywhere scene on the subway (No Pants 2k8). I expect it'll be fun!
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