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.