Coined

It’s going to be a busy summer.

I post absolutely everything to my blog. Except for stuff about work, because anything really socially interesting would probably be inappropriate, and I’m not very interested in writing technical posts. I avoid talking about relationships or interpersonal drama, because those details tend to be private and most of the people who pay attention to my journal are real-life friends, not anonymous internet confidantes. Finally, I try to leave out most of the day-to-day minutiae — I don’t see the point in listing what I had for breakfast or complaining that someone cut me off in traffic. What’s left? Not much.

I read a bit by someone recently — I thought it was Opinionista, but I guess not — about how you only post to your blog when you’re in a certain mood, so the self presented there is a perhaps misleading facet of your personality. This is certainly true for me, as well. I only post when I’m feeling social enough to think about other people, and antisocial enough to stay home. And when I’m too tired to self-censor. As much.

So, mood and content: I’m likely to post when I’m in a tired, semi-delirious, both-social-and-antisocial state. And I tend toward meta-content, self-referential or abstract. Such topics exhausted, I segue awkwardly into the mundane.I’m utterly wrecked from K’s workouts, which explains the delirium. At least my legs seem to be working normally again. I didn’t make it to this thing at Machine Project that looked cool, but I just wasn’t feeling up to the driving and talking and people. I did find an archery range near my apartment that will lend out equipment and let people use the range for free. It’s been a lot of fun.

I’ve been listening to The Magnetic Fields, The Killers and Death Cab, mostly, with a bit of Kimya Dawson and Olga Nunes thrown in. Go take a look at Grooveshark. Very beta, been lagging a bit lately, but neat. I’m also on last.fm.

I took the alternate route home yesterday. The one with all the greenery (yes, even in LA, there is vegetation). And with ducks. A good duck pond is strangely reassuring.

Happy new year.

I got a haircut.

For the past several years I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to two recurring new years gatherings, quite different from one another, but each quite worthwhile. It’s hard to miss either. For the time being I’m alternating.

This year’s gathering was a wonderful experience. I’m back on the grid, feeling refreshed and invigorated and probably not getting sick after all (S is sick, and I had a bit of a sore throat that’s now retreated). I’m not feeling quite energetic enough to take on the 350 posts Google Reader has waiting for me. But I have three days left to settle back in before work on Monday.

Christmas is another day.

I walked up the drive, past my mom’s car with the “peace is patriotic” bumper sticker, the massive wood pile, the aging sheds and fences.  The house is as I left it.  Actually, it’s expanding: they’ve built another small room, a new office for my dad as he gently segues into retirement.  It’s connected via the deck, so that makes four buildings in the central area.  The house is turning into a sort of miniature village.

I walked and talked with my dad, to match the dream.  S and I are settling in for a week of rest and recuperation.  It’s been a long slow day, food and fire and conversation.  This is why I’m here.

The bay area visits were good, comforting, engaging, hectic, tiring.  Vienna Teng was lovely, as always.

I hope you’re all well over the holidays, whatever they mean to you.

I hate being sick.

I realize this isn’t exactly a brilliant insight. But it wasn’t always true. For much of my childhood I preferred being sick to going to school. I got to stay home where it was quiet and read instead of having to deal with other kids.

Actually, that still sounds pretty good. But I find it hard to read, or play video games, or work on random side projects (like getting Ubuntu to load the proprietary drivers for my video card with both monitors and 3D acceleration enabled — I think I’ve mangled the installation sufficiently that it’ll be quicker at this point to reinstall from scratch.) I’m physically and mentally off just enough that I can’t really engage with anything. And I’m the sort of person who needs to be mentally engaged with something whenever I’m conscious. So I’m mostly just feeling twitchy and directionless. I spent a lot of time yesterday doing the mental equivalent of opening the fridge, staring at the shelves for a while and then closing it again.

We also have a project at work that’s been going pretty slowly, and I’ll be out on vacation for the second half of this month, so I’d like to make some real progress before then. I’m just starting to get past the awkward bits that require other people to get back to me to the straightforward coding bits that I can do quickly. I’m tempted to jerry-rig something that would let me work from home, which officially I’m not supposed to do. But I’m not sure I have the focus in any case.

I got called in for jury duty yesterday, and I went in and postponed my service until May. I feel a little awkward about that. Some hint of a sense of civic duty, perhaps? A jury with me on it would likely be more fair than one without me. I think I also feel bad for passing up the opportunity to find out what it’s like — to experience something unfamiliar. I was enjoying chatting with people for the hour or so before I went home. But I’m not really in any condition to be on a jury right now, I’d get other people sick, etc. And I’m sure I’ll get called in again eventually.

Books: Greg lent me Warren Ellis’s Crooked Little Vein, and I read it last week. Ellis’s writing style is a little psychotic, but it’s new to me and thus interesting, and it was a quick read. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of The Listener, some of which Ellis put online (and here’s where he stopped).

Then I went back to The Rift, which I bought (in one of those huge Powell’s shopping trips) entirely because I believed it was by Walter Jon Williams. I’ve gone back and forth on that since (on this book he’s listed as “Walter J. Williams”, with no mention of other books) but most recently I think it’s actually his. Not as interesting as his other books, but good enough to make it through the 950 pages or so. More recently I’ve started on The Zenith Angle, by Bruce Sterling, but I’m not making much progress right now. I hate being sick.

I suppose this would be a good time to mention Goodreads.com. I’ll add a link to the sidebar.

Music: I stumbled across a band called Rilo Kiley recently, courtesy of Phil, and I’ve been listening to them pretty consistently since then. Perhaps that qualifies as my latest obsession. I’ve also been listening to Wintersong in the car, which has a lot of childhood holiday nostalgia value. This gives my evening commute a comfortable, strangely festive feel. Gorgeous sunset a few nights back, too. Driving home at dusk is more pleasant than I’d expected.

I told S I was feeling antsy, and she said “well, you could still go in to work.” So maybe I will; I’m not likely to get a lot of rest at home. I’m going to go have some tea and see how I’m feeling.

Three nights ago, I dreamed about my father.

It was — in this dream — the end of the week. I was relaxed, as I hadn’t been for some time. The best way I can find to describe the feeling is this: when you watch a typical serial tv show, one without a continous narrative, you’re meant to have a sense at the end of each show that everything is wrapped up. That whatever crisis or chaos has defined the recent past has been resolved, and everything is back to normal. I was walking around the land outside my parents’ house, feeling at ease.

I saw my dad wandering around out there, and stopped to talk to him for a bit. And I felt a strong kinship, a sense of comfort in his company. We talked about nothing particularly important: when I’d be leaving, whether I wanted his old jacket; the usual meandering focus of dreams.

I woke up thinking, “I’m still going to have dreams like this when he’s gone.”

I’ve been particularly struck by my parents’ mortality lately. I’ve only recently really become conscious of their aging. My dad has always spent a lot of time outside, doing work on the land, and I think he’s just starting to get to the age where that’s a little more difficult. Perhaps in ten years he won’t do so any more.

I worry about what it will be like when my parents’ generation is gone. I’ve always had them there, had that whole generation, and there’s a perspective among my elders that I’ve always been able to depend on. And a supportive dynamic between myself and my parents that has meant a great deal to me over the years. I will miss that when it’s gone, and I’m particuarly not looking forward to trying to handle the existential crisis of old age with only my peers and the younger generations to turn to for support.

And I will really miss my dad.

They’re playing Christmas music, and Thanksgiving is this week. I’m posting a Halloween picture. This is probably some sort of allegorical represenation of my relationship with the world. Doesn’t that sound better than “I’m lazy and finally getting around to it”? Also, apparently you can walk into a movie theater wearing a sword.

S introduced me to Keen Eddie, and I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly, somewhat to my surprise. There’s only one season, unfortunately. It seems like a disproportionate number of good shows only last a season or two, but I suspect that’s because most of the remaining good shows go downhill eventually; that is, first seasons tend to be the best whether or not the show continues. We’re still ambling through our re-watching of Buffy, which is pretty good as something to give half your attention.

I braved the roads for a trek north a week ago, and enjoyed the party — geeks, games, Portal references, and a lot of good food. G received a pretty impressive nerf gun, too.

A’s wedding was short and very sweet. It was good to see that side of the family again. I see most of them about once every five years, so we’re barely more than strangers. But there’s some sense of kinship reinforced by contact over the entirety of my life, even if that contact is sparse.

The wedding was two weeks ago, and I’ve been holding off on mentioning it until I get some pictures uploaded. (Photo sorting and uploading can take me an awfully long time, with three cameras and three photo sites, and some photos only appropriate for some sites…)

More pictures here.

Also, it was in Portland, so of course there was a Powell’s trip. I’ve bought probably a couple dozen books over the course of the past six weeks, and I’m about a quarter of the way through them. It’s nice to be reading again. Perpetually dipping into other worlds gives me some protection from this one, from the crass and mundane, the billboards and glitter. Then again, I also feel as if I’m living in a bit of a fog. But it’s a nice fog.

This weekend was largely friends and games. And now I am eating a pickle. How can I complain?

Reading this link, I had the abrupt realization that being a writer must be like being back in school, with that paper you’ve been sporadically and arduously working on (but mostly avoiding) hanging over your head for all eternity.

And suddenly I’m a bit more comfortable with my chosen field. Well, “chosen” isn’t quite the right word, I suppose. My current field, the one I fell into. Into which I fell? Blasted imaginary grammarians.

Also, Gaiman’s Jonathan Coulton reference (in the link above) makes me happy.

—

I was thinking about my rather sparse set of journal entries, and realizing (as I have realized before — with my poor memory I live in a state of perpetual discovery) that it’s not so much that I don’t have anything to say — I do. It’s just always to individuals. I don’t have much to say to the world at large. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to work against that.

It’s also hard for me to write about anything that isn’t somewhat meta. And I’ve clearly gotten started on that again, so I think I’ll stop. Bedtime for now, and I’ll be back for this another day.

—

Me: Look! I have dice! We could be playing D&D right now!

S: Attack of Opportunity! (tackles me)

—

Recent wikipedia articles:

• Simpson’s Paradox
  
• Chromosomal Crossover
  
• The Stanford Prison Experiment
• The Milgram Experiment
  

—

A’s wedding was fun, but I’ll hold off on posting about that until I’ve uploaded pictures.

I visited D and A this weekend, and we went to Red Rock. It was a nice hike, if short, and it was good to get out of LA and see old friends.

More pictures here.

I’m in a daze, having woken up at 5 am to take S to the airport. (Yes, it was 5 am, and I was listening to los angeles.) She’ll be gone for a couple of weeks, but fortunately the missing her hasn’t really kicked in yet. Have you noticed my “wake up too early and post a blog entry” trend? I guess twice doesn’t really count as a trend. I think it’s actually just that interruptions of my routine make me more likely to do random or creative things. And that when I’m tired I’m less likely to self-censor, and my self-censorship is easily capable of eradicating entire entries.

On a vaguely similar note, I think the main reason I find work so exhausting isn’t so much the work itself, even in crunch mode. It’s that I work in an open area, in close proximity with a lot of people, and I’m a true introvert. Eight hours around other people is pretty draining.

Strategicon was fun (if a little draining, for the aforementioned reasons). I saw old friends, met interesting people, met uninteresting people, and played eight hours of Roborally. And six hours of Descent. And came in second in the San Juan tournament. I’m going to be burned out on board games for a while. At least a day or two.

I feel like I have a lot of travel coming up. I guess it’s really just a wedding in October, and then Thanksgiving and the Christmas / New Years holiday… but I’ve also got friends I’ve been meaning to visit, and vacation days to burn, and cities on the prospectively-moving-to-eventually list that could use some checking out.

I wonder if I should back-fill this blog with entries from my old one?

I’m pretty tired. I’d better get to work.