forgot

I forgot what I was going to write about.
Felix and I went to the Man-Store to get some stuff for being handy. I intend to fix the leaky faucet on our tub. I also need a 2x2 to replace the one that was stolen (along with my bicycle). And while I was at it I got some new house numbers, since the ones we have suck and you can barely see them during the day and can't see them at all at night.

We will start our unburdening process shortly, meaning its garage sale time! One nice thing about moving way far away is that you are really forced to get rid of the stuff you've been lugging from place to place even though you never need it or even use it, or even look through it! It's the great pairing down, so to speak. My stereo receiver, 25-CD Changer, and small but excellent sounding(and heavy) Pro x77 speakers will be on the block, as well as my (Shawn's) skis, all my leftover motorcycle gear, my scuba stuff, etc.

I expect we'll be getting rid of some extra furniture (not much though, since we're sort of spare in our furniture decorating anyway) and clothes as well as anything baby-related that is no longer being used and that we did not buy ourselves (though we'll probably try to give back any baby clothes and toys and stuff that we have on loan from the greater family lending library), just in case there is a #2 some day. Dunno. I don't expect us to have much storage space in NY and I'm sure not going to rent a storage unit. Not sure I know the place for nostalgic nicknacks anyway. I know I have a bin full of crap from highschool, college, etc. The "formative years" so to speak. Stuff I really have no attachment to. All going to go, I think.

Of course, aside from not wanting to take stuff with us we don't need, we also need to declutter as much as possible in order to sell the house. Who wants to go look in a basement or an attic and just see someone else's junk all over the place? No thanks. Most people don't want to be reminded of what the house will look like once they move their crap in. Don't spoil it for them. They'll have plenty of time to do that to themselves (as anyone can tell, I've fallen out of love with this house...a while ago).

Click, BOOM

So, even though Andrea will not officially accept the offer until tomorrow, I have pulled the trigger and notified family and close friends.

See, I've been telling people at work that I was only going to be around for a year or two and then its off to NY so Andrea can become the rock-star designer that Minneapolis's head is too far up its own ass to recognize.

If you read this and you did NOT get an email from me about our plans, its probably because I just forgot your email, forgot you were alive, or maybe you are just a complete stranger who reads my blog and don't realize that I do not know you, no matter how involved you feel in my life as you read about it on the interweb. Or maybe I haven't sent an email to friends yet, just family...

Hello? Mr. Pickles, hello?

So I've got my resume on Monster and a couple other sites...and nobody reads your resume, they just scan for keywords. SO I've been called and emailed at least twice a day by recruiters who want to hook me up with a sweet contractor job at...my current employer. Not only that, but its for the team on the other side of the cubewall from me. Funny. It's like, did you read the email? Did you see my profile? Looking for NY, not MN. Ugh.

Weight

Feeling much better today. Focusing on work.

It's funny...hey wait that's my bike.

Yeah, well, its still sorta funny. This morning while getting ready for work, I was standing half dressed talking about, of course, impending relocation or something related to it when there was a commotion outside. From the bedroom window we heard someon yell, "Put that back!" and then Andrea saw a white haired guy run across the street and I saw him running behind a black guy in a bike, holding onto the bike rider's shirt, yelling "Stop! Stop!" AH, I thought, never a dull moment in this craphole neighborhood. Then a minute later our doorbell rang. Huh?

It was the white haired guy. I noticed that something was missing from my front porch. Specifically, one of the wooden spindles on the railing, even more specifically, the cheapo $60 bike I bought from Target a couple years ago that had been locked to the railing all last fall, winter, and this spring. "A guy just sto9le you bike!"
"Oh." I said. The older guy was dripping with sweat.
"I tried to stop him but short of coming to blows he wasn't going to stop."
"Thanks." I said.
"You can get in your car and chase him down! He went down that way. A bald guy!"
"No, that's ok," I said, still covered in shocked amusement, "It was a cheap bike. It wasn't in great shape anyway."
"I think the tires were flat." he said.
"Yeah. Hey, sorry for the trouble."

So, that's how my day began.

I don't really care about the bike at all, but the feeling of personal invasion is hard to escape. I mean, he damaged my house a little bit and he took something that was mine. It wasn't his. What made him think it was OK to just take something like that? That little bit of psychic disturbance has had me off-kilter all day. That on top of the stress of the impending decision about where Andrea will work (definitely New York now) as me feeling like I'm on the verge of a breakdown. Literally.

But I think I just need to focus on the stable, on the known, and things will be ok.

oh, my head, my back...

So, Andrea's trip to NY was nowhere near the dramedy of her trip to Chicago. Got to the plane on time, etc. Taking care of Felix all by myself (well, I had a short break on Thursday when Kim, the nanny, came and took him to the park) definitely took its toll. But mostly we're all feeling a bit shell shocked because of the sudden multiplication of hard choices. So, now Andrea is being pursued, in some cases very aggressively, by firms in Chicago AND New York and all of them have their own time frames and offers...and we have to both decide between them AND I need to find a job, AND we need to get rid of this house, AND we need to find somewhere to live, AND we need to figure out who is going to take care of Felix while mom and dad are working full time, AND we need to pay for that...

...so, anyone who has advice or experience, or who would like to move to New York to be a live-in nanny for cheap, let me know.

updates

Ok, so here's the updates:
Andrea's trip to Chicago - A+
Turns out that after all her missed flights and whatnots, she arrived in Chitown around 2:50pm and had a great afternoon meeting with the people at the studio. They really liked her, she really liked them, and they said the would need to know if she will take the job shortly after she comes back from her interviews in new York (which she leaves for tonight). If she will commit to the position, they can wait until September for her to relocate. So, that's basically a sure thing if the offer is accepted in time. And at the end of her time there, she felt like she had spent just the right amount of time, not too little and not too much. So the whole airport drama was sort of not a complete loss (though wasting half a day at the Humphrey terminal is a special sort of hell, I know). At the very worst, it did not affect her chances at this job. So...basically we're almost guaranteed to be relocating to Chicago (or she is at least and me to follow as soon as possible...and who the hell knows what happens to Felix...ugh!) by September unless she actually gets an offer from the place in New York. And that's a whole other ball of sticky wax, because who knows what that offer will be or if it will even be as good (in timing, salary, etc.) as the Chicago offer. So, Chicago stuff all worked out well, so far.

Father's Day/Weekend - B+/A-
Well, despite my comments on being somewhat ambivalent about Father's day and my prediction that the airport fiasco would invalidate any honoring of thine babydaddy, we actually had a weekend packed chock full-o-father's day stuff.
Saturday was a hodge-podge if (ina/a)ctivity. We were all feeling wasted, warped, hung-up, and hungover from Friday's emotional rollercoaster. Felix was all crank-a-tank early in the morning (5:30am). We all took naps from about 9:45am to 1:30pm, which is a a LONG nap for Felix. After we all eventually woke up we gathered some supplies and went to the beach! It took us a while to get there since we were trying to stay off the highway. At about 4:45pm we got to the beach and Felix conquered the sand and surf. It was fun. The only part that was not so fun was that 15 minutes after we got there they had their "safety check" where everyone gets out of the water. This takes about 15 minutes to complete, I guess...15 minutes spent trying to keep Felix from going back into the water or dumping as much sand as he can onto the blanket. We had a great time, though Felix started getting cranky again as we were leaving, probably because he was hungry.
As a nod to father's day, Andrea went and got us dinner at Chatter box, so I was not required to make dinner. Felix went down at what seemed like a mostly normal bed t-

LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH!!!!!
Hard decisions just made even harder!
So, despite all of Andrea's naysaying, what I had predicted has come to pass. In New York, EVERYONE wants to hire her. Both places she interviewed at today said, "Yes, please, come work for us, PLEASE!" And to make matters even worse, the studio she specifically went to NY to interview at even said, "Hey, no hurry, we won't need you to start until fall..." which, until we see some numbers, basically makes it a tie with the Chicago offer. Well, not REALLY, but it makes choosing between the two that much harder. In a way, Andrea was sort of hoping that her NY trip would be fruitless because that would make the decision for her. Oh no. That would be toooooo easy. Not one, but two studios in NY want her. She's 100% on her interviews-to-offers percentage. That's damn good.
That also says something, again, pretty clearly about Minneapolis. Here, she can barely get a call back. She was called an anachronism during an informational. She was told by one local studio during an informational, that design isn't even about design in Minneapolis, that it isn't even about advertising either.
It points the way pretty clearly: For Andrea to get the chance to do the work she wants to do and get the recognition it deserves, she's gotta leave this area. No joke. When internationally known, award winning design firms and studios in chicago and new york spend their time trying to sell HER on their projects and telling her "Please, if you are serious, let us know and we would totally hire you like yesterday." She's being wooed by studios in two different cities! Minneapolis can only be bothered to fart in her face and steal her lunch money.

SO, from this point on it only gets tougher.

I ave started hsopping my resume online and submitting to positions in both areas. I've also started getting calls from recruiters. Unfortunately none of them have been for jobs in the areas I'm interested in. But it is nice to know that my resume is coming up when people say "I need someone who is X". I'm feeling more marketable already!

I've submitted for a couple positions that actually sound like they would flow really well from what I'm doing now. Mostly change management/SCM type stuff, but a couple software deployment and a release engineer position. So, I'm starting to feel pretty good. I think, really, the only anchor around our necks is going to be this house. I'm wondering if we might just let it burn down. I know it sounds horrible, but I'd welcome a natural disaster right now, provided my family and important stuff is safe and secure when it happens.

Seriously. If the roof blew off and the walls fell down and the car got pelted with hail damage...that would be effing perfect.

oh father!

so, Sunday is father's day. On this day I am minutely conflicted. Father's day and Mother's day are similar to Valentine's day, secretary's day, grandparent's day, etc... in that they are largely Hallmark Holidays. But nearly so much as Valentine's day, which I view as just sort of plain stupid and evil. Mothers and Fathers days are good holidays, I think, in that they (should) promote introspection about your relationship with your respective parents. It is good to occasionally say, "Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate you being there for me all the time." or "Thanks for sending me to college, I wish I hadn't been such a bonehead back then." or even "I respect that you didn't give in." Honoring your parents is something that should get some airtime in your day at least once a year. According to "everyone", the minimum offering should be a card and flowers. If you are able to, you take said honoerd parent to dinner, or something. A token that says, "Hey...thanks. I didn't forget this time."

That said...and I say this as a father myself (though this is my first anniversary), I wish retailers would shut up about it and stop trying to make me feel inadequate for not sending my parents on a cruise or buying them a flat screen TV during any of the special deals or sales. Now, granted, I encounter this pressure much less (not because I'm heartless) because I don't watch commercial TV, so I don't see the ads. I do see them online, hear them on the radio, and see the in-store displays. Maybe because I don't have the TV stream of adblather I am more conscious of the other marketing avenues. Anyway. I'm not some grinch who just doesn't want to give presents to my parents for all the pain and suffering I've put them through. (and I should come clean and say, yes, I know, I'm a horrible gift giver even when I DO want to give them, I'm sorry for that) As a new father, I'm experiencing all sorts of things for the first time. For Mother's day, I took my mom out to dinner because she was actually in town (the day before actually), otherwise I would have just given her a phone call. If times are good and we have money just laying around getting dusty, I might send her a gift certificate to Amazon or JoAnns. I also made Andrea breakfast in bed since she definitely needs to be recognized for her mothering (this year Felix got her a card too). And I gave her the day off and took care of Felix all day. On weekends, I usually try to take as much Felix time as possible anyway, since Andrea usually needs a recharge (though the weekends have morphed a bit since she started working), but a guaranteed 100% day off is a pretty good gift, I think.

Anyway, so Andrea asks me what *I* want to do for father's day. Do I want to do something special? Do I want to do something special as a family, with just Felix, by myself?

Huh. Something to think about. I think its safe to say, after this morning's performance I shouldn't expect (or really even deserve) a chunk of "me time", but perhaps we will do a nice family event that might give Andrea some release from the tension of today....I think we might take Felix to a beach or something. But I certainly wouldn't expect either Andrea or Felix to go shop the special sales for some thing I was hoping to get from someone.

Now, be it known that my parents have never demanded gifts on any of these days. Wouldn't turn them down, but they like to know their children are at least thinking of them.

Aw hell, I'm too scattered to finish this...
and I need to finish grilling the lamb while Felix is still asleep.

chitown

Well, for those of you playing along at home, Andrea did get to Chicago at 2:15pm, and I imagine that right now she's probably just meeting the whole crew at the studio and wowing them with her portfolio. And I hope that they take her to a nice place for dinner, and maybe a late lunch.

Hallmark does not yet carry a "Sorry for possibly crushing your dreams, yet again - Wife" card yet. I know, I looked.

fubar

well, I did it again.
The past week or so have been spent preparing for A's trip out to Chicago for an interview. The studio she's interviewing at is interested enough in her that they want to fly her too Chicago for the day, have a car pick her up at the airport, show her around town, etc, and then send her back to the minneapple in time for a late night tuck-in for Felix.

SO...after my previous airport experience, I felt pretty confident that she could catch the light rail 45 minutes before her flight and have no problems. Well, being OVER confident, I didn't get her to the light rail until right at 6:30, for her 7:00 flight. And we just saw the train pull away so we knew it would be maybe 10 minutes before the next one arrived. OK, so we drove to the airport and got there just in time to get on her plane....but AirTran moved from the main airport terminal to the Humphrey terminal last month. So then we SPEED to the Humphry terminal and arrive there 5 minutes too late and she missed her flight. So get on the next one, right? Well...yeah, ok...so they TRY to get her on the next flight but its already overbooked (WTF?). That flight leaves at 10:25 which gets her to Chicago at noonish, which sucks, but hey, spend the afternoon in CHicago and come home at night. Ok, so they try for that. Nope, they load up the plane and fly off, no Andrea on board. Her confirmed, guaranteed flight leaves at 12:52 and gets to Chicago at around 2:15. So, her day of being wined and dined by a prospective employer has turned into a nightmare morning followed by a late morning of drama and boredom at the Humphrey terminal, which is like being stuck in a small airport in nowhere midwest with no shops or food places, followed by a flight and just enough time to meet the studio, show her portfolio, maybe grab a light dinner, and then back onto the plane at 7:50 and home by 9:30.

If this were a vacation or a trip that spanned several days, this change in schedule would be a huge hassle, but not too much more than that. For a one-day visit with an prospective employer, who is interested enough to fly you out...well, it takes on a whole different flavor entirely. Andrea, understandably, is beside herself. She hates being late for things and even more hates for someone to think she's not on the ball, especially when an opportunity like this is in play. Obviously, she's very unhappy with me. My stupid confidence turned hitting a tight deadline into utter disaster. And of course, I was the one riding her ass for the past week to make sure she had everything lined up, all her stuff in order, her clothing picked out, everything because, "I'm just not looking forward to the morning-of drama if you forget something." Yeah, serves me right, but it does not serve her right at all.
She hates me, understandibly, and I'm not too proud of myself either.
I feel sick. I hope they are very understanding, but even more I hope that once she gets on that plane her day gets better, not worse. I've robbed her of a little bit of RnR, even though it is around a business trip, and I've possibly tarnished the impression they have of her. I wish I could call them and say it was all my fault.

Of course, this also means that next week when she flies out to New York we'll all be riding MY ass pretty damn hard to make sure I don't mess it up again.

And of course, Felix misses his momma. It doesn't help that I got him up early so we could all go to the airport. He should be finishing up his morning nap soon...its been a good long one.

It's supposed to be in the 90's today. Ugh.
I feel like crap for what I've done to Andrea, Felix is off because of the heat and his lack of sleep, and not to mention he's used to spending the mornings with mama. We'll see...this will be a test run for next week when I've got him for 2 days and 3 nights on my own.

And we've got a handful of important errands to run once he wakes up.
sigh...
You've done it again, bonehead.

no seasons

and now I shall rant a bit about our lack of proper seasons. This is Minnesota, we should have four distinct seasons. Cool and wet, hot and moist, cool and dry, and frozen. And those four distinct sensation-based seasons are roughly the same length, or at the very least, not drastically different lengths. Those of you playing along at home may have noticed that this year we've gone from frozen to hot and moist in a record 4 weeks, and that's not even a proper four weeks, I just mean that it has been roughly a month between the last substantial "cold spell" and the first substantial "heat wave". During that month there have been mostly moderate days, lots of overcast, lots of rain, a couple "cold" days and several unexpectedly warm days. Before that it was basically just cold all the time and from here on out I expect it will just be plain hot and humid. Basically, I'm still paying off my heating bill from the winter and already I've had to install one of the AC units so that Felix can sleep at night and his nanny doesn't quit during the day. WTF? If anyone with half a brain out there still doesn't believe in global warming, wake up. It's real. And even if its not, don't be such a bitch. Pollution is bad, gas guzzlers are bad, SUVs = bad, and it goes without saying that your asshat "Who gives a fuck about global warming, I'll be gone when the rapture comes anyway?" attitude is pretty much the big bad.

house

Everyone talks about how you should buy a house, a house is the biggest and best investment you'll ever make, etc etc... Of course, there's caveats and asterix and footnotes and exceptions to every one of those "house" cliches. Like, how you should buy a house...if you plan on staying in the same neighborhood, city, or state for the next 10 years, or if you plan on having the same job with regular pay increases or advancement, or guarantee that you will have a series of consecutively higher paying jobs, etc. Yes, a house is more like a marriage than a purchase; don't do it if you only plan on being around a couple years. Or maybe a house is more like a dog; if you do get one, make sure that the amount of time you have for it is more than the amount of time it actually needs. And of course, just as with a marriage or a dog, make sure you are getting a house for the right reason! (and that everyone who is getting the house agrees on what that reason is, same as married and getting a dog).

Well, last week I actually started a finished my first real house project since Felix was born, I think. I'm not counting fixing the kitchen sink because my dad did that. Last week I replaced the seal around our tub which was poorly done in the first place and was pretty much coming off in all the places where you'd wish it wouldn't. In finally pulling out the old nasty (and wrong sized) caulk-strip, I discovered that water was not seeping under the tiles and into the void between the walls and int othe drywall of my kitchen ceiling. No, the edge of the tub behind the tile actually has a lip. Instead the water that pools on the tub's ledge (due probably to a combination of the half-assery of the "remodel" job they did putting the tub in crooked and the fact that this 100 year old house is probably shifting on its foundation and what may have been kinda sorta level before is now just outta whack)and just soaks into the caulk and makes it mushy. And nasty funky stuff likes to grow there. So, in pulling out the bad, I discovered a little good. AND I replaced it all with a double-strength application of extra wide caulk strips that are also bright and shiny white and will rewmain so if we are methodical about trying to squeegy the water off of them after showers or baths (Felix likes to splash).

more than meets the eye

My weekly flyer-email from eReader.com spotlights a special on the new Transformers book based on the movie. Normally I wouldn't look twice at something like this, as books based on movies don't tend to be all the good and if you don't even know how good the movie will be outside of the whizzbang special effects you have seen in the trailers, well, what's the point? But in this case I was aroused by something unexpected. The book, based on the movie, is written none other than Alan Dean Foster. While in the greater scheme of literature Alan Dean Foster may be considered more of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy pulp artist and film novelization powerhouse (alien, Starwars, etc...) I fondly recall reading many of his books as an adolescent. The Flinx series, which apparently is still receiving new installments, and other Humanx Commonwealth novels, the Spellsinger series, as well as just stand alone novels he'd written like Quozl and The Vanishing Point. The thing about Foster is that while he is very prolific, he is also incredibly readable. His prose does not seem to suffer from the sheer volume he puts out. This is just a tidbit. Maybe I'll look up some of his newer novels and see if they spark my interest. Check out his wikipedia entry or visit his homepage if you are interested in seeing what I'm talking about.