Incommunicado or … Something.
Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted last. I have a semi-legitimate excuse: for some reason, my laptop decided it didn’t want to pick up the wireless signal from my router any more (and for a while it seemed it didn’t want to connect via a wire either). It’s not fixed, but I’ve stolen my wife’s ethernet cable for a while. Shh — don’t tell her 
Anyways, I just wanted to drop a quick post to let anyone who may have been interested know that yes, we’re still amongst the living, and no, I won’t be posting regularly for a while. We’re still trying to get situated — still looking for a place of our own somewhere in the Sun City — and pretty much the only guaranteed internet access I have is at work.
Quickie updates: work is work, and it’s pretty fun (though exhausting) working with both Java and C#; nothing to talk about on the writing front lines, just one short story I started one night when I was bored and never did anything with; Patti’s got a new job (goodbye badges, finally!); the animals are miserable with the heat but otherwise everything’s pretty run-of-the-mill around here.
Need to run for some fathers day stuff (and, of course, a cigarette).
Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso…
Well, we made it. We actually came in at about 1:00 Wednesday morning, and have been trying to get situated ever since. Just a hair over 33 hours from there to here (well, the car was running for 33 hours; it wasn’t all drive time).
I learned one very important lesson: California is too damned tall. Seriously. It took us an entire day to get from Redding to Riverside. And — with apologies to anyone reading this from the area — Central California is just damned boring to drive through. Oregon was nice. Arizona was, well, at least the scenery changed. I was too damned tired to pay attention to New Mexico, but I know it’s about the same as Arizona.
Come to think of it, once you get past the windmills around Indio, you can’t hardly tell by the scenery whether you’re in California, Arizona, or New Mexico. But at least there’s mountains and the road curves a little bit. Maybe I’m a little harsh — there were some olive trees (an orchard? a grove? what the hell do you call a field of olive trees?), and we saw a couple of bi-planes crop dusting, something you don’t see much of in the city.
Anyways, I’m starting back in at work today, and I’m a little anxious; I haven’t even thought about programming in over a week, let alone done anything with it. That’s a long time for me. Always thought it’d be good to take a break from it, and maybe it would be if it hadn’t been such a long one. Just haven’t really had much of a chance between moving and getting set up and taking care of things.
Okay, I need to run so I can start getting ready. And to smoke – always got to smoke. (If I think of anything else worth posting about the trip, I might add it tomorrow; but for now I think this is about all that’s fit to print.)
Lots to Write
Well, this is the last Friday I’m spending in this house — we’re moving sometime either Sunday or Monday. I haven’t written a damned thing in here in a long time, but here’s a quick over view (and it’s going to be about all I’m going to write for now):
New job, working for Philips Electronics back in El Paso — actually, they bought out a company I used to work for, and I’m going back to work there.
I went back there for a couple of weeks a while ago — well, I got back this past Sunday — and it’s amazing what a difference two weeks of sunshine makes in your outlook. Anyways…
The job’s pretty cool; lot of work, and long hours, but it’s good stuff with lots of room to grow.
Got a long road trip coming up — hit I-5 down to L.A., turn right on I-10, second star to the right, straight on til morning. Planning on hitting somewhere around Sacramento for the first night, then Phoenix the second night. Should be able to have lunch (or an early dinner) with the family back home by Wednesday at the latest.
Right now everything’s a mess though — still trying to pack, trying to clear crap out, trying to get a moving sale set up so we can get a little bit of extra cash on hand for the trip. Or at least get rid of stuff so we don’t have to go through the trouble of loading it up and haul it somewhere ourself.
Anyways, I’d like to say I’ll be posting lots of cool stuff from the road, pics of cool places and lots of little stories about riding with my wife, a dog, and a cat. I know myself though; don’t hold your breath.
Got to go for now though — long day, need to crash.
Been a While…
Just realized that it’s been over a month since I last posted; figured it might be time for a little bit of an update here. Let’s see….
For starters, I’ve all but forgotten about Like Glass and writing in general. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that there’s way too much other crap going on right now. Maybe in a couple of months once things get sorted out.
And it’s official: Patti and I are moving back to El Paso. Next Friday is going to be my last day at my current employer. I’m flying down there for a couple of weeks to get familiar with the company, then coming back up here for about a week to tie up whatever loose ends we might have.
Things are really weird around work now because of that, and it’s probably just me. It’s very much so a “lame duck” period — there isn’t much point in getting started on anything major, and there isn’t really anything minor to work on. Sure, there’s always documentation, but seriously, who documents their code? That’s not something real developers worry about, I mean c’mon…
It’ll be nice to get back home. The weather up here’s been quite schizophrenic, going from snowing during the first official week of spring to around the 60’s this past week. El Paso’s got some strange weather too, but I dunno … I don’t seem to be able to handle the cold like everyone else. In El Paso, it’ll storm like a hurricane for twenty minutes, then be the most beautiful day you’ve ever seen for a few hours. Then it’ll get windy for a while, then another storm, then back to being nice and clear. Maybe it’s just because that’s what I grew up with, but that’s easier for me to deal with.
Another thing I’m looking forward to is the lack of politics back there. At least, the crowd I used to hang out with — and Patti’s family as well, if I remember correctly — weren’t very political. I can’t seem to get away from it up here. And I’m sure it’s just my imagination — I’m sure not everyone up here really cares a tick about liberals or conservatives — but it seems like it to me.
Even my own mother’s become quite political in the time since she’s lived up here — I think it’s probably mostly because of the guy she’s with now, who’s quite conservative. And that’s one of the things that really gets under my skin. I consider myself an “extreme moderate”, leaning towards being a liberal I guess. For the most part, I really don’t care what happens in D.C. Hell, I don’t really care what happens in Olympia (or, rather, Austin now). If asked, yeah, I support gay marriages. I’m also pro-life. I’m all for universal health care but I want the government to keep their hands out of things as much as possible. I’m for assisted suicide, and against organized religion.
At the same time, that’s putting it too black and white. I really don’t care enough about any of that stuff to worry about it. It just doesn’t interest me, sorry, and you can say what you will about how it should interest me, how it should be important to me. It just doesn’t. And quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing about liberal this and conservative that. It’s old. People have their own ideas, that may or may not fit under a certain dogma. People may even have their entire belief structure under one umbrella term like either of those words. I don’t though, and most of the people I know personally don’t either.
Okay, enough of a build up here. What’s been eating at me lately — really eating away at me — is that my own mother has taken to fighting the conservative fight. For the most part, like I said: it doesn’t bother me. But a couple of weekends ago, Patti and I were over there for dinner (a rare event in it’s own right, especially with my sister and her husband there as well), and somehow the conversation moved to a point where I could mention that I listen to NPR on the way to work and the way home. I like NPR — the station up here at least. They have a lot of interesting stories that seem mostly apolitical (seriously, how controversial could the Seattle Times food critic be?), and the news coverage seems — to me at least — to be a lot less biased than a lot of the other news stations around. That and there’s no commercials, which is probably the main reason I listen to it.
I mention that though, and she (and her significant other as well, mind you) gets this disgusted look on her face. “Ugh. Why would you want to listen to that? They’re so liberal.“ Probably not verbatim, but whatever — that was the gist of it.
So I still listen to NPR every morning and ever afternoon, but there’s this little part in the back of my mind that keeps saying “You shouldn’t listen to that — it’s liberal.” WTF? It’s just a damned news broadcast. It’s stories about Americans — not liberal or conservative or republican or democrat or whatever, but “people” who did something that may or may not be noteworthy.
Anyways, that’s one thing I can’t wait to leave. I need to get running here though — it’s a little late and I’m not feeling too hot today (think I’m coming down with a nice weather-change-induced bug).
Quickie Post
Can’t write too much, as I’m running late.
Been thinking a lot about the move — it is officially decided, just a matter of coming up with the finances for it and we’ll be on our way. I’m excited, though I admit it’s a little depressing as well: I don’t feel like we’re just giving up — we’ve put up a good fight since we’ve been out here — but I feel like things could’ve worked out a little differently and we’d be a hell of a lot happier now. Anyways…
I like planning stuff, and this trip’ll be fun. Of course, I’m sure I’ll drive Patti crazy with it within the next couple of weeks, but for now it’s neat to talk about saving money, how far a drive it is, where we’ll stay (on the road and when we get there).
I know Patti feels the same way about it; we’ve done a lot of talking, and we both know it’s best for us to go back home, but neither of us are terribly thrilled with leaving. We came up with a good analogy that suits us both on this: it’s like having an sick dog, one that you just love to death but you know you got to have them put to sleep because there’s no way in hell you could ever afford the vet bill to fix them. You don’t want to do it, but you know it’s for the best. You know you’ll miss them, but you know it’s not worth it to try and stick it out, and you know you can’t make things better any other way without investing a lot more resources than you could possibly have.
Okay, it sounded a lot better when she and I were discussing it the other night, and this doesn’t sound quite right anymore, but you get the gist of it, right? (Scary thing is, that Chloe — our beagle — has been a little under the weather since we made that analogy. Maybe I should come up with something a little happier…)
Anyways, I gotta go smoke.
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