The Aerie
Okay, taxes done, blog updated, FAFSA finished, bus pass considered, bathroom cleaned, desktop organized, faucet replaced, post office box checked, sidewalk salted, next week's paper drafted, laundry done, homework finished, parent teacher conference attended, maps printed, class attended and job lined up for Monday. All that's left is write the Foundation website, update my academic evaluation, build a new Ubuntu server, and pack for this weekend's trip, and I'll be ready to relax!
So yes, I have a job, starting downtown on Monday at a good corporate gig at a good rate that, if I can avoid screwing up and also avoid running into the $*#&@ who fired me the last time I was there (and who fired me in 1999 from a completely different job - yes, I got fired by the same #*$*@ twice at two different jobs This town is too damned small. [And yes, I was fired simply because the *#&@ doesn't LIKE me, not for performance based reasons {and YES I have been fired for performance based reasons so it's not like I wouldn't say if they had been justified firings - they weren't,the #*&@$ just doesn't like me and I really hope she's no longer at this place}]).
This week I could have "taken 'off'" which would have meant building my new server, doing some household chores, and lazing about. But then I realized that I had another paper due March 4th, of the same kind that ended up EATING MY WEEK just last week. And I realized no WAY could I get a paper like that done during my first four days on the new job. And so I did the responsible, grown-up thing, and spent the last three days writing next week's paper. Yes I'm done a week early. I know! It's like I don't know who that is in the mirror!
ANYWAY having accomplished a truly mindboggling list of things, including my paper, my weekly homework, etc., I am NOW ready to relax ALMOST.
This weekend is the big trip to the cabin in Wisconsin with another couple, where there will be no TV reception, no cable, no cell phone reception, no Internet. Just a hot tub, a laptop, and a lot of liquor. Two nights, so I really hope I can decompress a bit tomorrow before we leave, otherwise I'll just get into the rhythm of the thing about when it's time to go home.
As for what I'll write, well, I'd LIKE to work on "Flying Sucks," which is a young adult novel about a kid who wakes up one day and discovers he can fly. Well, float, actually, which is part of the problem. No lateral movement.
But I fell like I OUGHT to work on "Mirek," which is a standard gamers-fall-into-the-game-world story, but set on Tékumel.
Or maybe I'll work on my role-playing setting idea, which is set on a partially-terraformed Mars around the year 2500 or so.
See, this is why I need to get to the place where I don't have to work for a living anymore. Because I'm so chockablock full of ideas that I'd never be idle a single day. Unfortunately I have 7.5 more years of fiscal responsibility before all three kids are through college. After that, WATCH OUT. I'll move into a cardboard box someplace and start writing!
Anyway, WEEKEND HO!
I was bored... okay, I wasn't REALLY bored, I was actually procrastinating over a paper... and I decided to make up a list of all the ways that the World As We Know It could come to an end. Here's what I've come up with so far...
1) Secession/breakup of U.S. I remain convinced a lot of America's aristocracy look with envy upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sarah Palin and Rick Perry would prefer, I think, to be the hegemons of their own countries than to be small fish in a big empire. And corporations, which are replacing nation-states as the main bodies of governance, are going to be happier when there are no federal regulations to which they even must nominally adhere. As with the Soviets, when it happens it will happen fast. The media will paint it as a good thing, particularly by pointing out how many states take more federal money than they contribute, which will seduce moneyed liberals in the blue states that have long subsidized knuckledragging red states.
2) The Big One. The clock is ticking along fault lines in California, and the U.S. may not survive it.
3) The Nuke. Ditto. A suitcase bomb detonated in a major U.S. city could end the country.
4) The Methane Bubble. This one sounds science-fictiony, but bear with me. Climate change releases a big bubble of oceanic methane gas, which then blows ashore and suffocates an enormous part of the coastline. Even better? An earthquake could trigger such a thing in unstable seabed, so maybe combine with #2? On the other hand the ocean is enormous, and this could happen along ANY coastline, so odds are half a million foreigners will be the first victims.
5) Coup de Grace. What says the U.S. military will sit still for all this? If we get a president who looks at the military budget and decides for some odd reason that it constitutes a huge drain on the nation, will they sit by and let their budget be slashed? Or maybe they'll look at the mess inside the Beltway and decide that one way to kick out the lobbyists and the foreign corporate interests is to seize control, temporarily of course.
6) Mombai Nuclear Winter. We've long focused on a nuclear winter caused by some old Cold-War alignment, but nothing says that Pakistan and India couldn't kick one off. Or Iran and Israel. Or all four. Who knows, it might balance out Global Warming.
7) Plague. For all that Dr. Mike Osterholm is a tiresome Chicken Little, the sky actually COULD fall, just as he has been warning for his entire career. One fast-moving influenza, and everything could be different.
8) Greenland Melts. Al Gore described this one. But just imagine the effect on the planet and the economy if Europe became a Siberia? To say nothing of the coastal flooding... Imagine much of Florida under four feet of icy-cold water.
9) Nothing. That's right. Despite all our dire concerns, possibly the world will somehow just keep muddling along the way it has been. In some ways, that's one of the most terrifying predictions so far...
10) Space Aliens. Okay, fine, not really likely. But wouldn't it be cool? We could sell them Antarctica for some of their beads and a few trinkets... what could possibly go wrong?
Okay, so I'm hoping to get work tomorrow. Interviews have gone well so far. Also I have a big assignment that I am hoping to draft tomorrow. If I can get a first draft tomorrow I'll be on track for the Thursday due date.
It's just as well I'm getting work now. No, no, not FINANCIALLY. I'm independently wealthy and I only work for the fun of it - I use the cash to light cigars, which I roll out of cash. No, it's a good thing if I get work right now, because I've jammed my non-work schedule so full of stuff that I need a job in order to get a break! College classes, Tekumel Foundation stuff, FAFSA to fill out - hell, we just have to sign our taxes to get our return, and I haven't got THAT done yet. On the other hand, I did clean the bathroom this weekend.
A good bit of partying this weekend, too, which was fun. Saturday night was the church Valentine's Day dance. Our friend Kim asked us to go and it was our first time, we had a lot of fun. Then Sunday we went to this restaurant called Pierre's because we had a gift certificate and also a cash gift card we had been given.
The dinner was nice, and at the end they pointed out the fine print that said they don't take gift certificates on Valentine's day, and our cash gift card didn't process, and we ended up paying for it out of pocket. Good thing I've got a job coming up (cross fingers). But the company was good, and that's the important part on Valentine's Day!
Anyway today has been a bit of a wash: went to the gym, then got ready for my 3:00 interview, and spent the three hour wait studying up on the technology to be discussed at the interview. So it's been four days since my last class, and I've gotten no homework done, with a big paper due. Sigh. Okay, not gonna stress on it - getting a job is an important thing to do. And I worked on classwork afterwards.
So hopefully tomorrow I'll get a contract to start on Monday, and spend the intervening period getting my homework done and all the other stuff. And if I DON'T get a contract tomorrow, I've got an interview at 2:00 for a different position, so hope springs eternal.
Okay, off to sleep and then I hit the books...
Seeing as I apparently don't blog any OTHER time, it's arguable that I am indeed blogging for my troll. Ah, but these days and weeks when I'm between jobs all start to fade into each other to the point where I look in my sock drawer, and they're all gone, and I look in my laundry hamper, and there they are all worn and I don't remember the intervening couple of weeks going by.
So I have Chet to thank for reminding me to get on here and post something! Thanks Chet!
But really, what's to blog? I wake, and if I'm ambitious I head to the gym with my spouse, and afterwards I throw myself into my classwork, grateful that I have something around which to focus my job-free days. This senior-level one-night-a-week seminar has SO MUCH reading that I can spend as much time as I like on my classwork and still never get it all done. Last week, for example, I had eight chapters to read in two different books - Senge's "Fifth Discipline" (70 pages) and Burke's "Organization Change" (150) - plus a 17-page handout and 22 page case study. That's 260 pages of reading dense text on business management. And then I had to complete an assignment based on that. Whew!
Job prospects move slowly along. I've had two interviews for one place and should get a third pretty soon. This one I'm likely to get, and I'll be well pleased if I do. The other opportunity is a permanent position which I'm not sure about. This one has been a trip: first they gave me a standard intelligence test. Then they gave me a modified Myers-Briggs personality test. THEN on a phone interview they e-mailed me code segments and asked me to identify the security vulnerabilities. Whew! That one had my head spinning, particularly since I started by telling the fellow that I stopped being a coder back in 1996.
Anyway I've got some prospects, and that's good. The other good thing is that my taxes are done (another advantage of not having a job) and I'm getting a substantial refund. This is due on the one hand to having paid taxes as if I was going to earn X dollars, and then actually earning X/2 dollars; and on the other hand due to the college education tax credits resulting from my paying for the twins' college bills and my own. The refund will, in a pinch, keep the mortgage paid for another month, and if I actually GET a job, will go towards paying down our truly impressive credit card debt.
So that's the latest! Thanks again to Chet for reminding me I need to blog. Gosh I might stop blogging completely if it weren't for him!