more than 140 chars of banal

Today's accomplishments:

1. I shipped the baby off to daycare for his first time EVAR
2. I surrendered our car to the mechanics (who will undoubtedly charge us about a paycheck)
3. I will shortly begin prostituting myself to recruiters. Yay me.

It might be fair to clarify #3: I don't have any official feedback from the Potential Employer of Great Desirability, but things look highly doubtful. This is demoralizing, but hey, might as well get used to it. So I'm not spending the days with the baby anymore, at least until I've secured employment (and then, well, not then either). I miss him. I'm sure he's having a marvelous time, and I know his sister is having the best day at daycare ever. Moreover, I've got complete freedom from his amazing powers of distraction for the entire afternoon.

It's still crummy. I miss my sweet baby. God, I'm such a mother hen.

Meanwhile, in what appears to be an attempt to procrastinate and avoid contacting recruiters, I'm getting all literate and stuff, tweeting, catching-up on blogs, all that nonsense. In an IM exchange with my wife, I came up with this:

[me] am drinking San Benedetto "Naturale" water.
[me] they were out of San Pellegrino "What I Normally Drink For Sparkly Waterz" water.
[me] and it turns-out that "Naturale" is San Benedettese not for "is an acceptably overpriced, attractively-bottled, Italian sparkling water beverage product for consumption when our local beverage purveyor's San Pellegrino supply has been terminally depleted," as I had originally surmised, but rather for "totally flat, non-sparkling water thing without bubbles or fizz. or carbonation. of any sort."
[me] boooo.

From the above, of course, you can deduce primarily that, when unemployed, I become much more whiny and infatuated with my own [attempts at] wit. I need a job.

So. I'm interviewing for a senior engineering position with a major multinational, one that has super-dreamy benefits, trans-friendliness, cool co-workers, interesting work, great location: in short, a whole can o' aw3sum. I'm also a basket case over this. There's a lot of panic, there's a lot of "what if I blow it all?" ... there's a lot of second-guessing, a lot of internal drama, and a lot of time to kill as I move from stage to stage in the process. I guess this is all normal. That doesn't really help, though.

AUUUUUUUGHH

I hate interviewing.

Here's an interesting observation: The baby just lunged at my chest and barfed all over the pajamas I happen to still be wearing at 6:30pm. And you know what first springs to mind?

I think I like wearing sour baby barf more than I like interviewing.

Pop Finds Pop Nutritious? Orly? Yarly.

Okay, I have to admit, there's a little part of me that is probably just wondering where youth went and how long I can cling. Of course, as I've always said, I turned 30 at age 12, and will probably remain 30 for the next 20 years at least (I'm 31). My personal perception of time has always been a little wonky, and I suspect that things are only going to get worse in transition.

But, so help me, I'm weirdly enraptured by the dance clubbing scene. The DJs (Tiesto, Oakenfield), the new performer-starlets (Katy Perry, Lady GaGa, and the like), and the veteran acts who against the odds keep hurtling themselves forward while being hungrily devoured by the others (Madonna, Tori Amos, and Peter Gabriel all come to mind), there's so much performance and production art -- some of it absurdly rich and noteworthy, some of it gallingly puerile -- being generated. I can't help but want in. It's peculiar, really, as it's so completely not the sort of thing I've ever participated in; my personal practice of "performance art" has pretty much always been extremely cerebral and traditional.

Actually, that does provoke a few suppositions. I have always been self-effacing in performance. I think authenticity has been exceptionally difficult for me, as Rachel has been crushed-away and silent for the last two decades. To perform authentically, to be present and genuine, has been crazy hard. I'd compare it to trying to walk on a half-thawed river: the first couple of steps seem steady, but then the "ground" wobbles and shivers, and as arms windmill everything shatters and I'm gone -- swept away downstream. And even if I manage to dance across through some sudden, superhuman dexterity, I'm shaken and unnerved, chilled, and the space I've crossed is a broken, slushy mess. That's what comes of pretending so hard to be what we aren't that we forget we aren't; burned bridges and scorched earth.

tweetish

I think -- at least until I'm once again gainfully employed and no longer filling weekday afternoons with baby urp, naps, clicking on things and cursing iTunes (SO. MUCH. H8.) (I still love my iPhone, though) -- that perhaps Rachel should get a twitter account. Because, you see, pretty much everything I think of to post, during the daytime, is one-liner tidbits of context-setting banality. nice-ish, and necessary, but kinda tedious to build an interesting blog out of.

Of course, that's even sillier, really, when one considers that I'd have, oh, zero followers. Oh well.

Getting things done?

Well, let's see. I just finished securing a developer key for my XO, and am about to set-up an Xubuntu image for it. I also just replied to a nice lady from A Very Large And Attractive Company about securing employment therein. Technically, following-up on that lead was "the one thing I wanted to accomplish" yesterday. Better late than never, I suppose.

I'm not entirely certain why, but modern electro-pop-trance-dance music has been quite intricately bound-up in my memory of this past year of transition preparation (pre-transition? transition preamble? I wish I had a more precise and descriptive phrase ...). Nothing much more to say, there, right now, but it bears saying.

Now what?

My wife and daughter are sweeping leaves in the side yard, after scraping-out the silted-up drainage grooves in our lean-to of a garage. A cold, sunny San Francisco spring day is drawing to a close, and the beautiful, sleeping 4-month old boy on my lap has prevented me from effecting the merest hint of dinner preparations. When the yard workers come in from their labors demanding a meal, boy am I ever gonna catch it.

Oh well. They'll just wake-up my excuse :)

I had this tiny (well, 16lbs.; not so tiny, really, any more) marvel with me at a therapy session a couple of days ago, and I found myself saying to him, as I gazed with wonder into his eyes, "can you believe that when I learned you'd be coming, I almost lost my mind?" Then I teared-up and held him for a good long while, as he grumbled sleepily. It was such a shock, how unimaginably distant that person seems.

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about what I would like to accomplish with this blog. To date, I don't think I have much of anything in the way of readership, beyond one kind comment, and I'll admit that's something I would like to change. I have a private journal for when I simply must articulate something in text that's not for public consumption, and I do make use of it. Even still, I want to share this: I want to share the experiences I'm having with people who can appreciate them.

I don't think I'm at a point where it's feasible, in the next year or so, to get to an IFGE event or Southern Comfort, which would allow for some networking and friendship-founding. This is frustrating.

Also frustrating is the sudden re-entrance of the four-year-old onto the scene, screaming bloody murder about a previously confiscated Hello Kitty charm (US$1 out of a capsule machine). When it's being used to forcibly enlarge the infant's nostrils in the back seat, the toy goes away. The sense of this, sadly, is lost on her. Argh.

... and now, with the two laborers respectively cajoled and released off to the bathroom for a much-needed shower, I've entirely forgotten what on earth I was saying. Oh, yes, what I want to accomplish here, and not being able to network in person. Hm. Well, the short, short version is "I don't really know what I'm trying to accomplish, just yet -- can you tell? I seem to just be writing whenever talking is desired but unavailable." Anyhow. I suppose it's time to rejoin this blissful tide of banality (and continue to beat my head against the brick wall of a determined, overtired preschooler's ire). Perhaps I'll edit this post into something more coherent, later.