So… it’s been an interesting and full week.
Where should I start?
Went to Bay Path on Saturday. Danced A1/A2 for the first time. For the first few dances, it hurt my brain. After that, all was well. It helped to notice that others were fucking up more than I was. I danced alone one square, and was able to find my place most of the time. Our square danced with a phantom the last two tips, and I was mostly OK. I’m getting good, that feels nice. I can actually dance A1/A2 now. Hopefully learning C1 will be more like learning A1, and not A2. We actually had quite a turn-out: 15 people from Tech Squares. Some people accuse me of being responsible for that. I just think that the moon was in the 7th house, and Jupiter aligned with Mars, and people wanted to dance. Afterwards, a dozen of us went to Harry’s for supper. Was fun socializing with both the same and different people. Got home ’round 02:00.
Sunday, well… that was more interesting. Dina left quite early for a Caribbean cruise with her family for her brother’s 21st. After waking up to see her off, back to bed to catch up on sleep. Awake again, some puttering around the house, then prep for the day, because it was going to be an interesting one.
Digression: One thing I noticed while prepping is that the new conditioner I bought is for “Flat, Fine, Thin Hair”. Should I use it anyway? I’m clueless. I first started using my own conditioner in London. I liked the almond and coconut mixture, but, unable to easily find it here, I started using coconut conditioner. While we were shopping the other day, I was just grabbing all the available, untried coconut conditioners. The conversation went something like:
Dina: Do you want to try something other than coconut?
Nick: <shrug /> Why?
Dina: Well, if the essential coconut oils are working well, you might want to see if others are good too.
Nick: Huh? I just buy it for the smell.
Dina: Oh (realizing she’s dealing with an obviously inferior hair-carist). Never mind.
Anyway, back to the boring narrative. My IM away message for the day was:
Shopping, Lazing Around, Tapas, Friends, Strip Club, Party, Zzz.
So, I guess I should start from the beginning. Grabbed my camera, and started walking. Meandered from our place to Bread & Circus to buy some produce for V’s Tapas party. Then walked up River, taking some hopefully good pictures. Stopped at Raz Café, had a coffee, and read a bit. Actually was a good hard Sci-Fi short story, A Walk In The Sun by Gregory Landis. For some reason, it brought tears to my eyes. Maybe it was my allergies.
After that, off to Pearl to buy some magnets and other knick-knacks to model complex math. Pearl is just way cool. I spent about 45 minutes there lazily browsing without meaning to.
Got to V’s, and prepped the food. Probably picked stuff that was too adventurous for young palettes. The salted duck eggs and tomatoes were fine. The 1000 year old eggs were prolly over the top. Stayed at the party for a relatively short time, about an hour. I realize that, despite the strides I’ve been making when it comes to being social, I still dislike large parties where I don’t know many people. Sorry for running V.
Had supper with Heather & Robert at the Middle East. Good company, grape leaves, and lamb tongue, what more could you ask for? Possibly a quieter venue and Dina, other than that, all was good.
After that, off to Southern Mass. to see a friend, RSC, perform / audition at a strip club. She’s off to university in the fall, and needs a bit of extra money for tuition. She won 2nd prize at amateur night. The first prize winner was obviously a pro from another club. I was unable to sack up and buy a lap dance from my friend, despite the fact that other friends seemed to have no problem with it. As I get older, I find that I worry more and more what people around me think. I’m Heisenbugging myself more and more often… that’s not a good thing at all… and it just bugs me. Anyway, the good news is that RSC got the job, and will be performing on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. That means we get to go again so Dina can see her dance, which means yet another chance for me to forego a lap dance.
So. There were some talented ladies at the club. On could move her butt cheeks quite independently. Another was an awesome pole dancer, though, according to a friend, sucked at lap dances. Many of them had interesting tattoos. One particular had glow-in-the-blacklight navel and clit piercings. I wasn’t aroused at all: strip clubs just don’t do it for me. The closest I came to being aroused was when I noticed one of the dancers doing a lap dance for a cute female.
Unfortunately, got back from the club around 02:00, so couldn’t actually make it back to V’s party… so… the IM away message was false advertising… I just skipped the party and went to bed.
Monday at work, got indications that I’m fucking up. Well, no… I know I’m fucking up to some extent, I’m getting indications that others are noticing. Sucky. I have to figure out what to do to fix it. So far my options seem to be:
- Grin and bear it, work harder, hopefully pulling a miracle out of my ass. If I do this, I’m going to need a sabbatical when this project is over.
- Admit I can’t handle it, and ask to be moved off the current cluster-fuck of a project.
- Change jobs, possibly with some time off in between.
- … of course, I can always do nothing, continue on at the current torpid pace, and see where that leads.
Monday evening, had a friend over for supper. On the menu was grilled steak rubbed in spices we have from Oleana. Very tasty. I’ll have to do it again sometime. The fungus course was mushrooms in burnt garlic. Sautéed spinach rounded out the veggie category. Dessert was Dina’s wonderful rhubarb pie, berries, and ice-cream. After that, couldn’t fall asleep, so did some work, and tooled on my website for a bit.
Tuesday I woke up late and worked a bit from home. Then decided to walk to squares. I should have brought my camera with me. Anyway, Fresca’s was closed. I learned that Arrow St. Crêpes was closed for good. No one tells me these things. So I bought a coffee (caffeine) some salami (protein) and fruit salad (fruits, tasty goodness) and ate on the steps. Chatted with JB and others who passed by. Dancing was good. JB powered me through arky swings. Something clicked into place, now I get what I’m supposed to do. Heather continued helping me with my swings, giving me both strategies on dealing with people shorter than I am and helping me more with my arky swing. So, given all that, I was able to dance arky without fucking up. Woohoo! After dancing, out to eat at Tiger Lily. Again, I regretted not bringing my camera. I should be able to get some good night shots of the pops and the big-ass church at night. We only shared one scorpion bowl, even though I wasn’t driving. We also played telephone which didn’t work… well… it did worked… which was the problem. The phrase didn’t mutate at all :-(
Wednesday, went to Audubon with Erin and Dan. Erin and I got there early and started with appetizers and drinks. When Dan got there, more appetizers, more drinks, and meal. All in all, quite tasty, and good company. Dan and Erin are busy these days, and I don’t see anywhere near enough of them. Dan went off to play softball so Erin and I walked off the liquor and talked. Twas good. Home, and unable to sleep ’til 4AM again. :-(
Thursday, V ropes me into supper at her house with the promise of only a small number of people and Filipino food. Mmm… it actually tasted like my mom’s cooking. Hung around, chatted, and then played Carcasonne. I actually won using a very short-sighted strategy: no farmers, small roads and cities. It only worked because there were very, very few cities actually completed, so the farmers lost out. Well, maybe it’s also because I got lucky and finished 3½ cloisters. Home and, what do you know, I was able to fall asleep by 2AM. :-|
Friday at work, I actually had something of a breakthrough. Was finally able to run our code against the upgraded 3rd party software / database. The bad news is that it made me realize that the middle API layer some consulting firm wrote for us is a POS. My favourite parts:
Attempt to connect to database. If connection failed Handle Error: Add the connection failed error to a recordset. Insert recordset into database.
Of course, the devil is in the details. The actual code corresponding to the above-mentioned crap actually returned a success code.
Attempt database insert. If database insert failed goto Cleanup: ... BeforeExit: Set some status flags. Continue to Cleanup: Cleanup: Release some resources. Add the error to the error recordset. Insert error recordset into database. If insert failed Goto BeforeExit: Exit Function
In short, the process gobbles up about 2GB of memory on my machine before crashing.
Friday evening, finally got around to cleaning the house a bit. Then ate, had a couple of Martinis, hung out with Jim, grabbed some sushi, had some more Martinis, and hung out some more with Jim.