Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

It’s been a busy week.

Friday

Let’s start with Friday, about 8 days ago. Wasn’t that good a day at work. Learned we were going to pass on a candidate for my manager. Our inability to find someone good enough for the job is frustrating. The current uncertainty and ephemeralness of the situation isn’t good, and is part of my mounting despondency regarding my job. Talked to my boss-boss about things related to said project. She told me to keep at my current project despite my unhappiness. I’d feel better for it than if I quit part way through.

After that, off to Polcari’s with Dina for dinner with Robert & Heather. Ate outside which was nice. Food wasn’t that good. I tried to stay quieter than normal ’cause I didn’t feel like ranting about work.

The other three went to the NPL‘s convention at the Cambridge Marriot. I felt anti-social so went home to putter around. Apparently the other three didn’t like the schedule of activities for the night. They came home to chat.

Unfortunately, Heather, Dina, and I felt unwell. We blamed it on the food. We started a game of Puerto Rico, but stopped after one turn. I would have modified my strategy had I know that :-)

Once the three of us felt better, the conversation picked up, and before we knew it, it was…

Saturday

We continued chatting until about 5 when Andy came over to crash. But of course, instead of crashing, we chatted until about 7 at which point we webbed that Johnny’s opened for breakfast. We were wrong, they opened at 8. However, they let us in anyway provided we avoid some menu items (the ones containing potatoes I think). Good breakfast.

During the late night chat, it came out that my delivery for sarchasm is just too dry and deadpan for many, if not most, people. We googled the sign for sarcastic. I try to do it occasionally, but it’s much more fun just to be me without the markup.

Home for a nap while Dina went to visit a friend somewhere in Southern MA. Then off to Bay Path for another A2 dance. Robert & Heather grilled me in the car on my A2 calls. I have some surprising holes. Notably Motivate and Remakes are difficult for me. Otherwise the grilling was lotsa fun. Being grilled by people who really know their stuff tickled my brain. Despite being organized last minute, it was well attended by Tech Squares folk. Dina’s dancing was surprisingly good considering she’d only had two hours of sleep. I got to dance the C1 star tip. It went decently well. I could spot most of the holes, and mostly knew where I should be because Clark, a really strong dancer, was my opposite. It helped that I knew the concepts. I even knew some of the calls.

After that, dinner at Harry’s and off to sleep.

Sunday

Did a bit of yard work in preparation for my birthday party. Keep forgetting how hard work it is. Good news is that our back yard is presentable again for the first time in a couple of years. Now let’s just hope it doesn’t rain. Did a bit of house hunting in the burbs. This is going to be different from Cambridge. First of all, the distances are longer. Second, there doesn’t seem to be a consolidated listing of open houses like in Cambridge.

Monday

Gaming night was well attended. A couple of people came for the first time. Some people who hadn’t been in a while showed. Overall, a good night, though some people got on other people’s nerves. I’m learning not to fret that too much, letting them work it out amongst themselves. Played St.-Petersburg twice. I like the game. Need to add it to our to-buy list. The game of celebrities started off with 11 people, and ended up as 2 vs. 2 in the last round. Was fun anyway.

Tuesday

Squares. Lotsa fun people to dance with. I’m getting better, which makes it even more fun. I just have to make sure that my goofing off doesn’t piss other dancers off. Off to Uno’s after that. Large crowd. All good.

Wednesday

A2 review. Went decently well. The C4 group came by for an impromptu banner raid.

After that, we went to dinner at Red Bones with Erin, her friend Ogden, and Dan. Hadn’t seen Erin or Dan in ages. Erin’s now a certified swing dance dork, and Dan’s both social butterflying and working out of state. We went easy on Ogden.

Thursday

Woke up early to let Lauren in. She wanted to crash at our place between the red-eye from CA and check-in time at her hotel.

Contras at the VFW. Been talking to a bunch of people about this in IM and in email.

Why had I decided that contras wasn’t for me?

So, there are lotsa different things that amalgamate into one big warning sign for Nick. I get dizzy easily. I’m not that good at swinging. I’m out of shape. The sketchy guy stories were off-putting. Also (i.e., mainly), it’s a big crowd of unknown people. I don’t like crowds. I don’t really like people much either. I’m not really a social person, I just sometimes play one in public. Don’t really need to get sucked into another time-sink either…

Why did I change my mind for tonight?

So, the main answer is there’s a decent size posse of people I know and like going, and it’s hard to say no to V. I’m also managing to book some tips in advance, which gets me over the scared of talking to people / new people bit.

On the technical issues, I’m working on the getting dizzy thing. Heather and Laura had been helping me fix my swing at Bay Path. I’m also going to be sitting out a fair number of the dances and leave early.

What I wanted to accomplish.

• Work on my swing.
• Try contras outside LSF.
• Hang out / dance with my friends.

Thursday contras synopsis.

I had fun, I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. Contras is just not generally for me. It’s something I’ll do at LSF and maybe one other time a year if a large group of people I know are going to a goodapparently the band wasn’t that good dance. Specific notes:

• The eye contact is something I need to become comfortable with. I can do it lightly at Tech because I ‘know’ the people and the swings are short. At contras, I’m uncomfortable making prolonged eye contact across multiple swings with Courtney, Lisa, Heather, etc. The women looking at me weird me out.
• I’m now happier with my swing with people who swing well. Thankfully, that was most of the people there. I still need to learn when to exit the swing / how to exit it better. I also need to learn how to deal with the people who can’t swing well. Both Heather & Lisa owe me lessons on that one. I also plan on asking Clark & Stephen.
• I still get dizzy. Even when looking at my partnerthough, not necessarily making eye contact.
• I have problems asking people to dance at Tech where I know people and there is a lot of time. I have much more problems at contras where I don’t know people and the time between dances is short.
• I don’t like sweaty people.
• I’m messing up the simple figure even though I’m doing the same thing over and over again.
• It’s too cramped.
• I have problems with the rhythm. Essentially, I have none. Mind you, I was told that this was due to the band.
• There are a bunch more little issues that I’m forgetting.
• The main issue is, it doesn’t tickle my brain like squares does. I’d rather stay home and study C1 than dance contras.

Work Stuff

While at contras, a coworker mentioned that management had noticed that I’m not happy at work, and, of course, that this was affecting my work. Of course, that can be taken two ways. They want to fix it by making me happy, or they want to fix it by getting rid of me.

Nick: I guess I’m in the doghouse.

Co-worker: No. They want to know what to do to make you happy again.

Nick: … … … you know… I have no idea.

The fact that I have no idea what would make me happy is not a good sign.

Friday

My alarm goes off. I groan and am peeved at myself for not turning off the alarm for a Saturday morning. Then I remember that my alarm is my Palm Pilot, and that it never goes off on a Saturday morning. Then I remember it’s Friday. If that doesn’t portend a bad day, I don’t know what does.

Fortunately, portents aren’t always right.

Dina and I said bye, as she’s off to NYC for the weekend to visit her brother.

Actually had a decent day at work. Made progress on the upgrade I’m working on. Still think it’s going to be a clusterfuck, but I took some concrete steps in documenting acceptance criteria for the clusterfuck, brainstorming rollback plans, and running test data through the upgraded and un-upgraded systems in dev.

During the day, received an amusingly surreal email from a friend. She’s been angsting over IM about various things over the past few days. Yesterday night, while sitting on a bench in Davis Square with a friend, she’s accosted by a 50-ish year old, mildly inebriated woman. Who goes on to give her the 3rd degree about the problems she’s been angsting about to me. The whole thing “was definitely a surreal, Fellini-is-now-in-charge-of-karma moment”, in her own words. I’ll leave out the description of what the tipsy woman said, but to close her email, my friend notes:

Part of me is still <preen />ing over my ability to control the cosmos by manifesting as Puck.

After work, off to CBC for supper with Lauren, Matt, Sarah, Moishe, and a surprise drop in from Dan. Also saw our friend Kathy there. Supper was good. Two uber-towers of beer. Good company. Was good to see Lauren again.

We broke early, as we were all tired. I went to get some ice-cream, and then off to bed.

Saturday

Tech Squares pool dance. Lots of fun. Lots of hard work. Thankfully, Rachel lent me some goggles, so one of my big worries, being able to see, was alleviated. I need to buy prescription goggles.

Decided to suck it up and not wear a t-shirt in the pool. I’m becoming more and more body conscious lately. Not a good thing. I also decided to try the tip in the deep end of the pool. Courtney helped prep me by teaching me some swimming basics. I really need to take a swim class. The one I took when I was a kid obviously left me ill prepared. Anyway. I only panicked mildly, and thankfully not enough to make a menace of myself. I gave up ½ way through the tip. It was just too much physical effort.

After that, off to Indian for supper. I hadn’t eaten since I woke up late. Despite being famished, I didn’t eat much. Weird.

Learned that WorldCon is in Boston over Labour Day weekend. Terry Pratchett is the guest of honour. This is the second WorldCon near me that I’m going to miss, as my sister’s getting married that weekend. The first one I missed was in Glasgow in 1995, while I was living in London.

So, I’ve noticed when describing things that I don’t always say whether Dina was with me or not. Yet when re-reading things that happened three years ago, I can still remember whether or not she was there.

It’s hard to describe the way our lives are intertwined. I guess it’s a good thing :-)

There are quite few Nick & Dina interaction blog entries since those things tend to be, well, private.

I have a bunch of recurring dreams that I remember.

• One that I used to have a lot as a kid was being on an infinite tightrope in the middle of the void. I’d feel a heavy weight pressing down on me. For some reason, the closest I’ve ever come to describing the weight is white, heavy, cold, kinda like a porcelain toilet. Usually had this one when my parents would fight. I remember having it a few months ago, but don’t remember what was stressing me out. Definitely a stressed dream. Probably symbolic of me trying to figure out how to deal with my parents.
• A frequent theme of a lot of my dreams is a first person shooter type experience. Either racing passed obstacles, trying to eliminate the other team, or accomplish some sort of position, player, or resource based goal. Though there is some urgency and adrenaline, even the ones where weapons are involved are not frightening. I never get caught, shot, or injured in these dreams. I’m not sure what this dream means.
• A dream I’ve had for a while is that I’m driving in a car. The brakes work, but not completely. I can slow the car down, but cannot stop it. I never get into an accident, in fact, there aren’t even any near collisions. I do roll through stop signs and stop lights. There is either no one at the intersection, or people are stopped and let me pass. I tend to get this dream after I’ve been an ass in public. Usually if I have this dream an apology is in order the next day. At the very least I should make sure I haven’t pissed anyone off. As far as I can tell, I’m trying to tell me that I can’t stop myself even when I try. No sense of urgency, just frustration.
• In the converse dream, I’m flying. Not Superman style, but standing up. I’m barely off the ground. Maybe a metre maximum clearance. I can clear hedges, fences, cars, and other obstacles, but it feels more like jumping off the air rather than flying higher. Like most of my other dreams, this one is pretty much devoid of people. I get this one when I feel that I’m not accomplishing what I’ve set out to accomplish, when I’m not being all I can be.
• The last one is relatively new, and it’s changed of late. I’m not quite sure what it means. I’m in some country. It may be the USA, maybe Canada, somewhere that uses Euros, or somewhere entirely different. I reach into my wallet to pay for something at a store or restaurant. I pull out a bill with an utterly odd denomination (16, 17, 23, 27, 31, 32, 33, 43, etc.) and start to pay. I then realize that these bills are not real money, despite the fact that they pass all the anti-counterfeiting tests, they have a watermark, holograms, metallic strip, micro printing, colour changing ink, etc. I’m peeved that I’ve somehow been conned out of some money. I’m peeved that I can’t remember where or when I got the money. I proceed to pay with normal, real, 20′s. I’m not sure what this dream means. Last time I had this dream, it changed. Though I noticed that the bills (a 16 and a 17 in this case) were odd, I decided to pay with them anyway. The merchant accepted the bills, gave me normal change, and that was that. Not sure what the change means either, though part of me feels that it means that I’ve been able to pawn off bullshit on others, and that I shouldn’t worry so much about it.

Alternate interpretations solicited.

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.