Making the Plane Home

This week has been a whirlwind, almost literally. I almost feel like I don’t remember it very well but I’m on a plane now and so I have a little bit of uninterrupted time to write and I’ll try my best to remember.

Yup. Not really remembering what happened between the last blog post and Friday, but I’m sure it wasn’t worth noting. It’s possible I just cleaned my house and watched Friends.

Friday: It was my day off so I tried to salvage White Car. Yes, the same White Car that got totaled six months ago. As I may or may not have mentioned at the time, the car belonged to my dead father-in-law so the title was in his estate. To call the estate complicated is a flattering compliment and does not begin to cover the tangled mess that it is. Anyway, PartnerPenguin was FINALLY able to get me the title and I was ready to salvage the car.

Except they didn’t have anyone available until Tuesday.

I decided to get the fuck outta dodge anyway and go down to another city. I’m pulling off the freeway and I see a guy who looks like a friend of mine. I pass him and it is a friend of mine! We hung out for the rest of the day until I drove us back to TLoTH and went to derby practice.

Saturday: Baaaaasically didn’t do anything. It was glorious. Oh, and I also talked to PartnerPenguin about adult stuff like retirement. Who the hell am I?

Sunday: At derby in morning, I paid my dues to the league and got to pick my nickname. I am so happy. It is:

Orogenous Zone, or Ozone for short. And my numbers are 215. Watch out world!!!

After practice I prepared for a belated Friendsgiving. I dressed real fancy because 1) I was getting out of my house and 2) I showered and sometimes I don’t like wearing normal clothes after I shower. I found a garment that makes me feel extra protected and I wore that. It’s a pashmina scarf that has beautiful gold woven into a paisley pattern. Once, I was at a doctor’s office and I saw a woman wearing a beautiful scarf. I said “That is the most astonishingly beautiful scarf I have ever seen.” Much to my utter shock, she gave it to me. I mostly wear it when I feel like I need strength but it turns out it’s also brilliantly warm because it’s wool. So I’ve been wearing it a lot lately.

Friendsgiving (new word I learned this year!) was really fun. First of all there was turkey, twice in a month, which is always great. There was a pretty well balanced meal with vegetables and mac’n’cheese and of course stuffing and mashed potatoes. I knew about three quarters of the people there so it was nice to see them all together. It’s always weird when people you know from work are actually roommates of people you know from theatre. It’s also really interesting to see how different geographic locations discuss software development. “Coding” at TLoTH seems to mostly mean the languages Fortran, C, maybe some C++, Latex and other serious science languages. I am accustomed to listening to PartnerPenguin talk about Ruby on Rails, Java, and Javascript (it’s like the difference between Ham and Hamster). Not only does no one care about ‘user experience’ here, they don’t even write adequate documentation. I’m sure some people do, so my sample is biased but I think it speaks a lot to the way that business is conducted on the hill: the mechanics are solid and impressive, but there’s not enough ability to communicate to the public.

After the get together (all the dishes were done upon our departure) I hopped a ride with this dude I’m going to call The Tenor. The reason for this is…and I don’t know how this happens…but the dude has close to perfect pitch but has never sung in a choir or really had any formal music training. I resisted telling him that there are literally men who would kill to have that kind of talent. Anyway, I recently introduced him to Gravity Falls because Gravity Falls is THE BEST. He learned the theme song on the piano.

(Sidebar: DID I MENTION HOW DEVASTATED BUT ALSO SATISFIED I AM WITH THE FACT THAT GRAVITY FALLS IS ENDING NEXT EPISODE? If I haven’t, now you know. And if you haven’t watched it, watch it.)

So we hung out for a bit and watched season 2 of Gravity Falls and I had a whole bunch of plot epiphanies. I don’t typically re-watch shows or if I do there is a good amount of time between the viewings. But as this show comes to a close, it feels good to get all woogedy about plot items I missed. I was also hella nervous for Monday so we had some good real talk and I felt better about my life and started the week strong.

Monday: Monday was a big day for me. Remember when I went to that <conference> in the Key Route City? When I went, I promised to bring back to TLoTH some of the things I found out. In very un-typical lab fashion I decided to take the event in a totally different direction. I have very detailed notes from the event but I decided to print out copies of the notes for people to read and then just have a discussion. I titled the event and asked simply: “How can inclusivity become a mission-critical attribute?”

The turnout was great! There were 20ish people and almost all the cookies I brought were eaten. It was my first time moderating an event and I felt very nervous and apprehensive. I didn’t have a specific direction for the conversation to go which was both a good and a bad decision. It was good because things came up organically and people spoke honestly and eloquently. It was bad because there were fewer actionable items at the end of the conversation than I had hoped to achieve.

But the content was great. It took me a couple days to synthesize but I broke it down into 5 categories.

1. Current Success
2. Culture of Respect (focused mostly on bullying behaviors): current problems and possible solutions
3. Flexibility as it pertains to retention: current problems and possible solutions
4. Attitudes: current problems and possible solutions
5. Recruitment: current problems and possible solutions

I felt very hyper after the event and let all my wooglies out. I get stage fright after I perform. It’s like insta-overthinking in retrospect. The hyper/mania feeling didn’t go away for an hour and half so I took half a Xanax. Man, what a weird drug. It’s very unpleasant and it sedates me all right, but while on it I am not funny. Non-ideal, man, non-ideal.

Tuesday: So at work we’re doing this thing called “12 Days of Christmas” where each co-worker brings in a meal for everyone else for one day. Being the only Jew in the building, of course I made latkes. My co-workers also requested that I bring in a menorah and explain the holiday. Wednesday was my day to bring food so Tuesday night a co-worker (hmmmm. Let’s call him Triple-Point-Dude [TPD] because he looks at mineral phases under high pressure and temperature) came to my place and helped me prepare the food. He shred the potatoes while I cleaned house. Then he shred the onion instead of dicing it and I laughed at his tears.

My neighbor Dori and The Tenor showed up and we all hung out. TPD is going to room with The Tenor because the latter has a spare bedroom. Seriously, real estate? That’s a thing you can do here? Anyway, we gave up on latkes pretty quickly because I didn’t have beer and nobody is patient. I should note that despite making TONS of food, I didn’t actually eat dinner.

We confirmed that the pub next door (part of why I live downtown, the very little nightlife available is next door) was doing karaoke and we walked over. We had a blast. I sang “Come Together” by the Beatles and TPD said that I didn’t ruin that song. Which is impressive! It would be a very fundamental song to ruin. TPD also bought me a second shot of HoneyJack so I was pretty shmamammered pretty early on. And I didn’t have dinner. :<

I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION, I SALVAGED WHITE CAR ON TUESDAY. Here is a picture of its final ride:

I think that’s why I was a little irresponsible and irritable on Tuesday night: I did too much adulting on Tuesday day. Anyway, I got to a level of drunk I’ve really only achieved once before: I got truth drunk. I’m a pretty honest person most of the time, but when I get truth drunk, I just tell odd and sometimes scary truths about my life. Last time this happened I told my classmates about how my next door neighbor growing up murdered someone and then tried to cut up the body with a chainsaw.

I don’t think I said anything that bad this time, but I was very honest. Fortunately, there was a lot of stuff going on so I mostly thought my truths to myself. Dori tried to sing the man’s part for “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and it was hilarious. She also sang “Johnny B. Goode” which was awesome and everyone started doing the twist. There was a pretty excellent rendition of “Du Hast” and some pretty pitchy Adele covers. The Tenor sang “Beelzebub” with a couple of the metal dudes and…wow. I have never heard that song before but what the hell, Tenacious D?

I got home and ate some food but it took me forever to get sober. Meanwhile, I was making the rest of the latkes so sometimes they were barely crisp and sometimes they were charred. Good times. I think I got to bed close to 2 am.

Wednesday Of course, Wednesday morning I was the Queen of Hangovers. Shockingly, I was actually able to knock out a really good synthesis of my notes from Monday and I wasn’t interrupted too much because my supervisor was away. Amazing how work happens when you’re not interrupted.  With a couple minor revisions, I felt pretty confident to send it out. I’m proud that I felt good about it because there’s a serious possibility that the notes will circulate pretty high up in management. I’m still nervous about having my name on everything because it means I’m responsible. But it also means I’m responsible if good comes of it. Risk is hard.

The lunch went well. Everyone ate the latkes and said they liked them. Who knows. I had a menorah and explained about the holiday and why you light candles. Then I sang the blessings which was a little weird but cool. The rest of the conversation was about Star Wars and how no one at the table had been alive when the first one came out. Yay! Students outweighed managers!

Thursday: Ok, so I’m now a new level of exhausted and I have to get through one more day. I packed this morning and put on fresh sheets in case a friend stays there while I’m gone. I feel like a disaster when I have to clean and pack at the same time. I also planned to take two checked bags of summer stuff and books so I wouldn’t have to ship them later. Ehhhhhh. That didn’t happen.

I sent my notes to the participants of Monday’s event. I’ve gotten REALLY good responses so far. They mostly include “that was really well done” and “do you mind if I send this to my managers?” Yaaaay!

Anyway, even though I left nearly 2 hours for an hour and half drive PLUS an hour of wait time at the airport, I almost didn’t make it. There were two accidents on the major freeway so what usually takes 45 minutes took two hours. I usually park in the super econ lots but I arrived at 6:02 and the flight was due to leave at 6:25 so I found an “economy” lot at the airport itself. I ditched the two checked bags and just ran with my backpack. (Sidenote: I bought this backpack last night because someone was moving away and selling her really expensive backpacking backpack. Seriously, I got it for 40% original price.) Good thing for derby, I was more successful than usual at running and I got the very last ticket for the plane. And now, yay! I get to see PartnerPenguin when I land!

And tonight, for those who are into Star Wars