The last time I saw my father was at my graduation ceremonies from Carnegie Mellon in May of 2003. Six weeks later he died of cardiac arrest at his home. In August I moved from Pittsburgh to my new job in the San Francisco Bay area.

Last July, a year after he died, I opened up my 'life savings' jar that I hadn't looked inside since living in Pittsburgh.

click to enlarge

Inside, written on a one dollar bill, was his final message to me: "If you keep this $ you'll have $ for a lifetime. -- If you spend it you are fucked."

I miss you dad. Happy Father's Day.

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Rachel and I went furniture shopping last weekend. We intended to drive in to the city to check out a sofa Rachel loved and look at a few other things and go back home to do some work. In reality we spent 4 hours looking at fabrics, ordering five chairs for the game room, and agonizing over living room options. It's a good thing, though. We're really coming a long way in taking a fantastic skeleton of a house and augmenting it with our own style.

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Had my woot canow (err, root canal) this morning and it went really well. Granted the novocain hasn't worn off yet, but other than taking about twice as long the experience wasn't significantly different than getting a filling.

I was lucky though. I didn't have any sort of infection or pain prior to the procedure. Most people get root canals because their tooth is causing them agony. I got mine because a regular (though much delayed) checkup found the tooth on the edge of infection.

I'll let you know tomorrow how the experience turned out, along with an update on Rachel who, totally outdoing me in the realm of oral surgery, is getting all four of her wisdom teeth extracted tomorrow.

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Rachel and I biked 10 miles before work today, and I feel so good. It's been too long since we've kept with this routine. I'm so glad Spring's here.

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Rachel and I had a great time this weekend playing house. After finishing up some coding for her parents and wishing her mom a happy birthday (Hi Ellen!), we took our soon-to-expire 20% off coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond and put it to good use. We bought a new duvet cover for the bed, a bunch of new towels and an amazing bathmat for the bath, and for the beyond we finally bit the bullet and got our KitchenAid Artisan mixer:

On Sunday we quickly put the new mixer to good use making tollhouse cookies. While they were baking we used the assets purchased from Fry's (which we closed out on Saturday after leaving BB&B) and wired up speakers in the kitchen, living room, and game room.

A little later Cy and Athena came over to not-watch the big game and we played video games and socialized for the remainder of the day.

Definitely a good weekend, though the fastest one in recent months, probably because we were both catching up on sleep. At any rate, I love having the new mixer in our house. I grew up licking the stirrer of mom's KitchenAid (which was actually handed down to her from my grandma Frieda) and I think ever since I left home I've had this unacted-upon desire to have one of these beasties of my own. The kitchen somehow feels a lot more complete now.

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Escrow

Yes, sorry things have been so quiet on the home front. There's been a lot going on, not the lease of which has been looking for, finding, negotiation, and entering contract for a new home, and what a fabulous home it is. Sorry for the dearth of details for the moment, but I'm still crammed with work and the paperwork that goes along with buying a house.

Thanks to Rachel's gentle nudging, I've also been putting time into Fury5 (that's right, I'm skipping Fury4 completely for something totally different) which will much better suit the way I blog and the way you all read. I'll be able to share the first live bits of that later this week.

That's all for now. Hi to Keith if he's reading. I hope you and your family had a great drive up to Oregon!

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I ended up working in the evenings and late into the night (or morning) Friday through Sunday (yeah, I'm a bit of a workfreak this weekend). Rachel's still in Florida so I'm using the time to play catch-up.

Crystal, Karen and I say Before Sunset tonight in Palo Alto, and yesterday I did a little open-house hopping, ending up at a fabulous house in Sunnyvale. The design is remarkable, mixing indoor and outdoor spaces more than anyplace I've seen outside of Hawaii. It's out of my price range, which is a pity, but when another house I was ogling dropped by $170,000 yesterday, I can start hoping...

The current owner, who put a quarter-million dollars in improvements into the house, probably won't see more than $100K of that back with the home sale, but that's not a disaster, since he's planning on taking the proceeds, buying four acres in Oregon, and building his dream home with cash to spare.

Anyhow, I'm a bit discouraged by this site at the moment. I swear I don't know how I blogged in the dark ages before I put in comments. This place feels lonely, partly because the barrier for one of you to email me about a post is far higher than that of just commenting on the blog, and even when you do, you're just talking to me, which is boring compared to having an open discussion on the site.

Hopefully I'll be putting some time into Fury++ (Err, Fury 5?) tomorrow after work. I'd like to see some changes around here.

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So yesterday morning my realtor calls me up, says 'the gods of real estate must be with you' because the buyer for the house I want backed out, a day after the seller's agent said there was virtually no chance of that.

Excited, I head to her office, after stopping at the selling agent's office to pick up about 120 pages of disclosures, and we go through them. There are a few questions which we need to contact the city planning office about, and we make plans to meet up again in the morning to draft the offer.

9:30am and I'm at her office, going through forms, deposit checks, disclosures and contingencies, when her cellphone rings. I knew it the moment I saw the lights flashing on her phone, and it was confirmed by the overly-loud voice emanating from the headset, past her ear and into my own: They sold the house hours before I was going to place a bid.

Again.

Since we were already well in to the offer form, we decided to finish it and put it to them, in case Accepted Offer #2 fell through.

At this point I don't care one way or another. The positives and negatives are about equal. I know, though, that this is just the moment speaking through my mouth attached to my head which is already frustrated by an office move last night into a space we still need to reconfigure to make it conducive to creative work. A whole slew of friends are going to see Circus Contraption tonight but not I, because I was too busy to think that I might be able to take a breath of my own on Friday, and in truth it's the right choice, because I'm still running big deficits on both my work and resting tallies.

I'm also running a big deficit on my fun quotient, but I guess I can just convince myself that this is all a game and try to improve two tallies at once.

As I type this post standing in front of my cube-to-be, powerbook sitting on a packing box on a desk that may or may not be mine, I can't recall the last time my life was in such flux.

Oh wait, yes I can. It was only a year ago.

Okay, so maybe life isn't so bad right now.

Come back safe and soon, Rachel.

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So more life tidbits from yesterday and today, in no particular order:

• Yesterday was my one-year anniversary of starting at Google
• The house I wanted to bid on, have wanted to bid on for over a month but didn't because I was getting loan approval stuff together, the house which I was going to bid on yesterday afternoon, after incredibly staying on the market for 5 weeks, taunting me, sold yesterday morning for the asking price.
• My group is moving desks to another area which seems smaller than where we are now and which has a droning air-conditioner whine over our heads 24/7. I have to pack up my cube by 5 today.
• I have a splitting headache right now preventing me from getting work done that I need to do, which is only making me more stressed.

Ugh. I'm just hoping the Excedrin kicks in soon.

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Okay, so things have slowed down here far more than my liking which, of course, means my actual real life is completely crazy. Funny how it takes some level of boredom, or at least inaction, for me to be able to compose treasties on laundry and the political ramifications of dust bunnies.

Anyhow, talking points:

I'm still working hard on the homebuying front. There's a place that I'm very interested in, and I'm likely putting a bid in tomorrow. I'll probably have a lot more to say on that once things actually progress further. In the process of looking at houses, one potential agent who had my email address read my weblog, took a picture of me from it and printed it on the packet of materials he gave it to me. High marks for personalization, but high marks also for creepy. But then what do I expect for exposing my life to the Internet?

The Jeopardy 'Brain Bus' is coming to San Francisco, I submitted an application, and I have an appointment for tryouts on September 10th. For those who don't know, Jeopardy has always been one of the big things on my 'to-do' list. When I was in junior high and high school, my mom and I would watch Jeopardy nearly every night. It turns out that my brain collects and sorts data in a way that matches really well with the kind of retrieval needed in Jeopardy. Yet for that desire, the only shows I ever tried out for were Card Sharks Teen Tournament (rejected!) and The Weakest Link. Now that it's time to try out for the one true quiz show I need to study like mad. I've got to go back to watching every night, scouring the jeopardy questions book Rachel surprised me with last week, figure out my weakest areas and brush up on trivia, trivia, trivia. The chances of making it past the screening aren't fantastic, but then I won't know until I try. With any luck, Ken Jennings will be vanquished by the time I'd get to be a contestant. I'd rather not be redshirt #114.

Work is busy too, but then work is often busy.

Rachel's away in Florida this week visiting a friend who was in a car acident a few weeks ago, so this is the first time I've been living on my own for nearly a year. It's the transitions that always seem harder. I lived on my own for about 8 years until last year, and it was hard for the first month or two, then I relaly got to like it. Living with someone else was hard for a while, but that goes away, too. Now the house feels too quiet and empty, but on the upside I have Nym for company this week, and though I can tell she misses her mom, she's happy enough to have me playing with her, curling up on the sofa, or coming her hair.

Okay, far too much to do today, so enough with the life update. Hopefully I'll put some of my quiet time to good use in finishing the rearchitecting of the site. After that I can reactivate comments. I miss you guys, too. It's a little too quiet around here.

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Hey folks, in the last several weeks I've been too busy/preoccupied/stressed to blog. Rachel, while no less stressed (in fact, quite probably moreso than I), has been doing a great job of keeping people up to date on her and our lives. A few days ago a very close friend of hers, Rex, was in a car accident, and Rachel's latest post gives a nice background to many of the recent events in both our lives.

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Well, it looks like I'll be moving offices for the third time in as many months, but this one's only temporary, and I'll keep my old office.

I've been a lot busier of late, and I've got to find a way to bring meaningful blogging (as opposed to meme-linking) back into my daily process. I've got to find a time and a place to blog, and then put it into my schedule.

Tonight's Poker night at Google (which, considering Poker night at TiVo, either means I'm becoming an addict or a shark (or both)). After Poker is Rachel's and my last waltz class with Richard Powers.

Tomorrow is Friday Night Waltz, then a blessed break where Rachel and I can play catchup on our lives after too many full weekends.

Rachel's been doing such a bang-up job on her own personal site that I'm really inspired to enact more of my own web visions, but then there's this whole job thing that cuts into my play time.

Wanh, wanh. Pity me. I'm too successful for my own good.

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So hey, it's already Sunday night (err, early Monday morning, that is), and that means it's time for Weekend Update!

This weekend started off early with a trip to see Alegria. A day after getting the (still unnamed) Prius, I was happy to trek up to downtown San Francisco for the show. The navigation system was fun to play with. It's actually a really elegant system. My masters project at CMU was designing next-generation car navigation and I was happy, yet sad, to see that many of our innovations were already in the works and available in this system. Nevertheless there are several serious usability flaws in the interface, but that's the meat of another post. I'm planning on writing a Prius sitelet, going in to detail on each of its systems from a user perspective.

Alegria was fantastic. It was Rachel's second time seeing Cirque du Soleil, and my second time seeing Alegria (I saw it 9 years ago when it first came to San Francisco). We sat in literally the first row (well, except for one person sitting in front of Rachel) and were close enough to touch the stage. The acts were amazing, all the more for being able to make and maintain eye contact with those characters who come close to the audience, and actually being under the flying trapeze. Cirque was, and always will be, magic to me.

Rachel's currently stage-managing SteinBeck's production of Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris. She got one of the producers to cover for her on Thursday so she could see the circus (we had tickets before she ever accepted the job and she told them it was a condition to accepting the gig). In compensation, I agreed to handle the box office for Friday's show. Ali and Mark came down to see the show and act as impromptu ushers. I sat back in the booth with Rachel as she ran the show, and had a great time watching a really funny play. I even unexpectedly got to see one of my old Berkeley drama teachers, John Fisher. After the performance was over and we had cleaned up and locked down the theater, the four of us went to the diner across the street and had a nice wind-down before I drove Ali and Mark back to their car at Orinda Bart and Rachel and I went to Emily's to visit with Kisa while Emily's out of town. We finally left Em's at about 2am (gotta take kitty time where you can!) and got to sleep well after 3am.

Saturday I made a serious faux pas. Rachel and I had been planning out the things we needed to accomplish in order to pull off Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner at our place on Monday night. Karen and I were comped to see the play Saturday night and Rachel and I realized that Saturday would be the only time we'd be able to go to Dickens Faire this year, albeit for only 3 or 4 hours. Working on our morning errands, I got a call from Karen to coordinate our plans for the day and it was suddenly clear to me that I'd seriously screwed up and doublebooked. In my head I thought Karen and I were seeing the play together, but I realized that when I didn't get to go to Dickens with her 1-1 last weekend, I hoped we could spend a whole day this weekend hanging out with her and that Saturday was that day. Serious oops. Damnit.

On the bright side, our doing chores late into the morning meant we were home when Mom and the girls from her chorus called to sing us a happy holidays. That was really special, and I wish I'd spent a little less time trying to prosletyse others into getting singing holiday greetings and spent a little more time placing orders for my friends. As it was the ladies were there singing later than they had in years, and I'm glad I didn't make them stay any later. Thanks, Mom!

Dickens Fair was a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of friends I almost never get to see otherwise, and I got to dance with a fair number of them. I had a weird realization, talking with Rachel, about how it would be so hard for me to work Dickens because it's during 'the busy season' and I suddenly realized that there really is a social season, almost as well defined as football season, and following almost the same calendar. I just know that if I were a girl I wouldn't wear white shoes after Labor Day because they'd get scuffed up with all the dancing that goes on almost every weekend after September.

Met Karen for the show (Rachel and I were running late because of the inexplicable 6:15pm Saturday gridlock before 7th street on 101). We walked around and talked for a while, then went in to see the show. The audience was more 'on' than they were for the Friday show, probably because it wasn't raining on Saturday and it was a packed house to boot. I liked the show even more the second time and Karen thought it was a riot. Ammy and Rick are seeing the show on Thursday and I have to decide today or tomorrow whether I can drive up there and see the show for a third time.

We drove Karen to her car at San Leandro bart after the show and again went down to spend some kitty-time with Kisa. Got back around midnight or so, did some cleaning and relaxing, and went to sleep, with a 7:15am alarm set.

Sunday Rachel and I started off with a visit to Watercourse Way for a 30-minute soak (in Two Stones if you're curious) followed by a pair of hour massages that left us both relaxed and my hair looking like a honky version of Don King.

Sunday morning shopping on University Avenue including a full tour through Restoration Hardware, the Apple Store, Gyros at a good greek place, and then off to IKEA, Pier 1, another Pier 1, and Target. The it was back home for cleaning and relaxing for a few minutes before Rachel had to take off to prep for Sunday's performance and I stayed here sorting papers and relaxing a bit.

Now it's nearly 2am, and I'm off to sleep so I can work hard tomorrow, take off a little earlier than usual (meetings permitting) and help Rachel with the Turkey and whatever else needs helping with.

On deck for this week are the special Monday dinner, Tuesday TiVo Poker Night, Wednesday Return of the King (actually, in the early afternoon, but then probably back to work for most of the evening). Thursday is when Ammy and Rick are seeing the play, and I know I have Friday plans as well. Saturday is Gaskell's Christmas Ball, and Sunday I'm heading to Carmel for family Christmas.

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Today I went to the cardiologist. After several months of occasional premature beats, I decided it was time to get checked out. Rachel was a godsend and did the legwork of finding a good cardiologist and so it was off to Stanford Medical Center I went this morning.

Driving, parking, finding the office, filling out forms, getting weighed and measured and it was off to the examination room I went. A thorough examination later and now I'm wired to seven electrodes plugged in to a meter smaller than a VHS tape. I'm wearing the box in a shoulder-bag. My cardio-manpurse.

Anyhow, now the machine's watching my every beat and I'm sitting here at my desk, waiting for my heart to flip-flop. It's like the opposite of hiccups: The more attention I pay to it, the less it wants to happen.

Anyhow, now I'm wired (and partially shorn, but maybe I'll talk about that later), and still getting over the cold that kept me from work yesterday. Ugh. Too much stimulus.

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It's 12:02am and I'm downstairs in my townhouse, with my powerbook in my lap, thinking about a lot of things. To share...

Rachel and I went to dance class today and it was a lot of fun. It's a pleasure to be in any dance class Richard teaches, even (especially?) if I already know the dance. It's the only time I can really focus on technique and cure myself of bad habits on the dance floor.

We're working on costumes for the Halloween Gaskell's Masquerade Ball. We're not doing anything fantastically involved, but it should be cool if we can pull it off.

My mom's coming in to town this weekend. It's the first time in a long time that mom's come up just to see me, since I usually come down to LA more often. I'm looking forward to showing her my home. I'm so house-proud. I'm so proud that this is probably the first time I've ever actually used that term.

My dad's business is selling today. It stirs up a lot of emotion. The house is in escrow, and will close in a few weeks. Piece by piece it's coming undone. I know this feeling isn't fair, since we have the important things, the memories, the pictures, the writings, and a whole lot of stuff, but the exchange of things for cash has a dehumanizing effect even in the best of times. I'll get over it, but right now I'm still a little under it.

A handful of people at Google read my weblog, and I know a few did when I was being considered for employment, but I don't know if my coworkers know about my dad's death. It's not something that's come up in conversation, but one of my coworkers is going on vacation for two weeks with her husband and new baby to visit both sets of relatives back east. We were talking about families, and I just wanted to tell her to cherish these times, these visits, because you never know what might happen before you see them next. Playing it in my head, it all sounded so morbid. I didn't say anything.

Susie and I are both looking at getting Priuses ('Priae'?). I have a deposit down on one up here, but there's a 60-90-day wait list. They officially arrive in dealerships today, so I might be able to actually see one this weekend. I'm still looking at other options, like the Outback. I finally got another interim license until the DMV gets me my real one (another story) so I can test-drive.

Tomorrow's Friday Night Waltz. Rachel and I both need new dance shoes. I'd rather not break mine in at Gaskell's, as three hours of dancing in new shoes would kill my feet. I don't know how we'd find time to get shoes for tomorrow night.

I'm thrilled that iTunes for Windows has come out. I'm really interested in hearing the download stats for the Apple Music Store in the coming weeks and months. This is a great move for Apple, though I was surprised to read that Apple expects to do little more than break even on the music store. Instead, the whole thing is a vehicle to sell more iPods, where the real money is.

Work is fantastic, and that's enough said about that for right now.

I can't find my beard trimmer, so my goatee gets longer and longer, held in check only by a small pair of scissors in my bathroom.

The house is almost entirely unpacked, and looking good. I hosted a brunch last weekend and it felt so good to entertain. Bagels, lox, and friends. The perfect Sunday morning.

I have this weird irregular heartbeat thing about once a day. I need to get it looked at, as it's been going on for months. They'll hook me up with a portable EKG for a day or two, where I'll press a button and take notes whenever I feel anything odd. I can't really describe it other than to say my heart feels like it wants to yawn but it can't. I'm looking for a good doctor and I'll make an appointment next week.

Wednesday night Rachel and I went to a corporate night event at SF MOMA. We got to see the Chagall exhibit and a few other collections. Chagall's never blown my socks off, but they had a fascinating display of 19th century photography, a James Turell installation (if you've never seen any James Turell, find out where you can see some and do it. That stuff blows my socks off.), a gallery of the lifestyle of asian prostitutes, as well as a standing collection of mid-20th-century art including Magritte, Jasper Johns, Rothko, and Lichtenstein.

The hors devours were very yummy, but the high point of the evening was the band. They were playing good seductive lounge-y music and had a fantastic female vocalist. "Whatever Lola Wants" and the like. Bass, Guitar, Drums, lead vocals, and an exquisite Theramin player.

Theramins are so cool. I've heard them before, but usually in the context of B-movies. I'd never seen one being played, let alone so expertly played. The man could make the Theramin sound like a pedal-steel guitar, a jaw harp, or a flock of birds. Within I was playing my own 'air theramin' and I know I just have to give one a try. Turns out that at about $350, they're not as expensive as I'd thought. Even cooler, I discovered a MIDI-compatable Theramin player, which seems almost impossible, because everything about the Theramin is analog, and totally nonconducive to traditional composition.

I've been thinking more about ambient displays, looking at possibly hardware for the house, and had the realization that many ambient displays exist as the causal interface between the trajector and the landmark, that is to say, the display doesn't just convey information, its very implementation is in some way tightly related to the resulting reaction triggered by the display. When you think about it this way, any step in a causal chain could be seen as a display, and the 'interesting' displays are those that are either naturally ubiquitous, or otherwise ignorable or conditional. I don't expect this to make sense yet, but hopefully it will soon.

Fury's been getting a lot of google hits today because google thinks a post I wrote two years ago explains why The West Wing wasn't shown as expected Wednesday night. The real answer is that NBC shelved the episode for two weeks so it wouldn't compete with the Baseball playoffs or world series. West Wing will be back on October 29th.

That's it for now. I still need to get down to coding the site, and I have half a mind to do a drastic redesign, beyond the Fury 4.0 designs I was passing around a few months ago. At the very least, there will be a complete rewrite under the hood.

That ought to be some good fodder for comments. I'll talk to y'all tomorrow!

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Okay, a whole lot of small things:

• Ammy's put a bid on a house last night. They have until 8pm today to accept or decline. It's a big underbid, so who knows, but she's really excited.
• I picked up a couple of original TiVos for $50 apiece (employee discount on outdated inventory), and I'm looking to use them for some cool projects, but I'm not sure what yet. One I want to work on is a TiVo for radio. Further details will follow.
• Rachel and her mom arrived in town on Wednesday after a 3500 mile road trip from Rochester. Rachel's staying with me until she finds work and an apartment, probably around the end of the year-ish. Ellie's going back home on Tuesday, and she and Rachel will be doing sightseeing before then.
• I'm new car shopping. I've had the new car bug since June, when I realized that Mutant is over six years old. Several years ago I promised myself that I wouldn't get a new car until I had a place to put it, since her life on the streets has caused Mutant to age faster than I'd like. Now my townhouse has a real bona-fide garage with a garage door opener and everything, so I guess it's time! I've been researching cars for the past three months, originally focusing on an Accord or Passat, then gravitating towards something more utilitarian like a Honda CR-V, but then refocused on a Subaru Forrester and, after looking at them, changed to the Subaru Outback. I've been keeping tabs on the new Prius though, and the more I see, the better it sounds. I'll have to adjust to the equivalent of a 104hp engine, but other than that the Prius looks really good. Most of my hybrid concerns have been addressed in this model, and I'll be very keen to take a look at them when they arrive in showrooms on October 17th. 60mph City, 51mpg Highway is nothing to sneeze at, and the optional Bluetooth integration with my new cellphone (I got the Ericsson T616 by the way, but more on that later) is also pretty sweet.
• Karen's car got broken into a few days ago. They took her stereo and (nonsensically) the controls for her air conditioning. Basically the whole center panel.
• I need a name for my place. I was thinking about 'Rendezvous' because I have a fully equipped guest bedroom and wanted to play up the 'I know it's a long drive from the East Bay, but come on down 'cause there's crash space' angle, infused with a little bit of the Three's Company theme song. Now I'm over it, but I'm still looking for a good name that's not based on a trendy fantasy or sci-fi book or movie.
• I really, really love my job.
• Kisa's still at Emily's place. I thought it made sense that, since Emily's living by herself while Chris is down in Los Angeles until who-knows-when, we shouldn't switch Kisa to my place until I was living alone. It didn't seem fair to take Kisa when I already have a roommate keeping me company.
• Rachel's cat Nym is being fostered by Ammy and Rick, who live about a mile away from me. If you're wondering about the seeming contradiction, it's that Kisa was carefully chosen as one of the few breeds of cat I'm not allergic to. Nym, unfortunately, is not, so while Rachel's staying with me, Nym would drive me (literally, though not figuratively) to tears after a day or so. Nym's having some adjustment issues at Ammy's, mostly because she doesn't yet know what a great cat-lover Ammy is, and how happy Amy is to have Nym around after Tigger passed away less than a year ago.
• I'm reading Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom." It's a very interesting story, and not what i expected. Cory's probably known just as much or more for editing the fabulous site BoingBoing!
• Listening to Aphex Twin alone at work in the morning creates a really interesting mood.
• Last week I added Google AdSense ads to Fury. They make me about $1.50 a day, or nearly enough to pay for Fury's hosting! If you're thinking, 'Where are the ads? I don't see them!' it's because I love you, the regular reader.
• Gah. I really should link up a lot of things in this post, but if I'm too lazy to have seperated this post into the five it warrants, then I'm too lazy to go look up hyperlinks all over the web.

So, that's it in a nutshell! Any questions?

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What's up with Kevin? Well, all my stuff is now in the new place, and I have boxes everywhere. I've been steadily unpacking, putting books willy-nilly into bookcase cubbies. Sorting by genre, author, and the rest can come after everything's out from the boxes.

Rachel, her mom, Ellie, and her cat, Nym, are in Yellowstone today, and should be getting to the Bay Area tomorrow evening. I'm trying to unpack as much as possible so they'll be able to relax when they get here. Nym's going to be fostered at Ammy and Rick's place until Rachel has a place of her own. Ammy's all excited about being a mom again, after Tigger passed away last year.

Meanwhile Google is a dream come true.

Oh, and somewhere in the move I lost a bracing strut for my bed, so I can't put it together yet. I'm going to IKEA today after work to see if I can get just the part, or what my other options are. 'Till then I think I'll be on the mattress when Rachel and Ellie arrive, so Ellie can have my guest bed, that I've been using up 'till now.

Let's see... What else? I'm treating Rachel to Waltz and Swing lessons by the incomparable Richard Powers. We're starting on Thursday, and they run every Thursday for 5 weeks.

Okay, that's my quick life update. More to come as it happens!

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I watch my traffic logs. It's one of those things bloggers don't really talk about. There are those who try to keep their blogs quiet, a small publishing venue for friend and family. There are those who don't care who reads, but aren't out there trying to get the world to read them. These are the ones who don't look at their server logs, don't have webmonitor bugs on their pages, and don't really look into the audience while they're speaking to the world. Less catwalk, more mountaintop.

I'm one of the other kinds of bloggers; the ones who have their stats page bookmarked, the ones who can tell you without skipping a beat that their weekend traffic is 2/3rds of their weekday traffic, the ones who feel a pang during Thanksgiving and Christmas because they know they'll see it as a dip in their weekly traffic.

There are a lot more of us than you'd think. It's one of those things a lot of bloggers do, but none of them really talk about. What's a lot of traffic? 10 people a day? 100? 10,000? It's like talking salaries. If you do it to make yourself feel better, you'll easily find someone who's got you beat, and so much for that (strangely, I don't feel that way about salaries, but I figure some people do so maybe it's a useful analogy).

Back to traffic though. It's tough. Keeping the daily watches on where people come from, and how many people come by gives me a good read on the pulse of the site. I know that it takes one particularly good story to increase my daily traffic by 80%, but that it'll fade back to normal within 4 days. It takes about three weeks of consistant above-average content to start building my regular rolling average, and about two weeks of poor or no content for the numbers to start dropping, but when they drop, they have inertia.

I have two lists, one in my pocket, one in my head, of things to do on the site to double my traffic. Part of me wants to do it for the egotism, part for the knowledge that I must be doing a better job of content creation if I get more visitors.

But the other part worries.

Traffic is more than eyeballs. It's people. One surprising and valuable thing I learned these last couple years is that simmering the pot makes for a great soup of users. If I post things that might get a little bit of attention outside the regular readership, they'll come in and take a look around, read the comments, post a little, and stay if they feel like this is a place for them. This tends to create a relatively like-minded group.

On the other hand, when there's something that gets a lot of attention, a lot of traffic, the whole culture of the site gets overexposed for a few weeks or a month. First time visitors read the comments of other first-time visitors and the maturity of the site folds in half. Some of the regular readrs get discouraged and drop off, and some of the newbies stick around, thinking this is the norm and liking it. This is a full boil, and it can scaldan otherwise great soup.

I've been reluctant to bring the site up from a simmer, mostly for fear of scalding the pot, and to a lesser extent because I'm worried of failure; that I'll do amazing things and nobody will care.

I'm working on solutions to the first, one of which is to create less tenuous ties with you the reader. I'm working on making very easy logins, (possibly passwordless) and letting anyone leave comments, but those comments only appear on the site once they click a link in an email the site sends to their stated email account. The email account can be totally anonymous on the site, but it'll stop the user who just wants to graffiti, or who cares too little about their own content to click the one-time verification link. This site-reader relationship would have a lot of advantages to the reader as well, but we'll get to that later.

Another possibility is something more along the lines of Derek's POWlist. I love ths list because sometimes Derek's site falls off my radar and once a month or so I'll get an email from the list with a particular good or important post, and I face the decision of unsubscribing, visiting the site, or keeping with the status quo of getting these periodic updates. I love it because it's push without being pushy, and I can't even tell how many readers I've lost from Fury when their computer crashed, they switched browsers and lost their bookmarks, or gradually forgot to check Fury, when they never really intended to leave. It's a wonderfully soft way of keeping friends.

I want to cut loose with some bigger projects that would get attention from outside the blogging community. I'm sure that coming across AOLiza articles from the Wall Street Journal while moving yesterday is no small part of this resurgence. So I'm thinking about the best and fastest ways to cement the readers I have, in a worse-comes-to-worst eventuality, I can whisper to you "Psst! Let's ditch these new folks and make it like it was! The new site's over here!)

Or I could just put the new stuff on one of the domains I've owned for years and haven't gotten around to utilizing yet.

Anyhow, it's another late night at the Googleplex, and I should probably call it a night. I'm deciding whether to go to my new place with my newly-purchased bedding, make my bed, and sleep in the new place that feels so empty of both stuff and spirit, though an excellent canvas for both, given a little time, or trod over to Rick and Ammy's, where my toiletries and their guest bed are.

Heh. Ammy? I'm comin' over. The new place will wait one more day. Just so long as I put some things away before the second wave comes from Pittsburgh.

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So, due to the exigencies of having only one moving buddy for Sunday and the overall exhaustion of helping Karen and Crystal move house on Saturday, the great Berkeley Storage Space to Mountain View Townhouse move will commence one week later, on September 14th.

Banns shall be posted on the morrow, and already I'm sure I'll have the help to pull it off (err, on, then off).

Yesterday, with help from The Ken and The Ken's $1 Van I got a ton of IKEA bookcases from the Abandoned Fortress of Duotude to the townhouse's back patio, where they laid in wait overnight as the landlord moved out on Saturday. Literally, averaging 150lbs apiece, the seven of them together amassed, well, okay, half a ton. (But half a ton is better than none!)

Sunday, Liz, along with the 'Twins's Twenty Dollar Dolly' enabled me to move the pieces into my new living room, where they await the stuff from storage to give their lives purpose. Oh, and as it turns out I will be going to the spanking IKEA, needing an 8 foot glass door to replace the one that broke mid-vanride. (Amazingly, it was the hinge, and not the huge pane of glass, that broke.)

Then there's the van that was filled yesterday in Pittsburgh, which is, on Tuesday, starting its own cross-country journey, ending at my doorstep in 10-14 days time. Then there's the Big Honking TV which I'm selling to Ali and Mark rather than try to wrest from the gravity well in their living room. Then there's the 10 boxes of memory and utility from Dad's house that I will, at some point, have to fetch from California Meridional.

Oh yeah, and a table and chairs from Emily, and a pair of lamps from Ammy and Rick.

It's like an IKEA family reunion, with a few black sheep from Norka Futon and Pier One.

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On the 'coping' front, every now and then I come across an emotion I'm really not sure how to internalize. I spent nearly two weeks working with Mom and Susie on Dad's house last month, and I got updates every few days from Mom on how things were progressing. Repairing tiles, repainting, fixing a latch, getting an appraisal.

Susie and I both carefully thought it through, and decided that neither of us would be living in the house in any reasonable timeframe and, as fond as I am of the house, I'm in the Bay Area for good as far as I can see, and Sherman Oaks home prices are peaking, especially with rising interest rates. It's the right thing to do.

Even though I've been a part of the process at every step; even though I went through the house to say goodbyes when Ammy and I came to Los Angeles a week ago on the last stop of our road trip, I got a profound pang when I looked up the listing for my Dad's house online today.

While walking though it, empty and repainted, amidst real estate agents scoping it out, I was okay. Somehow I was still protecting it, watching over and cradling my dad's home as I can't watch over him anymore. Seeing it as an anonymous listing on the internet, distilled to a 320x240 picture and a handful of database fields, I just feel like I'm leaving a memory and a spirit naked and unprotected amidst strangers.

...

I need a home of my own. The townhouse I'm moving in to next week reminds me of Dad in a way I can't describe, and a few ways I can. Something about the walls reminds me of the condo he had over 20 years ago in San Francisco, and the flowerpots and drip watering system that I asked the landlord to leve in reminds me of when Dad, Susie and I would go to Grandma's in the Spring and set up tomato plants and drip systems on the terraced steps alongside the house, and when we did the same in my Uncle's backyard years later, bringing forth tiny pumpkinds and zuccini into the world.

I want to make things grow. I want to nurture. I'm really looking forward to unpacking a few of my 'Dad boxes' so I can wear some of my memories externally. My insides are getting a little too crowded, and I need to breathe.

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So in a half day I start my first day at Google. So much backblog stuff to write about: the road trip, my sister's birthday party at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, coming back home, apartment hunting (sooo excited now that I have a rental application in at a 2 bedroom townhouse in Mountain View that I'm highly enamored of), house painting at Karen and Crystal's brand new house (they got the keys Friday!) (Crystal just said, apropos of nothing, "We're not just talking about house. We're doing house!") They're incredibly excited, and so am I.

We painted two rooms today, and painted clouds in one of them. It's a fun place.

Okay, now off to dancing, then sleep, then Google, then to see a cottage in case the townhouse doesn't go through, then Plough (more dancing), then sleep, and repeat!

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Wow, the day is here. I can't do it justince in prose, while simultaneously finishing packing (thank god for Rachel and Ammy and their help!!!)

With the help of the Sidekick Ammy and I may be able to post some from the road. I'm sure there will be more stories to tell, not to mention Alaska stories and pictures to post.

The AirPort and DSL router are the last things to be packed, and it's about that time.

I'll be checking in soon!!!

Next stop: Nashville

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Things are very different when death comes in the middle of a life, and not at the end. In a thousand ways the life seems to go on, a dotted line continuing along the trail of what would have been solid if not for the sudden stop; electric bills, friends calling. The memory of an ongoing life, where we find ourselves stopping mid-thought to factor in this course correction in the midst of thinking our everyday thoughts.

I can't speak for other families and other tragedies, but one of the gifts my family has unspokenly given to each other is that of uncorrected tense. "Dad likes to do" this, or "Dad buys these kinds of trinkets on trips." Though it's been nearly a month, we all tend to put phrases like this in the present instead of the past, more often than not, though none of us mentions it.

Maybe we all have our own reasons. I can think of several. Functional fixedness, or habit, is an obvious possibility. I'm sure some out there might think it's denial. For me, it's an unconscious manifestation of the idea that what my dad was and is lives on. In so much as these qualities (that the present-tense comments are usually describing) shape our feelings about him, those qualities still live on. Naturally Dad doesn't literally take pictures at every possible opportunity anymore, but the quality that he takes pictures at every opportunity remains.

Like I said, I don't know the cause of this tense in the rest of my family, but I do know that we share the common emotion, the common little gift that we give each other whenever it happens. We don't correct each other. We don't force each other to open our hearts wide to the truth, like the harsh glare of the sun after a matinee. Instead we take the small comfort that we still can talk about Dad this way, that he's here and along for the ride, and not just a stop along the way.

Maybe over the years we'll migrate to "used to" and "I remember how he," but even then the focus will be on the living, and on the action, not the cessation. I'm proud of my family for this combination of maturity and support, that we're in a common struggle and gather strength from it, without pushing each other down to keep ourselves up.

This 'gift of tense' is just one of the things that makes this time more bearable.

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So suddenly the five weeks I had to complete grad school has vaporized to one, two weeks spent in Los Angeles with family, one week back now, and leaving one week early to spend more much-needed time with family.

My life is suddenly thrown into fast-forward, a mixed blessing of keeping busy and of having to work fast enough to stay on my own life's train.

Within the next week I have a bunch of work do do on my masters project, and my independent study project, and I need to pack up my apartment to be ready for movers to come and take it all in their van.

Late next week Rachel and I head to Vancouver, with a 7 hour layover in San Francisco, where we can spend a little time with friends, then a week with family, then flying home from Anchorage by way of a redeye to Atlanta (can you believe there's a plane that goes from Anchorage to Atlanta?) where we'll meet Ammy and hop on another plane to complete the return to Pittsburgh. Then it's two days in Pittsburgh before Ammy and I drive off on a 12 day road trip back to San Francisco, with stops in Los Angeles, Vegas and the Grand Canyon for certain (not in that order), and a bunch of other destinations to be finalized, but likely including Mammoth Caves, Mesa Verde, and the Painted Desert.

Two days later is my first day at Google. Meanwhile I'll be staying with Ammy and Rick for a few weeks (or less) while I find an apartment and tell the movers where to appear with my stuff.

All-told I'll be living in six different environments over the next six weeks. Maybe my internal bolstering preparing for once again changing my total environment has helped a bit in dealing with the unexpected change in my life. I knew I'd be off-kilter, and so perhaps I'm a little more prepared emotionally, though just enough to keep standing, not enough to absorb the blow.

So much to do, and so little time. I need to compartmentalize. I need to make sure that when I leave next Thursday that school is checked off. I need to make sure that when I leave on the road trip, Pittsburgh is checked of. (I mean materially, not personally. Those I love here in the 'burgh will be with me for a long, long time, and do not have little boxes next to their avatars in my mind).

The last 10% is always the hardest.

Here we go!

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I haven't been crying much recently but for the last week my eyes keep feeling tight around the corners, like I'd just finished.

I feel like I'm a nuclear core, with control rods to help stop a cascade of grief. The control rods can be work, a book, sleep, or for all last week the labor of going through dad's house, and making arrangements.

Being around family, I felt like the control rods were even more important because if any of us let go it would cascade to the others. We each grieve in our own way, and I've been worrying about letting mine out, because I don't want to make anyone else feel worse. I wish I could tell them that grieving is a good thing, and that my own expression of it shouldn't make anyone else feel worse. It's easier to hold it in like a balloon with a slow leak. I think about him in a thousand small ways, every minute, each time crying a little inside. It shames me that I even worry what other people think, that I'm worried about showing my pain too much, while at the same time worrying that I'm showing it too little.

I feel it, inside, and that's what tells me that I'm not a bad person.

Yet I still feel the compulsion to write this post. The irony's not lost...

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On the morning of my birthday, July 4th, my dad stayed up late writing me a letter. The letter touched me very deeply, and when I called him later that morning we shared a wonderful conversation, confiding how proud we each were with each other.

I told him how I bought two iSight cameras, one for each of us, so that despite being at opposite ends of the country we'd be able to see each other and talk like we were in the same room. He told me that he'd ordered a slew of multicolor-led Google pens, a few shirts, and baseball caps, in honor of my starting there next month.

We talked about our writings, about visiting me when I get my apartment in Mountain View, and about using both his and my frequent flier miles to get Rachel and me plane tickets to visit Los Angeles in the next couple weekends.

After the call, I went to a BBQ at a friend's new house, followed by tremendous fireworks in downtown Pittsburgh. My Dad went to a party at my uncle's house in Malibu, where he had a great day with family and friends, staying late and driving a friend home late that evening before returning to his own home.

Some time early in the following morning, July 5th, 2003, he suffered a severe heart attack and passed away at his home.

At the memorial service the following Friday, Susie and I were the last people to speak after my mom, grandfather, cousins Steve, Craig, and Jill, and Dad's brother, my Uncle Alan. After the service, a handful of people asked if I could send them the text of the eulogy I gave:

"The last time I spoke to David was last Friday, on my birthday. Earlier in the day he wrote me a letter, and gave me a gift more important than he could possibly have known. I'd like to read it to you:

To My Son Kevin on his 30th Birthday

It's 5 a.m. on your 30th Birthday and I'm still pondering what present to honor you with. My first present, very carefully selected with your mother's help, was your birth name – Kevin David Fox. Kevin because I wanted to do my best to provide you with a first name kids wouldn't be able to tease you about-- like they did to Dana Steven Fox who had to abandon Dana and retreat into Steven/Steve to escape. And because I wanted you to have a name that was substantial and more than ordinary, but not too unusual.

I'm not nearly as clear about why I held out for David. My deep sense is I somehow wanted you to know I would always do my best to be there with you and for you through all the scary and difficult times whenever and wherever they might envelope you.

Your plunge into sharing your "true voice" experiences on the verge of your 30th Birthday has inspired be to jump in after you. Here's a true voice poem I wrote five years ago.

Ordinary Terror

This morning I went to my appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles to pick-up my personalized license plates. I didn't know why they were important to me.

While I waited for my name to be called, I was jarred by the appearance of scores of people without appointments waiting in dreary lines. They were on the short side and didn't stand out in any way. They were nothing more than ordinary, living out unremarkable lives.

Down deep I'm terrified of being ordinary. They seemed content.

The first time I felt the horror of ordinary gushing through my body came when I was seven. I was asleep in the basement room of our two-story up-side-down house when the cold water pipe hugging the ceiling above my bed burst at 3:00 a.m. I was frightened and confused. I screamed for mom and dad while I slapped at the light switch until the nightstand lamp snapped on.

The plumber arrived about an hour later. He was old and grizzly with knarled calloused hands, but he liked me. While he wrenched off the old lead pipes and wrenched on their shinny copper replacements, I asked him what it was like to be a plumber for a lifetime.

I was shocked by his answer. He said it was difficult for the first few years until he learned how to fix each different plumbing problem. But after that, he said it had been easy for the next 30 years because he just kept doing what he already knew how to do.

Right then I vowed never to be a plumber! To be doomed to a lifetime of fixing the same pipe problems over and over until I died with my knarled, calloused hands clutching my favorite wrench. How awful – how ordinary. He didn't seem to mind.

I'm walking toward my car with the desperate hope the personalized plates my hands are wrapped around will some how, some way shield me from the terror of ordinary, and open my pipeline to salvation.

David Fox     March, 1998

I feel much different today. If I write a new true voice poem the title that appeals to me is "Ordinary Joy." Further bulletins will follow in celebration of your 30th birth year.

I just grabbed "14,000 things to be happy about." off my bookshelf and opened it at random to pages 100-101: "...the intimacy of humor...flashlights that work...a bowl of tiny mandarin oranges...a breeze tiptoeing into the room, afraid to intrude...Timbuktu...opening stuck windows...steak fries...the splendor of fall...deep-set windowsills...electric morning coffee-maker...every seventh wave being a big one...the pleasure of water...V-formation of migrating geese...." And there are 13,984 more in Barbara Kipfer's book.

How many more known and yet to be known are there in my "book? or you book?" Could be bazillion, or even kabillion more! (I've been wanting to use bazillion and kabillion somehow somewhere for months, and now I have Ta Dah! (I've also been wanting to use Ta Dah!). This is such fun!

And thank you for adding a bunch from your book: "having the canola...the extra mile...following a dream...Winter's blankets of snow...cacophonous cicada...thundershowers before sunset...lush green grass...surreptitiously placing Easter eggs....the midnight moon...picnicking on the grass...following foot-deep footholes in the snow...fireflies flicking on and off, talking to each other...paper cut-outs...sneaking into IKEA...the last day of classes...snowscaped graveyards...dancing with abandon... ...all nighters...pockets...tandem skydiving...keyboards...cloverleaf intersections... kettle drums ...Mardi Gras beads...a kitten sleeping in your lap having mouse-chasing dreams........" and so many many more. What I am happiest about right now is you on your 30th Birthday – TAH DAH!!!!

Love, hugs and so much more,

Dad

Dad derived his greatest happiness from finding joy, and bringing that joy to those around him.

He loved the immediate pleasure of teaching people something new, whether it was cribbage or kite-flying, computing or how to cook the perfect quesadilla.

He passionately shared the photographs he took at every opportunity, pulling out his powerbook in any free moment to give a personal tour of China, the Galapagos, or just a day at the beach. He loved sharing the beauty he saw in the world and in everyone he met.

Most importantly, Dad found his deepest satisfaction in helping people realize and pursue their own dreams. When he and I chose the name for his company 12 years ago, David wanted to keep it as open-ended as possible, reflecting his mission of helping people achieve their own goals -- in this instance, occupational goals -- hence the name "Professional Advancement Success Systems" or "PASS."

To David, the meaning of life is in the journey.

Dad never expected anyone to follow in his footsteps, but he hoped that they would walk in the same direction -- following their ambitions and dreams, and helping others to do the same.

My dad was the most supportive person I've ever known and, even after his passing, he's still supporting us, as we -- each and every one of us -- has been bettered by the impact he's had on our lives.

The finest memorial we can give to David is to keep on walking in his life's direction, to keep finding the joy and the beauty in life every day, and doubling that joy by selflessly sharing it with everyone we touch in our own lives.

Thanks for reading. As I've mentioned before, I have a lot more to say, and I'll be putting together a site of some of his writings, photos, and memories. I'll be talking about it here as it progresses. If you're just visiting Fury and aren't a regular reader, email me and I'll drop you a return email when there's more about David.

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Hey guys. I've spent the last week caring for my father's things, caring for myself, and caring for my family. Though it still seems incredibly early, considering what needs to be done, I'm heading back to Pittsburgh on Saturday, my last 5 weeks of grad school suddenly turning into my last two weeks instead.

A small shining light is that the memorial service was lovely. The family really held it together, and Dad would have been proud of us. I'll be talking about him a lot for a while, so you all can get a good picture of the man I'm proud to call my father.

Tomorrow (err, in the morning, rather) I'll be posting the text of what I said at the service. There's still so much to go through, and to work through, but I'm incredibly thankful, both for the strong family we all have to lean on in this tragedy, and in the copious amounts of work I've been doing for the last week and a half, which has helped distract me from letting the wave hit full-force.

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Art will come later.

My father, David Henry Fox, passed away unexpectedly this morning. I'm going out to Los Angeles tomorrow morning (everything's completely booked tonight) and will be out there for a while. Further bulletins will definitely follow, but I probably won't be as responsive as usual. I should have email access while I'm out there.

Thanks. There's so much more that I want to say about my father, about my love for him, about a thousand things, but I can't right now. It will come later.

I love you, Dad.

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It's the big three-oh for me! Woo-hoo! Now I'm finally old enough to be a U.S. Senator!

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So it's only two days until I turn 30, but nature's present came early. I walked outside tonight at about 9:30 to go see a free showing of Goldmember in the park. Stepping off my porch, I stopped in my tracks. Between one warm evening and the next, the fireflies had come out in force.

From my first visit to Pittsburgh over a year ago, I was clear on the concept that I wasn't in California anymore: Bright sunny 80-degree days are no guarantee against a quick thundershower before sunset. When I came here to live last August, I learned about the cacophonous cicada and their 22 year cycle. Fall introduced me to the colors of which Pennsylvanian nature is capable, followed unusually quickly by Winter's blankets of snow, applied again and again. With the Spring came the rain, lush green grass right outside my window, and an ocean of dandelions. Approaching the end of the full circle, I thought that I knew all of Gaia's gifts to Pittsburg, but stumbling upon thousands of glowstick-green fireflies softly lighting and fading while weaving in front of, behind, and around tombstones in the twilight struck me dumb in a way I suddenly realized I had feared I was becoming incapable of as I enter my fourth decade.

I've often used the cemetery as my emotional soundstage over the last year, whether surreptitiously placing easter eggs on the statues with Rachel, picnicking on the grass, following foot-deep foot-holes in the snow on the way to the bus or striding hom, weaving through the headstones beneath the midnight moon with 'Rest in Peace' blaring in my iPod's earbuds. This felt totally different though. Tonight the graveyard was alive.

...

It was exactly 20 years ago today that I had last seen the faerie. A half a world away, in a vineyard an hour north of Florence, I was just two days away from my 10th birthday, travelling through Europe with my mom and sister. The fireflies were everywhere around the trees and the vines, flicking on and off, talking to each other, and speaking to me as well. It was a magical night outdoors, eating a fine dinner, feeling the Summer warmth, and walking a path under a waterfall reputed to take a decade off the ambler's age (a completely different prospect to someone not quite ten yet).

As we waited for the tour busses to take us back to reality, I urgently found a jar and caught a few of the fireflies. I was so proud. Mom told me that I could keep them if I wanted to, but I should know that they'd die within a day, and they would never glow again. I let them go just before I climbed the steps onto the motor coach. Mom smiled.

...

The faerie have changed in the intervening decades, but then so have I. In 1983 I was spastic with youth, and the fireflies reflected this with their fast binary blinks. Somewhere on their abdomen they were flittering their shutters open and closed, sending precise signals through the dusk.

Nature, digitized.

Today's gift was so different that at first I didn't even recognize it. A sine-wave of brightness in the corner of my eye, another floating above my car. I literally rubbed my eyes to clear these errant embers floating senselessly. After one travelled right in front of me, I realized what they were, so different from what I expected. Focusing out beyond the grass and to the headstones beyond I could see hundreds of them, brightening, peaking, and dimming to invisibility, seemingly constant lights drifting between this dimension and another. Seeing headstones literally lit by their passing glow, I thought to myself, 'Buffy can't touch this.'

Reality, smoothed.

I had to share, so I called Rachel to tell her that she was right and the fireflies had indeed come. "Of course, silly!" 'Will they stay? or is it a one-night deal?' "They'll be around all month! It's what they do."

Feeling the magic lift me, I got in my car and drove to the movie, seeing only one or two fireflies the whole way. Apparently the dead get first dibs. Well, them and their neighbors.

Tomorrow I'll see how well the video camera can handle this unique low-light setting. For tonight, I'm cherishing my first birthday present.

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Angel - Sarah McLachlan

Spend all your time waiting
for that second chance
for a break that would make it okay
there's always one reason
to feel not good enough
and it's hard at the end of the day

I need some distraction
oh beautiful release
memory seeps from my veins
let me be empty
and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

In the arms of an angel
fly away from here
from this dark cold hotel room
and the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage
of your silent reverie
you're in the arms of the angel
may you find some comfort there

So tired of the straight line
and everywhere you turn
there's vultures and thieves at your back
and the storm keeps on twisting
you keep on building the lie
that you make up for all that you lack

It don't make no difference
escaping one last time
it's easier to believe
in this sweet madness
oh this glorious sadness
that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel...

You're in the arms of the angel
may you find some comfort here

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One of my friends has a weblog, but saves his more personal stories for his email list that he sends out maybe once a month. Today he wrote about himself ten years ago, how he would have called himself a songwriter, and about a song he wrote then after his breakup with the first woman who he thought he would have spent the rest of his life with.

Of particular poignancy are the lines in the song: "I bet you'll find that in ten years time...I won't even cross through your mind." To him the passage of the decade was a liberation, one item he could checkoff a list that he didn't even knew he kept with him.

It's been just over 10 years since I met the first woman I thought I could spend the rest of my life with. I didn't write a song about her when we broke up, but then 'breaking up' is a misnomer in this case, as it implies breaking off. I've been lucky that several of my closest friendships have come out of my closest relationships.

The recognition of an elapsed decade is freeing to me as well, but probably in a different way than to my songwriting friend. It's shown me that the valuable relationships last, no matter the form they settle into. My post-relationship friendships aren't about a refusal to admit interpersonal failure. They represent sincere, close ties that sustain themselves, even when we're apart for years at a time.

I'm still good friends with five of my six past girlfriends. Okay, seven past girlfriends, but there's an asterisk (I suppose there's always an asterisk) next to one of them. I'm not sure if this is more a testament to how much I value friendships or how differently from most people I view relationships, but it gives me warm fuzzies.

I wonder where I'll be 10 years from now. Who will shape my life then, and who will have shaped it along the way? I suppose I'm tacking a small item onto my own invisible list. I'm sure that come 2013 something or someone will bring this post to my attention. Things always tend to come back, in the good way.

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Okay, warning to those who don't want to weird about people's weird biological experiences: This is an article about my weird biological experience. You've been warned.

So I've had a virus for almost a week, slight fever, cough, achy, restless and lethargic (a really annoying combination). Luckily yesterday I was feeling a lot better. My cough and sinuses were still acting up, but the 'brain cloud' had lifted.

I went to sleep last night, and had a little trouble sleeping, waking up every few hours to hack, pee, and get more water. Ugh, but not abnormal for being sick.

When I woke up at 4am though, it was different...

You know how, when you're nauseous, and you feel like you might throw up, and you get this taste in your mouth, like a warning for what's to come? Totally unlike the actual taste of vomit, it's that warning, call it metallic, or bitter, or whatever. you know that taste?

Well, I woke up with that taste in my mouth, strong. Now through the whole illness I didn't have any stomach upset, and even now I didn't feel queasy or nauseous. Still, just to be safe, I got up and walked to the bathroom. Over the next 30 seconds I had wave after wave of this taste. I could actually feel it being expelled from my saliva ducts under my tongue. I mean teaspoons full. Did my mouth know something that my head didn't? It was actually panic-inducing. Adrenaline shot up, which probably created a feedback loop. The conflict between mixed messages from my body and pavlovian response was very disconcerting.

Things finally started to settle down, but it was very unsettling: My body, which usually keeps pretty quiet, woke up, screaming to tell me something, but I didn't know what. I still don't.

Any ideas?

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Walked out of my house a few minutes ago, popped in my iPod's headphones, started the random shuffle (someone should name their band 'random shuffle'... Or their blog...) and strode through the cemetery to the bus stop on the other side.

'Going through the motions' from Buffy OMWF came on as I walked through the grass between century-old tombstones. It was as perfect as a month ago when 'Rest in Peace' came on while I walked home through 2am moonlight.

Last night I decided today would be a creative rebirth, and this was a good start. I feel goth on the outside and plur on the inside. Scary.

Joining the spirit of unfettered writing, my iPod has apparently decided to do away with friction. Now my little jog dial will spin and spin until I deliberately stop it.

After kvetching to Benjy last night about how the latest firmware update fixed my iPod's battery problems, now I may have a replacement reason to take a closer look at the new iPods to be announced next Monday.

Mmmmm... Commerce...

[blogged from the sidekick, on the bus to school]

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I just had a phone conversation with someone who was accepted to both the HCII and SIMS programs, just as I was two years ago. He's agonizing over whether to leave Berkeley (where he owns his home) and move with his wife to Pittsburgh for a year, or study at Berkeley SIMS for two years.

I don't envy him his decision. I know how hard a decision it was for me. In fact, the relocatioon factor was probably in no small part responsible for my decision to defer from CMU for a year to work at Yahoo. I remember that a year later, when I again had to choose, this time between Yahoo and CMU, the fact that I'd have to move either way (the 50 mile commute from Berkeley to Sunnyvale was just too much) made the idea of moving to Pittsburgh a little bit easier.

In the end, what made my decision was the Hogwarts factor: HCII is the best place to learn HCI. SIMS excels at information systems, and would teach me perhaps 70% of what I wanted to learn in HCI, but the idea of being limited only by my own bandwidth was just too attractive.

It's really a kind of risk aversion: I worried about spending two years at SIMS and leaving thinking that I could have learned more about my own focus somewhere else. On the other hand, unless the HCII underdelivered, Carnegie Mellon offered me exactly what I was looking for, with people who shared my focus and passion.

Other pennyweights on the scale were the idea of spending a 'year abroad' in the East, to experience something other than 'California seasons' (and last Winter didn't disappoint on that cold front), and getting an advanced degree from a different school than my undergrad. Having TA'ed Marti Hearst's UI prototyping and evaluation class (after taking James Landay's version of the class) I felt that I already experienced the single SIMS class closest to my interest.

In the end, I just needed a big change. 12 years in a city can build up a lot of plaque, expecially when the reason for not leaving is fear of change. This last year is a yo-yo on a string. Ship out, gather experiences, and come back the wiser. All in all, (and I'm a little surprised) the experience has been gratifying in many of the ways I theorised when fretting about the decision to come out here. (By the way, the post I just linked to has become one of my all-time favorites; a real turning point.)

A year ago last January I was living in the middle and now I'm not. I'm headed down a certain path with a few forks to navigate, but I'm moving fast and with definite purpose.

Everything's just moving so fast. How fast? Next month I have two days of interviews with Google, I may be flying to Seattle to talk with Amazon, and there's still Yahoo and eBay to think seriously about.

I've never really had so many parts of my life change at the same time, as they will in August. I don't know when Rachel's leaving (neither does she), be it late May, after I go in August, or any time in between. I'm blessed to have found such a great person to share the second half of my year here with. Every time I carry something up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, I think about having to carry it back down in a few months, or daydream about hiring movers.

I'm starting to yearn for the open road again. The week with Ammy last August, gunning across the top of the country was amazing, and we're deciding between taking the Canadian high road or the deep South on the way back. I'm working on so many projects right now I have scant time to think, let alone dream, but the future is pretty well packed with options. We'll see how it all pans out.

And now I've taken this post down three or four different paths, with little cohesion. Funny how there's an inverse relation between the directedness of my life and the directedness of my writing. Well, I'm sure that's enough for now.

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I'm in Ft. Lauderdale now for the CHI2003 conference. I'm in all kinds of tizzies, mostly school and work related. Karen and I took 438 pictures during our time in LA and on the cruise, and I have about 48 really good ones that I'll be posting soon.

I took the redeye last night from LAX to land in Charlotte, NC this morning, where I met some of my fellow CMU folk and we flew the rest of the way to Florida.

right now I'm realizing that Ihve' had a chai and some dried mango and that's it for the last 20 hours, so I'm going to go find some yummy food and destress a little before tacking the mountain of homework I have to get through.

Oh, and great news on the job seeking fronts as well. Interviews abound, and possibilities coalesce...

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It's meme time, and today's meme is 'the alphabet of you.'

I got this one from Karen, who probably got it from Rachel. Anyhow, here's me, from A to Z:

A - Act your age? How old would I be if I didn't know how old I was? I act older at work, and younger at play.
B - Born on what day of the week? Wednesday. Wednesday's child is full of woe.
C - Chore you hate? I actually like laundry when I get to it, and cleaning makes me feel accoomplished. It must be paying bills, because when I'm done I feel poorer than when I started.
D - Dad's name? David
E - Essential makeup item? Umm. Contacts?
E - Essential item of luggage when travelling? My Yahoo backpack. Plenty of room for a weekend's clothes, and a snug padded slip pocket for my powerbook.
F - Favorite actor? Val Kilmer tends to stay high on my list. I completely forgot until reminded last week that I'd met him in person. Go figure.
G - Gold or silver? Silver
H - Hometown? Hometown: Encino. Home base: East Bay
I - Instruments you play? A little piano, a little recorder, and my bowed psaltery.
J - Job title? Grad student. Probably an interaction designer again in a few months.
K - Kids? Just me.
L - Living arrangements? By myself in a one bedroom renovated attic across the street from a beautiful cemetery. Will soon be moving to a one or two bedroom in the SF Bay area, either Alameda or maybe Mountain View or Palo Alto.
M - Mum's name? Carolyn
N - Number of people you've slept with? 9
O - Overnight hospital stays? None!
P - Phobia? Failure
P - Paracetamol, Ibuprofen or Aspirin? Excedrin: Acetaminophen, Asprin and Caffeine. I often get dehydration headaches because I don't have much of a sense of thirst. Excedrin works like a charm at getting rid of the headache while several glasses of water fix the problem by the time it wears off.
Q - Quote you like? I'm not going to teach you how to vandalize a car. You're not even old enough to drive one!
R - Religious affiliation? Religion? No thanks, I'm full already.
S - Siblings? One older sistah
T - Time you wake up? Various. I usually sleep at 2am and get up between 6 and 10am.
U - Unique habit? I think of ideas all the time. I actually start work on at least 3 cool ideas a week, but almost never finish. Last night I took a dozen pictures of wristwatches, convinced that all our advances in miniaturization and technology let us build more elegant digital watches, but instead we just make more complex ones. I don't know if I'll ever write up my ideas on that or not. Oh wait, I just did! NEXT!
V - Vegetable you refuse to eat? Eggplant. It's not an egg. It's purple and squishy in the bad way.
W - Worst habit? Thinking I know everything about a topic. I need to respect other's opinions more, as well as their criticisms.
X - X-rays you've had? Plenty of dental x-rays. Not as many others. I can't even think of any. I've only broken two bones, my little toe (twice) and a rib (probably). Since the treatment is the same if it's broken or badly bruised (tape it and wait), there wasn't really any point.
Y - Yummy food you make? I make really good tollhouse cookies. Add 50% more salt and double vanilla and they're really, really good. I also learned how to make surprisingly good lemon chicken quesadillias from my dad.
Z - Zodiac Sign? Cancer

Got your own alphabet of you? Leave a comment and link us up!

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I have way too much latency in posts. Things happen to me, and I ruminate, think of ways to relate them to the greater experience of life, decide what to blog, but then something else happens and the post is relegated to a pocket of neurons in my brain, never to escape.

Karen, on the other hand, is a good, responsible blogger. I'm glad I've spent the last week with her for a lot of reasons, but the relevant one right now is that she has been giving a good day-by-day account of our Los Angeles adventures, from Magic Mountain to the Oscars to Citywalk to movies, and all the rest. So without further ado, I invite you all to her blog to check out what we've been up to. ("Check out to what we've been up"? I figure I should watch my dangling participles when linking to the site of a writer.)

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I'm so very, very tired, with no room to sleep. Ugh. I need a vacation.

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So I've been too busy to blog, to busy to recap my mid-semester crisis, too busy to talk about the freezing snowstorms followed by 60 degree weather followed 24 hours later by biting 13degree nights, followed now by 50-degree spring thunderstorms with lightning like strobelights and thunder that feels like a 2.5 under your feet.

And I'm going to China. That's right. China! Don't look so surprised! It's been there on the calendar on your left for months now! Eight days from now I'll be in China (well, 9 days, technically 10 when you factor in the date line) and there I'll be for two weeks, and when that's over? Well I'm not home yet!

Rough itinerary to come, but let's just say that I'm not just keeping busy, I'm trying to shoo busy out of the room but it Just Won't Go.

Ahh, life is good.

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