Agog is the word...

Thought this deserved wider distribution for the sake of our lurkers: From Nana's E-mail.... Not sure you all are agog about how this retiree is managing but I'm offering a sample: Seriously wake up at 11 a.m.(it's been a party-ing weekend remember) and half hearted efforts don't count. Gulp orange juice (thank you Sandlin) go for lunch and then join the every Monday 1:45 WALK IN THE PARK. THE van picks a different place to go each week , there are a lot of options. This week we four residents " democratically" decide to skip Edmonds (too cold & windy there) for Community park in Woodinville (I may have the name wrong).( Smallish but memorable because of man giving workout to his prize winning golden lab retriever using whistle and hand signals ala Scotland sheep dogs. Dog also on TV as show winner. There is also an inactivated rope landing gear climbing tower connected to rope-and-plank walkway about 25 feet long leading to another tower w/rope landing-gear exit. My imagination gallops along. speculating on the excitement on a warm summer day. Back at 3:10--start reading Seattle Times in lobby when LaVerne reminds me of once-a-month book club in library at 3:30. Join 10 residents for discussion of THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH--led by a retired Chateau marketing manager- (bubbly vivacious-)-who will try to arrange coaching for three of us with Nooks, but don't really know how to check out public library books. Brisk discussion that runs a "little long"--then ascend to 3rd floor dining room . Book Club custom is to eat dinner together and wine drinkers have choice of white/red. Menu in Dining Room changes daily, always has LONG salad buffet and GREAT variety of desserts. Special of The Day is Repeated as Eating Light that skips rich sauces, Has always been delicious as far as I'm concerned but old hands cluck and are greatly pleased that a new chef starts this week. My strategy is to ask for half orders--"small" milk. Singing group practises on B1 level 4th Monday at 5:30 Frankly, I'm ready for bed. Needless to say I'm a happy camper. Blessings to all. MP

More reasons it's awesome Nana lives here

1) Since Nana lives here, sometimes Mom and Dad wanna 'just come by for the weekend.'  They never did this when I lived in Pittsburgh.
2) Since I get to see her all the time, I get to hear Nana stories.  It's refreshing to be reminded that I come from a long line of women who work really hard, and manage to be successful even while juggling many needs.  Last night Nana was telling me about how her Mom had made her and her sister a little play house, complete with furniture, at their home in Wyoming.  And that she always made all the cabinets, clothes and food for the house.  Yeah, my people are handy and industrious!
3) Nana provides great excuses to see other people I want to see.  Party with the family next weekend!
4) Nana does stuff I only imagine doing, so it's like a preview to adulthood.  She is selling her house.  "Buying/selling a home" is no no longer on the list of things I know nothing about.  I've been a privileged observer to the proceedings of offers, negotiation, financing factors etc.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the various inspection/assessments play out, but the theme seems to be "Lots of Paperwork."  Who knew?  (oh, and in case you didn't know, Nana has accepted an offer on her house from a young family, and everyone feels good about it.)

I expect to be adding to this list quite a lot in the near future.  In other news, I am spending the day catching up on PM homework.  I've got like a hundred pages of reading to do before Monday, but considering how... um,... not dense it is, this will be no big.  It's weird to go into a field that is meant to describe an abstraction, I keep skimming past the 'vague stuff' only to realize that's the entire discipline.  It makes me wish I were taking the class in combination with having some big project.  Perhaps I'll convert my job hunt to a Project- and then manage the heck out of it.

NON-STOP ACTION

I like to be busy.  Well, not busy, but I'd rather have my time accounted for then to have nothing to do- and that sometimes means I overfill by time, but I'm happier that way.  I may have gotten ahead of myself this week, but I'd rather hardly have time to sit down then to be stuck at home.

I got a project at my internship with an imminent deadline, which gave me something to work towards.  I've been trying to stay on top of the job hunt, and have had some more phone calls and meetings crammed in between other things.  I started taking a project management course at the community college, it probably won't be hard, but there is a lot of reading I ought to do to get my money's worth. 

And then I got sucked into some extra hours at the bank as a result of something we aren't supposed to talk about, but we are calling "the Russian mobster incident."  I used to think that there were some jobs where there was so little responsibility that you could NEVER have a bad day.  I take it back.  Also, I don't think banking is my calling.

And Nana got an offer on her house!  This is great news for her, and a sweet primer for me a on the paper-work involved in buying/selling a house.  (hint: a lot).  Someday, when we are DINKs, we'll get to put all this practical knowledge to use.  Actually, this was double awesome because having Nana over to talk about counter-offers provided me the motivation to actually cook something for the first time in ages. 

Both of the professional societies I am a board member for had meetings this week, and I got a new writing contract that will take a couple weeks.  Busy-ness is just part of my future.

Matt's CDL class is keeping him very busy, but hopefully this weekend they'll get to shift gears (literally, they've driven miles in the parking lot in first gear).  We are hoping to go see Tulips again this weekend, so I'm going to be mad productive until then so I can enjoy a few unhectic hours with my family.

I'd write more, but we all have the plague

Tyler managed to pick up a cold a little bit before his birthday, right when all of the family was coming in to visit. I don't know what it was, but it's set off a chain reaction of illness that's kept the entire family busy with doctor visits for the past few weeks. It's pretty staggering.

I started it off, with a fever and a cold that eventually clogged up my throat with gunk and ended up giving me an ear infection. I'm a grown man! I'm not supposed to be getting those anymore. Anyway, I did, and managed to get over the worst of it before my throat got really sore. I ended up going to see the doctor for that one, which meant that he as able to tell me that my ear was still infected and my sore throat was not, fortunately, strep throat. It was still horrible, though, so I got some antibiotics and am feeling much better, thanks.

Tyler's ear infection has stubbornly refused to go away, and ended up spreading into a pretty severe fever a couple of times. Unfortunately that meant that we had to graduate him past oral antibiotics and onto a shot! It was horrible! But it seems to have helped his ear. Anyway, he's going into the ENT doctor tomorrow to get evaluated for tubes, because he's been getting a lot of infections and they're becoming progressively harder to cure. I don't want to be giving him a shot every time he gets a cold.

Jess managed to skip the worst of it, but ended up with a voice-clearing sore throat yesterday and she ended up with a couple of doctor appointments too. So between the three of us, we have been keeping the American health care system well employed. You're welcome.

Micro news! Tyler is really good at walking now. He does more walking than crawling. This means that we get a lot more calls from the day care telling us he bonked his head on something. He's also taking naps on a Cot now and is being gently weaned off of bottles and on to real person food. They cook good stuff at that place, I'm actually kind of jealous I can't join him for lunch. He'll be moving up to the toddler class pretty soon, I suspect. I'm trying to make more music, but so far haven't been successful. I'm trying to find a way to come at a new composition that allows me to, well, make something, mostly. Work was boring, so I went off and found my own work. It's much less boring now. I've become totally addicted to supporting video games on kickstarter. It lets you pledge money to support a thing (music, art, a physical product, anything, really) before it gets made. It's just like putting in a pre-order, really, but it's a pre-order that helps the development of the item in question. I like it. I finished the first book of the Hunger Games. Quite pleased with myself. A good, fast read, high on quality. Recommended.

-N

If you are jealous, there is a solution...

I had breakfast with Mom and Nana in Nana's apartment this morning.

Clearly, this is an above average Tuesday.

Also, Nana lives here now!  Like, 100% official, all the time.  Woohoo!  I need to send around invites to the welcome home party, but if you can't come, you should probably plan to come to visit Nana.  Her place is pretty sweet, and my place is pretty sweet, and between the two of us there are good times to be had.

I'm on page 8!

Check me out!  Also- I'm on the newsletter committee, so I kinda helped make the whole thing happen.  Sweet!

Today just headbutted my optimism

Let's level- job hunting is lame.  It's a constant drain on my confidence, my time and is giant hurdle I have to get past before I can really have a future.  When I am not looking for a job, or meeting people who can help me get a job, I am thinking about it.  When I am job hunting, I am faced with jillions of jobs for which I am NOT a good fit.  There is nothing good about job hunting, and I know that, so I try REALLY hard to stay upbeat about it, to keep at it when I can and just cry about it when that's all the more I can do.  It makes me hypersensitive to my failures and reiterates my shortcomings (OMG- Did I just send that recruiter a note about an 'oppurtunity'??  What is wrong with me??). One of the best things about getting a job will be that I can stop looking.  Point made?  Ok, this is just the backdrop then to what might have seemed like a typical day at any other time in my life, but today just made me want to crawl back in bed.

It started out good- I applied for a job I really liked last night, and I was feeling anxious about how my application came across.  I put a lucky penny in my shoe today (because having my life feel out of my own control reinforces my superstitions) and headed out to my internship.  I was able to find a parking spot in South Lake Union, where I met a new team of investigators who are in crunch time about their upcoming grant.  And they are studying one of the few major diseases I don't know ANYthing about, and a class of regulated substances I am also totally naive about.  The manager just throws me in like I belong there, but it isn't long before everyone is throwing questions to "the market analyst" and "I will check that out too..." doesn't seem so helpful.  But no one stormed out of this meeting (unlike their last one- did I mention it was tense?), and I went back to our regular office.

Parking on campus is a drag, but I've found a lot nearby that usually has a spot for me- but today I didn't have the right change, because I left my $1 coins ...somewhere.  I decided to risk feeding half the money now, and half the money later when I broke a $20, because -dammit, I was ready to have a good day.  I had a networking meeting further down on campus, and for some reason I didn't bring a coat.  Obviously, it was raining cats and dogs.  The meeting was ok, but it reinforced that I am not doing enough to get something useful out of my internship.  And made me soaking wet.

Traffic was TERRIBLE.  When I got home, the cat managed to rip a hole in my work pants (of course, in the bum) while I started a late dinner (made even later by the fact that Matt is gone to CDL school).  And then I burned the speghetti sauce- I know, I didn't know that was possible either. 

Any other day I might say "I got a new project, I didn't get a parking ticket and I got to meet some new people," but not today.