Archive for May, 2010
Olin alumni reunion: as much as I am not a bar/party/large-crowds-of-people-with-alcohol person, being with my old school buddies, in any context, is much like pulling on a favorite old sweater. Everyone is doing great – I didn’t expect Laura to fly in from Abu Dhabi, nor Beth to come from Vancouver, and so forth – Cody came from California, I hadn’t seen him since we graduated 3 years ago, Chandra and I made lunch plans, I’m cashing in my rain check on Karen and Krystin’s housewarming party and going to bring them a moving-out bottle of wine (whoops), Boris is more freaked out by the news of Andy P’s engagement than I am, DJ discovered climbing trees by his house that I now have to come out and try, and so on through the night. (Well… I lasted an hour, and then I was just tired.)
Probably the most frequent question I got tonight was “so, where are you living now?” It was easy to tell how long it’d been since I talked with the person from where they thought I was – everywhere from China to Virginia (I think this was a mistaken “Washington DC”) to pre-emptive hesitant “Raleigh?” queries and a few folks who have already given up keeping track. I explained I was with Red Hat and open source and getting people excited about education for a living, and they laughed and said it sounded like a Mel job.
Hung out with Hari in Harvard Square and yelled at him to get off his ass and start Doing Stuff (which… has been a recurring theme in conversations with at least a half-dozen of my friends in the past 2 weeks – maybe this is part of my role in life, to kick my friends into doing stuff). It was quite good. He lent me an Econ book which I shall read tomorrow morning, plus a business book which I will read… ah, probably tomorrow too. They won’t take long.
Finally left Harvard Square at 11:30pm, intermittently half-dozing on the train rides back out to the suburbs. When I’m tired, I’ll do this thing on airplanes and public transit where I stuff my hands into opposite sleeves (like crossing your arms, except inside your sleeves) and lean over onto the nearest stable surface – train wall, bus seat, airplane-boarding-tunnel-thing – and close my eyes while I wait for a moment and rest. I’m still awake, just… in suspend mode, I suppose. It’s usually only for a couple seconds at a time.
Walked 2 miles back from the train station, made it in at 1:30AM, and my feet hurt. Sitting here eating a late-night dinner and trying to rub them out and let them rest a little before I try to sleep, because they are sufficiently sore to be a distraction to unconsciousness, even in my current state of tiredness. I think I shall be nice to them tomorrow. And consider wearing shoes with arch supports next time I go dancing (it’s the combination of Friday dancing and tonight’s walk that are bothersome, I’m pretty sure).
I’m back in Boston for a couple days, and the view between Kendall and Charles/MGH on the Red Line is as gorgeous as it ever was; I’ve always loved going over the Longfellow bridge and looking at the Charles River and the city and the lights. I’m pretty sure it’s time to leave, though; I’m here, I’m with my friends, I’m happy, hanging out with them is awesome, I just landed back in town today for gosh sakes – and already I’m restless again. Oh well. There are worse things than wanderlust, and it does take you to some interesting places.
My feet are probably ok now. Going to bed.
Sunday, May 16th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
I’m starting to get better at the travel thing, and since I’m going to spend this summer on the road, I figured it was time to document my current travel setup, which consists of 1 backpack + 1 guitar. I may rearrange this to become 1 suitcase + 1 guitar, with the backpack comprising most of the interior of the suitcase, but we’ll see.
Back compartment:
- Laptop, laptop power cable
- Wireless keyboard and mouse
- Portable laptop stand
- Any papers I’m carrying for work or study
- Any books/software I’m working through, including music books
- Anti-RSI tools
Middle compartment:
- Running shoes
- Dancing shoes
- Clothes for the week, including 1 pair of either nice or non-nice pants (whichever one I’m not wearing), 1 light pair of running/pajama pants, and rolled-up t-shirts (and usually one shirt that’s not a t-shirt)
- Some sort of portable exercise thingy, when I get one – Greg recommended exercise bands, I’ll have to check into that.
Front top compartment:
- Toothbrush and toothpaste
- Travel comb
- Earbuds and ogg/mp3 player, microUSB connector for charging/file-transfer
- Thumbdrives for messing around with in general
Front bottom compartment:
- GPS, with dashboard mount and charger
- Phone charger
- RSI-prevention combination wrist-rest/wrist-brace gloves
- Headset/webcam (when I get one for my laptop – I don’t have one now)
On the Mel:
- Cell phone (front right pocket)
- Wallet (front left pocket)
- Notebook and pen (rear left pocket)
- Boarding pass and photo ID (rear right pocket)
- Keys (on carabiner hanging from belt)
- Jacket (either wearing it or tied around my waist)
- Comfortable shoes that don’t look awful
Guitar:
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 1 Comment »
I’m pretty sure I’ve linked to this before, but the poem “To be of use” by Marge Piercy describes a lot of what I like about my team at Red Hat. And… actually, many of my friends and colleagues, no matter where they’re from.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
I agree with Max: Greg’s going to kick ass at ISKME. Although I’ve only known (and looked up to) him for a short period of time compared with others in Fedora and Red Hat and beyond who’ve worked with Greg for many years, it’s been an honor to work with and learn from him – and I’m sure that, thanks to the collaborative-fu of the open education world (which both of us are still very much in), it’s not going to stop here.
Good luck, Greg. We’ll see you around.
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 | fedora, sugar | No Comments »
(Originally written on Tuesday night, but I thought I’d lost the draft. Found it again, now posting.)
Oh yeah. Birthday check-in on those projects…
- Operation: Education! has been in cross-training mode for the past few weeks – I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Red Hat’s education strategy and how my next 1-3 (probably 2) years there will roll nicely into grad school, but I also really need to start sending professors (including the one I hope will be my future advisor) my application drafts. However, I’m waiting to figure out stuff at Red Hat so I can start rolling that into those application drafts… after this weekend, I need to start working on them both in parallel again.
- Operation: Finances! has reached its endgame. I’ll be talking with my parents about the last two accounts when I go for my cousin’s wedding in California exactly one week from now. I sent them a relatively comprehensive overview of how I manage my accounts and keep tabs on things, how I plan on managing my 529 and my IRA, and… well, that seemed to do it. I also never want to read the tax code again. Ugh.
- Operation: Healthcare! has not quite started yet. I… still need to get a doctor in the Boston area. I will… do this when I get back to Boston. Intermittently doing the running thing, generally trying to bounce around instead of hyperfocusing on my computer… I haven’t found my rhythm for exercise yet, but I’m running around enough to suit me, particularly with the dancing. Still working on actually eating meals at sane times (or remembering to). This is easy when I am with other people; I forget about the food thing when I am by myself. This does not necessarily bode well for my move to Raleigh, since I’ll be living by myself instead of with my aunt and her family. Perhaps I shall set alarms on my phone to remind me of meals.
Andrew and I woke up at 3:30am on Tuesday so we could leave for the airport at 4am to catch my 6:55am flight. And then he drove to work. Andrew is crazy. I am so lucky to have such good friends.
I slogged through my work email backlog (almost done now!) on the plane and chaired meetings on IRC during my layovers. It worked quite well, actually. Had a phone call with my mom while walking through the airport and ended up sitting on the bench outside the car rental place, attempting to stay conscious enough to say things like “yes, mom” and “okay, mom” and “I understand, mom” and reassure her that I will watch for credit card fraud and always hide the GPS when I park the car and that I will wear something suitably feminine (NOT A DRESS) for my cousin’s wedding and that I will not be the one to pick my clothes for that (Andrew, my mother thinks that you have better fashion sense than I do – don’t worry, my aunt’s supposed to actually approve my outfit).
Onwards through backlog.
Saturday, May 15th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
It was a good meeting this morning, and a lovely lunch (Ole Time, of course) with Max and Greg. Greg now has a mug, vast quantities of food and beer were consumed (by other people – I tried a bit of mead and actually was not that hungry tonight) and after that I sat in my rental car and played guitar a bit, figured out the chords for “Dancing in the Dark,” and then discovered there was dancing, and went dancing. Mmm, blues.
Either the people there are very polite or I am getting better at dancing, because multiple leads sought me out multiple times – I only had to ask for the first few dances. I’m definitely plateauing, though – need to go to another workshop (I’ve only ever been to one) and figure out what to work on next. Fortunately, bix is coming up.
Dancing is becoming something that’s consistently good for making my brain quiet when I’m thinking too much. Even Mel (Greg’s wife) noticed that tonight when I was passing her notes at dinner (the room was noisy!) about whether she’d like a sous-chef at some point, because I would very much like to learn Southern cooking (and how to make collards edible).
The results:
[X] Yes! Minions are cool!
[ ] Huh?
Yay! I can haz learn things.
Friday, May 14th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
Today, I…
- Registered for OSCON – giving two talks now, one on “Junior Jobs and Bite-sized Bugs: Entry Points for New Contributors to Open Source” with Asheesh Laroia of OpenHatch, and another on “5 FOSS in Edu Projects that Changed the World” with my Red Hat teammate Karsten Wade. Mild terror at such high-profile speaking opportunities. Ridiculous amounts of planning and rehearsal. Rehearsal. Rehearsal. I can improv by myself, but with someone else? I don’t know.
- Found to my astonishment that I actually do understand our education strategy and… almost feel on top of things! Whoa!
- Went drinking with Max and Greg after Greg’s surprise farewell party. I may periodically need to visit Greg’s house and bribe bribe him with liquor in exchange for advice.
- Earned my first One American Dollar from a dare posed by Max. In other news, I’ve whiteboard-staked my claim to Greg’s desk.
- Got hit by the truck of reality again (I freakin’ hate that stupid truck).
- Discovered late-night restaurants in Raleigh. Well, one of them, anyway – they have good matzo ball soup.
- Got details together for applying for an apartment near the office for the fall; I’ll submit the application tomorrow. Plans are getting more and more solid every day. It feels good, yet sort of weird, to know that I’ll be living in one place for almost a whole year. By my standards, that’s extreme stability – even if I’m sure I’ll be traveling a lot during that time.
I don’t know what I’m doing Saturday morning. I don’t think I have anything to do, and I am guessing that everyone I know here (from work) will be busy. I think… I might just wander the city, and see if I can figure out the sorts of things I might do once I move down here in August. I really need to figure out how to make sure I don’t just work.
Thursday, May 13th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 1 Comment »
Managed to avoid cameras tonight! Was originally going to do a photo shoot with Andrew for swing dancing (one of his friends who does photography for the local paper needed one) but got there to find there was another follow who (1) danced better and (2) was wearing a dress. (I hate dresses. A lot.) This suited me mine, as I’m incredibly camera-shy – so I got to watch a photo shoot that included some dips that I probably wouldn’t be able to do.
Tomorrow I fly to Raleigh. I still have Marketing deliverables to work on – not yet done, but almost - a round of POSSEs to update, and my hands and feet are covered in the little itchy red welts of mosquito bites. Didn’t yet get through Inbox Zero, which was my hope today. Oh well.
It’s been a good weekend, and I’m thankful for hanging out with Andrew, though I did need to punch him a lot. Friends really do have an unlimited quantity of “Don’t Be Stupid” cards to play, and he dropped a whole stack of ‘em on my head this weekend (and continues to). And it’s been a good day. We had ice cream for dinner (chocolate chip cookie dough). I’m… really tired and incoherent now; I’ve definitely run out of conversation-fu for the day.
Which means I’m going to bed. Yay! Sleep! I might have a little bit of it at a regular hour now!
Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
This weekend was the most unplugged I’ve been for a long time. Andrew and I went dancing (lindy!) in Pensacola on Friday night – I drove on the way back since 4am is further past his bedtime than it is mine – crashed a bit, then went off camping at St. Joseph Peninsula. I must say I rather liked it.
First came the 2.5 mile hike (in the blazing Florida sun, through sand) to the campsite. We were the only ones there, and it was a primitive site, meaning the only thing there was a firepit (and two benches and a picnic table, which… we weren’t sure why they were there, but okay). The beach had fiddler crabs. A lot of them. And birds I didn’t recognize. And water – lots of water. And white sand. And was extremely shallow for a long, long ways – I was pretty hot after that hike so I took off my sneakers, rolled up the cuffs of my jeans, and sloshed out maybe 50, 60 feet before the water came more than a few inches above my ankles. Waded back and forth enjoying the water part of the beach while Andrew poked around in the sand (discovering yet more fiddler crabs). Went back, learned how to pitch a tent (easier than expected) and start a fire. (Harder, but fun. THE BURNINATING!)
Andrew found a large log, attempted to burn it in half, then gave up using it for fuel when that didn’t work. I sized up the piece of wood, gave it a tap, decided it was a prime candidate for brittle fracture. “Swing it against the tree like a baseball bat,” I said. He was skeptical, but did that, and it broke into lovely fuel-sized pieces. “You… you proved me wrong!” moaned Andrew in mock distress. He found another large log later and did the same thing, smashing it to pieces against the tree and occasionally bellowing things like “I AM ALL THAT IS MAN!” when performing various fire-related actions. I’m used to this by now – I mean, I studied engineering, my best friends for years have generally been guys, and I’m a tomboy myself – but it is still tremendously amusing.
Next was cooking. We did a couple kinds of cooking. There was a bag of freeze-dried “just add boiling water!” beef stew that we tried just for amusement purposes (it was okay). He also showed me how to put chopped food (beef, potatoes, carrots, etc) in foil packs, then put the foil packs into the fire – those turned out glorious. Eggs, sausage, and cheese scrambled into a casserole for breakfast, biscuit dough wrapped around sticks and toasted over the fire into doughboys. (Also, firestarting is fun. Also, a lot of random things are flammable!)
And s’mores, of course – the chocolate bars melted in the Florida heat, so we were squeezing them like toothpaste onto the graham crackers and getting marshmallow and chocolate everywhere. Andrew gave up due to Too Much Messiness after his first round of s’mores and just toasted marshmallows thereafter; I originally intended to soldier on with more s’mores but eventually decided to do the same. “Oh, did civilization get the better of you?” asked Andrew when he returned and saw me toasting marshmallows, the chocolate and graham crackers set off to the side – then looked at me and quickly added “…of course, I say this to the girl with wild hair who’s covered in ash and has chocolate all over her face and a mouth full of marshmallow.” I waved my sticky ash-covered-chocolate hands around into a thumbs-up and happily mumbled an affirmative. <lolcat>Civilization does not want!</lolcat>
Andrew and I talked until mosquitoes drove us inside his tent, then talked until he fell asleep, at which point I took the flashlight and wandered around a little longer (yay for stars!) until mosquitoes drove me inside my tent. I slept eventually, sometime around 3:30am. Partially because it was a good night for thinking, mostly because it’s hard to fall asleep when bugs keep biting you (I think 3:30am was around the time I finally killed them all). Next time we are bringing better insect repellent. Oy. But I like talking with Andrew – or I should say I appreciate talking with Andrew, because he knows me well (too well sometimes, despite being my polar opposite in many ways), and pushes me to think about things that are hard, but that’s what friends do. (And I hope I occasionally return the favor.) Yay for friends! Sometimes you have to punch them or throw sticks at them, and sometimes you threaten to stab them with their titanium camping sporks (okay, that one was more me being twitchy than Andrew being annoying), but they are good to have.
Beach sunset: awesome. Beach sunrise: super-awesome. Night sky in place with much less light pollution than I’m used to: HOLY COW. Mosquitoes: I understand you are a valuable part of our food chain, ecosystem, whatever – but if you bite me YOU WILL DIE. That having been said, that sunrise alone was worth it. I woke up early – way before Andrew did – and walked out to the end of the peninsula and watched the sun come up over the beach as the sky shifted from pink and orange to a pale blue, then a deeper one. I usually don’t see these things; I’m usually in front of my computer for the sunset and either working or sleeping through sunrises, and there tend to be buildings and whatnot in the way. So when I do get to see them, I appreciate them.
I then cooked my birthday noodles on the campstove. It’s a Chinese tradition – long noodles for long life. You also wear red, so I had my Red Hat t-shirt on, since I do not own any other red t-shirts. The noodles were pretty boring – normal wheat noodles boiled in broth made from chicken bouillon cubes – but reasonably tasty. There were supposed to be dumplings in them, but we think a raccoon ran off with the dumplings because we could not find them in the morning. Still tasty.
Oh yeah. I’m old now – not yet old enough to get rental cars for cheap, but… but… I’m 4! Got back to Panama City from the campingness to find a bunch of text messages that completely made my day. My friends are awesome. (And my brother, who apparently went camping this weekend too – it seems we both decided this was a skillset missing from our childhoods and decided independently to learn it, though he took some fancy campin’ class at Stanford as an elective once, thus prompting our father to complain that he wasn’t paying tuition so that his son “could learn how to poop in the woods” – ah well.)
Got back to Andrew’s place, unpacked, unwound, and now… I am totally crashing. Mattresses. Indoors. With no mosquitoes, and with running water. Nice in an entirely different way.
Working from Andrew’s apartment tomorrow while recovering from camping trip. Flying to Raleigh on Tuesday, and then… it is transition time. I am excited. Perhaps I will even find a place to live (starting in August) while I’m there. Woo!
Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
Before the weekend, I spent most of my non-working in Andrew’s apartment sitting on his couch and messing around with my guitar. I made the (obvious, now) discovery that sliding hand shapes up and down the guitar transposes the chords therein, recalled that these were called barre chords, and went about trying to come up with a few based on the hand shapes I know for playing the few songs I’ve gotten down so far. I haven’t checked it against lists of common barre chords yet, and I don’t know what chord I’m playing (C? G? F#?) on what part of the neck, and I don’t care yet – right now I am having fun, and learning how to learn things in Ways Other Than Reading Analytically.
While searching for a Sibelius-to-lilypond plugin for DJ (and our band, SuperCap), I found both a plugin (not tested; I don’t yet grok lilypond) and a series of guitar studies/etudes from circa 1900 by A. Eggers, currently being transcribed into lilypond. I am extremely tempted. However, I haven’t yet learned how to sightread sheet music on the guitar – I’ve been doing tabs, so while I can read music fluently and sightread on the piano very well, I’m not sure what notes are where for the guitar, nor how to figure out the fingering while sightreading when it isn’t tabs (which string do I play on, what finger do I use, etc). So perhaps that’s something more to work on; I should actually learn the chords and theory behind the songs I’m playing.
Not only have I learned (and memorized!) “Shoot the Moon” tabs on guitar – I finished that a little while ago – I’m almost through arranging it for fingerstyle guitar, which turns out to be my favorite style of playing. I’m very proud of myself, particularly since I figured it all out by ear. Now I need to learn some sort of tablature program so I can transcribe my first piece of guitar sheet music. Win! Also, I found this old post on special effects (not all that old) while searching for that reference. Mmm, stories and CG geekery.
But back on topic: I’m really liking the guitar. Portable instruments for TEH WINZ! I think my summer travels will be spent with two pieces of luggage: my little rolling yellow carry-on (in which I will place my backpack) and my guitar. At some point, I may consider making an acoustic guitar pickup because I like listening to blues and jazz guitar and it’s difficult to imitate the sound with just acoustic-fu. However, it may be better to get a contact pickup instead.
I don’t know anything about guitar equipment; I just have my guitar (which has a strap) and capo. I don’t even own a tuner or a music stand or a pick (the history and variety of picks is boggling, by the way). I think getting a pickup should be a reward towards some milestone I want to work towards – perhaps recording all the exercises from A Modern Method For Guitar, Volume 1. The “recording” part would be to learn how to record and also to keep myself accountable via some sort of deliverable. I considered lessons (online, since I’m traveling a lot) but concluded that (1) I’m still at the stage where the ability to be spontaneous and inconsistent is important to my motivation, and (2) whoa classes are expensive. So… yay, self-study!
Stuff I can play from memory (equivalent to the list of “stuff I can play in general” in order of learning them):
- Blackbird (Beatles)
- Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez)
- Geile Zeit (Juli)
- Green Eyes (Coldplay)
- In My Life (Beatles)
- Don’t Know Why (Norah Jones)
- Virginia Moon (Foo Fighters)
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day)
- Shoot The Moon (Norah Jones)
Some of these are more impressive than others; for instance, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” consists of 5 chords (and I can only play the chords, I haven’t done a fingerstyle arrangement yet), but the pull-offs and bends for “Diamonds and Rust” took a long time to nail, and I had to rearrange the fingering for “Shoot the Moon” a few times to convert between “I can imitate the guitar accompaniment to be played with a hypothetical nonexistent singer!” to “this is the only instrument going and now has to take the melody and bass lines too!” fingerstyle.
I’ve also given up on songs; I abandoned “Change the World” (Eric Clapton) partway through because it just doesn’t sound as cool without the full orchestral backing, and wimped out on “Stop This Train” (John Mayer) because I can’t grok the fingerpicking pattern for the life of me. I am surprised I haven’t learned any James Taylor songs yet – but I’m having trouble finding fingerstyle arrangements for his stuff (and I can’t sing, so the original arrangements don’t work so well). I still want to learn this particular “Wish You Were Here” fingerstyle arrangement. So nice. But ridiculous compared to my current skill level (see the tab? yeah).
Then again, I do enjoy me a bit of masochism, particularly when it comes to learning stuff, so… we shall see.
I think that I will always love the piano, and consider it my primary instrument still – but it’s just not pragmatic to study it seriously when I can’t regularly access a keyboard. When I got back to Boston a few weeks ago from over a month on the road
never having touched a piano in the meantime, I sat down and played
scales and they were horrendous. Fingering was off, slow, sloppy, everything. Even if I kept up my mental sharpness, the muscles in my fingers turn to mush without the regular conditioning, and I can’t make my hands play what my brain is thinking. Maybe when I go to grad school and can’t travel so much due to classes for a year, I’ll take it up again – I’ll have a stronger grounding in theory and improvisation by then due to Happy Fun Times With Guitar.
And so in the meantime – I think I’ve turned (slowly and slightly unexpectedly) into a guitar player. Not a good one yet, but… learning!
Sunday, May 9th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
The news is public now – Greg’s moving on. He’s going to be the CTO of IKSME, and he’s going to kick ass. (As usual.)
And my world has been turning upside down a little in the meantime. I know it’s not so much a “goodbye” as it is a “see you around” – after all, we’re both still going to work on open source in education – but still, when one of your mentors leaves… Greg is the one who started me on doing what I’m doing now, who even opened my eyes to community work existing in the first place, who showed me what it was that I was already doing, and that I had actual potential for it – that I was good, that I could be really good if I worked hard and learned more. It’s been a joy and an honor to work with Greg and learn from him; one of the reasons why I joined Red Hat (and wanted to join Red Hat so badly) was specifically so that I could do that. And now, a few days shy of a year from when I first joined CommArch (as an intern), Greg is leaving.
When Joe was driving me to the airport so I could catch my plane towards Andrew’s place in Florida, I described my sense of confusion, which has probably been pretty apparent to anyone who works with me and has noticed my general level of distraction for the past… two weeks? three? ish? Joe responded with “oh, it’s like MIB.” It took me a bit to realize he was talking about this clip from Men in Black (about 8 minutes in).
“I haven’t been training a partner. I’ve been training a replacement.”
I mean – okay, that isn’t strictly true. (And the rest of the clip doesn’t work as a parallel analogy.) And it’s going to be good; Max and Karsten and the rest of our extended team are amazing, and it is a privilege to work with them and learn from them as well – and I’m excited about the (more!) education stuff I will be taking on, and there are multiple people – very good people – filling these mighty big shoes. In a different way, but also in a good way. All of us are going to grow. It’ll be great! But still. Uncertainty is scary, change is hard – and even if you know you’re going to end up in a better place, the leap to get there is a little terrifying, since you don’t know quite where you are going to land – just that it’s going to be better.
In other (related) news, I’m moving to Raleigh in August, once POSSE travel takes a breather. Working from headquarters. (Likely more accurately, “flying out of RDU instead of BOS.”)
I fly to Raleigh next week right before he leaves, to say goodbye and probably to talk a lot (I am sure beer will be involved at some point) and do Transition Stuff, whatever that means. It is my first experience with this sort of thing happening, so I am confused and don’t know what’s going to go on. But it will be ok – we’ll play a lot by ear, I think – and I will learn a lot, and I’m sure it will all be great. (Also, I get to play on Red Hat’s soccer team on Wednesday night! I’m looking forward to playing with the team regularly when I move to Raleigh in the fall.)
In other news, I spent the day working and the evening hanging out with Andrew, having reached his apartment at approximately 1am this morning. After a spectacular seafood dinner, we bought birthday noodle supplies; Chinese tradition on your birthday is to wear red and to eat long noodles (long noodles == long life) – with the additional constraint that everything must be campstove-cookable since we’ll be in the woods on my birthday, as I’m getting an Intro Camping 101 lesson for my 24th. (It’s something he’s promised he would teach me “someday” for… at least 4 years. Someday is now.)
Then we went walking on the beach at Piers Park; he had flip-flops and shorts and was quickly barefoot and standing in the waves, I took much longer to laboriously pull off my sneakers and socks and roll up my jeans (now drying off from being partially soaked with saltwater). Scrawled math equations in the sand. (Okay, that part was me. I also turned his sand-writing into syntactically valid Python code. Shortly thereafter, he tried to push me into the water – though he would have caught me if I’d actually fallen.)
The waves were warm and the stars were out, and we danced lindy on the beach, no music, just skidding in the sand. I hadn’t seen or danced with Andrew since August, which was before I had my “whoa, dancing is awesome!” tipping point, and he was surprised at how much better I’d become in the meantime; in the past 9 months, I’ve somehow gone from following rote steps to actually connecting and following and flowing – it’s hard to describe. We got more camping stuff from Walmart, then went back to his place where I played guitar as he fixed us both vanilla coke and run (which… I was skeptical, but it is really good).
Andrew is one of my best friends; we’ve known each other since we were both sophomores in college – apparently we were both intimidated by each other freshman year, but this changed rapidly once we actually started to work on projects together. We disagree on many things; he’s Mr. Conservative Traditionalist in many ways, and I’m recklessly optimistic and fiercely independent even when it means disregarding tradition (and both of us stand in amusing contrast to Mark Penner’s radical revolutionary mindset), but somehow it works. It’s been a real blessing to have him as a friend; in some ways, it’s been like having an older brother. And it is particularly good to be here the weekend I have to think through a lot of things. So thank you, Andrew.
I may not blog again until Monday or so – tomorrow after work we’re getting into the car and going dancing in Pensacola (basically all night), then crashing when we get back to his place at ridiculous-o’-clock AM; once we wake up from that, we’re going camping for my birthday, where I will learn such things as (1) how to sleep outside, (2) how to cook birthday noodles over a campstove, and (3) how to survive over 48 hours without electronic contact. I fully expect to stagger back in Monday morning going ahhhhh a mattress I would like one now – but then again, I’m used to sleeping on futons and couches and floors and whatnot, so… how hard can the ground be, anyway?
We will find out!
Thursday, May 6th, 2010 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 2 Comments »