A beautiful night

Today after work, I went for a drink with a few coworkers to the Border Cafe.  Two margaritas and a few hours later, we decided to get dinner at Casablanca.  I had a delicious stuffed squash with spinach, which was more than I would normally be comfortable spending on dinner.  Luckily, I'm fairly sure the evening was comped due to the visit of our fine clients, with whom we were eating.  BK told some spectacular stories of his time in the Middle East and South America.  Casablanca saw me with two Stellas.  

Needless to say, the walk home was beautiful.

Around noon today, it started snowing, and has been doing so ever since.  At this point of the night, we're up to about a foot.  As I walked down Mass Ave, every so often I would run for a moment to gain some speed, then stop, plant my feet, and slide through the snow.  It was great.  Someone wrote "Hi!" in the snow on a mini van's window.  I wrote "Yo!" back.  I saw some people making a snake shape in the snow - I nearly stopped and asked if they wanted any help.  

It was a great walk.  It was snowing the whole way.  I called my brother at the beginning of the walk, but one of his kids was crying, so he said he'd call back.  I missed the call, what with my drunkenness, sliding, and general obliviousness, and I called him back when I had about ten minutes left to my walk, and we talked as I walked home.  

Apparently a building burned - to the ground - in New Haven.  It housed a bar that we went two once or twice.  They had a mechanical bull.  He said he walked by, but couldn't tell if the bull was still there.  I wonder what they'll build in its place.  

For lunch H, A and I (Hai!) went to Veggie Planet.  I had the special pizza - apples, brie, spinach, and honey glaze.  It was pretty good.   After work, we played a round of Ricochet Robots.  DR and I tied for first place.  At the end of the game, the last two tiles were for robots that were 1 move away from their target spaces.  Unheard of!

All in all, not a bad day.  I actually felt like a professional at work today.

I'm trying to be assertive, I'm making plans

Crazy great progress at work today.  It's like I know what I'm doing.  I got the whole data model for our project up and running.  In all, I think it took two days to customize.  Now I can move onto something else!  Meanwhile, I'm still lunchlighting (kind of like moonlighting, but over some pizza) in the product group and as our de-facto webmaster.  I formatted some pages with HTML today (woohoo.), and nearly had to Photoshop some stuff.  

Lunch was a Safe and Sound from Veggie Planet.  I just wasn't feeling up to an Unsafe, and that's the way it is.  It's the first time I've had a Safe and Sound since the first time I went there with GM and his wife.  I did, however, return to having coffee in the morning today, and I celebrated by getting my usual Small Coffee And A Lemon Scone at Dado.  C (or is your name spelled with a K?) seemed happy to see me - she's such a sweet girl.  Always a pleasure.  Before lunch, I walked out of the office with LG and took a stroll around Harvard Square.  He went to the bank at Cambridge Savings, and I walked around the Garage trying to figure out what to have for lunch.  I eventually circled all the way around, went up Brattle until it hit Church, walked back by the office, and ended up at VP.  

I stayed somewhat late at the office again.  6:30 PM or so.  I got there at 9:00 AM, and took the very short lunch described above.  At the end, it was just DM and I left in the office.  This is all, I think, in lead up to me leaving at 4:30 or so tomorrow to catch our flight to D.C.  

As I write this, my LiveJournal account has expired.  Literally.  They sent me an e-mail saying as much.  I guess it's that time.  Somehow I find it hard to write there.  There are lots of reasons why that might be, but I won't speculate, because I really can't tell.  

It's funny, because normally I write so that others will read it.  I don't know of anyone I've told about this blog, yet here I am.  Maybe I'm changing some.  Maybe my priorities have changed.  Maybe I'm just hoping someone will find it, or maybe I intend to pass a link around once I'm sure I'm going to keep writing here.  

On my way home tonight, I stopped at Whole Paycheck for some ingredients.  Daddy needed an omelet, and boy did he get one.  Dinner was a three egg omelet with broccoli, red onion, mushrooms, feta cheese, a bit of garlic, and a generous dash of Tony.  Accented with some buttered baguette and a Corona (with slice of lime!), it was delicious.  Next time, I think, I'll use a white or yellow onion.  Red just isn't quite right.   

At some point this evening, I should consider packing a few days of things.  Honestly, I could probably do that tomorrow morning (or after work) and be fine.  

Caught a cab, ran up a tab at 7th and Flower

Today I woke up late, and just didn't feel like getting out of bed.  My alarm was set for 6:30 AM.  The appointed time rolled around, the alarm did its thing, and I did mine, pushing "Accept" and rolling over in bed.  I accepted, just not what it thought.  At 8:05 AM or so, I sat up, stretched, and started getting ready.  I made it in by 9:30 AM or so, which is impressive (in one way or another) since I live a five minute T ride from the office.  

I continued working on my new Services project.  Am I supposed to talk about what it is?  I can't remember.  A lack of specification helps me remain vaguely anonymous, I suppose.  I think it's going to be a good time.  I'll be working on a much smaller team, which I'm not exactly looking forward to, but it should be a nice quick project.  

For lunch, M, J and I ordered Chinese from Yenching, the former and I went and picked it up.  Apparently they know him really well there; they brought us tea while we were waiting for our food (we got there early).   I got Spicy Tofu, which didn't taste spicy to me.  It was made with silken tofu, which never seems to hold flavor as well as the non-silken, more curd-like variety.  It was good anyway, so I'm pleased.  This seems to happen to me often these days - things that places claim are "spicy" really aren't so to my palate.  It seems I'm becoming immune.

After lunch, I decided to go get my headphones from home.  R sent me a link to a SeeqPod playlist she made full of Christmas songs.  Awesome.  I had to listen.  At 1:28 PM I left the office, determined to see how quickly I could get back home, get what I needed, and get back to the office.  Around 1:45 PM I got home, walked in the front door of the building (someone left it open), and... realized I didn't have my keys.  I left them in my bag, on my desk, in the office.  Swearing, laughing, and calling myself an idiot, I got back on the T and got back to the office by 1:55 PM or so.  Determined, at this point, to get what I wanted, I stayed a moment to make sure I had no meetings, and then ran back out of the office with my keys and got on the T again.  I finally made it back to the office at 2:26 PM.  Apparently, on an average trip, it takes me 58 minutes to make a round trip, provided I leave my keys behind once.

I stayed in the office until 6:45 PM or so, to make up for my mid-day errand.  I found out I have 13 vacation days left, which is absurd.  That means that, at the end of this week, I could leave the office and not return until 2008.  I get to carry over five of them until next year, which I'll do just so I don't leave my project completely in a lurch for the next three weeks (they'll only be in one for the two after next week).

At the gym today, they had reversed the mens and womens locker rooms.  Just for today.  "... What?" you say.  That's what I said at least.   Turns out that they were having problems with the sauna/showers in the womens' locker room, and it being that the vast majority of repair-persons are men, they deemed it prudent to make a switch for the day.  The women have nicer lockers, and an oddly shaped locker room (it's not rectangular, but sorta curved on one end).  Wacky.

Just open fire when you hit the shore

Today I was reassigned out of our Product group and back into Services. "Back into" is really an odd description of the move, as I was never really there to begin with. There's a possibility that I may stay in Product - I don't know, as both the head of the Product group and the head of the Services group are out of the office - and was only notified of this by the lead architect on the project, as he had something he needed me to do. Odd.

Lunch was a slice of pizza from Pinocchio's. Good, as always, though it was chilly enough outside that it was cold by the time I got it back to the office. I didn't really feel like eating much more than that. After work, we played a round of Ricochet Robots, which I just barely won. Having a brain that's good at spacial relationships doesn't do you much good when you're playing against a bunch of people who're built the same way, perhaps even more acutely.

Dinner? Why, the three C's, of course. Cheese, crackers, and carrots. What more do you need? I wasn't particularly hungry anyway. Ever since I was sick, I've been having big meals to make up for it. (I think there were several days where all I had was some liquid and a piece of bread.)

I listened to Tom Waits all morning just because it was that sort of day. Mellow, and sort of messed up. On the way home, I listened to most of an album of Explosions in the Sky. I couldn't figure out what was wrong for the longest time - then I realized that my footfalls weren't matching up with the music at all. I was wearing boots, and so every time I put my foot down it sounded like a bass drum in my ears. When I finally got the timing down the album improved dramatically as a snowy, cold soundtrack to the walk home.

Wanderlust

So when I went to school, I chose a practical career. Granted, it's one I enjoy.

There's some things that go along with that, though. Ten hour work days, commutes, being tied down, steady income, thankfulness for eventless weekends, mumbling in the kitchen at 7:30 pm trying to figure out what to throw together to eat, alarm clocks, getting ready for work in the morning, trying to find time to get some errands done, having errands and calling them such, buying clothes at least in part so that you'll be presentable at your company, having a company and describing yourself as working at such, using the term coworkers and forgetting about the social meaning of a bunch of people laboring together for the man.

I'm twenty four years old.

If I were to quit this job and all the things mentioned in that paragraph, leave this place and disappear for two years, when I came back I'd be twenty six. I'd still be a baby. This, really, has me wondering what I ought to do with those two years, since I seem to have them. A few options:

1. Go back to school for more computer science and software engineering.
2. Go back to music school.
3. Go back to art school.
4. Go volunteer somewhere.
5. Go get a job somewhere I don't really speak the language (Japan being a prime candidate, seeing as I'm at least already learning the language).

There are problems. I don't have a portfolio or anything of any sort for #2 and #3. For the others, well, so maybe those are the main problems. They're also the most fun sounding. All five, honestly, sound great. I enjoy what I'm up to, but I often wish that I had more control over what I do with my time. School would be good for that.

It's a matter of feeling like I'm accomplishing something in my time off. This works best if I have more time off, or am in a position where I can't help but learn something when at rest (re: Nihon).

I feel sort of like something has to give, soon.