B and Plan C are down in Cali, seeing the inlaws for a week. Plan C is now nine (!) months old, which everyone agreed was about the minimum you'd want for plane travel. It sounds like she did really well with the airport and flight yesterday, although I received reports that she was pretty cranky on the drive from SFO to Marin afterward.
As for me? This is weird, you guys. I normally have about 20 minutes to myself per day, from 6:45 to 7:10am, as I'm crunching down my Cheerios and slurping the first cup of coffee. This apartment seems huge with just me (and Pesto) in it. After getting all choked up leaving the airport yesterday, I spent my day rebuilding my computer, then watched an enjoyably crappy action movie with K. Then I spent a couple of hours shooting guys in the head on my computer. Then I went to sleep.
I did introduce one near interior design element: an ugly black network cable connecting my PC to the router in the kitchen. I have a feeling it is not going to stay in place when B returns.
1.30.2011
1.26.2011
I Was Observed
I had my observation at school today. If it went well, I might get to teach further classes there. If it didn't, I won't. I was feeling okay leading up to it, but now I feel sort of like I got hit by a bus.
B and Plan C leave for California in three days. It's going to be super, super weird for me being away from them.
Our internet connection sucks, so I'm stealing K's through the wall at the moment. Thanks, K!
My bunny's breath smells like bunny food.
B and Plan C leave for California in three days. It's going to be super, super weird for me being away from them.
Our internet connection sucks, so I'm stealing K's through the wall at the moment. Thanks, K!
My bunny's breath smells like bunny food.
1.16.2011
There's No Sleepin' To Be Had
Here's how I remember it worked:
-Childhood into early adolescence: sleep just wasn't a big deal. It was just part of the biological situation.
-Adolescence: sleep became a bigger deal, especially because it became very painful to wake up early, which is pretty stupid because the whole inherited-farm-schedule-nonsense of American schools means you have a lot of very tired, bleary kids showing up at 8:00am. Most of the time during the day you feel alright, though.
- Late adolescence into early 20s: worst part for sleep in a way, because it becomes agonizing to wake up early. The schedule here would normally be something like midnight or 1am to 10am, if possible. You can still soldier through if you have a job that makes you get up at 5:30am (!), but you get real mean and lift weights all the time and drink a lot of beer (a LOT of beer.)
- Late 20s / early 30s: you start getting old. This seems to consist of the ability to wake up when you have to without too much trouble, but the thing is, you feel tired all the time. Morning, afternoon, evening, night, it doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter if you've been sleeping like a champ for weeks. You. Will. Feel. Tired.
- Throw a baby in the mix: well, I sure hope you waited until you were in your late 20s or early 30s, because I know I would have thrown myself out a window if I was dealing with this at 22.
Last night I was in bed by about 11, then up before midnight to convince Plan C to go back to sleep. Then I was up at about 5:50am because she was up and ready to baby party (baby partying is a lot of rolling around the floor with toys making noises.) It's the weekend, so B gets to stay in bed. Then after two hours, Plan C was tired and cranky again, so I put her back to sleep.
Now it's 8:30 in the morning and I have been awake for 2.5 hours and no one else is up. It's weird.
-Childhood into early adolescence: sleep just wasn't a big deal. It was just part of the biological situation.
-Adolescence: sleep became a bigger deal, especially because it became very painful to wake up early, which is pretty stupid because the whole inherited-farm-schedule-nonsense of American schools means you have a lot of very tired, bleary kids showing up at 8:00am. Most of the time during the day you feel alright, though.
- Late adolescence into early 20s: worst part for sleep in a way, because it becomes agonizing to wake up early. The schedule here would normally be something like midnight or 1am to 10am, if possible. You can still soldier through if you have a job that makes you get up at 5:30am (!), but you get real mean and lift weights all the time and drink a lot of beer (a LOT of beer.)
- Late 20s / early 30s: you start getting old. This seems to consist of the ability to wake up when you have to without too much trouble, but the thing is, you feel tired all the time. Morning, afternoon, evening, night, it doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter if you've been sleeping like a champ for weeks. You. Will. Feel. Tired.
- Throw a baby in the mix: well, I sure hope you waited until you were in your late 20s or early 30s, because I know I would have thrown myself out a window if I was dealing with this at 22.
Last night I was in bed by about 11, then up before midnight to convince Plan C to go back to sleep. Then I was up at about 5:50am because she was up and ready to baby party (baby partying is a lot of rolling around the floor with toys making noises.) It's the weekend, so B gets to stay in bed. Then after two hours, Plan C was tired and cranky again, so I put her back to sleep.
Now it's 8:30 in the morning and I have been awake for 2.5 hours and no one else is up. It's weird.
1.10.2011
Update All Over the Place
- It turns out that Full Sail makes a tasty lager (called LTD), which doesn't really taste like a lager to me, but is still good! So, thanks for trying, Full Sail!
- I really enjoyed the movie and associated soundtrack Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. As things like that do, it vaguely made me miss playing in bands. In particular, it made me mourn the nonexistence of some kind of generic middle-of-the-road catchy indie garage pop/rock.
- You know what's pretty sweet? Getting Cisco networking equipment to authenticate against a Linux-based radius server. That's what.
- I am in love with the PCC shuttle. It's free and it picks me up and drops me off (along with a couple of dozen other people) 10 minutes from my apartment. There's even a downtown line that plops me down close to the software company when I do my schizo teaching / IT guy days.
- The baby sleeps in her crib now. The transition was tough but nowhere near as tough as we (or any of the don't-sleep-with-your-baby naysayers)* thought it would be.
- The baby has been antisocial lately. She is no longer instantly charmed by loud groups of people. This makes it harder to take her to Motley Crue concerts.
1.03.2011
Civilization
It's still very dark (and cold!) out right now - 6:58am, exactly 30 minutes after I got up. My first class starts in a few hours. About 60% of my lectures are written(-ish) but I still have a lot to do. I'm especially concerned about running out of material for my ancient world class. There is only so much I have to say about the Egyptians at the moment.
At the risk of repeating myself, I'm pretty annoyed at having dug myself back into the position I was in the whole time I was a graduate student: perpetual guilt tied to perpetual work. As a graduate student, by definition, if you aren't working, you're slacking. Every minute of every day should, in some sick sense, be devoted to working on articles or languages or review. For most people, this results in a nauseating cycle of procrastination and desperation that only lets up when they've finally reached their mental limit and declare to everyone within earshot that they just don't give a shit anymore and they stomp off to cry themselves to sleep. I was happy to leave that behind.
Yet, somehow, here I am again: desperately battling the clock to get enough prepped while still working part-time in IT. Twice a week this term I will be jetting downtown after I teach in the morning to put in a long afternoon at the software company, along with all day on Fridays. B now has to do all of the heavy lifting with Plan C while she (Plan C) is teething, transitioning to the crib, and otherwise going through growing pains.
Lest you think this is all idle complaint, let me restate my intentions for the edification of the interwebs: never again will I do this kind of crap. I will turn things down rather than oversubscribe. We moved here, I abandoned all hope of a professorship at a four-year, because we wanted to live and be happy (-er) in Portland, not so that I could become a new version of Captain McGrumpyPants. ForSOOTH!
Yours,
-Captain McGrumpyPants
At the risk of repeating myself, I'm pretty annoyed at having dug myself back into the position I was in the whole time I was a graduate student: perpetual guilt tied to perpetual work. As a graduate student, by definition, if you aren't working, you're slacking. Every minute of every day should, in some sick sense, be devoted to working on articles or languages or review. For most people, this results in a nauseating cycle of procrastination and desperation that only lets up when they've finally reached their mental limit and declare to everyone within earshot that they just don't give a shit anymore and they stomp off to cry themselves to sleep. I was happy to leave that behind.
Yet, somehow, here I am again: desperately battling the clock to get enough prepped while still working part-time in IT. Twice a week this term I will be jetting downtown after I teach in the morning to put in a long afternoon at the software company, along with all day on Fridays. B now has to do all of the heavy lifting with Plan C while she (Plan C) is teething, transitioning to the crib, and otherwise going through growing pains.
Lest you think this is all idle complaint, let me restate my intentions for the edification of the interwebs: never again will I do this kind of crap. I will turn things down rather than oversubscribe. We moved here, I abandoned all hope of a professorship at a four-year, because we wanted to live and be happy (-er) in Portland, not so that I could become a new version of Captain McGrumpyPants. ForSOOTH!
Yours,
-Captain McGrumpyPants
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