Category: Family

June 12, 2007 /

On Sunday I was supposed to meet Caitlan here so she could drop some things off before she, Kristi and Melissa went touring in London. The original estimate was that she would show up at 1:00, give or take an hour. Kevan and Holly left to go to Kew Gardens at 2 and Caitlan still hadn’t made it. By 4:00 I figured they’d just decided to lug things around rather than spend time getting here and back, so I decided to try air-drying all my laundry simultaneously. In my small upstairs room, this means festooning every available protuberance (coathooks, shelf corners, light fixtures, etc) with my underpants.

By 6:00, Catriona was home and I went out running. Circa 6:50 I returned and was greeted by Kevan. “Oh,” he said, “your sister and her friends came by. They’re upstairs.”

My life is a sitcom, second in a series.

March 11, 2007 /

I’ve been here for a week! This morning Holly made baby pancakes (which she called something much nicer that I can’t remember) and we ate them on the back porch, and the rest of the house failed to vote me out. I’m glad. This is a pretty great house!

I’ve been to Battersea Park repeatedly, and to the Science and Natural History Museums, and on a Tube Walk (pictures), and today I tried to go to a scheduled pickup Frisbee game at Hyde Park but it turned out not to exist. But still! I navigated to Hyde Park and back all by myself! I also managed to get to Victoria Station and back, twice, to pick up and drop off Caitlan when she visited.

Keen-eyed readers of this blog will note that normally I don’t go outside that much in a month, and will probably guess further that I am deliberately overcompensating to fight culture shock / homesickness / loneliness et cetera. Good guess, keen readers. But it’s working! And given my only other experience outside the country, I think overcompensation is entirely in order.

London is awfully big, but awfully neat too.

Update 03.07.2007 1243 hrs: Pikelets! They were called pikelets.

March 7, 2007 /

Holy. If you’re on the Interweb, you’ve heard about the Wikipedia guy who said he was a professor and deleted everybody’s stuff and nobody could argue with him because he was an editor? But then, no, he was a liar and a college dropout and a tool? Right.

I went to school with that guy.

I wonder why that wasn’t in the alumni magazine. KENTUCKY.

Also: WIKIPEDIA.

January 24, 2007 /

Remember my list of potential destinations? The least likely of them has become the best choice, and in fact the one I’m making: on March 3rd I’m flying to London, to live with Holly, Kevan and Catriona until Roz arrives in August to take their spare room for fall term. I’ve worked out the tax-related bits and I have my boss’s approval to keep working for Indelible on Greenwich time. I have purchased plane tickets and an iPod. This trajectory does not reverse.

The whole thing fell into place with a suspicious ease, as if we had assembled a Lego castle merely by shaking the bucket, but I am not looking askance. Five and a half years ago I was writing here about how I had to turn down my semester abroad to keep my Comp Sci degree; now that degree is making it possible to go after all, with people I like, and to hang out with my mom and sister and Maria there. Real life seems to have a plot.

I’m going to London!

January 3, 2007 /

Yesterday Maria and I looked at the best apartment in the world, and today she applied for the lease; assuming she gets it, we’ll be moving in mid-February, and I will probably just be leaving my stuff in boxes in anticipation of leaving Kentucky. My very, very tentative plans for the move are to buy my brother’s truck for the transportation involved and drive to wherever I’m going sometime between February and April.

For those of you paying attention: yes, this means I’m going to get my driver’s license.

There really isn’t a better time in my life to do this. Everything I need to do my job fits in a backpack, and I can work from any coffee shop in the country. All that’s missing is a destination.

Excluding New York City and the South in general, where should I move? I want to live in a metropolitan area with a healthy tech sector. Also, truck or no truck, I want somewhere with good public transportation. Chicago (sorry, Flora) and St. Louis don’t really interest me; all the places I’ve traditionally talked about are coastal, but it’s not like I surf. Said places:

  • Boston: I understand there is neat stuff here, and also they put all the cars underground.
    • Downside: I’ve never been there and I might dislike it for the same reasons I dislike New York (cold, dark, smells bad, cost of living).

  • Providence: I’ve been there and I liked it a lot.
    • Downside: Not really a rising-star tech city, and rumor has it the sun sets for six months at a time. Iffy public transit (but highly walkable).

  • San Francisco Bay Area: Been there and liked it too. Kind of the standard to which I compare all other potential destinations.
    • Downside: I would be a twentysomething male web developer living in the SF Bay Area. Also, insane rent.

  • Seattle: High scores in tech and coffee-shop availability.
    • Downside: See SF Bay Area.

  • Portland: Apparently the place where kids move these days.
    • Downside: See Boston.

  • Hilo or Honolulu: Ian might be in Hilo in August, plus, y’know, Hawaii.
    • Downside: This is a stupid idea.

  • Greensboro or Raleigh-Durham: The model of a rising tech area; driving distance from Jon and Amanda.
    • Downside: Jon and Amanda might be moving, and more importantly, this defeats the whole point of getting out of the South.

  • San Diego: I’ve been there and I liked it; solid tech score; not wet, dark or smelly; people can crash my place for Comic Con.
    • Downside: Poor public transit. Would probably be considered outcast for weird skin patterns that emerge when I tan.

  • London: I have beautiful illusions of this place.
    • Downside: This isn’t actually a possibility. I’m pretty sure I cannot legally work there, or afford to live there under a weak dollar. Also I’m enjoying those illusions and would dislike having them crushed. Consider all this repeated for Sydney and Toronto.

The pachyderm in the pantry is that except for the unlikely choices (North Carolina, London, possibly Hawaii), I have no friends in any of these places, and I am spectacularly bad at meeting new people. All of my current friends were obtained through academic programs with enforced social contact or Internet. So, friends on Internet: where should I move?

Update 1038 hrs: Maria got the apartment! Who wants to give me driving lessons?

Thanks to everybody who has commented or emailed with advice and information. You guys are the best Internet ever!

November 8, 2006 /

This is mostly for my own future reference, but the apples I found labelled “Mountaineer” at Whole Foods are just slightly superior to Fujis in every way. A little more tart and crisper, with thicker skin, less wax and a better texture. They asymptotically approach the quality of apples from my grandmother’s orchard, which is probably the best any commercial apple is going to do. Unfortunately, they seem to be available only in season, so it looks like I’ll be back to eating Fujis (which are, to be fair, far superior to any other cultivar) in a month.

Data point: since I started eating roughly four to five apples a week–something like a year and a half ago–I have not been sick. Magic? Or coincidence?