I can justify it, I can, but when it comes right down to it, I wanted one. And mama has worked hard for her money this month and earned a reward. So I did some research - both iPod and phone were reaching the end of their lives, I got better reception with Lady's 3G at the apartment, and the web surfing... Oh, the web surfing! So yesterday after a long day at the office I went by the store "just to look."
And now I'm typing this blog entry from an iPhone. The kicker was that I got to keep my Boston number, that would have been a deal-breaker. But I'm connected and I love it already. App recommendations, anyone?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
what do you want to hear first?
Bad news? My hairdryer broke yesterday.
Good news! The off switch broke, so if it's plugged in it's running.
Bad news? I can't reach the bathroom plug above the vanity light.
Good news? Stepping up and down from the toilet for the plug has to be good for me ass.
Good news! The off switch broke, so if it's plugged in it's running.
Bad news? I can't reach the bathroom plug above the vanity light.
Good news? Stepping up and down from the toilet for the plug has to be good for me ass.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wanted: a happy hour.
(note: written Thursday after work via blackberry)
At this moment my day feels like a comedy of errors. I spent all day yesterday at my client's office instead of mine - it was a productive day, but there was no time to breathe. Today promised to be more of the same, so I took a deep breath on the way to work, and fortified myself with a Firehook creation. Except that there was a figurative fire this morning, and my client and cohort raced to deal with it while I focused on the task we had intended for today. Most of my day was spent on my laptop in my client's office with my iPod plugged in as I struggled to ignore the five other people coming, going, and gabbing.
At 230pm I claimed a sanity break and headed over to my office in order to fight a losing battle with our IT department for an email stuck in the company filters. "But I NEED it!," actually left my mouth. I barely contained the foot stamp that wanted to accompany that statement.
My hour up, and a few losing innings of Boston baseball later, I was back at the client site, fighting with file transfers, and watching the clock. Bill and Anna were going to meet me at a new bar I'd spotted on the modified commute, and there were happy hour sushi specials and fruity drinks waiting for me. "I'm leaving at 530pm," I told myself, without much conviction, "or 545pm at the latest.". That was better. That came out with more force. At 545pm, one last print-out came from the printer. "You can spare 5 more minutes, can't you? We'll all feel super virtuous if we finish this," my client said with a hopeful expression. I agreed, doing my very best to sound gracious, despite knowing we would neither be merely 5 minutes, nor finish tonight*. Sure enough, at 6pm I pulled out the blackberry, and checked the next train arrival. "Ok," I said, "now I HAVE to go." I put on my coat and headed for the door - feeling somewhat guilty for leaving my co-worker behind, but I was done. I hit the down button for the elevator, and thought to myself, "I can make it across the street and down into the station in 8 minutes..."
The elevator came, I entered, let the doors close, and pushed the button for the first floor. The button light flashed, and went out; nothing else happened. I frowned, and pushed the button again. The light flashed and went out. I took a deep breath and pushed the 'door open' button. The same thing happened. "Ok, don't panic," I thought as I pushed every single button. Each one flashed in turn before going dark, and still no motion in the elevator. Now here's the thing, I have an irrational fear of being trapped in the elevator. Not in the Speed, some crazy guy's set a bomb and we have to hope Keanu Reeves comes to save the day in the worst movie I own that I can inexplicably watch over and over, kind of fear. An elevator just seems such a helpless sort of place to get trapped. No cell service, no one instantly on the horn to get things moving. I mean, if your metro train gets stuck underground, people know from the get-go. Also, there are people in the train with you. I'm very good at being calmer than the people around me in stressful situations, but you leave me alone, and I go from regular day to freak-out in no time. As evidenced by the fact that all of this went through my head in the 60 seconds between the last button pushed and the elevator kicking into motion. Of course, when you're in an elevator that's not responding to any buttons, but suddenly starts moving - not exactly comforting! Turns out, a woman had called the elevator from the floor below mine. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and I burst out, almost shouting, "Don't get on this elevator!" She was taken aback, but followed me to the stairs, and I started jogging down the stairs on an ankle that gave a little twinge as I hit the bottom flight of stairs. Of course, without thinking, I'd headed for the set of stairs on the opposite side of the building than I'm used to, and came out in a bare, white hallway, thinking, "I just want out of the building!" I was almost running by this point. The woman following me had to give me directions to the lobby, and I didn't even stop to say thanks, I just headed for the door. I jogged across the street, called my client while walking the block to the Metro station to warn him off the elevators, and headed down the escalator to the sound of a train pulling out of the station. I hit the platform, saw 6 minutes on the board for the next train, flexed my ankle, and let out a quiet, but intense "f___!"
I caught a bus straight out of the Metro and made it to happy hour a mere 10 minutes late, where the drinks were pretty great, the crowd was out of control (and overly gelled), and the decision was made that Anna and I were more Monday-night kind of people. So we let the cucumber mojitos do their things and headed to a lower-key locale for the rest of the night.
*They did finish Thursday night, but not until 7pm.
At this moment my day feels like a comedy of errors. I spent all day yesterday at my client's office instead of mine - it was a productive day, but there was no time to breathe. Today promised to be more of the same, so I took a deep breath on the way to work, and fortified myself with a Firehook creation. Except that there was a figurative fire this morning, and my client and cohort raced to deal with it while I focused on the task we had intended for today. Most of my day was spent on my laptop in my client's office with my iPod plugged in as I struggled to ignore the five other people coming, going, and gabbing.
At 230pm I claimed a sanity break and headed over to my office in order to fight a losing battle with our IT department for an email stuck in the company filters. "But I NEED it!," actually left my mouth. I barely contained the foot stamp that wanted to accompany that statement.
My hour up, and a few losing innings of Boston baseball later, I was back at the client site, fighting with file transfers, and watching the clock. Bill and Anna were going to meet me at a new bar I'd spotted on the modified commute, and there were happy hour sushi specials and fruity drinks waiting for me. "I'm leaving at 530pm," I told myself, without much conviction, "or 545pm at the latest.". That was better. That came out with more force. At 545pm, one last print-out came from the printer. "You can spare 5 more minutes, can't you? We'll all feel super virtuous if we finish this," my client said with a hopeful expression. I agreed, doing my very best to sound gracious, despite knowing we would neither be merely 5 minutes, nor finish tonight*. Sure enough, at 6pm I pulled out the blackberry, and checked the next train arrival. "Ok," I said, "now I HAVE to go." I put on my coat and headed for the door - feeling somewhat guilty for leaving my co-worker behind, but I was done. I hit the down button for the elevator, and thought to myself, "I can make it across the street and down into the station in 8 minutes..."
The elevator came, I entered, let the doors close, and pushed the button for the first floor. The button light flashed, and went out; nothing else happened. I frowned, and pushed the button again. The light flashed and went out. I took a deep breath and pushed the 'door open' button. The same thing happened. "Ok, don't panic," I thought as I pushed every single button. Each one flashed in turn before going dark, and still no motion in the elevator. Now here's the thing, I have an irrational fear of being trapped in the elevator. Not in the Speed, some crazy guy's set a bomb and we have to hope Keanu Reeves comes to save the day in the worst movie I own that I can inexplicably watch over and over, kind of fear. An elevator just seems such a helpless sort of place to get trapped. No cell service, no one instantly on the horn to get things moving. I mean, if your metro train gets stuck underground, people know from the get-go. Also, there are people in the train with you. I'm very good at being calmer than the people around me in stressful situations, but you leave me alone, and I go from regular day to freak-out in no time. As evidenced by the fact that all of this went through my head in the 60 seconds between the last button pushed and the elevator kicking into motion. Of course, when you're in an elevator that's not responding to any buttons, but suddenly starts moving - not exactly comforting! Turns out, a woman had called the elevator from the floor below mine. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and I burst out, almost shouting, "Don't get on this elevator!" She was taken aback, but followed me to the stairs, and I started jogging down the stairs on an ankle that gave a little twinge as I hit the bottom flight of stairs. Of course, without thinking, I'd headed for the set of stairs on the opposite side of the building than I'm used to, and came out in a bare, white hallway, thinking, "I just want out of the building!" I was almost running by this point. The woman following me had to give me directions to the lobby, and I didn't even stop to say thanks, I just headed for the door. I jogged across the street, called my client while walking the block to the Metro station to warn him off the elevators, and headed down the escalator to the sound of a train pulling out of the station. I hit the platform, saw 6 minutes on the board for the next train, flexed my ankle, and let out a quiet, but intense "f___!"
I caught a bus straight out of the Metro and made it to happy hour a mere 10 minutes late, where the drinks were pretty great, the crowd was out of control (and overly gelled), and the decision was made that Anna and I were more Monday-night kind of people. So we let the cucumber mojitos do their things and headed to a lower-key locale for the rest of the night.
*They did finish Thursday night, but not until 7pm.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Oh, Shiny!
Monday night I get a text message: This gorilla is in labor.
Backstory: As I zipped up my suitcase in NYC in February, getting ready to head to the train station to Casey Jones my way up to Boston where I was staying with Eric and Annie, my cell phone gave the DING! of an incoming text message. It said, "this gorilla is in labor," and the number was Annie's. It was a month early for her, but that's not unheard of, and I had seen the photographic evidence that said this kid was on the fast-track. But my very first thought? "Sh!t, where am I going to crash??" So I called Annie, who said she hadn't sent me a text message. There was a pause as she pushed a couple of buttons on her phone, followed by, "Eric! When did you learn to text message?" Needless to say, it was a false alarm.
Monday night, though, was the real deal. I texted good wishes, sent word south to Em, and sat back to wait. OK, I went to bed, but whatever. Tuesday, no word from Boston, an excited g-chat with Em, but we figured we'd hear when there was news. Wednesday, no word. I g-chatted with Em on the Metro ride to the opera, and then left a message with Eric - what news? He left a message while I was ensconced in the restaurant, but Em talked to him, too - the baby had been born the night before (!) and all was well. Except for the fact that he still didn't have a name. Details, people, and it's not like they didn't have anything to call him - what's wrong with Egg Tooth? I have a tiny cell phone pic from Annie with that monniker.
Today I got an email, his name is Andrew, and this is what he looks like:
How ridiculously beautiful is he? He already looks like he's thinking about something that will lead to trouble. Now, his initials? A.D.D., so we're going to hope that doesn't say anything about his attention span, but that it instead ADDs up to some mathematical genius - he gets it from him father. Momola, however, thinks that he spells attention deficit for his parents - why else would they forget to name him for 24 hours? Therefore, in keeping with a current family joke, Momola is referring to little Andrew as "Shiny" to mark his ability to distract.
I'm planning my visit.
Backstory: As I zipped up my suitcase in NYC in February, getting ready to head to the train station to Casey Jones my way up to Boston where I was staying with Eric and Annie, my cell phone gave the DING! of an incoming text message. It said, "this gorilla is in labor," and the number was Annie's. It was a month early for her, but that's not unheard of, and I had seen the photographic evidence that said this kid was on the fast-track. But my very first thought? "Sh!t, where am I going to crash??" So I called Annie, who said she hadn't sent me a text message. There was a pause as she pushed a couple of buttons on her phone, followed by, "Eric! When did you learn to text message?" Needless to say, it was a false alarm.
Monday night, though, was the real deal. I texted good wishes, sent word south to Em, and sat back to wait. OK, I went to bed, but whatever. Tuesday, no word from Boston, an excited g-chat with Em, but we figured we'd hear when there was news. Wednesday, no word. I g-chatted with Em on the Metro ride to the opera, and then left a message with Eric - what news? He left a message while I was ensconced in the restaurant, but Em talked to him, too - the baby had been born the night before (!) and all was well. Except for the fact that he still didn't have a name. Details, people, and it's not like they didn't have anything to call him - what's wrong with Egg Tooth? I have a tiny cell phone pic from Annie with that monniker.
Today I got an email, his name is Andrew, and this is what he looks like:
How ridiculously beautiful is he? He already looks like he's thinking about something that will lead to trouble. Now, his initials? A.D.D., so we're going to hope that doesn't say anything about his attention span, but that it instead ADDs up to some mathematical genius - he gets it from him father. Momola, however, thinks that he spells attention deficit for his parents - why else would they forget to name him for 24 hours? Therefore, in keeping with a current family joke, Momola is referring to little Andrew as "Shiny" to mark his ability to distract.I'm planning my visit.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
delinquint and distracted
I was chastized (by proxy) for not blogging more lately. The thing is, I've been working enough that nothing really story worthy has happened to me, with one exception, but it's not my story to tell. When not working I confess to being distracted by Facebook and Twitter, but 140 characters isn't astrowahoo, and I've got a few half-composed blog posts in my head. Many revolve around one topic, and I wasn't really ready to discuss it here, I wanted to work it out a bit on my own and in more controlled settings. I was pretty sure that life changing decisions granted you a two-year grace period before the next came along. But what the hell, let's lay it out there.
I'm thinking about going back to grad school. Not BU. Not astronomy. I'm about to start talking to a professor my client has lined up about getting a degree in applied mathematics. So now you can all tell me how crazy I am and I'll keep you posted on the famous J----- family decision matrix.
Also, I'll try to post more often.
I'm thinking about going back to grad school. Not BU. Not astronomy. I'm about to start talking to a professor my client has lined up about getting a degree in applied mathematics. So now you can all tell me how crazy I am and I'll keep you posted on the famous J----- family decision matrix.
Also, I'll try to post more often.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)