Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:23:07 -0800November's flown by. I suppose it usually does -- somewhere in mid-Q4, when teams are declaring production freezes, releases are getting pushed back (or, foolhardily, accelerated), the normal inhale-exhale of time speeds up, and the x-axis of time seems to just compress. What was linear spikes upwards or even exponentiates headlong into and through December, whose melee I can only guess at (and which, I'll add, I'm not looking forward to). And so, immediately after arriving back in this country from Reykjavik and Dublin, after a wedding, an election for the ages (crammed into Mike's top-of-the-hill apartment, from which vantage we could see celebratory fireworks exploding over the Bay, Jaime & I actually wept at both the Democratic victory (voting presidentially only since 2000, I've never before won) and moreover the huge importance of the image of the Obamas onstage in Chicago: not only this new leaf, but this sea change, this vindication), I dove back into what I knew was waiting for me at work: going "always-on," during which time my pager and my cell phone cause minor heart attacks as they vibrate and beep menacingly. I frantically pull up graphs and monitors, begin to populate my mental cache of the state of the known world (according to Google), and learn how to fly the biggest planeful of users I (or anyone else) will probably ever get my hands on. I dream in unit-test frameworks. I even awoke after a lovely night out on Saturday -- La Bohème at the opera, Jonny-drinks at Absinthe, catching up with an old friend -- I woke up restless, thinking someone had deleted a core Python library, and nothing worked. It feels weird this week (I'm taking a small break from the deathmarch to oncall) to not bring both beepy devices with me to make espresso in the afternoons, to not keep them in my pocket so I can feel them buzz above the noisy grinder. Yoga falls by the wayside, a victim to work and, until recently, choir rehearsals and concerts. We drink champagne on the rooftops, singing SATB Barber to the streets of SoMa and then passionate Distler in a parking garage. It's hard to play Sheepshead (well, and win) when you're simultaneously mucking with critical bits of infrastructure from your laptop, balanced on the table with the cards. At least I'm not going anywhere for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I tried that last year, too -- making my own vegan spread and not going to the Midwest -- but then Ben's wedding had me flying out to The Town That Vegetables Forgot for the next three days, and so I ate poorly that weekend anyhow. This time, I've been cooking since Sunday with more prep to come tonight (you'll find me sautéeing mushrooms with one hand and drinking zin with the other, oven going full-blast, listening to the BBC on the radio in my wool socks and sampling the stuffing). I'm still on the hook for the Annual Midwestern Goyische Schlepp next month, but for now, this 4-day weekend promises to be, if not entirely sunny, rest- and foodful. ... and then on Monday, it's back on. |