Adventures – Page 12 – My Truant Pen

It’s late and I’m tired

It’s late and I’m tired. So you might think I’d go to bed. Ha! You and your logic! The thing is, I miss you guys. I’ve been super-uper-duper busy, even by my standards. As usual, it’s a mix of work (it’s amazing what happens when you have a job that really needs your brains!), kids, things you have to do as a grownup (like paying the bills and doing the laundry), church, and fun activities that are more important than you are (sorry!).

Things that I have neglected to tell you about include the really amazing experience of participating in an ordination. It was wonderful, profound and meaningful. I’d love to share it with you. Maybe someday, but not tonight. Still, you’re not 100% out of luck since I posted some pictures here. (Note to the unfamiliar: not all ordinations feature cakes with replica chocolate hats as a central feature. Only the really cool ones do that.)

Then there was a week of worky worky worky. Friday after work we drove up to the Middle Of Nowhere Maine, took a left, and went to a little resort for the night and then went whitewater river rafting on the Dead River in the morning. Then we drove back. It was completely awesome and nuts and fun. There was a dinner in which we went from the standard “What’s the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve ever seen” (Mine is Coreolanus) to “Which Zombie movies are the best and why.” That, my friends, is how you know you’re having a good dinner. Sadly, there is no photographic evidence any of this took place, so I might have had an extensive and enjoyable hallucination.

Now it’s back to worky worky worky again. Or, more appropriately, sleepy sleepy sleepy.

I’m verbing my noun

It’s been quite a week for me and I’m near incoherent tired. SOME silly people wouldn’t blog when they can’t get noun-verb agreement, but I’m far more cavalier than that! We took a four day weekend and went Camping! In New Hampshire! With a 4 year old and 18 month old! Now that most of the scars have faded, it was a lot of fun. Thane has a death-wish, of course, which seemed most evident in the water. He loves it when he has a bath and lays his head back in the water. The same move in a foot of lake water, on the other hand, has predictable effects — at least to the grownup mind. He got pretty bored at the campsite. I realized, as we packed up, that we brought umpteen toys for Grey, but hardly anything for Thane. No wonder he attempted to drink the dishwater.

Anyway, so Thursday was ALL PACKING and Friday through Sunday were ALL CAMPING and Monday was ALL DOING CHORES.

Normally, work would seem vacation-like in comparison, but this week we flew in a bunch of colleagues from several different continents (bonus French accents!) and spent extensive time in windowless conference rooms discussing the relative merits of SAP and Siebel. And a good time as had by all. But it involved like all my time and brainpower. I mean, I didn’t even get to read my blogs! Or my advice columns! THE HORROR! This is probably the longest I’ve gone without updating in, er, a long time.

So instead of a nice and detailed summary of camping with three maniacs and some meeting notes, I’ll simply leave you with a portfolio of pictures:

Parks, backyards & camping

Constantinople, not Istanbul

Today I bought tickets for Istanbul.

In August, my husband and I will have been married ten (10) years. That seems momentous somehow. How can I possibly be old enough to not only be married, but to have been married a DECADE. So although this isn’t the time of life of the greatest free cashflow (hello daycare!) sometime last summer I decided that we would go.

In our decade of marriage, we’ve really had three kinds of travel vacations: family, beach and exotic. Family speaks for itself. That’s our backpacking, trips to Victoria, hanging out in Atlanta, etc. That usually happens once or twice a year, although perhaps not this year. Beach? We’ve made three of those. We went twice to Cozumel, Mexico — once before we had kids and once when I was pregnant with Grey. We really like snorkeling. When I was pregnant with Thane, we went to Belize to snorkel there, which would’ve been more fun if I hadn’t been wrestling with a herniated disk.

Three times, we’ve done “exotic” travel. When Grey was about 6 months old, we went to London because I’d never been and because (I think really) I wanted to prove to myself that my life of adventure wasn’t over because I’d procreated. Grey threw up about 6 times a day every day we were there. We have not traveled internationally with kids since. For our honeymoon, we went to Greece. We spent two? Three days in Athens? Then another blurry 5 or so on the island of Aegina, discovering that we liked snorkeling together and could be entirely content with a schedule that had us both reading two books a day. Then, in 2004, we went on a trip that was the best week of my life. We went to Vienna for a week. Ah! What can be said! There were museums and weapons and friends and Hungarian Goulash and alpine meadows and fortuitous pfeiffer-steak and it was just the best week I’ve ever had. We took a train through the alps to Vienna, because I had longed since my sophomore year of college to gaze up at the glimmering tongues of flame of the Pentecost, writ in gold, on the mozaic-strewn St. Marks, where Giovanni Gabrieli wrote music to fly over the heads of worshippers. And we did. We stood in St. Marks and heard music and saw mosaics and it was amazing.

We have figured out, with this scope for comparison, those three exotic and three beach vacations, that the journeys of the mind (and museum) are more worthwhile. Beach vacations are fun. It’s enjoyable to read and relax and snorkel. But it’s like the difference between candy and a meal… the nourishment of the other travel is so much greater. It may not give quite the quick hit, but it’s worth it.

On reflection, the destination for this adventurous 10th anniversary trip was decided by a pair of books, the Sarantine Mosaic series by Guy Gavriel Kay. I read them in Victoria last summer. In college I’d taken a course in Early Christian and Byzantine Art, and amazingly we’d studied Byzantium as part of it. I’d loved it. I drank it in. I dragged my new husband to every church I could find in Athens, including quite a few that were by no definition Byzantine. These two books really touched on an authentic feeling of what it was to be Byzantium (although it’s a fictional setting, it’s clearly Byzantium. I highly recommend the series. Keep your eyes open for Procopius!) And I wanted to dig deeper, and drink more fully from that history.

So it came together — a journey to a place of great history and depth. Byzantium. Constantinople. I want to stand in Hagia Sophia, great wisdom, and see what she has become and imagine what she once was. My husband has placed a vote for The Sinking Palace. We’ll be staying at a hotel that overlooks the Bosporos. I’ll likely bring along the Iliad, and perhaps we’ll make a day trip to Troy.

Can we catch lightening in a bottle? Can anything ever be as amazing as Vienna was? I don’t know, but it seems like there’s no better place to find out than Constantine’s New Rome.

Celebrations of a jet-lagged mother

I still owe you some summaries of my trip to Europe. It was really a neat experience. Basically, we’d spent about 10 hours in a windowless conference room discussing projects. This does not merit blogging upon, except to touch on the fact I must be doing ok at the new job since they gave me a second high profile, big-deal project to manage. Not code, manage. Since that’s the direction I wanted to go, I’m trying very hard not to go into actual-coding withdrawal. Anyway, after 10 or so hours of complete senescence, we’d rise in order to drive to that night’s restaurant. And then we’d spend three or four hours eating. OH MY GOODNESS. I actually did gain 3 pounds in a week — a combination of lack of activity and 3 to 4 hour French dinners. I had beef, duck, white asparagus & rabbit. Yum!!!

On our way home, we flew about 50 miles north of the volcano. I watched the ash plume and the southward streamers heading to disrupt other planes. It was a quite a sight to watch.

When I got home, 100% of the human males were running temperatures. Thane scored triple medication during the week: otic eardrops with antibiotics, oral antibiotics & an antifungal cream for a diaper rash. Poor kid. Grey had gotten sent home with a 101 degree fever, which would’ve been worse if my husband hadn’t come home with a fever feeling terrible. So deeply jetlagged as I was, I was still in the best shape. Yesterday, we mostly vegged. There was lots of tv. And Wii. And computer games. Because really? There are times when it is appropriate to do your best lump-impression, and a rainy, stormy day when the entire family is sick counts as a good lump-day.

But today, against my more realistic expectations, everyone seemed fine. Great even! Amazing the impact that two naps can have on a body. So we went to church. It was a really awesome service. The kids are just an overwhelming force in the sanctuary. We were doing this Genesis creation play we’ve done before. There are about 20 elements of the play that the kids wave over their heads. We ran out.

Then after the service I got to chat with a new family who was visiting the church. It warms the cockles of the heart to see the congregation grow and thrive, and to watch those joyful and energetic young faces! I’d also like to say on the record that we don’t pay our preschool Sunday School teachers nearly enough. (Side note: I’ve discovered that our young adults are usually surprised and shocked to learn that the position of Sunday School teacher is an unpaid one.)

After service, I figured the kids would start wilting, but they were doing quite well, actually. My heart had been longing to go to the Arnold Arboretum for their annual lilac festival that happens on Sunday of Mother’s day. I had thought yesterday it was out of the question, but at the last minute on a whim (as you could tell by my inappropriate garb) we decided to go. We had a ball. There were the Morris dancers (I love Morris dancers). The sun was bright, but it was cool and windy. There was ice cream. There was wandering. We wandered through scads of fragrant lilacs. Grey rolled down a grassy hill about 10 times. You might hear rumors that I rolled down — in my Sunday dress. Mere rumors, I assure you. I’m far to dignified and well-socialized for such tomfoolery.

Of course, the remainder of the day was dinner and cleaning and grocery shopping and antibiotic dosing, etc. But you know what? I’ll take it. My Grey is so super snuggly and affectionate. I love this age, and I love who he is. He is so loving towards me, and the rest of the family. Today he made up a song about how much he loved Thane. And he gives me such great kisses and hugs — I wish I could bottle them against future adolescent dignity.

And now the Red Sox are actually winning a game against the Yankees (wonder of wonders!) and we have tickets for tomorrow (look for us in the Bleachers) and life is just good.

Postcard from the Alsatians

I’m sitting right now in the middle of a town, Obernai, in the Alsatians on the French/German border. The first written reference to the town dates back to the 9th Century. How much before that it was inhabited is anyone’s guess. The hotel I’m in, Hotel Gouvernuer was, as far as my French holds, the headquarters for the General of Louis the XIV. It’s a sixteenth century building, built into the town wall, with wattle and daub, and dark walnut staircase with boards 18 inches wide. LOVE!

Tonight for dinner we went to Strasbourg, and in an ancient restaurant, the Maison Kammerzell, with truly historical murals on the wall and leaded glass intermixed with stained crests in the windows. (We sat right under this mural). I had escargot, duck confit and a dessert I could not pronounce (as well as a glass each of Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris). On expense. With the rest of my team. We then came back through the dark and misty agrarian countryside, to the cobblestone streets.

So yeah, I spent the day in a 10 hour meeting in a conference room that could be anywhere in the world. And yes, it so happens I have to present at (eep!) 8 am tomorrow morning. And trust me, we’re getting a lot done and much of it is done much better for our connection and proximity.

But man, I’m not complaining. I’m having a fantastic time. My only regret is that I can’t roam as I will, am WAY underslept, and wish my husband was here to enjoy it with me. History, food, companionship and lilacs in bloom in France? These are a few of my favorite things….

Amsterdam

So here I am in Amsterdam, completely jetlagged. I’m spending two days in The Netherlands before flying to Strasburg and driving to my final destination in France. The recommendation I had from those experienced in this particular trip was to catch what sleep I could on the plane over, and then NOT SLEEP as soon as I could get into my hotel room. I’ll go to sleep tonight and then I’ll be more or less on the correct time zone.

So a coworker and I, fresh off the plane, wandered Amsterdam today. Friday was apparently the Queen’s birthday, the proper celebration whereof requires massive amounts of beer. The remainder of the weekend was then dedicated to the pursuit of cleaning up all the mess inspired by the beer. So we wended our way past canals full of boats down picturesque cobblestone streets, gazing at all the interesting shops that were closed because it was 9 am on a Sunday morning. A cold rain is falling — a rain for which I and my wardrobe came completely unprepared.

We pondered going to one of the big museums, but a line of umbrellas stretching around the block, very much like the line of Nannies in Mary Poppins, combined with cold blowing drizzle and extreme jetlag, dissuaded us.

Of course, everything’s going to heck in Boston without me. Without my calming presence, the water lines go all kerfluey and break and the entire city of Boston and environs is under a boil water order (yes, that does include my family). My eldest son has contracted a truly nasty cough, which apparently kept him and everyone else us last night, running hot showers (with untreated water…) and applying Vicks. I’d feel more sympathetic, but even with the disruption in sleep they’ve gotten far more than I have. Then again, I figure I have to stay up another 3 hours or so… they’re just starting their day.

It is an odd feeling, to have woken in the morning on continent. To have played frisbee on the town square and eaten a snack at your own table, and in the space of the same waking day — the same change of clothes — to be so very far away in a land where everyone rides bikes and canals are more common than left turn lights in Boston.

I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to keep updated. Sadly, although my meetings will be happening far from their usual locales, it may have less of the local flavor than you might wish. That’s a short way of saying that on Wednesday, we’re going bowling.

But my room has a lovely view of a canal, with house boats and ducks. From where I sit, you can see a turgid, modern windmill on the horizon. The wind whips past my window, but it’s warm in here and I feel infinitely better after a post-flight shower. Tomorrow, we meet with our colleagues here, and then fly that hour South to begin the serious rounds of meetings. And I have slides to Powerpoint before I sleep.

The gym

I am not a gym rat. I have never had a gym membership. I’ve generally been sort of unsure how they work, except they seem to involve getting up early in the morning and having a wardrobe of specialized clothes for looking good while sweating.

Well, it turns out my new job has an onsite gym. That all my colleagues are regulars at. That costs a grand total of $25/month of which $150/year is reimbursable through my health plan. That has everything you might possibly need, including cable for day Red Sox game. On contemplation, this seemed pretty hard to forgo. So in early April I bit the bullet, wrote a check, and decided to try to figure it all out.

I’d like to take a moment to thank my junior high and high school gym teachers. At the time, I thought it was the height of unfairness that SCHOOL where I was supposed to be GOOD at stuff was making me do things that I didn’t know how to do and was bad at. I had to learn whole new skills like lifting weights, running, stretching, and even doing pushups. Despite my early despair, this education made doing sports seem plausible. And sports taught me how to be in shape and negotiate fitness, in addition to how to work hard at things I was terrible at in order to attain hard-won mediocrity. I went to state in basketball and track (through no merit of my own), and have varsity letters in things other than Knowledge Bowl and Pep Band. I haven’t done an organized sport since my sophomore year of high school, but I have confidence in my ability to do physical things that require sneakers and sports bras. This was not inevitable.

An adult gym seems very different. I mean, there’s the whole subtext of locker rooms. The thing about locker rooms is that you are naked in them. Not metaphorically. So there’s my boss’s boss’s boss, and there’s someone who works in the cafeteria and we’re all getting our clothes on for Zumba class. It’s very equalizing in an “I hope I don’t make a complete idiot of myself” kind of way. There are fitness friendships that spring up far across corporate divisions. And then there’s the issue of unspoken etiquette, which I’m sure I don’t know all about. Does one attempt to hide under the insufficient towels, or is one unafraid as one walks out of the shower? There are brushes on the counter in front of the mirror… do only idiots use them? Are they just for show? Or is it ok for me to use them? And these are my coworkers — people whose opinion is important — so it’s important I not commit huge faux pas.

I suspect I might be oversensitive, since the jr. high/high school locker rooms was the place where “gross” “freaky” and all the other terror-terms of my youth were defined — where being “normal” and “like everyone else” was the height of my desire. Perhaps the payroll coordinator is more forgiving of foibles than was the norm in 7th grade.

Also, among my areas of ignorance is hair dryers. I’ve just never used them, never mastered the art of them. I only own a hair dryer for putting up that plastic sheeting across the windows. A hair dryer is a must if you’re using a corporate gym, because really? Sopping wet hair does not say “professional”. So in addition to Force, Java, an entirely new business, and powerpoint for everything I have to master hair dryer skills? It seems too much!

The good news is that I’m really not in all that bad a shape. I did 25 minutes on an elliptical without trouble. I ran a mile and a half on the treadmill. (I do love those day games!) I’m up to 5 visits. I think this is going to work for me. But I find it like a strange new world with all these rules and customs I need to carefully wend my way through.

What about you? Are you comfortable doing vigorous exercise? Do you have a gym membership? Is it like a second home to you, or a foreign country?

Vignettes

Grey seems to be doing very well in his new preschool. We’re hearing about his friends and the things he’s doing. He keeps careful tabs on what we’re packing for his lunch, and offers guidance on acceptable offering. He’s bringing home art projects. One recent one was about the tooth fairy. The question was “What does the tooth fairy do with the teeth she collects?” His answer was that “She cuts the teeth and wishes come out.” Neat! He’s also bringing home these awesome drawings with these elaborate back stories. He’s reading more and more (although I think that’s unrelated to preschool). He reads a lot more than I realize, sometimes, and can read entire books. He picks up lots and lots of written words. So he seems like he’s doing very well.

We also get these sheets on Thane’s progress. All I can say is man, that kid can eat. There’s an update on how much of his lunch he ate, and the answer is almost always nearly all of it. It’s also kind of funny how surprised and unused we are to him talking. The surgery was now about three weeks ago, so you’d think we would’ve adjusted, but he keeps being verbal in ways we don’t expect. It’s like if Maggie from the Simpsons broke out in a discourse with Lisa. For example, at dinner tonight Grey turned to him and asked “So Thane, how was your day at daycare?” (Aside: I love that Grey has internalized that dinner is sharing time — sometimes he’ll ask his father and I how our days were, too.) So far, so sweet. But then Thane replies, “Good!” Yoinks! Or Thane will come out with his new favorite word, “No.” He loves to do something he knows he’s not allowed to do, while saying “No” as though that somehow makes it ok? Unfortunately, the new daycare does NOT accommodate his need for a morning nap, which I really don’t understand. He’s 16 months old, as of this weekend. Plenty of 16 month olds haven’t dropped their morning nap yet, right? He plays hard, he eats hard, he sleeps hard. Actually, as he gets older, I think he looks more and more like my father – right down to the large feet. (He wears a shoe size only two sizes smaller than Grey does, and Grey is hardly small-footed. My father wears a size 13 wide.)

My first week at work was absolutely as good as a first week could be. I really like my coworkers. I’ve met oodles of people. I’m very well supported. I’ve gotten my first task, and I’m at the panic stage of learning a new language. It’s structured very differently than web technologies, and I haven’t figured out the structure yet. My colleagues come from very different backgrounds (Lotus Notes, for example) and can’t help me figure out the analogies because they don’t know where I’m coming from. So I’m doing the time-honored technique of reading everything I can find, staring at code samples, and waiting for it all to gel. It will. I know it will, it just requires (amazingly) hard work, open-mindedness, patience and sleep.

The storm last night was amazing. It would’ve been some blizzard if it had come down as snow. It came down as driving rain. The noise was astounding. It sounded like we were sleeping at the base of a waterfall. I have never heard such noise! The house, however, did not shake. I feel very secure in its old bones. On the other hand, we lost some of the gutters — all the way up to the roof line. They just need to be put back into place. Also, the trim on our windows is really quite rotted. Does anyone know what one does about that, other than hire a contractor to come replace all the trim in our windows? (Ah, yes. I suspect that’s the real answer.)

I’m loving the Olympics. I’ve tried to record the nightly programs, and they’re a lot of fun. I’m sad to see them come to a close. However, as the rains fall and the snow melts it comes to mind that not far away is spring training. Truck day has come and gone. Pitchers and catchers have reported. Position players are in Ft. Meyers. In fact, according to a quick trip to their site, the first Spring Training game is next week! Ah, winter. You do not ACTUALLY last forever. You just feel like it! For some reason, this winter has seemed less oppressive to me than usual. Perhaps it’s all the change in my life, or getting enough sleep for a week there.

Interim report

I think I really like the new company. I have yet to meet a colleague I don’t genuinely like, and I swear I met the entire third floor this morning. (Just about the only people I haven’t met are the guys next door — and I’ll get there!) As of about 3:30 this afternoon, I even got a real-o programming assignment in the brand new language/environment that I’ll be working in. I believe I read my panic and inability to figure anything out correctly as complete fatigue. This afternoon and tomorrow will be the worst of the ignorance, and then I’ll start climbing the hill towards competence.

It’s funny how much I find I know about things that aren’t actually useful. There was a discussion about contracts and pricing and I was practically jumping up and down because THAT is an issue that I UNDERSTAND.

Anyway, hopefully once I’m using less of my processing power for making friends, remembering names and learning new languages, I’ll have some left over for you!

The beginning of the end of summer

We went camping again this weekend — the last of our planned three day weekends in New Hampshire. It just so happened that this long-planned weekend coincided with Hurricane Bill. It was rather, uh, wet. And damp. And muddy. Happily, our tent has the floor plan of the Taj Mahal (although it did seem to shrink as the weekend went on), my husband is a tarp-affixing, rope-tying ninja, and we contrived to have fun despite the thunder and lightening.

Some friends were camping at the same time and they brought us fresh-baked cookies. Such things had not been dreampt of in my philosophy before.

Other notes on camping:

We played “Roll Through the Ages” again which is a great two player game. Sadly, it was likely the last time I’ll get to play it since it was roughly my 6th consecutive win and I won by a huge margin. This doesn’t bode well for talking my husband into it again.

We managed to sneak some lake time in between thunderstorms. On the plus side, nearly no time was wasted applying sunscreen!

Thane developed amazingly during the weekend. When we returned, Unka Matt got a quizzical look on his face and asked, “Has he grown up since Thursday?”. Yes, Unka Matt, he had.

That last one probably deserves more than a bullet point. The last day, after we’d broken camp and gotten everything in the car, we went for a final swim in some of the best weather we’d had to date. As we reluctantly pulled ourselves out of the warm waters, I held Thane’s arms to have him walk out – on a whim. It was too deep to let him crawl, so I kept him on his feet. And we walked. And during that walk, something turned on for him – the realization that there was this new tranportation method available to him and that this was something he could do. He desires it. Thane has not yet taken his first unsupported steps, but he has stood for significant periods of time. He’s cruising. He’s on the verge. It was astonishing to see that moment of transition between a crawler and one who aspires to walk.

Unlike previous camping trips, I didn’t take any pictures this time. I’m not sure why not – I just didn’t. The only pictures taken were on our way home, at the Miss Wakefield Diner. As I took this picture, my loving husband said, “This is why I wanted to be a father. I remember now.”