Thursday, May 30, 2013

Home Alone 2

The J-Dog is in Chicago (well, she's not there yet, but she's on the way) for work until tomorrow night, and the Sambone and myself are left alone to hold down the fort.  What is on the agenda?  Perhaps a trip to Robert E. Lee State Park, a trip to the bank, maybe T. Joe's,  Anything to keep the boy out of the house and non-whiny, really.  Tonight I'll be dining on chicken breasts and scalloped potatoes made from a box. 

11 days of work left at the Noble.  Woo-Hoo!  Can't wait.  Yesterday I gave my official letter of resignation to my boss. 

I'm about midway through 1Q84 and still enjoying it.  For awhile I was reading so much at work that it was giving me headaches, so I've had to slow my pace.  Now I'm only reading when I take shits. 

Speaking of taking shits, I think Sam is doing exactly that right now.  Also, he (I'm assuming it was him) pooped on the floor yesterday during his "naked time," but Jeannie didn't find it until a few hours later.  Ha!  The downside of having a heavily-patterned living room rug:  you don't find poops until several hours later.  They never tell you that sort of thing in the store....

Thursday, May 23, 2013

16 days

16 days left at the Nobes.  Still weird.  Still exciting. 

I should really just stp now and go to bed.  I don't really have anything to write about, and I have to work tomorrow morning. 

Today I was outside pushing Sam in his swing, and one of our neighbors asked me if I was on vacation.  I've had a feeling that our neighbors wonder what in the hell our worklife situations are in our house, because I'm always home during the day at weird times, and then Jeannie's home during the day other times, and it all probably looks weird from the outside.  So I explained that Jeannie goes into work during the day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and that I go into work in the evenings on those days, and that I worked during the day on other days.  I also explained that I would be switching jobs at the end of the summer and that I would have a bunch of time off this summer. 

Sometimes when I get off work at night and I'm walking to my car, I imagine our little dude asleep in his bed and it makes me feel like everything is right with the world.

I should go poo and then go to bed.


Monday, May 20, 2013

18 days

18 days left of working at the Nobes.  Weird, weird feeling.  I have worked at the Nobes pretty much the entire time I've been in Baltimore, minus a month at the beginning.  Another weird thing is that I'm feeling tremendously excited to start working for ChesShakes.  Like, so excited that I'm not really even thinking very much about the delicious, paid, two-and-a-half months where I don't have to work at all, I'm just thinking about when those delicious, paid, two-and-a-half months are over and I get to dive into this unknown job for which I am probably totally unprepared and unqualified, but which I get the chance to do anyway.  Some things that frighten me about the job:

1.  The skills that Lesley and Ian think I have (designing, building, organizing, etc) are actually skills possessed by my wife and not by me.  My guess is that there is probably some truth to this fear, but not as much truth as my head is currently assigning to it.

2.  The fact that I've never really had a job that required me to put a lot of myself into it.  I've always been happy working not-very-hard jobs for not-very-much money.  And then going home and focusing on the stuff that I really enjoy, i.e.,  LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK.  And this job has the potential to be a job that I will actually enjoy, and WANT to put a lot of myself into, and WANT to put a lot of time and effort into.  Which I think could have the potential to be tough for the Jeanners, and maybe tough for Sam, and maybe tough on me.  Because none of us are used to having to share/split my attention or interest.  So there might be a period of adjustments at the beginning, and figuring out how everything needs to work in order for everybody to be happy.

3.  This third one is both the biggest fear in my head right now and kind of the easiest one to think away:  I WILL HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.  AND IT WILL BECOME EMBARRASSINGLY CLEAR RELATIVELY QUICKLY.

Enough about jobs right now.

After a brief attempt at another re-read of Infinite Jest,  I have decided that I might be done re-reading it for awhile.  I was kind of missing the language and mood of Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, so I decided to pick up another Murakami book at work and started 1Q84.  So far I have found it to be more engaging than W-UBC and have been really enjoying it.  I worked all weekend (and tonight), and ended up getting over 250 pages of it read.

Was there anything else I've been wanting to write about?  Probably, but I know some of it is work-related so I'll save it for another day....

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Magooby's Knuckle Masks

Saturday night, as a little pre-mothersday activity, and thanks to the generosity of my co-worker Abbey who last-minutely agreed to come over and babbysit, Jeannie and I went to Magooby's Joke House (worst name for a comedy club ever?  Or best?) to see Paul Reiser, aka Paul of Paul and Jamie (aka Mad About You, aka Jerns' favs TV shows).  It was weird (cause he's basically the same wacky, nice dude that he was in the 90's but in an older man's body), and funny, and we enjoyed it.  We were, however, definitely on the younger end of the age spectrum of people in the room. 

The board of ChesShakes has voted to go ahead and start construction, which means that I am now 98-99% sure that I will have a job come September, which is pretty darned good. 

Today I am off work, and have numerous errands to run with toddler in tow ( I think he's maybe a toddler now -- he definitely toddles...).  Grocery stores of all varieties except health and halal, liquor store, who knows where else.  He is currently hanging out in his playpen cooing to himself. 

I had a dream the other night that featured knuckle masks, a concept that, I'm pretty sure, nobody has ever thought of before. 

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Mr. Wind-Up Bird

Just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  Weird book.  But I liked it.  And strangely enough, it seemed to fit perfectly with all the stuff that's been happening in my life recently.  It's a book that feels a lot like a David Lynch movie, with shifting identities and seemingly random pieces and stories running through it.  And at the moment, being a relatively new parent who's about to end a 10+ year job and start a new one, I feel like I'm going through a somewhat major identity shift -- I think when I'm old and look back on this time I will mark it as the beginning of my adulthood.  Is that good or bad?  Probably bad!  Ha Ha.  Who knows.  Probably neither.

Oh, I should mention that I spoke to Lesley the other day and we set a starting date for me at ChesShakes for the beginning of September.  Which means I will be leaving B&N on June 15th, taking the severance package and getting paid through the end of August, and then starting the new job in September.  So really, it all is working out pretty perfectly, or at least it seems to be at this point.  Tomorrow I'll probably find out that the ChesShakes building has burned down or that B&N has yanked away the severance offer or something like that.

The lil' dude was a bit annoying this afternoon, but in his defense he was sick with a fever and highly snotty and, by all appearances and signs, just not feeling very well.  But I was very happy when Jeannie got home from work and was able to take over and I could go in the other room and fold laundry and not listen to him whine.  Luckily, days like this a few and far between.  I guess that's why humans have lasted this long.

It is very very weird to me to think that I won't be working at B&N in just a little over a month.  I feel a lot like a passenger on the Titanic who has just been very politely offered a lifeboat.

I kinda feel like Wind-Up Bird has gotten me in the right headspace to re-read Infinite Jest.

Monday, May 06, 2013

Big Fucking Q

I'd write more, but I'm too busy flushing the toilet, brushing my teeth, and drinking all of this Nyquil. 

G'night!