Keeping UP!

It was Portland OR again this week - filled with liquid sunshine ("rain") but nice nonetheless. My trip to Powells was fruitful, finding some odd things for friends and Bella. And the client meeting was also pretty good - looks like a little more work will be shaken out there, continuing to justify my visits... Better than Philly since I actually got two solid leads out of there. Also had a very nice visit with our consultants out there... a good meal and some fun stories swapped, though they are all feeling a bit nervous about the company.

Truth be told, the past weeks have been filled with a fair amount of stress. Not JUST the stuff at work (I remain not-laid-off for now), but finances as well. Having just done my taxes I've come to the grim realization that this new job, while fun, has not been anywhere near as lucrative as I had hoped: I've made only 2/3 as much in 2008 as in 2007 AND 2006... but somehow didn't ratchet down the expenses, so I'm in a bit of a hole. And if you haven't noticed, 2009 isn't looking like a banner year for people doing sales work. If I keep my job, I'll still not be able to make as much as I did the previous years. The dream just isn't panning out as I had hoped.

But I'm going to work my way out of this pit, one way or another. I have always kept as an ace in the hole my ability to DO work rather than just SELL work, and I see enough stuff out there to know that a Jimmy could definitely step out and be employed. Things are certainly not bad enough for me to "jump from" here - but there's not a compelling "jump to" option in place. Plus I have some bonuses due in May, so there's no incentive to leave before then. Add to this that my potential severance is several MONTHS, there's little incentive to leave without being PUSHED.

So my challenge is to settle into my level... make due with the income I DO have, work with what I can do in this job for a few months... Come to peace with the situation much as I had to come to peace with coming BACK to this company a year ago, after having quit them. All the while feathering my nest preparing for the next great idea/option. You hear me universe? I'm listening.

I can leave this stress a the door, not bring it home, and seize the opportunities. Give them 100% while there, and 0% while home. Write some music. Steal some time when on business trips to visit the Muir Woods. Eat some food. Practice my workouts. Play with my kids and have some laughs.

Speaking of the kids: Tonight it was revealed that at Bella's school they sometimes play Dance Dance Revolution during Gym class. Naturally I got out our dance mats and Bella and I cut a rug to "Butterfly"... With my training, she'll be the best DDR mover in her class. If we can get Isaac from dancing in circles around us.

For the non-Facebookers, there's a great meme going around:
CREATE YOUR BAND NAME & ALBUM COVER:

To Do This

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Here is my masterpiece:

A date with Isaac

Longtime readers know that one of my rituals with Bella has been to have a one-on-one evening with her, getting dinner and then some sort of shopping (Guitar Center has been a favorite). Well, Bella's off at the Water Park, and Pamela was deep into her basement cleaning (we're now at the point of dusting off and evaluating detritus from our youths - diaries, keep. 5th grade health homework, no.)

So Isaac and I had a date tonight. He was well rested from a big nap, and we started with burritos at Chipotle. Like his sister, he loves the veggie burrito bowl. He's a bean fanatic. Afterward, we got hot chocolate at Caribou, and then off to Edinborough Park - an indoor playground.

We started in the gym with Isaac chasing basketballs around, and moved to the climbing structure. He was initially pretty scared of the big towers, so we played in the baby area for a while. That built up his confidence, and by the end, we were zooming down slides 50 feet in the air. He did NOT want to go, but by the time he was in the car, he had his didda and was getting very mellow.

It was a fun date, and i'm struck by how big of a boy he's becoming. We had pretty linear conversations, he's using a fork well, and we played well together. I look forward to getting to know this guy on more Dates. And I need to make time for more Bella dates too!

So he's asleep, and our original plan was to watch a movie, but Pamela's having such a good time looking at her documents (high school 'zines!) that we decided to keep it a mellow evening and I'm up here, about to enjoy the trashy goodness of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" - episode 2.

Quick Fitness update: Surprise surprise, my tape for Attack had a problem with it, so I need to schedule a re-taping. Seriously, my phone mojo is leaking over to recorded images? Today I subbed for an instructor whose injury from BodyAttack really aren't healing, so I'm happy to help out. Then I stayed for BodyFlow (known outside the US as BodyBalance), which is Tai Chi, Yoga, and visualization exercises. I loved it, but man was it HARD!!! I actually cramped up a muscle holding a position. I think it would behoove me to keep working on those skills...

Time to kick back!

Roller Toaster

It was another odd week work-wise. Philly wound up being somewhat unsatisfying. The people I've been cultivating there really aren't coming through with "the deals" as I would like them... but remain as nice and agreeable as ever. Which makes me want to leap across the table and say "THEN BUY SOMETHING!!!!!" But I'm not one for that sort of selling... yet... But by the end of the week I had some positive movement on some deals, so things weren't all bad.

One of the people we let go was a GREAT woman who we had lured away from another firm... and then fired after a MONTH on the job. I was just sick that she was on the list. Fortunately I heard that she chewed out the firer (my boss) good on the phone, and even put her MOM on the phone to give an additional helping of perspective. It was brutal, and it needed to be. Our company acted like fools.

But I'm sticking with it. I can continue to offer my perspective and to represent the best interests of the people who work for us. I will try.

With Anathem done I was flailing for something to read, and decided to try The New Yorker on Kindle. Here's the problem. NO CARTOONS. I'm sorry but I read the New Yorker for the Articles just like someone reads Playboy for the articles. The writing is good, when I read it, but basically I'm just looking for my Danny Shanahan and Roz Chast fix. So when they decided to put the New Yorker on Kindle without cartoons... well let's just say I unsubscribed. Really people.

So I downloaded another classic Neal Stephenson book - The Cobweb - which he wrote with his uncle and is a great techno thriller set in 1990. It deals a lot with the US/Iraq relationship, which almost 20 years later really takes a different tinge. I'm savoring the book.

It seems in the two days of my absence, Isaac had another developmental leap. Last night at dinner, we were offering food, which he would consider with an "ummmmmmm" then either a "no thanks!" or a "yes please!" The boy is nothing if not polite. And he and his sister are eating like crazy, growing perceptibly every night.

Isaac's other big development is that he's playing by himself... He has a set of trains and he puts them together, onto the track and around the town, making choo choo sounds. He can sit contently playing trains for quite a while, which is very fun to watch. This is in contrast to Bella, who has always enjoyed/needed a human element to her play: She always wants to play WITH, and used to consider quiet playtime to be a punishment. As she's got older, she's found pleasure in creating art quietly by herself, so I'm glad that she has something she can do solo. And her art (beyond the duck head) keeps getting wilder: She's working in 3d paper a lot now, with objects springing off the page on cut coils of paper. Her style is very amazing. We were flipping through her "quiet time" composition book and found wild geometric designs, pages of faces (lots of Isaac), some experiments with drawing tree branches, and some pages of color studies (bold blocks of color juxtaposed). I don't know where these things come from, but I love them all.

We're reading Mrs PiggleWiggle to Bella at night now, and she thinks it's great fun. And she's picking out words as I read it, pointing to them and trying them out. Which is only a little awkward because in the book, Parents occasionally spank their kids, which we're changing to "give time outs" on the fly. As she reads along, she can tell when we edited, but she hasn't challenged me on it yet. But I can see her notice!

This weekend, Bella is off for the weekend with her best friend Jenny to a waterpark in Owatonna. We were originally planning to go, but a combination of realizing wrangling Isaac might not be relaxing PLUS deciding to save some dollars in this uncertain job world led us to take up Jenny's parent's offer to take Bella along.

Pamela has been a demon around the house, cleaning and purging our crap. She's taken some well deserved breaks watching the John Adams miniseries from HBO, and tonight she'll be finishing it up. Then tomorrow, with no Bella and an Isaac who will be down by 7:30, I'm thinking it's time for Pamela to finally see Iron Man. ;)

We'll just see about that, won't we?

Phill-ay

First, an awesome quote from Bella on Monday. While helping Isaac paint, she said:
""Don't stretch your imagination too far. Otherwise you'll never come home."

No idea where that one came from.

I'm in Philadelphia, which is not quite as nice and fun in the cold, so I've been in the room doing work most of the day. Of course I made my pilgrimage to the Reading Market, and had a Sausage and Pepper sandwich (what, no cheezsteak? Eh, I'm not the biggest fan of those... Once a man has has a proper Italian Beef or Combo, the subtle flavors of a Philly Cheesesteak simply cannot compare)

On the flight today finally finished Anathem: A thriller based in quantum mechanics? Amazing. It really did take its time to get started, but as it took off, all of the laborious backstory was rewarded in spades. And it went places I simply could not have imagined. I love being pulled in a thoroughly unexpected direction.

Tried to watch the movie "Pineapple Express" tonigh - I'm pretty sure the movie would work if you were as stoned as the protagonists, but that is not where I am in life, so after 45 minutes I decided no further investment was warranted. Yes, there were some giggles. I concede. But not nearly enough to keep me going. Instead I watched the pilot of the new action thriller "Dollhouse" by Joss Whedon. A very creepy yet fun show with echoes to Alias and any other number of "who am I now and why am I shooting at this guy" amnesia plots... held together with a larger menacing story arc and very good acting. This one's getting added to the list provisionally (with Heroes and Fringe).

Allright, it's late out here and I have a day of meetings tomorrow, so this short update is OVAH.

He goes to Eleven

After the hammer fall yesterday, work was strangely more tranquil. Even though we were all a bit down, at least we weren't biting our nails. I actually got a lot done... and snuck out for some lunch at a new Deli called "Mort's" in Golden Valley. Matzo Ball Soup was good, as were the complimentary pickles (one garlic, one sour, and a pickled tomato!). The pastrami sandwich was thick cut, tender, and piled several inches high, with a side of homemade chips that were scandalously delicious. A good deli experience really smooths over everything.

When I got home I was exhausted - five days of teaching in a row plus the added stresses got a bit tiring. So I tried to take a nap, but the kids were playing "sound like a bowling alley", so the noise kept me on the edge of consciousness until they just gave up any pretense of NOT being in my room and jumped right on top of me yelling "TIME TO GET UP DADDY!!!!"

We headed out to the Chatterbox pub for an early dinner... Isaac was in rare form: He was dancing like a maniac to all of the great 80's hits, and socializing with all of the other patrons. They have old game consoles there, and he would sidle up to any kid playing and try to "have a turn???"

The gentleman he is, when the waitress came by, he ordered a chocolate milk for himself and "Diet Coke for Mommy". On the way out the door, he bolted back to the table and stole a last sip of her Diet Coke. He looked unreasonably pleased with himself.

We're hitting spring cleaning early, and our manifesto is "no boxes, no hiding" - so we're going into ALL of the crap corners and finding things. Tonight it was the "spider room" off the basement where we had stored old toys and mementoes in plastic bins. The allergens were insane and we're all reeling... but it's been fun to find old treasures, and Bella can't believe some of the cool things we have. I've been checking Ebay and have found that around 10% of my "old" plastic star trek and alien toys from my binge in the 1990s are actually worth something, even in the non-mint condition they're in, so I'll be hitting the Bay.

The kids are asleep... Isaac amused me by calling me in after being in bed for a half hour: He had piled all of his blankets and toys in the middle of the bed, and had laid his pillow across the top, and was stretched out on top of it all. He was a good foot off of the mattress, and was giggling quietly. I rearranged it all and re-tucked him in, and he dozed off immediately. Clever boy.

And Bella picked out a book at Wild Rumpus today, and read it to me for bedtime. She's getting SO good at reading... and she was so pleased to have been able to read me the whole thing. She did it twice actually, then we had a good cuddle.

Time to curl up by the fire, read more Anathem, and enjoy a spot of Lagavulin to finish the week.

The hammer falls

Today was the day: Around 15% of our group was laid off en masse, and while I was not among the fatalities, some good friends were. The larger corporate entity which had eaten us 16 months ago had left us to our own devices for 14 glorious months, but come the new year decided enough was enough. Time to shape up.

As it often turns out, the cuts were made to a number, not to make a cost or revenue target as far as we could tell. All divisions had numbers to make: ours was 15%, but a sister group appears to have lost 25%. It could have been worse, I suppose.

So we the surviving are now in a position where sales are warming up, but we have no bench of people to sell. Several of the layoffs were new hires who we had worked hard to land, and I can only imagine this will speak poorly of us on the job boards, so recruiting will be difficult. Recruiting will be even harder since they laid off our two recruiters! So we're down 12, no viable incoming resources, and very little incentive for the current staff to stay, yet we have a 20% growth goal for our bonuses.

It's crazy. We're all trying to figure out what the year will look like. Hey, maybe it'll all come out fine in the end! Why not be optimistic? In truth, the past 15 years of my career have been a very smooth upward trajectory, with good things coming out of strange situations. I'm fully prepared to allow the next change to wash over me.

Fortunately, the rest of life is wonderful. Bella hand-made 27 valentines last night for her friends and teachers - each one slightly different, thought out for each kid's personality. It was an ambitious project! Isaac has been continuing his very two year old behavior, but remains adorable. His current quixotic quest is for Diet Coke: He's like the Trix Rabbit, coming up with schemes to trick mom out of her Diet Coke - sweetness, flirting, stealth, deception... it's all there. We do NOT want him to be drinking this stuff, but the sense of the forbidden is all the more alluring. "Can I some Diet Coke, Mama?" big eyes, big smile. That kid is TROUBLE.

I've finally turned the corner on the new Neal Stephenson book - Anathem has suddenly become a cannot-put-down page turner after a good 200 pages of "setup". Much more so than in my earlier update. It's ROCKING. The kindle accompanies me everywhere now. In other media, this weeks Fringe was an absolute brain opener... I'm so sucked into this series.... it's amazing.

Tonight we had a little birthday party for Darwin and Abe. Carrot Cake and Apple Cobbler. It was a wonderful little celebration!

It'll be an early night tonight: All the stress of work this week, plus I've taught a lot of classes and will teach again tomorrow at 6am, so this body needs some recoup time!

Eh, work.

So of all the weeks to be in town, I decided to stick around for the week that the whole organization will be going through some major changes (which, until they happen, I will not commit career suicide by revealing) and it has everyone on edge, myself included. Not that I think my job is in immediate jeopardy, but I'm pretty sure some people who I see on a regular basis won't be around. Which is just AWKWARD. I've taken to having my door closed in my office, looking busy to avoid too many idle conversations. Ok, BEING busy.

Hopefully things will get resolved this week and we can move forward, better or worse, but out of limbo. Limbo is no fun. And you add that on top of the general economic malaise, and it's a mega funtime. So anyway, this has just been "on my mind" for a while and has dragged my mood down just a teensy bit.

Isaac, being both a mood reflector and a boy in the midst of massive brain development, has been a brittle terrible two, falling into sobbing fits at the drop of a hat. He's been taking too long to fall asleep, boycotting naps, and getting up early - the kid is a wreck. Bella is faring better, but exhibits classic older sibling tendencies of holding something away from Isaac for maybe 1 second longer than needed, leading to the collapse, and she just shrugs. Siblings - best of friends, worst of enemies.

Plus, destructor of technology has a new game: Hiding Netflix envelopes. We have no idea where our disk one of the Paul Giamatti IS John Adams is.

But it's not all bad: Bella and Isaac have a new play - she gives him piggyback rides, and he thinks it's the coolest thing in the universe: They both have such smiles on their faces! And I've loved putting them to bed AND being morning guy with them too... it's so worth it to be in town!

Also, we bought a kid's biography of Charles Darwin, and have been reading it to Bella: She loves the idea that he collected bugs and acorns. She's a little scientist in training, and I think she'll find a lot to identify with Charles. We'll be having a little 200th birthday party for him this Thursday. Pamela is Intelligently Designing the festivities. HAHA.

Fitness: Due to a problem with the tape, I have to re-tape my BodyPump assessment for the THIRD TIME tomorrow. Of course we're two months into the next release, but I have to tape the release I was trained on, so I rehearsed today in an empty studio, loudly coaching and encouraging my non-existent worker-outers. I think their form was very good today. On Sunday I'll be taping for Body Attack.

Monday during BodyAttack, I had a quite pregnant lady in class. BodyAttack is a very jumping/running based class, but there are a whole set of parallel alternate movements that are more marching/stepping. So I made sure she was doing the parallel, and she got a great workout, and it forced me out of my usual routine as well. As my fitness level has increased doing this class, I can teach the full hour at 110% while coaching, and it's important to remember the class isn't all at that level, and actually could get HURT if they try.

Fun coming up for V-Day: Pamela's mom is flying up for 4 days: Papa is off to a trade show over V-Day (the NERVE), and we already agreed to watch Jenny so that Randy and Jemae can have a romantic evening of Valentines, so we figured we'd invite Bam up to join the fun. And I'm thrilled - Isaac is Bama's boy, and I'll have some serious competition!

Don't worry about Pamela and me: We had that great escape to the Graves601 in Jan, and will have many more escapes in the months to come. If we can share our lives to bring happiness to others (Jemae, Bam) on that romantic day, that makes all the difference.

In geekiness: Both Fringe and Heroes have started back up and I'm in geek heaven. Both are completely delivering. Terminator starts next week. Then we have the Watchmen movie, the Terminator movie... it's all going to be amazing. It is a good time to be a nerd. But I do NOT watch Battlestar. I'll start them up maybe this summer during my travels (I can usually get 3-4 shows a trip - saves on pay-per-view for sure!)

In other geekiness, no I'm not buying a new Kindle - my new/old one works just fine. But the new model offers a lot to the newbie, so if you were ever on the fence for a kindle, just go for it. And I'm finally getting into reading the Neal Stephenson Anathem novel. I started it months ago, but it was a bit thick. Much like the System of the World trilogy, which I quit after 200 pages, only to love it a few years later. I had read 150 pages of Anathem months ago, and picked it back up, restarted it from the beginning, and it was instantly more compelling. Perhaps the Black Jack Geary pulps have worn me down and I was ready for something... thought out... and readable.

Well that's my polygeeky update. Go to Hulu.com and search for "I'm on a boat" for maybe the best laugh I've had in a week. It's amazing.

A JimVention

Look for my new idea: An online bank for time travelers looking to have a safe haven to come back in time, invest in a certain stock and have it kept safe for them for 1-400 years (during which time the stock appreciates and the time traveler returns to their own time a wealthy creature). We promise confidentiality, living away from fault lines and major military installations, and a sufficiently low profile as not to arouse suspicion of temporal police.

We could operate with special requests (have the investment converted to lithium solids at least 2 years prior to 2237, and store in a concrete lined bunker in mojave....? DONE). We'd naturally ask any time traveler to prove merit prior to opening an account simply by giving us an investment direction: If in one year the investment did what the traveler said it would, we will work with them. (and it's not like the time traveler needs to wait - they've got the machine, it's like two stops on an errand run.). Naturally, the "proof" tip is something we only invest lightly in to weed out the scammers (and for them to know we're not just looking for a stock tip and pack up shop... you do not piss off time travelers. They can go back and mess with you. Well, a version of you, as you'll see below). Our money is made by management fees on the REAL investments (plus a conversion fee for turning radioactive future-gold into Euros).

Now of course, the very act of going back in time and making this investment really breaks temporal cohesion and the "you" who would benefit from this is not the same "you" who made the trip (a branching universe is created once the past is changed, which is why even though people keep going back in time and killing Hitler, we still have the same past), but we could appeal to the altruism angle - SOME version of you in the future would be the beneficiary of this... and it could filter across the universes to create a positive uplift to your own universe situation, if not the direct benefits. Some sort of "quantum entanglement of investments" theory.

Startup costs are low, for sure... we just need our first investor to show up. I'll be at my fitness studio Time Out Fitness Monday February 9 2009 (or year -28 Global Singularity (beta), year -40 Singularity (Final), or Mayan Zero Year -3) at 7am Central Time, having just finished my class. I'll be ready to talk.

Wonderful Bella

1) Tonight Jenny was over, and the three of them were somewhat quiet upstairs for a while. Bella ran downstairs and asked "can I have some socks?" Why? "We want to make sock puppets." We pointed her to my sports socks drawer and told her to take what she wants. She ran back up stairs and we heard her exclaim:

"Jenny! Wonderful News! We can use my dad's SOCKS!!!"

Wonderful news???

2) Of course I had to tell her about my fun evening in San Fran with Al and Topsoil as I put her to bed tonight (see previous blog posting). Naturally I finished with "and there was a NAKED MAN" which led to lots and lots of giggles. At the end of the story, she asked the name of the naked man I said "Avi" which isn't right, but it's not far off.

She said "Avi? That's a strange name!"

I responded "You think Avi is strange? What do you think about Topsoil's name?"

She paused...

"Well soil means dirt, and dirt is a good thing. Add in Top which means best, and it works. It's a good name."

I have to admit she has a point. Nature girl is approving of the Radical Faerie naming, I suppose!

And that's the update. Bella is VERY happy to hear I'll be in town for 12 whole days before my next trip. Pamela too. I imagine Isaac would be too, if he had a refined concept of time. But he's just a boy.

SFO

Another week, another trip. This time to San Francisco, which is one of my favorite places. I had two good meetings, some "team building" with the onsite group, and a bit of time to wander around the city... Unlike my recent trips to Dallas, NYC, Seattle, and Boston, the weather was NOT unseasonably cold. In fact it has been beautiful. Finally.

I had lunch at Yank Sing yesterday - a wonderful DimSum restaurant. This is my 4th visit and I've finally got comfortable with the concept, and am no longer shy about asking for exactly what I want and not waiting for the carts. As always, the Peking Duck is something at on paper I would never eat (the fatty layer...), but in practice is flat out delicious. At the end of the meal, I surprised the hostess by saying "shi de hen hao chi" - it was delicious. Which strangely led to a fragmentary exchange in which I BELIEVE she was saying I reminded her of Alton Brown from Food Network. Very interesting.

On the language tip, last week in NYC I was riding an elevator and a couple came in having an apparent argument, hissing at eachother in french. I didn't react, but suddenly I head the woman tell the man "Tais-toi - il peut comprendre francias, hein?" (ssshh - he could understand french!) Again, I didn't react, but I though it was interesting to catch myself being referred to in the third person... All the more reason to keep my languages current.

I met Al and Topsoil for dinner last night in the Mission area, near the Castro. It was a very good Tapas place and we were coursed: I liked almost everything... Al had a funny comment - "there is no other food where the degree to which I hated it as a kid and the degree to which I love it now is as extreme as Brussels Sprouts." It was a wonderfully cerebral way to express it... Alas, even though I've seen some pretty innovative preparations of the Sprouts, they remain horrible horrible devils cabbage to me.

We got talking about a documentary released recently about an obscure 1960s popstar who still makes strange records and sounds like "Roy Orbison on LSD". Naturally, after dinner and a walk around the neighborhood (past Dolores Park, which was gorgeous), I was treated to a glass of scotch and a listening to said music at Al's place.

When we walked in, we were bemused to find that their houseguest (who has been there for a couple of months) had turned the heat WAY up, and was lounging around naked. Ah, San Francisco. He threw on a pair of shorts for a little while, but by the time I left, he was floating in the communal hot tub, lights on, naked again. They live in a little "secret world" in the Mission - only a garage visible from the street, opening up inside to 4 house/apartments and a small courtyard. And nakedness is just fine with everyone. I think Al has found a good place in the world for himself.

And the music listening... let's say the early 1960s stuff sounded a bit like Tom Jones with a Tom Petty accent, and the later stuff sounds like 1980s Nick Cave crossed with yes, Roy Orbison, but also a little Klaus Nomi thrown in for good measure. For my journey home, I had to put on some very energetic pop music to counterbalance the strangeness.

Im SFO waiting for my plane, which is substantially delayed due to mechanical issues (fix them, take your time), but life is good because as I sit here, on the muzak is Fake by Alexander O'Neal. That was a fabulous Jam/Lewis production.