As a developer, generally the task before you is taking a large amount of chaos and uncertainty… and then distilling that down to a stable, predictably recurring outcome. This work lends itself well to how, I feel, my brain is naturally wired.
This mindset, howver, works less well in the real world – where I have control of fewer variables. And despite my best plans and intentions, the outcomes are never as stable as I may want them to be.
“I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing”
The web itself stretched like a large triangle, from the green light pole to the white, plastic pole near the crosswalk. It was like a massive, invisible flag.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say this thing was angling to catch a small child in this thing.
Got this fortune over the weekend. And immediately, on seeing this, I thought of this very specific movie scene:
Liz and I went out to Mike and Michelle’s house today, to hang out with them, Halley, Fritz, and another couple (Nashua and Joe). All of the women know one another via knitting activities they’ve done together, and Joe was part of the group that went out to Rhinebeck last year.
Bob was on a slightly shorter schedule today, but we fell to talking. And then talking some more. And then some more. And then next thing we both knew, nearly two hours had gone by. And since we were close to his quitting time anyways, we decided to go upstairs for a beer.
Going into this meeting was a bit stressful. It’s a big step, a lot of money, and a lot of heavy decisions. This is also a pretty big thing for Liz as well, who has been thinking and planning her “ideal” kitchen since whe was much younger (all the way back to her high school years). To say that she’s given this a great deal of thought is an understatement.
“A quarter of a million dollars gave him access to fly first class anywhere in the world on American for the rest of his life. He flew so much it paid for itself. Often he’d leave in the morning for a business trip, fly back, and I hadn’t even known he’d left. Other times, I remember calling his office to find out what country he was in.”
After work tonight, we met up with our neighbors Betsy and Michael for dinner. We had made plans a few weeks ago to hang out at Ascione, a restaurant that recently opened in Hyde Park.
Yeah, this was a prime example of how the vision in my head never really made it out in the real world. My goal was to do some kind of Braveheat Brave Heart, and it kinda worked?
Fun trivia fact: I learned, way back when I was more into poker (and was watching a lot of it via TV and Netflix), poker champ Annie Duke studied “tells” by reading FBI manuals regarding body language.
Been a busy week, and just now catching up to old blog posts. I sometimes fall a few days behind here and there, but lately… I’ve fallen multiple days behind, almost a week’s worth of posts.
Not sure if this is a signal that perhaps I need to ease off the blogging thing, as it’s starting to feel like a requirement, like a chore.
Liz was working in the basement, cleaning things up, while I was out in the yard mowing the lawn. After I got done, we were planning to do some work up on the second floor. But instead, we began addressing the big stack of trim that we’d collected in the basement.
We did some preliminary research the week prior. And this time, we met with someone and talked at length about various preferences and options. A lot of this planning is partly to figure out what we want, but also to figure out what space is available for other things like windows and appliances.
On the heels of our off site work event yesterday, tonight several of us at work had plans to stay late to play some board games.