Meh… I don’t have any excuses.

What I have are strong feelings.  Strong feelings usually accompany big events or changes.  In the last 2 months, I’ve moved, I’ve found out my office is moving (not closer), I’ve spent more money on housing & repairs than ever before, and in general have thrown everything in life up in the air.  For funsies.

Oy.  It’s just been a long … year, I guess.  Lots of great things, but lots of big things.  Let’s be clear:  almost all of them are great, and even the ones that aren’t great aren’t that bad.  So I’m NOT complaining.  What I’m doing is processing all the horse shit feelings I’m having as we try & deal with all of it at once; it would be much easier to process if I had a meth habit, methinks.  Lemme get back to you on that.

What is really striking to me in everything that’s going on is how inefficient we FEEL, especially related to the move, even in spite of the sheer volume & crazy-short timelines we’ve been working on.  I think that feeling has to come from just bad expectations.  (Some of it, admittedly, is because a few things have not lived up to the most basic expectations we had – like lawyers breaking contract laws.)  Because we didn’t really know any better, we just sort of expected everything to be fine as we moved into a completely-rebuilt 1950s ranch home.  And we really didn’t prepare ourselves for being stressed out for doing the move in the middle of our busiest two months of 2012.  In September, we all went to Southern California for a working vacation.  Then I went to Chicago for work.  I came home on a Thursday & then we closed that Friday.  Then 2 weeks later in October we went to Ireland for a week with a 2.5 year old toddler.  And now we’ve been back for 10 days and feel like we’ve literally made zero progress since we moved.

It’s a completely irrational feeling, but that’s how we feel.  We have, in reality, put Kate into a great preschool, hung curtains, met neighbors, bought a rug, consulted landscaping, chimney & roof contractors to deal with water issues, unpacked 80% of the boxes, purchased a washer & dryer, and shopped for a shit-tonne of furniture.  (Our only real success on that front was a $75 queen box spring I bought from an Indian guy on craigslist, which was a great price considering it came with a free cumin smell & cricket jumper.)  That’s not a short list, nor is it an easy one.  But because we aren’t 100% settled, even feeling 99% effective feels completely unacceptable.

We suck at expectations, I think.

Anyway… this ended up being a bit of a therapy session for me.  Thanks for reading; may not have been the most interesting post ever, but it IS better than a meth habit.  If you’ve got any thoughts or consoling words, I’m all ears.  And penis.  I still have a penis.

Well, I should finally put it up here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/ShowerSandwich

That’s where you’ll find most of the stuff I’m up to these days.  Takes the steam out of my actual writing, honestly, so just head over there, at least for now.

That’s all.

Head over to the ShowerSandwich channel on YouTube for Episode 5.

It’s important.

Not sure why I didn’t just start here, but I’ve now moved the “podcast” to YouTube, and I’m done calling it a podcast. If YouTube does RSS for folks, great, and if it allows folks to get stuff on mobile subscriptions, also awesome. But it’s not really a podcast on YouTube, it’s just awesome on YouTube. (Hopefully.)

Episodes 1-4 can be found here!

Any & all feedback is welcome, either here or in my YouTube channel.

Episode 3 is up!

Note: PodOmatic, while largely a very easy & great way to keep these things up here, only lets me embed player code that just takes you to the latest episode – so if I keep embedding it here, every embedded player will take you to the same episode. That’s less than ideal… so here’s the links to each one.

I’m officially over my “free” storage limit at podomatic, so if anyone has better ideas on where to post ~400MB video files for your enjoyment, I’m all ears. (Let me know if any of these episodes don’t work & I can save some space.)
Episode 3!
Episode 2!!
Episode 1!!!

A friend has convinced me I really just need to keep doing this sh*t & eventually something will come of it – I can stop worrying about the planning, the editing, the censorship, the material, and just MAKE it.  In his words, “There is no win, there is no fail.  There is only MAKE.”

With much ado, Episode Two.

Well, it’s certainly been entirely too long since I wrote anything like a substantive update., so I won’t even waste your time with foreplay.

Job:  On the plus side, I’ve been doing it for 4 straight years (exaclty), so it’s much easier than it used to be, and I’m much more adroit at getting help when I need it.  On the down side, I still need a lot of help… mainly because we’ve got the work for 3 people and really only have me right now, and should really only have the work of 2.  (It’s the quantity driving the need for assistance, not the subject matter itself… I’m “approaching awesome” at what I do.)  We also have some of the world’s worst systems, and in case you were wondering, being on the other side of the country from them does NOT make them easier to deal with.  In related news, I’m starting to pick apart my day-t0-day & understand what parts of this I actually enjoy & which parts I want to avoid in the next role, whatever form that may take.  So far I’ve identified a minute part of what I do everyday as “Fun”, and the rest is all in the “Not Fun” supercategory.  *SURPRISE!*

Family:  Kate’s 15 months old now, and she’s awesome.  According to the world’s best Chinese pediatrician, she’s on track to be ~ 5’10″ tall, weigh 130lbs, and to have a head too big for any hat.  She’s literally off the head-size chart… which means she’ll either have a GIANT brain, be a REALLY awesome candidate for performing arts on stage or screen, or she’ll have trouble dragging her melon through the halls at school & will be mocked for blocking everyone else’s view of the chalkboard.  Speaking of chalk, put one in the W column for Renee; without her efforts over the last year, we wouldn’t be all the things we are: great parents, homeowners, landlords, composters, members of our community, good children, good siblings, and good friends.  (Okay, I think that means “put several” in the W column.)

Acting:  I’ve floated my headshot out to a few things, but the most promising comes up this weekend.  It’s a traveling Dinner Theater Troupe based in South Jersey, and it looks like they do mainly fun comedy stuff and/or mystery dinners at a number of different venues around NJ.  I’m anxious to find out more & see if they think I’m a good fit; stay tuned on that.  Mostly I’m just glad to be able to feel like I now have the time/energy to give to the performance side of life again.  It’ll be an even bigger challenge than it was in SF given we have Kate & a home & a rental property … in short we have even more commitments than we used to, and now I’m trying to layer on this acting thing as well… so you can imagine I’m bracing myself to be a completely exhausted dude if things pan out.  But it’s all been worth it up to this point, and I know the acting piece is a worthwhile venture when it goes well (which really comes down to the commitment of the people involved), so I’m actually looking forward to the exhaustion.  It’ll come with an equally large benefit of satisfaction and fulfillment.  Maybe then I’ll stop complaining about IT support & work problems that frankly just aren’t worth the hassle.  R would love that.

Friends:  One of the many excuses I lean on as to why I only blog once in a blue moon is that we’re a very busy family when it comes to the social calendar.  In the year we’ve been here we’ve spent probably 3/4 of our weekends hosting or being hosted by some of our best friends and/or family.  I get to see a lot of the folks that would be reading this anyway – and to make it worse, when I see them I don’t feel like I have much to talk about other than work & the fam – so the motivation to blog just hasn’t been there much.  But in the last few weeks I’ve been pinged by a number of friends I haven’t seen or talked to since we moved, so a) my apologies for the long-overdue “update” format of today’s post; and b) now that I’ve written it I realize I ALWAYS have stuff to talk about – but somehow it’s easier for me to write it than to think of it in the social setting & deliver a diatribe on the spot.  HOWEVER: if you count yourself among the number of friends I haven’t seen since last September, get in touch & let’s get something on the calendar to visit – wherever you are or wherever you’re coming from, there’s always some possible solution.  (A clear example that proves we’re BUSY people if not geographically distant people:  I haven’t seen Cermak since his son was born in January, and he lives less than 200 miles away – and we’ve done exactly 3 podcasts together since then… that’s right, we barely have time to do THAT any more.  Meanwhile I’ve been to SF 13 times since October.)

In short, there are tons of reasons why we HAVEN’T seen you, but very few reasons why we CAN’T see you soon.

KJ, Becca Rufer & Joan – miss you ladies.  Joan, have a great 40th birthday… I’m sure you will, considering I still can’t believe that’s a number associated with your indomitable enthusiasm, energy & optimism.  World’s Youngest 40-Year-Old.   To you & Becca:  I’m out there soon & will be in touch to try to make something happen.  KJ, you too… perhaps another lunch with the C-Monster?

Ahh… that felt good.  Was it good for you?

Our pricing analyst just told me she’s quitting & going back to school.  I’m depressed.  And slightly jealous.