Falling repeatedly into a gravel pit is a really good way of clearing the mind and digging oneself out of a weekend funk. Spent an hour at the gym today bouldering after over a month of not touching rock. I found myself struggling at first with V0 routes such as the one labeled “Really Big Holds”, but it got much better after a while. Unfortunately I am still in search of new climbing partners, since one no longer wishes to climb and the other is on doctor’s orders not to.
Work has been quite hairy, as is usually the case around release time. For some reason bugs that have been sitting there happily minding their own business for a year just love to pop out the day you try to ship. But we finally did get a new major release into beta testing. And the other story out of work is that we have finally decided to let a certain person go. Although I never specifically asked for his head (and I am quite proud that I never did this, even though I’m less happy about the fact that I couldn’t help being obvious about disliking working with him) it was nevertheless getting pretty clear to all in the office that this person was just not working out after a year. I could force myself to tolerate the personality conflicts, but the sheer level of utter incompetence was making us look very bad, particular given the position he was in.
So there will soon be another opening, and in a total coincidence a cousin sent in his resume this week – a younger cousin I haven’t seen since I left NFLD at the age of four. This prompted a conversation with Rosalind about the importance of family and a reminder about Father’s day, which contributed to the mild funk this weekend. The other contributing factor was some friends bailing out at the last minute for the second time on weekend plans. I need more reliable friends.
Shifting gears: can someone explain to me why female cellists are so damned cute? Really, this isn’t a fetish, it’s just a repeated observation including another made while on the 5 line today. (Unfortunately, she got off the bus before I collected my wits enough to make conversation. It’s just as well, at best I would have just managed to commiserate about cellos and public transit.) As it turns out, I will be playing chamber music on Thursday for the first time in over a year – signed up for a class. Too bad I’ll likely be stuck on the cello, but maybe I can find another cellist to play Schubert’s cello quintet with.
Another cello related story missed during the blackout period last year: one weekend I took the ferry out to Bainbridge Island last year on a sightseeing whim. On the trip out, a woman – older, with a preschool aged daughter in tow, but attractive: yet more proof for my observation – took a cello out of a case and began to play, oblivious to the passengers around her. She was obviously practicing, but it was just as obvious she was an excellent player as she ripped through the Bach suites and some concertos I could and couldn’t place. We got off on Bainbridge and decided to take the same ferry back immediately. And on the way back we realised the cellist hasn’t disembarked, and was still practicing. And when we got off in Seattle, she still stayed behind – it seemed she was going to ride back and forth all day, practicing.
I’ve seen this woman twice since then (it’s hard to miss her, hauling her cello and her daughter around downtown), but I’ve never had the nerve to talk to her. Later in the year, I felt a lot of sympathy for her since the housing situation had by then deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t practice at home. I guess she just had the same problem.
