What’s happened over the last month:
I drove from Seattle to California again with a car filled to the brim with stuff. Mom was wedged in between house plants and was ordered to keep me awake. We left the night before I planned, because we were sick of sleeping on the floor in the empty house. So on Friday after I left work we furiously packed up the remaining items in the house, drove to Portland and stayed there for a night. We made it as far as Ashland on Saturday because I had already made a hotel reservation there and didn’t feel like cancelling it. Sunday morning proved to be the anticlimax: we crossed the Siskiyou pass early and found the roads to be free of snow – I had bought chains in Portland due to warnings about the pass and ended up never needing them. California initially welcomed us with a sea of peasoup fog but soon we were in the sunny Bay Area and miserable Seattle weather became but a memory.
We arrived to find Susan buried among my many boxes of stuff. Over the last month most has been unpacked or put in storage, and we’ve slowly been getting rid of overlapping furniture and electronics – this has prompted a few minor headaches dealing with eBay and craigslist flakes. At least everything arrived intact, including the piano!
The second day after I started work again in Emeryville (coincidentally, only a few days after my seventh anniversary of starting at Pixar), I was there for the announcement by Steve Jobs that Pixar was being acquired by Disney. Obviously I had heard the rampant rumors floating about the Internet but somehow didn’t really believe it was going to happen. I think that’s all I’ll say on the subject. As far as work goes, it’s been fairly intense over the last month. My office situation is as follows: I have an office to myself! I still lack furniture but I’m working on it.
Mom puttered about our house for a bit, then decided on a whim to go to Taiwan to catch Chinese New Year festivitives. This prompted a mad scramble by Susan and I to purchase plane tickets online for Taipei (didn’t work on short notice), then Mom bought surprisingly cheap tickets the old fashioned way (travel agent! paper tickets!) and soon disappeared. After touring Taiwan and Hong Kong she came back this past Saturday, left again for Vancouver today. My mom, role model for retirement.
The house was listed soon after I left. The stager did a great job, even working with the ultraviolet purple paint in the living room (which, by the way, I actually liked) – if you’re selling in Seattle I’ll be glad to provide a reference. Three separate offers were made over the course of two weeks and after a bit of minor haggling the third ultimately proved to be the clincher. I sign the paperwork tomorrow and should close on Friday; and that, for now, closes a “This Old House” chapter of my life.
We’ve been fostering a dog from Smiley Dog Rescue. Her name is Tillie and she’s gone quite far in wearing down my natural aversion to dogs. My allergies have also been less reactive to her, we think it’s because she sheds a lot less than my sister’s dogs whom I visit during the Christmas holidays. So the daily activities include a dog walk, and there’s also the occasional trip to the dog park or adoption event. My crowning geek achievement in January was finding an unused webcam among Susan’s stuff, plugging it into the webserver, running Motion: tada, dog cam! Endless entertainment while we’re at work.
Speaking of geeks, I made it to WonderCon for a day, thanks to Christina. My first convention! Alas, I felt unworthy amongst my fellow convention goers. I really haven’t read enough comic books in the last decade, and hadn’t watched Firefly yet so could not appreciate the true meaning of a Browncoat. (I have however started on addressing that.) At least I did see Frank Miller talk, and that was quite interesting to me as someone who appreciated his Daredevil work.
Brian (fellow Pixarian, also involved in New Brain shenanigans) suggested I try out for the Punk Rock Orchestra. With a week to prepare, I actually practiced cello and auditioned this past Sunday, playing a good old standby (a Bach prelude) and sight reading a Dead Kennedys piece. I think I know how it went, but I’ll avoid jinxing myself until I have it in writing.
That’s about it. Things seem to happen a lot faster around here, don’t they?
