Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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digging out

People… this week.

Work snowed me in.  I did a lot and put in extra hours to get it done and still came out behind in the end.  Mostly this is because I used about eleven hours of the week to sit down with my employees and talk about “professional development.”

These are those HR-sounding meetings where we talk about goals and expectations and measureables and deliverables.  I spend a lot of time preparing for the things, and then a lot of time actually doing them, and then a lot of time following-up afterward.  In short, they are a lot of work and on top of my regular a lot of work that means things pile up.

I’ll get back to right.  Use today and use some of the weekend and then next week we’ll be in Oregon and I’ll work until Thanksgiving and hopefully the slowness and deadness of the holiday week will allow me some catch-up.

Sorry for the sucky week.  Goodnight.

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maybe i should invent a machine

Hi internet.  I took a break latter half of last week and I deserved it; did me well.

Sunday the weather turned cold and wet here in Northern California.  It was, by me, welcomed.  Even into last week we had temperatures in the 80s and it just didn’t feel like October.  When the rain came today it pushed a summer’s worth of dust and dirt down from the gutters, spitting out a foamy mess.  Maybe it’s the 100th time I’ve said this, but it’s always amazing to me how strongly things like weather and songs and smells can bring back memories.  Combine one or two or even three of those things and I swear you could create as immersive an alternate reality as is possible.  Maybe I should invent a machine.

I’ve started turning off work e-mail on the phone over the weekends.  This is my second weekend without.  I have to say it makes a dramatic difference.  Not reading that one thread which will start Monday morning’s rolling snowball of a complicated task means not dreading the coming of Monday morning; means not having to fight the pull to log on and dispatch a preemptive answer; means not getting sucked into a discourse and being derailed from time with family.  It may seem silly that I have to turn off the feature to get away… but when it’s on it’s just so easy and so right-there.  It’s hard to not look when the thing clicks at you, announcing a new thread about Q4 budget or receive-side adaptive equalization.

I’m sitting in the living room now, listening to this out-of-nowhere record Forget by some dude who calls himself Twin Shadow.  Egad is it good.  It’s like a guy was frozen in the 80s and woke up to  make a totally rad anachronism.  Even Sharaun is kinda jamming to it.

Goodnight.

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cooing & head-petting

It’s only Tuesday.

Sitting here at 9pm reveling in the fact that the 9:30pm meeting I’ve been dreading since my 6pm arrival home from work is on its off-week of its every-other-week cadence.  Seriously, three hours of between time isn’t even enough for my work-brain to fully shut down and my home-brain to take over.  When a bad work day happens to align with one of those few and far between days where I have late-night meetings I clock-watch from the moment I get home until the moment the cellphone rings.  Stupid work, encroaching on my time.

We leave for a week in Florida around the middle of the month.  And even though I just had some time off work when Cohen was born, I’m ready for some more.  While there I plan to hang out with friends, maybe take walks by the river, spend some time in the pool and sit around reading.  None of the family back South has met Cohen yet so we’re all excited to give him his east coast debut.  Keaton might be most proud, she’s so in love with the idea of being a big sister and takes real joy in sharing him with other people.  She wants everyone to know how well she can perform her sisterly duties… and it turns out that, luckily, Cohen actually seems to be calmed by her cooing and head-petting.  Her very real ability to soothe him is a really cool thing for her (and us) and she wants everyone to know.

Let’s hope their relationship stays as sweet right through highschool.  Goodnight.

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all this for eight hours of that

Mmmmgrrph… stupid back to everything normal.  Here goes.

It’s Sunday afternoon and there’s a tight spot in my chest and an thinness to my attentions; it’s a mild sense of dread.  Not an excited dread either, like being poised at the apex of a roller coaster or dropping in on a big wave.  No it’s a dread-dread, in the Websters sense, and it’s because I return to work tomorrow.  This time with family has been perfect and I don’t want it to end.  The feeling is compounded with the fact that there are at least two, if not more, difficult issues waiting for me to be dealt with once I’m back.  Being away from work with those things looming made the time even more sweet, but now coming back looms doubly with the weight of them.  O but Lord I don’t want to go back!

But let’s stay away from the drudgery and keep things positive.  All things in the world of our new four-person archetypal American family unit are going well.  Cohen seems to have picked up the “great baby” torch passed along be his big sister Keaton, and is super low-maintenance – only waking us twice at night for feeding (one late feeding before bedtime for mom and dad, one in the dead of the still of the night, and one right around sunrise).  He doesn’t fuss (yet), doesn’t spit-up (yet), eats well and sleeps well.  His beef-jerky belly button fell of without fanfare last week and he’s already recovered much of the birthweight he lost in those first few days.

Just as Keaton before him, he was an instant source of joy for me; the kid shines with some magical sheen I can get lost in – some aura that I can stare into for hours.  They are so precious, new babies.  I wondered, before he was born, how he’d “impact” the strong feelings and ties I have to Keaton – our firstborn.  Wondered if my attentions or passions would be split or multiplexed or somehow diminished.  Seems so silly now, it just adds together in heaps… you fill this huge space you didn’t even know you had.  My heart swelled the moment the slimy ruddy little man broke free and screamed from his toothless little mouth, and it’s roomier for each yawn and gurgle and startle.  The love I have for Keaton is the love I have for my big, four-and-a-half year old girl.  For Cohen my newborn boy.  Apples and oranges yet both innate and instinctive.

So anyway I’m depressed about having to go back and trade all this for eight hours of that.

Goodnight.

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lightening up landfills

Happy Thursday internet.

I took Wednesday off too.  I’m pushing it with work and these sort of ad-hoc vacation days so I spent the first two hours of the morning clearing out the inbox and taking care of some items that just couldn’t wait.  Then again, around 3pm, I logged on and worked for an hour.  Finally once more, around 9pm, I checked mail and dispatched a couple more items on the to-do list.  So while I technically took the day off, I also managed to get a little done in the process.  Tomorrow I go back in; just too much to do to stay away again.

Tonight was a big night for Keaton.  After more than a week of dry pull-ups and mid-night trips to the potty Keaton packed off to bed in her Ariel panties alone.  It was a proud moment for her, and she wanted to go into her room to change into her pajamas without anyone knowing.  She told me, “Dad, you can’t look!  There’s a surprise with my jammies tonight that you can’t see yet!”  When she emerged from behind her closed door she had her PJ pants around her ankles and thrust middle forward, hands on her hips, saying, “See dad!?  Panties for bedtime!!”

I wrote more than six months ago about how I longed for this day, and even though I still feel like she’s “late” Sharaun and I are both holding our breath and hoping to finally be free of diapers.  Well, at least for a month; then it’s back to diapers in spades when Cohen joins us.  So… really… we’re talking about eight straight years of diapers here… if Cohen is as stubborn about nighttime as his big sister is, I guess.  It’s OK… I suppose I can deal with diapers again, and I’m still super-proud of Keaton for lightening up the landfills.

Goodnight.

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thinking ahead

Hello to the week’s-end.  At the sawmill we called this week “work-week sixteen.”  Well good riddance to work-week sixteen, says I.  Bring on work-week seventeen; I take all comers.

Long-time readers may recall that the sawmill gives us worker-bees an extended piece of paid vacation every so often.  The suits call this a “sabbatical” and it amounts to a three month paid leave, during which you’re free to do what you want.  I had my first sabbatical a few years ago, and think our family did a great job maximizing my time away from work.  In fact, the image accompanying today’s post is a screen-capture of the spreadsheet I used way back then to map and budget our sabbatical goings-on.

The other day at work I spent some time thinking way ahead.  It’s something I do every once in a while.  Try and think five or so years into the future, figure out what major things will happen.  It’s my way of trying to anticipate, any maybe even make plans around, large milestones I know I’ll face way down the road.  Normally, I limit this kind of crystal ball stuff to work or financial subjects… for instance, the project I’m working on now at the sawmill will end in a couple years.  I’ve spent time considering what I’ll do then, and what, if anything, I should be doing now to position myself correctly.  Or maybe I’ll re-run a retirement-readiness check on my investments… something boring and grown-up like that.

Maybe it’s the coming baby, but this time around I also started day-dreaming about far-off family happenings.  Once on the subject my mind turned to thoughts of a second sabbatical.  After some quick (OK not so quick) mental math, I figured our kids will be eight and four when this magical time rolls around again. Eight and four; holy crap.  Keaton twice as old as she is now and in 3rd grade.  Baby #2 as old as Keaton is now and about to start preschool.  A smile came to my face: This could be a magical time for a sabbatical.

One could argue, however, that any time when you’re paid to stay away from work for months on a stretch is “magical.”  Yeah, true.  But I’m talking about the relative ages of the kids.  Having a four year old now I understand what things she’s capable of enjoying, so I have a point of reference I can use in dreaming up travel or activities. I can see our family tromping around the world, stopping in all manner of tropical or exotic locales.

Man, I think I’ll start a new spreadsheet right now.  Never too early to think ahead.

Goodnight.

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the uh-oh squad

Wow.  Four days and four entries.  Amazing.  Tons of media today.  Let’s go.

Oh before I get started, remember that health care thing I wrote about a few days ago?  If you’re old enough to remember 1993, the year the GOP put forward their own health care overhaul legislation, you might find this link interesting.  It compares the major provisions of the GOP’s 1993 bill to the recently passed “Obamacare” bill (and the Republicans’ 2010 counter to Obamacare, just for completeness).  For such a small amount of consolidated data, I found it pretty enlightening.

Work this week saw me delivering annual reviews to the troops.  Even though it’s not inherently negative in nature, the whole “performance review”  thing is a downer in general.  People always want more than you’re able to give, whether they truly deserve it or just feel like they do… and you’re never able to do as much good as you’d ultimately like to.  It’s no fun being the guy that makes people feel like crap.  Tuesday was the day for me and it was a long one.  I called a fellow manager around 4:30pm, after delivering my last review, and said simply, “I’m done.  Meet me at the bar.”

Although I’m not done… still another few to go for remote folks or those traveling or whatever.  Bringin’ me down man, bringin’ me way down.  I’ll be glad when time heals the wounds and we can get back to execution.

Speaking of getting back to execution, here we go.

The other day Keaton was in her bedroom for “quiet time” – we don’t get naps anymore but she still gets an hour to hour-and-a-half of “quiet time” in the afternoon – and she was being anything but quiet.  She was back there singing to herself.  Now while this is a violation of quiet time rules, I had to let it got for a little bit so I could sneak up to the door and surreptitiously record her with my phone.  Have yourself a listen:

[audio:109thefish.mp3]

Keaton at “quiet time”
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

Funny thing about the radio call-phrase she mimics at the end there.  “The Fish” is a local christian radio station.  I hardly think they were playing the Black Eyed Peas or a song about being “a little drunk” at 2am and needing someone.

At work they have this new program where they offer you cash incentives to do some “health and wellness” stuff.  They’ll draw your blood and run your numbers and you fill out surveys about how often you poop and how many beers you drink each week.  Then you meet with a “health coach” and they tell you to go to the gym and eat less bacon.

Now, I know this sounds all 1984 and whatnot, and I’m sure they’re just using the data to bucket me into some “risk bracket” to determine the optimal time to let me go (i.e. before I kick the bucket per their statistical “when’s he gonna die” model).  Anyway, I didn’t come here to write about that (although I’m apparently sacrificing a full entry).  I came to write about sitting in the waiting room.

While I was sitting in the waiting room (my health coach needs a punctuality coach) I picked up a book to try and pass some time.  The book was called 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work.  Being a manager and all, I figured I might actually learn something I could apply at work.  Oh man was I wrong.  The foolishness of this book was indescribable.  If anyone, ever, anywhere did this stuff at work…  And when I got to this page, I just had to take a picture since no one would actually believe me:

If someone brought me this idea in all seriousness, I would try my hardest to fire them.  Fire.

Goodnight.