Category: Kevin

I was offered a job today. Not formally, but I was definitely offered one. I didn’t apply for the job, or give any signals that I wanted the job, but it was offered. I’m extremely excited. It’s within the company, and pretty much the job of my dreams. It will involve more than just building things, but software design, concepts and developing strategy, which is a lot more than I do know. It’s a new challenge. I think I’m ready for it. I’ve been kind of coasting lately, and feeling a little stagnant. This new job will give me the opportunity to get more involved in all facets of Searchin’ for stuff, and man, that’s fun. Can’t wait till I can give you more details…

I’m going to spend today recouperating. I think, if I wake up, I’ll go get some pork with funny noodle at Saigon Cafe, and go see SuperTroopers.

This being alone thing is really starting to suck. The novelty of going to the bathroom with the door open and playing video games with the volume way up. Then, I realized that if I really wanted to, I could do that when Jen and Max are here. I need to find something to do with myself for the next ten days. There are only so many movies to rent and TiVo one guy can watch. Now that I’m starting to feel better, I can leave the house even!

And to make myself feel better, I am worth exactly: $2,572,760.00.

I learned an important lesson last night. It was hard-won and therefore I’m going to share it with you. If you have a serious sinus infection and you take serious antibiotics long enough, there comes a point when the snot loses its purchase in your face and decides to turn tail and head for the exits. If you’re smart or lucky, this will happen during the day, when you’re home on the couch with crappy action movies and several boxes of Kleenex. I’m apparently neither smart or lucky. The mass mucous exodus started at about 10 last night and lasted until about 3:30am this morning. It was an amazing technicolor display of reds, oranges, greens, yellows and some clear viscous liquid I seem to remember from many months ago as normal non-infected proto-boogies.

I spent a part of this time on the couch with a roll of toilet paper (because I couldn’t find the Kleenex enclave) and the garbage can, watching the rest of Ghost World, which I just didn’t get. The relationship between Enid and Seymour was interesting, and Thora Birch was unendingly cute, but I just didn’t get it. Maybe this is the snot talking, but I think maybe it only works if you read the comic book the movie was based on (which I didn’t). The rest of the night was spent watching re-reruns of the Olympics on NBC and cursing my nose.

So, don’t ever ever ever get a sinus infection. And, if you do, go see a doctor right away or else you’ll end up on the couch in the middle of the night trying to figure out exactly how much snot your head is holding and why it has to leave in such an unorderly fashion. I mean, couldn’t it stand in line until I was ready to open the doors?

Someone at work actually noticed that I’ve lost weight. First time someone other than an immediate family member noticed since I started. Damn, that feels good.

A funk has set in. Maybe it’s because Jen and Max are going out of town for two weeks, or the fact that I don’t feel well. Maybe it’s that they’re threatening to switch platforms on me at work, and I’m afraid I’ll have to learn a language I don’t want to (Java – Why the hell would you compile something that’s going to change every other week?).

There’s something to be said for a sinus infection that’s now bad enough that every time I sneeze it looks like a gib exploded in a bad gangster movie. My face is so swollen that my vision’s affected. Yeah, baby, I love it! I’m going to the doctor tomorrow to see what’s up and hopefully we can find a way to kill this thing once and for all.

In other news, I’ll be able to weigh myself on a reliable scale tomorrow and see if this soda reduction is working. I feel like I’ve lost weight, but our scale’s so old and messed up I have no idea where it starts, much less what number I should be reading when I get on it.

Oh, look at all the pretty colors in that thing I just coughed up! I see green, a little pink, yellow. It’s like a Paul Klee that got left out in the rain. I hate winter. Yes, I know not long ago I was fantasizing about snow, but this winter has been mild so far. All of a sudden, winter came back yesterday after a week of tempertures in the sixties and seventies. Boom! Thirty-five, thirty mph wind and snow. Do you know what happens to people with allergies and asthma when there’s a sudden temperture change? We flip out. The body decides to rebel against the cold by battening down the hatches of my face with mucous. It’s a never-ending flood. My face fills up with sandbags against the cold. Like the extra insulation is really needed for the five minutes a day I’m actually outside. Damn you, body! Can’t you evolve into a nice housebody? One with a nice, regulated, amount of mucous? I don’t need strategic snot reserves. I really don’t.

So, anyway, how are you?

My poor little Powerbook. I have one of the older G3’s with the bronze keyboard (pre-firewire). It’s been through so many complete wipes and re-installs that I think it’s having a personality conflict. After getting tired of waiting for OS X to load anything, I’ve decided to switch to YellowDog 2.1 again now that Ximian‘s available.

What’s funny is I don’t really use it for anything. I used to take it home and use it for MAME. Now I use my poor little Dell laptop for Civ3. So, I’m turning the Powerbook into my little crash machine where I can play with compiling kernels and other geeky stuff.

Speaking of geeky. I’m sliding down the slippery slope of complete geekhood. I had a dream in code the other night. I now speak Tcl better than I speak English. I find it harder and harder to relate to non-geeks. I have dark circles under my eyes. I wear geeky shirts – like today. I got this nice polo from the guys at Overture, and well, I’m wearing it. I also got really excited yesterday when I got mail from the guys at YellowDog saying they’d posted my Howto and are sending me a t-shirt.

I need to start painting that huge canvas in the basement. I need to read that book. I need to stop thinking about work all the time and get a good night’s sleep.

Gail’s short story yesterday reminded me of my own juvenile therapy experience. I was five, and don’t remember much of it. I remember bits and pieces of small chairs and tables, colors and smells. I remember the event that lead to the therapy almost like a movie, looking at myself in third person, watching the events unfold like a spectator instead of a participant.

When I was five, we lived in Germany. Dad was stationed at Ramstein, and we lived on the army post at Kaiserslattern. It was fun. We lived in a first floor apartment with uber-waxed wood floors that caused my first two trips to the emergency room that resulted in stitches. There were always kids around to play with, and we took trips all over Europe in our beefed up VW pop-top camper. While my cousin Andy was visiting us, we went out to the country to look for some nature center mom had heard about. Lacking good directions we ended up running down paths through the wood looking for something that resembled our intended destination. My cousin and I had run up a hill to see if maybe we had missed it or something. As we ran back down the hill, my sock got caught on a branch and my foot jammed into a beehive. For some crazy Bavarian evolutionary reason, German bees (who are especially efficient) build their hives at the base of trees, in the ground. The bees decided that the best way to remove me from their home was to sacrifice their lives by stinging me repeatedly until I left.

My cousin had already reached the bottom by the time I started screaming. He ran back up the hill, took off his sweatshirt and started beating the crap out of me with it to get the bees off. I dislodged my foot and we ran down the hill. I don’t remember much of what happened next. I remember there was this older German couple walking their (wait for it) German Shepherd. She was deathly allergic to bee stings and had some weird thing around her neck that was supposed to ward them off. I think she had some cream for stings that she gave us. I don’t remember anything else about that day.

In total, I was stung more than 35 times, and developed an allergy. And worse, I developed a crippling fear of flying bugs. If I went outside and saw a fly or some other buzzing insect, I immediately ran back inside. This is when the therapy started. I remember the office was in a small beige building (all offices on a military base are some shade of biege and usually small). There were bright simple paintings on the walls. I remember sitting on a chair at a small table across from (I think) a woman and looking at pictures.

Not too long after that, we moved to Iceland (which I’ve talked about a couple times). I don’t remember going to therapy there. I do remember the ulcer. It took forever to diagnose. I had to go to several Icelandic hospitals in the capital, drink barium and watch it slide down my throat and into my now porous stomach on TV. I was a member of the Frequent Mylanta club and went through a large bottle every few days. My pediatrician said I was the first six year-old he’d ever met with a stress-induced ulcer. I don’t remember when the ulcer went away… but it did.

Speaking of starving… I’ve been doing pretty well with my New Year’s Resolution. I decided that I drink way too much soda (I was up to 3-4 20oz Dr. Peppers or Code Reds a day). So, I’m down to one 20oz Dr. Pepper for breakfast. On my daily trek to the convenience store in the building with some friends, I decided to take a look at how many calories I’m saving with my new plan. If you look at the back of your Dr. Pepper bottle, it says there are 100 calories per serving. You’d think by serving, they meant the bottle, right? Nope! 8 ounces. Who drinks 8 ounces of a 20 ounce bottle and then puts it away? Not I, and not anyone I know. There are 2.5 servings per bottle, which means that every 20 ounce Dr. Pepper is actually 250 calories. That means I’m saving 750 calories a day by not drinking my other three. And even worse, Code Red is 120 (I think, it might be 150) calories per serving. Fat, your days are numbered!