0003 Kolera 16: Mobius

This past weekend, I think I sprained my brain.

Kimya evening, Jessie and I loaded up supplies in the back of the Lander and headed off to the Microsoft campus for Puzzle Hunt 12. Coming home for a good night's sleep before thirty-one hours of puzzle-solving, running all over the facilities, bad food, and sleep deprivation. I competed as part of Grey Goo, the puzzling group that Jason and Mufi more or less founded with Shaterri, Jessie and I. In addition, we had Jeff, Jason's coworker Garret, Shaterri's sister Stefanie, Kiefer, Jason's friend Jack, Jessie's friend Steven Stair, and an extra MS employee that we recruited through the company puzzling-events mailing list. All told, of the seventy puzzles in the event, we saw fifty, solved about three-quarters of those, and generally had a blast.

I think we also learned a lot about how not to run an event like this.

By the designers' own admission at the closing ceremonies, Puzzle Hunt 12 was, in fact, Puzzle Hunts 12 and 13 that had been sort of smushed together. The team developing PH12 had been aiming for a straight-up Jeopardy theme, and at the same time the next team in line was working on a horror-themed PH13 at the same time. However, both teams started to stall out very badly, and they collectively made a decision to throw their efforts into a joint project to ensure that some kind of event happened this year, but of course their themes were nigh-incompatible. Determined not to let this stop them, though, they cleverly blended their respective storylines into... okay, no, Jeopardy ruled the first half of the event, and then suddenly upon entering round two we discovered that we had unwittingly assembled some kind of artifact that had broken a mystic seal. Had we gotten through the whole event, we would have discovered that Death had come for our souls.

Now, it's fair to say that most Hunts have some kind of plot twist; it's become a fairly conventional plot element in the events run at MS. I joked about an hour into the event that this year's plot twist was that Alex Trebek was going to kill us all. Little did I know how close to right I was. In fact, PH12 was both PH12 and 13, each half shorter than a conventional hunt but together longer than any previous event.

This alone wouldn't have been enough to condemn it. I'd have cracked some jokes, sure, but given the necessities I can let the theming slide. No, what really made this event a problem was the fact that, at about 22h00 on Jugya, we ran into what can best be described as a blocking problem. Normally at events like this, there's some kind of "unlocking" mechanism whereby as a team solves one problem, it gets N more where N is some positive value, until all the puzzles are unlocked. In this one, we got all of the Round One puzzles and its "meta"—a puzzle that requires information from other puzzles to solve—and then were completely unable to move forward to Round Two. We spent between four and eight hours—reports differ based on amount of sleep and degree of time dilation experienced due to temporary insanity—trying to figure out how to solve the big puzzle without making any real headway. This became a serious demotivator to most of the team, and some of our teammates didn't really recover from it in the morning.

Again, that alone might not have been a killer, but a lot of the puzzles were in some serious need of cluing. Normally when a team receives a puzzle, there's some indicator as to how to approach it, even if the message doesn't make any sense or is painfully obtuse. Most of these puzzles had no cluing at all, which meant that by and large we were guessing not only how to solve them, but how to even begin tackling them. This left a lot of us floundering on a number of puzzles, wondering if we were making headway or if we were just chasing red herrings all night.

Now, all this said, I still had a blast, and I'm looking forward to the next one, which if my reckoning is right will be Puzzle Hunt 14. That, however, is months if not a year away, and in the meantime... Team Grey Goo is running on its own event. True, this one won't be nearly as long or as large, but it's a step, a much needed and welcome first step. I'm really looking forward to this. It's coming together beautifully, and I hope everyone that plays in it has as much fun as we've all had in putting it together.

This world is spinning around me.

---

In other news, I think I've finally found somebody I can call "family doctor" again in good conscience, and it's not just because he gives me the drugs I want.

So, as a bit of prelude to this discussion, I would like to remind the home audience that I have been fat my entire life. Overweight. Morbidly obese. I'm not saying this out of any sense to desensitize myself to the words, but as a simple recognition of the truth. Both of my parents are overweight, my mother has crushed vertebrae in her back because of her weight, my father had a quadruple coronary artery bypass graft when he was in his fifties, and overeating has just been a part of my life for years. Plus, I eat when I'm stressed, I horde food, and I'm not particularly active. So, in short, I'm pretty screwed when it comes to my weight, so much so that for most of my life I had essentially given up on ever getting better.

As discussed in the past, as part of my transition I said I would lose the weight, and with the help of Dexatrim and SlimFast, I did. I went from 360 pounds to 209 in a year. Now, I may have gone overboard, but I dieted like I meant it, and I did what needed to be done. I then kept the weight off for six months, taking one Dexatrim a day as an appetite stabilizer. Then the FDA banned PPA, and Dexatrim got reformulated into something that didn't work for me. Since then, my weight had steadily crept back upwards again, and a few months ago, I topped back up to where I had been before I had started. The scale has been, for a few months now, topping out around 364.

Square One was a great television show, but a lousy place to which to return.

Ever since I'd gotten to Seattle, I'd been looking for someone to help me with my weight. My metabolism is more or less broken and my appetite regulation is next to nil. I could finish off a large pizza and still have a psychological craving for food despite feeling physically bloated and ready to vomit. I'm not happy about it, but those were the facts, and I wanted medical help in dealing with them.

The first doctor that I saw told me that surgery was the answer and he wanted to refer me to Swedish Medical for a gastric bypass. I said I wasn't comfortable with the operation idea, seeing as how reports are starting to trickle in suggesting that weight loss as a result of surgery is temporary and results in nutrition complications later in life. Plus, I have a bad habit of waking up on operating tables, which isn't any fun for anyone. On top of this, operating on the obese is always risky, which means even for a theoretically simple procedure, there's still more danger than there would be for someone healthy. Upon voicing my concerns, the doctor essentially said that he wasn't going to give me drugs and that if I didn't like the surgery, I could eat less and exercise like everyone else.

Strike one.

When I went to see the second doctor, I went in armed with facts, figures, statistics. Research is starting to show that the "eat less and exercise" argument, which great in theory, simply doesn't work in practice because the body is too good at screwing itself up. We've evolved to gain weight, not lose it, and I'm a prime example. I've seen the studies done that talk about about the set point, and all the other going theories on fat gain and storage. I tried to explain all of this, passionately, to my second doctor, and she said that she might consider pills, maybe, but that first she wanted me to go through the nutritionist and do yet another round of dietary alterations and increased exercise. I tried to explain that I couldn't do enough exercise to make a dent in my caloric intake as long as I was fighting hunger pangs 24x7 regardless of how much I ate, and she just said that she wasn't going to do it my way until I'd done it hers, regardless of my insistence that I'd tried her way a hundred times before and failed.

Strike two.

So, when I recently changed over to Capitol Hill Medical on a recommendation from Rachel, I was skeptical, and concerned. The ARNP I was going to see was the third attempt in a year to get some help with my weight. Without wanting to admit it publicly, I was really starting to feel like it was a this-or-nothing proposition. So, on my new-patient visit, I mentioned to him that I was interested in getting some help with weight loss and that I'd had real success with Dexatrim back in the day. He was noncommittal at the time and said he knew bad things about PPA, but he didn't tell me no; he just disagreed with my choice of medication. I let the matter drop, and that was that.

Now, during last weekend's Puzzle Hunt, I managed to come down with a urinary tract infection. I know this because I woke up having an intense need to go to the bathroom, and when I did I thought someone had set my crotch on fire. Then, five minutes after I stood up, I had to pee again, but nothing came out. Having had that symptom before, I knew immediately that it was time to call the doctor and get the no-nonsense FUCK-YOU-UTI medication. Then, while I happened to be in the office getting an antibiotic prescription, we talked about some other health goals and he said I needed a Hep-A and Hep-B vaccine, and he asked me if I'd be comfortable with the first set of shots today.

Actually, he more or less said, "unless you tell me no, I'm sticking you with these needles," but much more politely and with a sense of humor.

So, while he was prepping my shoulders for the injection, I thought I would pop the question. "I mentioned before about wanting some help with weight loss; are you willing to help me?"

He looked up, stuck me with a needle, and asked me if I'd ever tried xenical. Now, xenical—sold over the counter as Alli—blocks the body's ability to absorb fat, which means not only does it guarantee loose stool for the duration of the prescription, but it also hampers the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. I don't need any more help with malnutrition, and I said as much, so Dave asked me if I had any other suggestions.

I asked, "what about sibutramine?"

He whipped out his iPhone, hit some kind of pocket drug reference, and proceeded to read off the list of suggested side effects. At the end of it, he shrugged and said, "that's everything that's ever been found on anything anywhere. You want a prescription?"

I blinked. A medical professional, listening to his patient and giving her what she asked for? Sacrilege! We haggled a bit on dosage and such, which is to say he told me he'd start me on the lowest dose and if I needed it we could increase the strength later, and then he made me pinkie-swear that I'd be back in four weeks for my Hep-A booster and a liver-function test. Then he handed me my new drug prescriptions and sent me on my merry way.

I took my first pill last night. This morning, I woke up around 08h00 and figured, "I should have a bagel." I wasn't particularly hungry, but I figured it was breakfast time and I should have something to eat. So, I had a jalapeño-cheddar bagel, and I went to work. Around 12h00, I realized that it was lunch time. That was it. No pangs. No hunger. No clawing inside my gut. Just... "hey, it's normally time when folks eat." But I wasn't hungry. I did start getting pretty peckish around 15h00, but two cans of V8 and a can of grapefruit juice were enough to calm my needs until I got home and had a black-bean-and-egg-with-cheese sandwich with Jessie. Then we noshed on Sun Chips, but I got bored of them after a bit while she kept going.

It's now 23h30, and the worst that I'm feeling is... vaguely peckish. That's all. It's like I have a normally-functioning body that knows it got fed and is happy with what it got. I've got dry mouth from hell, and my tongue tasted like the floor of a taxi cab this morning when I got up, but those are some pretty small prices to pay for what may be the first steps towards actually going back to what a normal person of my height should weigh.

Maybe this, too, can be another square one.

I was told there's a miracle for each day that I try.

0003 Radera 01

So, another month, another lack of update.

Really, it's not that I don't care about this thing any more. It's more the case that I get caught up in doing things and I don't really think about telling folks about it. I just don't "blog" the way most people do. Rather than talk about what's going on right now with my life, I tend to save up and dump it all out into large blocks, and then I forget stuff between when I start saving and when I figure it's time to post. So, chalk it up to use differences, more than interest fatigue.

So, this serves as a prelude to answering the question, "what has th' buni been doing for the last six weeks?"

Despite the removal of one user from my IRC server and the subsequent disappearance of a few others, the universe has not imploded, nor did I really expect anything like that to happen. I did expect a much larger hew and cry about the whole affair, but on the whole people seem to be pleased with the outcome. The community doesn't appear to have splintered, and in fact seems cohesive enough to assemble an anthology of short stories posted to the Shifti, though I'm not involved in the project directly. Still, things seem to be on an even keel there, so I'm not inclined to do too much rocking.

Anthrocon came and went during the downtime. I'm usually uncomfortably enthusiastic for AC, but this year was a little weird. Everything felt very last-minute, very rushed. Part of this was my own inertia; I didn't get the hotel situation resolved until the last minute, and we ended up having to change rooms twice during our stay in Pittsburgh. Part of it was a general lack of planning on my part, and I confess part of it was the ever-present sensation that I've failed in my own goal to have something for the dealers' room. However, as always, I went and had a blast and look forward to going again next year.

Of course, one thing that I've lamented for years is my lack of anything worth selling in the dealers' room. So, my plan is for AC next year, if not for some con prior, to have Beautiful World ready for publication by then. I'm actually further along on this project than it seems. I've broken the halfway mark for a science fiction novel—forty-thousand words—and I'm not yet halfway through the development. I've charted it out, and as long as I'm finishing a chapter every three weeks, I'll have enough time left to get the novel into publishable shape in time to get some advance copies for Anthrocon next year.

Unfortunately, this isn't coming without a price. I'm sure somebody has noticed by now that links to three of the chapters I'd posted previously have gone missing from my website. This isn't an act of censorship so much as it's an attempt to preserve the "publishability"—if that's a word—of the rest of the book. I'm not sure if this is an actual concern, but I'm in better-safe-than-sorry mode. This also means that I won't be posting any more parts of the book to my website, and when FA comes back up, I'll be removing some of the previous sections. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it seems like the best of a set of questionable alternatives.

Now, what this also means is that I'm looking for a shortlist of folks who'd be interested in serving as alpha-readers of the new parts of the story as they become available. One of the things I'll confess quickly and eagerly is that feedback is a large part of what helps drive the creative beast, and I'm making strides with generating that internally, but I'm also aware that other people reading my stuff helps me feel like making more. I don't think I want the universe involved in this process, but I'd love to have a pawful of folks interested in helping me make the book better. I'm not sure what I can offer right now for services rendered other than, like, autographed copies, but I'm sure I can come up with something.

In other news, I've successfully paid off the bankruptcy, which means that the thousand-per-month drain on my budget is now gone, to soon be replaced by a seven-hundred-per-month car payment, if my estimations are right, as well as gas and car insurance which should round me out to the money I'm presently "saving". So, no real movement ahead, but I'll have my own transport again, which will go a long way towards restoring my confidence in my ability to get ahead. Right now, the most likely vehicle on my list is a hybrid Ford Escape, not because I want an SUV but because nobody makes a hybrid station wagon that I wouldn't have to import and I can't afford to hold out until next year for some of the theoretical sixty-miles-to-the-gallon BMW or similiar. Plus, I can fit inside the Escape, or at least I'm led to believe that I can.

Speaking of fitting, the Weight Chart is back online. I found a scale with a 400-pound capacity, and I'm rather embarrassed to admit that at the beginning of the measurements, I needed it. The current trend shocks me, but today's lunch will likely change the direction of the red line for a day or two, mostly because I was in a hurry and ate faster than I could register it. That and portion control seem to be my biggest bugbears, but even there I'm getting better, little by little.

I actually weight to a doctor about my weight, and I learned a few interesting things I'd rather not have known. Rather, I'm glad i know them, but I'm not happy about them being facts, or even historical trends. Basically, whatever my weight was when I was eighteen, give or take two years, is my body's "set point", and most of the natural tendencies will be to maintain that number. Since I weighed 350 pounds at eighteen, I'm likely going to be fighting uphill forever. I've looked into bariatric surgery, but what I'm seeing in the latest reports is that it's a six-year "fix" that ends up not actually solving anything and compounds outstanding problems with new dietary fuckery. Most of the drugs combatting weight loss lead to side effects worse than the weight itself causes. So, apparently the sane goal for someone of my size and history is 315, which is ten percent of base body mass. I'm headed in the right direction, but it's likely going to be a long, painful road.

I'm not saying I'm giving up on the goal. I'm merely setting the expectations for myself and everyone else. Failure is likely, for reasons that have nothing to do with how hard I try or how much I want it.

That one thing aside, though... things seem to be shockingly good. There've been a few dips and wobbles here and there, but they're all things that can be resolved through talking and effort. I'm still not exactly the most social person alive, but I'm feeling better about casual interaction than I have in a while. I still have a pretty big back log of rants on various subjects, but the urge to drop trou and shit into a text file has gone down significantly in the last few months, even if the subject matter is itself fascinating. I really don't have any reason to bitch.

Perhaps that more than anything is driving the silence. I'm just... happy with my life, for the most part, and the elements with which I'm dissatisfied are all things on which I'm actively working. Happy people don't make waves. I'd love to be up for challenging the system and burning the world, but really, I've got it good right now, and I don't want to blow it.

Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

Last month—at the end of May, really—I started a new project, the Ranch on Mars. The idea was to harness some of the tricks of psychology that I've seen exploited at work to try to make meaningful improvements in my own life. With the first month of tracking progress behind me, I think it's a good time to evaluate not only my progress, but the means of measuring them. I learned a few things about my own brain, which I can hardly say is a bad thing.

First, the good news. I was able to successfully complete two of my four goals for the month, and in both cases by better than an expected margin. With the regular introduction of money into my various savings accounts, I saw a good increase in our financial cushion in case of disaster. A two-hundred dollar deposit into my stock account combined with the dividends of the last quarter to make enough of a cash sum on hand to make a stock purchase that would keep my commission rate under three percent, which is pretty good. Two percent or less would be optimal, but that's going to take larger sums than I can currently drop. Getting to work early means that, at least in theory, I get out of work early. This has helped me spend less time on the road because now I'm no longer stuck in rush hour traffic as often or as long. That's definitely had a positive impact on my quality of life, especially with summer heat. On the whole, I think I did really well on the goals that I completed.

Now, the downside. My weight actually went up month-to-month, and I made absolutely no headway at all on my novel this month. These are both disappointing, but I'm trying not to be too bummed about them. It means I didn't earn the DSLite I'd been wanting, but oddly I don't feel that I'm denying myself something or living the ascetic's life. Did it mean I didn't want one badly enough? I don't think so. The weight difference in my purse alone will be an improvement, and I admit some amount of wanting the cool toy that my wife has. So, what happened to keep me from achieving these when the other two came so easily?

As far as the writing goes, I really do think that City of Heroes takes a large part of the blame for this. It's very easy to simply come home and slump in a chair and zone out in front of a game, doubly so when one has had a really shitty day at work, and I've had a lot of shitty days this last month. My team lead was out of pocket a good part of the month because of personal issues—a death in the family on top of scheduled vacation—and so I've had to step up unexpectedly and serve as head of projects that I had expected someone else to be managing. This has meant that, despite getting into the office at 08h00 or even 07h45 on some mornings, I didn't get to leave work until 17h00 or later. In one case, I was still at work as late as 19h30. This had a huge negative impact on my desire to do anything other than lump when I got home in the evenings, and City of Heroes is just interactive enough to make me feel like I'm being at least mildly creative even if all I'm doing is spinning my gears.

This isn't to say I did nothing creative last month. I've been working on what could really best be classified as "fan fiction", even though the characters are my own creation. They just happen to be set in the City of Heroes setting, and thus are utterly non-publishable unless I feel like going back and ripping large chunks of history apart. They're also mostly collaborations, which mean that I don't have sole ownership of any of the works. It's creativity, but it's not progress on my novel, which is what I really hoped to achieve. Still, it's been good to at least keep writing, even if it's not writing that furthers my goal of being published.

Finally on the creative front, Jessie made an observation that I think bears further exploration. I do most of my creative writing when I'm not at home. I'd never noticed this before, but I think she's onto something here. In the past, most of my short works happened when I was in the computer lab on campus. The biggest chunks of Child of Man appeared when I was on trips of one sort or another. I added half a chapter and four-thousand words across previous parts over Anthrocon. I had actually set the goal of finishing chapter twelve anticipating a trip to Seattle last month, and then the trip was delayed. This actually did throw my plans for creative writing for a bit of a loop. The trip's been rescheduled for next month, which should give me some time to actually work on my novel in peace, but it will also give me the chance to get some other bits of writing done that I've been delaying. This also makes me wonder, though, if it wouldn't be beneficial to plan to take regular evenings out to a coffee shop or some other home-away-from-home with my laptop to give myself the chance to work on stories. Maybe even a weekend trip out to a motel somewhere on the interstate just to write might benefit me.

As far as the weight goes, there are so many things I could blame here that it would sound not like a reasoned discussion but instead a laundry list of excuses. This said, however, I think I know what the largest factor of my failure here was. There is no direct correlation between what I eat and what I weigh. Now, that sounds like an absolute load of bulldada, and it is, but within it lies the key to the answer. Consider the following scenario:

• Day one, morning: I weigh myself and my weight is X.
• Day one, afternoon, I eat something unhealthy.
• Day two, morning, I weigh myself and my weight is X-n.
• Day two, all day, I eat reasonably and moderately.
• Day three, morning, I weigh myself and my weight is X again.

This happens more often than I think anyone really realizes, and it's not exactly rocket science. Many things have an impact on day-to-day weight, not the least of which is how much fluid I've had to drink. A gallon as compared to a half-gallon of diet tea at work could easily make up the difference in those numbers. So could sweating out a lot of water, or a second bowl of curry, or skipping the toast in favor of the bagel. Whatever. The point is not the specifics, but rather the psychological impact of these events. Eating something bad didn't hurt me, because my weight dropped. Eating well didn't help me, because my weight rose. This sends all kinds of mixed signals that reinforce bad behaviors and punish good ones, and that's a surefire way to undermine positive performance.

So, what's the solution? The scale is the only measuring tool I have, and its accuracy as a measuring device is suspect. Then again... is it the only tool? I do have another means of measuring weight impact: intake. Specifically, calorie load. Does this mean I'm going to be counting calories? In a word, yes. Why? Because it's more reliable than the scale. The scale makes a good trailing indicator. Does the moving average say I'm going down in weight? Then I'm eating right. Does it say I'm going up? Then I need to re-evaluate what I'm eating. The food, though, is a pretty good leading indicator. If I eat that ice cream bar, I'm going to need fat jeans. If I skip that second bowl of rice, I may fit into the top I've owned for six months that I can't wear without feeling ugly despite the pretty color.

This next month is going to suck. However, hopefully it will pay off in the long run.

As a side note, I'm not blind to the effects of exercise on weight and health, but after my trike got stolen, I took a real hit in morale. Getting out and walking, especially in the summer, is just no fun. The trike was fun, and that got removed through no fault of my own other than perhaps not keeping it under a laser cage. I had two DDR pads, one mine and one Kitana's on extended loan, but one got broken at Anthrocon and the other is so close to falling apart that it's not really reliable any more, and bad feedback is more frustrating than no feedback at all. I've rearranged the furniture in the living room to provide space for a replacement pad once I buy it, but I do have to buy it first. Jessie and I have talked about getting exercise bikes to ride together, but we'd have to find a good place to put them. I could walk around the warehouse during the day, but that's hotter than doing it outside, and the overhead fans just stir up the hot air and make breathing a privilege instead of a right.

So, in recap:

• I didn't achieve my goals in July by a large enough margin to justify buying the DSLite for myself.
• I have a pretty good idea why I didn't achieve the two I missed.
• I have my goals for August based on what I learned in July.

I still feel a bit like a perfect damn fool putting myself through this, but at the same time, I think it's helped me, even if just a little bit. I saved two hundred dollars I wouldn't have otherwise. I'm getting to work at 08h00 without a struggle, and I'm setting my sights on 07h45 and thinking "Hey, I can maybe even push myself back to 07h00 one day!" I'm feeling more focused on my weight issues than I ever have during the whole time I was on Atkins/low-carb/whatever. I don't feel like my novel is some far-off one-day thing any more. I'm making progress, a step at a time.

A true initiation never ends.

---

In other news, as hinted above, I'm going to be going on a business trip next week. Seattle—Bellevue, specifically—this time, for two weeks. I leave Monday morning, and I return Friday a week later. That's eleven days in the PacNorWest. Anyone reading this who'll be around during that time, please let me know. I'd love the chance to find out who my potential neighbors are.

That's right. Potential neighbors. My stated purpose for the trip to Seattle is training at the hands of somebody who has a decade of experience in our primary software package, but I do have an ulterior motive for going. Last week, I applied for a position in the Enterprise Monitoring group in the Bothell office. My manager knows and supports the transition, as does the person with whom I'll be training. Everyone that I've told so far has been positive about it. Now I can but hope that the hiring manager is as supportive.

This wasn't the way this was supposed to happen. I really hadn't planned on looking for work in Seattle until 2008 or so. I'd figured I'd get one of my two mortgages paid in full, rack up some living capital under my belt, apply for a position, and make a nice leisurly transition from one coast to the other. I had a few years yet in Pottstown to get some sense of stability in my life. I really did think that this is how things woul dhappen, and I planned accordingly.

Then I came in contact with the event horizon of the Luck Plane.

As fate would have it, a friend of mine is looking for work. Knowing he has a degree in psychology, I suggested he apply for one of the many open manager positions at the distribution center. He asked me for a requisition number—the unique ID given to the position itself so that applications can be tracked more easily—and when I went into the company jobs website, I happened to notice an open position for my same analyst grade in a team that does work interesting to me in a location to which I've said I wanted to go. So, after a quick consultation with Jessie, I put in an application. I didn't really go looking for this opening so much as I found it, as one might find a dollar bill on the sidewalk, or a cake.

On Friday, my manager presented me with the name of the recruiter for the position, and that afternoon I called her. When I told her that I had applied, and that I'd be in Seattle for training in a week, she said that it would probably be a great chance for me to interview, and that if things went really well, I could have an answer on whether or not I got the job before I left for Pottstown again. On the whole, she sounded really positive, though she did warn me that T-Mobile doesn't pay to relocate people in the COS team. That means I'd have to pay for my own move, but I told her that I was fine with that. She wished me luck in my application process and said she'd see what she could do to escalate the timetable for my interview so that I could plan on taking care of that while I was already there.

I'm in what feels a bit like uncharted territory here. The plans I had made are now potentially in total disarray. I've never tried to sell a house before. I've moved cross-country, but I had a place I knew I was staying when I arrived. I don't know what kind of timetables exist or are proper to request to get all of these details resolved. I haven't even gotten the job and I'm worrying about what to do if I get it. I've had serioua stomach-twitches all weekend over it.

On the other hand, of course, is the fact that even if this had waited until 2008, I probably would still be going through all of these sensations. Doubtless I would not have gone looking for answers until I needed them, and even now I may not. If I don't get the job, nothing has changed. If I do get it, it's something I've said I wanted, and I really do think the move is for the best. Pennsylvania is nice, but the weather here is still horribly unpleasant during the summer, as our current hundred-degree heatwave will demonstrate. The neighborhood in general is not a good area in which to live. The culture in Seattle, so I have heard, is far more like what I think Jessie and I are seeking as far as standing community. If nothing else, the job opportunities within T-Mobile are better at the corporate headquarters than they could ever hope to be at the warehouse. I want very much to believe this is a move in the right direction.

Do I sound like I'm trying to convince myself? I am, sort of. When I felt like I had no chance to get out of my current situation, I've said repeatedly that I wanted to get into a corporate environment again. Now that I'm facing the chance to get it, I'm suddenly unsure. I don't think this is a change in what I want, or in what I think I want, as much as it's a case of cold feet. I'm no longer standing on the side of the pool, looking up at the high dive and saying I wish I could do a back flip. I'm now standing on the diving board looking down at the water and realizing what a long drop it really is. If I climb back down, I'll still want it just as much, and I'll have added to it the "shame" of having run from it, but that doesn't make it any less nervewracking.

Still, for now the best approach is Zen. The interview hasn't happened yet. The interview may not happen this trip. I may not know anything soon. Until it happens, guessing about the future is needless anxiety. Relax and enjoy.

Tomorrow does not exist. Twenty tomorrows is a long time.

This feels like a maintenance post. No great weight sits upon my shoulders. No meaty social issues currently constrain my thoughts. No horrible demons lurk just behind my eyes demanding attention. I figure all in all I've been doing a fairly good job of tending my baobobs, and that's meant fewer emotional collapses and less drama all around, which is pretty much a good thing.

To be sure, there have been a few issues that hover around the fringes of my perception. My internal network at home is intermittently dying for no apparant reason, and it has since the power failure last week that took down the server for a few hours. I suspect that in the power loss-return-loss cycle, one of the hubs got damaged. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's a nuisance I'd rather not have to face right now. The sociopolitical environment outside the Lapinian Consulate remains tense and unwelcoming, but it's always tense and unwelcoming even when it's warn and inviting. This is merely the way of rabbits, and I'm adapting and accepting over time. I doubt the world will change enough in my lifetime to ever make me want to participate in society in any way other than the bare minima required to sustain myself and my family financially, but stepping outside my door doesn't actively invite death either from other people or my own head. My weight isn't where I want it to be, but I've taken a few baby steps in the direction of dealing with it and the feedback I've gotten has been mostly positive. It's going to take a while, but I hope these things will sort themselves out in time with a bit more effort.

I think the one big issue currently weighing on my mind is the trip I have upcoming. Three weeks ago, I flew down to Atlanta for team meetings and group training. Now they're flying me to Seattle for a week for more meetings with a different team on a new project for which I've "volunteered". To be sure, I wanted to be involved, but not so centrally. This project has the feel of "make-or-break" on it. It's something the business wants very much but that the support staff thinks in general is not a good idea, so if we can make it work, it'll be a big boost, but when if we have to cancel it, it could look ugly. I doubt I'd lose my job over it if it went poorly, but I'm lapine enough never to trust raw assurances.

This whole "business travel" thing still has me mystified, tired and a little tittilated. I've always loved to travel, and I know I've commented before on this fact, but I also know I've mentioned that the heyday of business travel is behind us. At least, it seems like it. At my level, I fly coach, I'm on the cheapest fares and the least convenient times, and I have to carry my own suitcase. I spend long hours away from home, but I know it's because I'm important enough to the company that they're willing to spend money on sending me places. I love living out of a hotel, but eating out all the time gets tiresome and sometimes I just want to cook a comforting meal. I love to go and see new places, but I always look forward most to coming home.

If anybody in Seattle over the next week wants to try to arrange a time to meet, email me and I'll send you my PCS number. I'll be staying at the Silver Cloud Eastgate, 14632 Southeast Eastgate Way, Bellevue, WA 98007. I won't have a car, but I should have my evenings to myself unless my manager decides to keep me chained.

I'm refinancing my house again, the second time in a year. The first time it was to consolidate debt and I was damn glad for the chance to do that, but my credit score was pretty low thanks to The Bad and my job situation was brand new and still a little shaky, so I got a pretty poor interest rate on a 3/27 Fixed-to-ARM. If none of that bit makes any sense, don't worry. It didn't to me at first either. Mortgages typically come in two main types, depending on whether the interest rate can change over time or not. If it can, it's adjustable. If it can't, it's fixed. Fixed interest rates typically save people money in the long run, but they're usually reserved for people who have great credit or who can afford to pay a large amount up front on a house. Adjustable-rate mortgages change with the prime lending rate set by the Federal Reserve, so every time you hear Ben Bernanke talk about raising interest rates, all those people who have an adjustable-rate mortgage pay a little more out of pocket on their houses. They tend to be more expensive in the long run, but anyone can get them. The fixed-to-ARM program is a hybrid of these ideas, giving the borrower a short window during which the interest rate will remain steady regardless of what the market does. Then, at the end of that window, the interest rate on the mortgage jumps to what it would have been had it been tracking the Fed's rate changes all the way along and becomes adjustable from there. It's great if you expect to refinance your house again in a short amount of time, or if you plan on selling the property within the fixed-rate time period.

This may actually happen for Jessie and I.

This is where the rest of my job weirdness enters into the playing field. My department doesn't really have any need for any more team leads right now. We've got a team lead, and he does a damned fine job as a team lead, but he's also not fully employed as a team lead because he's still having to serve as a principal support analyst on a lot of issues. He's an Analyst IV. I'm an Analyst III. Until the IV is fully working as an IV, there's no need for any more IVs on the team. This means that there's no room for promotion in my current department. If I want to advance faster than the cost-of-living adjustments, I have to leave my current department, or my current company. Assuming for the moment that I want to stay with T-Mobile—because I do—that means having to switch to another group. However, to do that I'm going to have to move. There are no other groups in my current facility, because my facility is a warehouse, not a corporate office. The only things open to me here are management jobs I don't want, and production jobs paying half or less my current salary.

T-Mobile's corporate offices are in Tampa, Atlanta and Seattle. Anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line is right out, if only for the weather, to say nothing of the political culture. This means that if I want to get anywhere in my company any time soon, I'm going to have to relocate to the Left Coast. This isn't an immediate thing, and it's obviously not a guaranteed thing, but to borrow from the Torino Scale, the likelihood of moving is somewhere around a five. It's not certain, but it's non-zero, and the most likely alternate scenario involves changing jobs, something I'm loath to do if I can avoid it. I've never worked at the same company longer than eighteen months, unless you count my stint as a teaching assistant at the University of North Texas, which was a year of three overlapping part-time jobs.

I figure the timescale on this is somewhere around the beginning of 2008 if it's going to happen, which should be coincidentally right around the point at which I've finished paying off my past debt. I like the significance of this. I like the cosmic unity. It means nothing, but it looks pretty, and that counts for a lot for me. I can choose to interpret it as symbolic if I wish, a new start in a new city and a new goal. In trying to find references to my past discussion on travel, I instead found the post wherein I discussed my desire to make a plan for the future, and putting down the last of my negative past feels like a good start to that. I'll be free of past burdens and ready to take on new challenges. I'll be able to face the future. From here, it looks like the kind of event that cries out for a commemorative print in Reconstructivist style, faces in a row along the bottom-right upturned towards rays of light from the top-left corner, wearing vapid two-tone smiles with a Cyrillic propaganda slogan beneath it.

In any case, this all started with a discussion of refinancing the house, and I'm going with a 3/27 because of the need to plan for the contingency of moving cross-country, but it also serves to pull down my interest rate another half-point beneath what I'd get if I went strictly with a fixed-rate mortgage. That means in the short run I'll be saving myself another thirty dollars a month, which amounts to a free box of Fudge Stripes for th' qiti every other day. Our Feline Mistresses must be appeased.

This will also mean I have more money to throw at the credit card, which might even advance the timeline by which we've paid off our back debt. That would break the nice little synchronicity above, but it would also save us some finance charges, and I'm unspiritual enough—or perhaps sufficiently capitalist—to destroy universal harmony to save a few bucks. It would also mean that if we move to Seattle, we do so with a nest egg and the chance to put some more money down on a house, or some more stock to start earning dividends, or a nest egg for emergencies. The less money we have to spend paying off the corporate masters, the more money we have to support ourselves and move towards self-sufficiency.

It's not that I enjoy being the ant; it's that I've been the grasshopper.