Thwarted Again

Month: February 2009

  • Mountains and molehills

    I took a few pictures of the mountains as we were driving back to Denver from vacation. I wish we got just a little bit more snow here but at the same time I appreciate not having to drive on it.

    The yard is starting to come back to life after a fairly mild winter. I don’t think the cherry is going to bloom much this year but I’m fertilizing it in the hope that I can fool it a little. The viburnum we planted in the front has been growing and looks very nice right now.

    Also, the agarita bush which was probably four inches tall when it was planted is much bigger and is blooming for the first time. I don’t know if I’ll get any fruit off it this year but it’s encouraging.

    I went out to inspect the garden plot this afternoon and it’s holding up well. There’s one place where the roof drip line has broken the paper but the grass in that small place can be dealt with using more thorough methods. It’s 26 feet long and 13 feet wide. After I leave a little space on the fence sides and build the retaining wall it’ll be 24.5 feet by 10.5 feet. After I measured the slope of the yard and did some math I determined that I’m going to need to have 10 yards of garden dirt brought in. I think, all in all, it’ll be about $750 worth of supplies to be ready to plant and then I need to get the actual plants. I still need to decided exactly what I’m going to plant too. I have been reconsidering the “tangle” plan and I think I’ll cut back on that and have more of the garden be a traditional layout. That will make it easier to treat diseases and pests and it’ll look better too.

  • Vacation

    A friend was kind enough to invite me along on her sort-of-annual group ski trip and since I don’t have much to do these days I accepted. I’m generally a stick in the mud but, as was pointed out to me by basically everyone, how often do you have the time to just go somewhere and have fun and not worry about what’s falling apart while you’re gone. It was very generous of her to offer and I am grateful. The last time I was on more than an inch of snow was something like 15 years ago so I figured since I was starting over I might as well give the snowboarding a try. The resort has people up on the mountain with video cameras to record you so you can see how you’re doing it wrong and I have uploaded my particular wrongness to the youtubes for the enjoyment of one and all.

    I had a lot of fun. The snowboarding has a tougher learning curve than I remember for skiing but it was enjoyable. The first day we learned how to not kill other people and then how to not kill ourselves. Mainly that’s by not letting the board get away from you when it’s not attached to you and how to slide down the mountain with the board across the hill with you on either the heel or toe side. The second day we did some “falling leaf” and then learned how to make turns. The third day it was just me and Bruce (the guy in blue in the video) so we made sure I wasn’t going to die on the bunny slope and then went up to the top of the mountain where the video was taken. My only real complaint about being up on the mountain was that I was thinking so hard about what I was doing that I didn’t really get to enjoy the surroundings. I expect once you get better that’s less of an issue. Maybe I’ll go back before another 15 years is up.

    It was nice hanging out with everyone and I don’t think we got on each others nerves too much. Ready to go home on Monday but not quite ready to murder everyone so I guess that makes it a success. I am also now caught up with season two of House so that’s good.

    Now I need to find some one to give me money.

  • Work

    I don’t talk much about work here for several reasons but I’m going to do so for a little bit. Friday was my last day at my now former job. I worked at a semiconductor fab near where I live which closed. There are a lot of reasons for the closure and most people who worked there have different mental pictures of the events and conditions that lead to the decision to close. I don’t really want to get into that but, much like most things, there is no single thing responsible. I ended up being one of the last people there since I became the manager of the IT group in the last year when my friend who had had that job as one of his many duties left to take a pretty fantastic position at Sun Power (solar company). So, we shut down the fab, cleaned up the equipment and then my group organized and dealt with the computers, servers and network hardware. I think we did a good job and I hope the few remaining people don’t have too much extra to do that I wasn’t able to get done.

    This was my first job out of college and for a few years I was not very happy with it. I couldn’t say why now. I had less work and responsibility than I ended up with at the end and I was fortunate to not only get a job quickly after graduating but to then survive the several rounds of layoffs caused by the post dot-com bubble correction. I liked the vast majority of the people I worked with and towards the end I came to feel that had we not closed I could have worked there for the rest of my life. Still, eight years is a pretty good run at a job these days so while I’m sad I am also proud of the work that we did and of my contribution.

    I’m going to spend the next week and a half going through some of my old textbooks (I used to know some math once upon a time sigh) and work on an application to a company some of my friends work at and seem to like. Then I’m going to go on a ski trip with some other friends which should be fun. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been skiing and I’m going to try the snowboarding this time so it’ll be an adventure. That reminds me, I need to buy the lessons and lift tickets today. Anyway, it’s not a great time to be looking for a job but I have some savings which means I have some time and, as has been pointed out by many people, how often do you have a lot of time off where you can do whatever you want. In fact several of them suggested I go to Japan like I’ve been wanting to for a while but that’s a little more than I’m willing to spend without an actual income.

    I suppose that’s it. I’d like to think that having more free time will cause me to post more but I doubt it. Wish me luck.