for awhile this morning i was concerned that i might prove a medical miracle – the spontaneous creation of an ulcer in 30 minutes or less. i wrote yesterday about not knowing what to expect from the beginning of the spring semester at school today. i knew the kids’ schedules would be changing, but i had no idea that the schedule change that would push me into meltdown mode would be my own.

for the past semester i have taught english. duh. english is my specialty, my area of certification, the topic of my degrees. i assumed in the new term i would be teaching english. which i guess i am. sort of. the slip of paper i was handed this morning listed the following courses: two journalism, two library research, and one economics. i laughed at the last one, figuring it was a computer error. then i was informed by our burly, surly jerky assistant principal that with out phase out, some teachers were being excessed and that the remaining staff would have to pull together to fill in the holes left in their absence. when i meekly protested that i had never studied much less taught economics, i was informed that i should be glad i was not being told to teach basket-weaving, but not to worry, there was a textbook for economics.

cue hyperventilation.

i didn’t want to be the staff member who wasn’t being a team player. i didn’t want to be the difficult one, or the one who was viewed as not wanting to help out in a pinch. but economics? i fell into the bookroom, grabbed a textbook, and felt my stomach sink even further. how was i supposed to take in and spit back out this information to students who would be looking to me for explanations and answers? starting in, oh, forty-three minutes?!

my school is —— up. i’ve known that from the beginning; i came to new york knowing the phase out situation and realizing that it would be weird. i just didn’t ever think it would be quite so shitty.

by midday salvation came in the form of the announcement that the other english teacher had agreed to take on my econ class, and i would have her non-area class swapped in its place – drama! i nearly collapsed in relief. granted i have no experience whatsoever in teaching theater, but it is at least an area i have interest in and have spent some time as a student. i haven’t even been told whether its a performance class or more in the vein of the study of drama, and i probably won’t be given this information. i will be expected to come up with curriculum, dig in the book room in hopes of unearthing dusty books i can use, create a syllabus, assignments, classwork, homework, and present myself as a compentent educator in a subject i have never taught. starting tomorrow.

but thank god it’s not economics.

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“Dada? Dada?” a voice comes softly from the doorway of the next room. I get up, walk over and peer around. “I have bzggrzsh,” he says, reaching his hand out over the baby gate to me. It is only as he drops something into my hand that I realize what the unintelligible word was:

Boogers.

A grey-green chunk of nose tinsel rolls into my hand.

“Thanks, buddy. Here’s a puzzle to play with.”

“Okay, Dada.” He turns, skirts behind the partially open door and disappears into his room, new puzzle clutched in his hands.

You see, yesterday was The End of Napping. When you become a parent, you’ll understand why this is capitalized. It is the end of an era, the death of a beloved, even needed friend. In the past six to nine months, there have been intermittent days of ‘no-napping.’ And at these points, various people have implied, “Well, maybe he’s done taking naps.” My response:

Not if I have any say about it.

For a guy who is a general screw-up, late to just about everything, and has a desk so cluttered as to make professional organizers cry, I have been the Minister of The Schedule. Regimented, baby. Wake up, baby out of clothes, in bath, playing in water, brushing teeth, drying off, clothes on, breakfast in, *break for Sesame Street, snack, run errands or work out, get home by noon, food by noon-thirty, storytime at one, bed by 1:20pm., roughly thirty minutes of baby yammering, THREE HOURS of me…errr, nap time, up at 5 for play time, then dinner at 7, bed at 8. Rinse. Repeat.

Even this child’s poops were more-or-less on schedule.

I had a finely tuned machine, my friends. It ran like silk, save for the occasional, unavoidable interruptions. We spent a week back home over the holidays, wherein he did not nap. Strange beds, strange schedules, and tons of people who wanted to see him. I was amazed that he handled it all so well. People said “Well, maybe he’s done with napping.” Amy and I just glanced at each other, with that tacit understanding: “Um, no.”

When we got back, he went back on his schedule and everything was smooth as silk.

Until Saturday. Sigh. I still don’t know what went wrong. I put him down for his nap in his crib, and went to take a shower. As I got out of the shower, the bathroom door swung open and there he stood. After I peeled myself off the ceiling, we had a discussion about getting out of the crib. He’s done this once before about six months ago, and after a reprimand he never repeated it. I put him down and he took his nap.

The next day, he climbed out three times. A stern rebuke sent him back to bed and napping ensued, but I raised the household threat level to “Ochre” and started monitoring his phone calls.

Then yesterday… the napping ended. He climbed out again and instead of forcing him back into his crib, I laid him down in his new, ‘big boy’ bed. Of course, he didn’t stay there. We had ‘quiet time’ where he played in his room. But no nap.

Shit. Daddy needs Nap Time. Seriously. A stretch of time during the day where everything is quiet and still? You have no idea what a wonderful thing that is.

Reed is in the next room, making noises for all the animals in the zoo. I’m listening to The Shins, but it’s not really helping. My baby is a big boy now, such a big boy.

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the saying is ‘you get what you pay for.’ like when you get a tattoo from a guy going door-to-door with a homemade gun.

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thanks everybody for bearing with us. it turns out that our hosting company has been bought and the servers moved from the midwest to new england.

we moved the data over this weekend, but the host didnt set everything up the same way, so some stuff has broken. most of it is fixed, but bear with me as i try to climb through code over the next few days.

(yes, timestamps are an hour off — the machines moved timezones. yes, quick note is broken. no, im not sure why yet, but ill look at it tonight.)

least im back to normal working hours. though the commute is still awful.

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naim june paik died yesterday. this really sucks.

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ok dokie. everything should be working right on the site once again. sorry to everyone who posted today who found their writings timestamped as if they were floating in the atlantic.

i found about 50 pictures yesterday that need to get processed and thrown up — and those dont count any of my digital ones from the last many months. plus i _still_ owe the last few days of japan posts and pictures. plus im trying to get this tagging system worked out. and ray asked for a print stylesheet, so thats on the list. i swear, i need to call in sick for a week and crank on everything here, but it isnt going to happen.

hopefully though, now that this migration has gone through, i can get back to all the stuff i was enjoying prior to this weekend.

anyway, this was just meant to be a quick note to tell you that everything should be back to normal.

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i was hoping to get this post up while tripp’s rant on googe was still on the front page…

i had lunch at google last thursday.

a friend of mine from hp labs, let go in the great layoff of summer 2005, took a senior researcher position at google. i keep in touch with a number of these ex-hp guys through xbox live, we have a weekly game that’s been around for about 2 years now. sometimes we even meet in person! a bunch of them came down for e3 last year and we had pizza in westwood. then, when i arrived up here, we set up another pizza dinner in cupertino. this crew is an interesting mix with a wide range of age, origin, politics, faith and personality. but we can all agree that we enjoy shooting at each other via the rainbow 6 games and talking trash in between. thus i now have an odd little local social group that is spread across some of the premier technology companies around here. and when “mr degauss” asked if i’d like to visit google for lunch i knew i couldn’t turn that down.

the campus is about 5 minutes from my house in mountain view. no joke. i merely had to cross to the east side of the 101 freeway and there, around the bend, was the google complex, easily identified by the colored cones. blue, red, yellow, green… of course. the buildings the headquarters occupies used to belong to sgi, may they finally rest in peace soon. the valet parking lot, free naturally, was full and the attendant directed me to park underground. instead, i picked up my friend and we made an ad hoc parking spot at the first stretch of empty curb we found.

as we walked in, mr degauss commented that the swarms of cars and people were part of a hiring surge. how they expected to fit any more employees inside, neither of us could figure. my theory is that google is attempting to hire all competent technologists as a strategy, the purpose is to vacuum the available developers in the bay area until competitors asphyxiate from the lack of human resources. regardless of whether that’s accurate, i was instantly overwhelmed by a greater population density than i could ever feel comfortable in.

there was no real physical security that i could see. we just walked right into the main quad. though my cynical instincts caused me to believe that there must be some kind of surveillance. at the main building, degauss printed out a visitor’s pass for me which required that i sign the standard nda. at least i assume it was standard as it was far too long for me to read while standing there. i was ready to eat anyway and hunger trumps privacy.

it was closer to 1 by the time that we got the main cafeteria and the whole place was ridiculously crowded. while i would have enjoyed a leisurely stroll through just to check out the broad offerings, i really just wanted to get some food and get out of there. i’m not claustrophobic, but i have low tolerance for lines. i like to have some space to myself. so when i found some indian food, served under a sign declaring “namaste”, i grabbed a tray.

did i mention lunch at google is always free? well it is. make of that what you will. they also have a large number of vegetarian and vegan plates, the sort of thing that engenders my respect. that day they had a couple differenct okra dishes and some black rice at the station i visited. pretty decent. but as soon as i got my food, my friend led me out of the public dining space and into the main building where we occupied a small table above the entrance stairway. much better.

i got to ask degauss a number of questions about his google experience so far. the anecdotes were a mixed bag. not sure how much i can say that would be interesting to most readers. a lot of the stories just confirmed what tech journalists and investors have been spouting about for the last couple years. the really surprising part might be just how de-centralized the whole management structure is. there are a number of mechanisms that are in place that seem very “hive”. he also confirmed my worst fear: that google does not understand design. while they have a number of fantastic engineers and researchers, there is a frightening lack of concern for aesthetics, ergonomics and usability. although as we ate lunch, a colleague of degauss’ came by and announced that the research group had hired an anthropologist. they seemed excited and relieved.

after lunch, degauss showed me the coffee and his office. his office was small and shared with one other researcher, which is apparently a stroke of luck considering how packed the rest of the place is. more importantly, there are these little beverage/snack clusters that he calls “7/11s”. they have an absurd selection of drinks. far too many coffee choices for my comfort. it was clear to me then that no one there really appreciated coffee, they just bought every machine until all the counter space was filled. as if variety was going to increase the chances of making a great cuppa. not so. it just led me to a frustrating decision to go with the crappy automatic machine.

and there it is: in writing this i’ve figured out the metaphor for google’s dilemma. the plethora of coffee machines are a model of their business and research approach. rather than find/design 3 coffee machines that serve really excellent brew customized for the 3 most common consumers/users, they try to acquire/index them all. let the customer choose the content they prefer, helped by an invisible ranking mechanism or maybe just the path of least resistance. the entire experience is lackluster. a lot of work in a cluttered environment for a pitiful return.

so that’s what i walked away with. google impresses in terms of scale rather than style. the exact opposite of say apple.

i make no predictions for the future however. google employs a large number of smart people. maybe they’ll get lucky.

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today at school things are confusing. it’s a teacher workday but i really don’t know what to work on. the first semester has just ended and tomorrow the kids get whole new schedules. i have no real way of knowing whether i will get all new students or all my old kids back. i was at the halfway point in huckleberry finn with my old classes, and i am at a bit of a loss with what to do if i have a mix of new and old students. do i summarize what happened in the first 18 chapters of the book? scrap it altogether and move on to a new novel? it doesn’t even look like i will get my new roles until tomorrow, so i am at a loss at the moment to do planning.

i got my W-2 this morning and it has my old VA address printed on it. this is stressing me out although my accountant father assured me that it will not bungle things when he does my taxes for me. i am so so grateful for my father. i know i don’t always get the emotional nurturing i’d like to have from him, like saying ‘i love you’, but he surely does his best to help and take care of me as much as he can. he takes care of my car and does my taxes and does all kinds of wonderful dad things. i am lucky.

this week i have an appointment with a new therapist. the social worker i have been seeing is specifically a bereavement counselor and not all my issues really fall under that topic. we’ve been talking about kind of phasing me out of sessions with him for a little while now, so i have an appointment with him next week that i guess might be my last. it’s weird to start talking to a new social worker; i feel like the first session i will just be providing all my backstory – like explaining what’s going on in a soap opera to someone who doesn’t usually watch it. this new SW is right in my neighborhood though, and i am grateful for that. i think i’m over feeling like there is a stigma attached to seeing a therapist; i personally believe that every person in the world could probably benefit from having counselling of some type. how can talking things through to an objective person not be a helpful thing? in my perfect world everyone would have access to free counselling. it kind of goes along with my more extreme idea that all girls should be put on the pill at age 10, though that’s a hazy idea i’ve never completely thought through yet.

this movie is filming next to my school. super duper celebrities have been orbiting in a one-block radius of where i am each day and i never even sensed it. amazing.

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people can be so rude here at times. this weekend was a bit of a culmination of that. friday night i was at gpscy (the grad school bar) and i was in a hallway where people hang coats. there were a couple of guys near me in the hallway, and one backed into me, spilled my drink all over me, then looked at me and said “it isnt that bad.” i was appalled. i stood there staring at him for a second, waiting for an ‘excuse me’ or and ‘im sorry’ or a ‘hey, let me get you another drink,’ but instead, he said nothing aside from the fact that being doused with a cosmopolitan ‘isnt that bad.’ i wanted to throw the rest of my drink (well, the 1/3 of it that was left) in his face, but i couldnt bring myself to be that mean. then, the next day, on the way to the gym, i stopped at urban to return a couple things. the doors were locked. i thought maybe i was just being a klutz, so i tried to open them again. locked. i looked at the hours on the front door. i looked at my cell phone. nope… it was definitely 11 32am and the store shouldve opened at 11. there were workers chatting at the register who motioned to me that they’d be at the door in a second. a few minutes later, some bitch comes slowly sauntering up to the door, unlocks it, doesnt open it for me, and never says ‘o, sorry for the delay’ or ‘we had to open late due to x.’ when i get to the register, two workers stare blankly at me until i finally say ‘i need to return some things.’ they still say nothing. i put my things out on the counter. neither of them ever say ’sorry you had to wait’ or ‘how can i help you?’ instead, we proceed through the transaction saying nothing. i want to tell them how terrible their customer service is, and that i couldve done their job better at age 13 (when i actually helped out at a children’s clothing store) than they were doing at 23. but it just wasnt worth wasting my breath. i just wanted to get out of the store as quickly as possible. and to top it off, when i got home from the gym, someone was coming out of the lobby door that leads from the lobby of my building to the elevator. the door is locked, and a guy looks me in the face and lets the door slam behind him in my face. when he hears it slam (as he’s still in the lobby), he says nothing. no apology. no excuse me. just nothing.

i have to admit that one thing i like about the north is that i dont have to smile at everyone and i dont have to chat everyone up b/c no one does that for me. but i do still hold doors for people; i do still say ‘excuse me’ when i bump into someone even if it isnt my fault. in fact, i even blurted out ‘excuse me’ to the guy who spilled my drink all over me, until i realized what had happened and waited for him to reciprocate via his response. i can be impolite in many ways — rude, abrasive, outspoken. but most of the time, it isnt intentional. and most of the time it is with people who know me better than just as a rude or abrasive person. im not rude to strangers. i go out of my way. i just wish people could learn some basic manners here. it just makes you a better person.

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and in other news, im reading anna seghers’ the seventh cross. it was written in the 1930s; it was begun before german crematoria had been constructed, but the narrative about an escapee from a labor camp implies the evil that the main character wouldve faced if he hadnt escaped. it was so gripping in the first thirty pages, i had to read the last few pages to know if he lived or not. my whole body would tense when reading sections about his escape route.

i have weird survivor’s guilt when reading about the holocaust. i dont know why; it just makes me feel terrible that im not going more relief work in poor countries, or that i didnt really know what was happening in rwanda in ‘94 until years later. i had to pep-talk myself before sleeping that i was not in danger of the SS pounding on my door at 2am and that there are ways i can do something good for other people through design. regardless, i still had nightmares that i was in a country where the holocaust was impending and that i was persecuted: as funny as it might sound, i dreamt i was at william and mary, in the sunken gardens, borrowing a list of ’safe’ professors from an SS guard, and copying the names down in the hope that they could offer me refuge. admittedly, i go a little crazy when i read about the holocaust and WWII. while reading this novel, i imagined how we could hide people in our house in richmond if something like this were to ever happen; i wondered if we would take people in. the worst part about my craziness is that i only read 100 pages last night; i still have 300 to go, and i dont really want nightmares for the next three nights. i didnt think it would affect me this badly…it certainly got to me pretty badly in late high school and undergrad when i was reading about the holocaust obsessively and taking a class on its representation, but i thought that was water under the bridge. does anyone else deal with this? am i the only wasp-y-perfectly-safe-well-educated-american-girl who has this strange and terrifying guilt?

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