Friday, November 13, 2009

Flub

Work is kicking my butt lately, and I guess it's fair to say life might be too. But I suppose I ought to update my faithful followers, so here goes a dash through the week.

Sunday
Played music for kids ministry and had a good meeting about that. It looks like I get to be somewhat helpful to the people at church, so that's exciting. I also think I'm going to be responsible for a ton of planning, so that will be fun.
I also went out for a drink with my friend Ryan from my building and a new guy named Sergio. He also works at Microsoft. He is also 22. We might as well be clones. Me and all the other hundreds of 20-somethings working at Microsoft and living in Seattle. I feel so special

Monday
I had my weekly small-group thing with the guys. It was my turn to lead the group, and it made me realize what being a PM has done to my life. Seriously, I want to call out action items on every meeting and every second I feel like I'm wasting time bugs me. Like.I'm.Doing.Now.
Well I might as well finish. Anyway, the point of that story is that I like to "PM" the crap out of everything lately until I remind myself to be a normal person again.

Tuesday
Went to the Belltown Community Council meeting to make a park on Bell street from 1st to 5th. I really love the idea. I really didn't love how negative and pessimistic everybody was. But I do love my neighborhood. It's so quirky and I love it. Anyway, safety is a big deal here and Bell street isn't the poster child for the kind of place you want to hang around at night. So hopefully the neighborhood sees that doing nothing other than complaining hasn't improved a damn thing, and perhaps we could use this movement to do some good on Bell Street. We'll see.

Wednesday
Band practice got canceled, so I worked on a spec and a prototype for work all night. Thrilling.

Thursday
Frantic rush at work to get things done. Bad day. Realizing half the crap I designed isn't going through. I was pretty low on sleep at that point.
Later that night, I got invited to a random jam session and drove to Lord-knows-where in SoDo (south Seattle) to find some practice space that looked like an abandoned warehouse. I haven't actually gotten to play guitar with a group in a while--I always end up playing bass. I haven't been in punk mode in a while either, and I feel like I've drifted so far into my jazzy/indie/technical mode that I might not know how to do punk anymore. Well, I figured something out and it was fun.

Friday
Hell. I just need to make it through work and then we'll see what is worth writing about. I want to try to make it to the Belltown art walk tonight, and it would be nice if my plans to hang around and watch movies with some friends at my place go through.

The rest of the weekend
I am taking a group from my building to volunteer at FareStart on Saturday. Turns out recruiting at the McGuire is harder to do than I would have hoped. But that is what I get to do tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it. I think some people I know are having a wedding reception-type of deal (even though the wedding was a few weeks ago and not anywhere close to here) in the afternoon.
Sunday, I'm just planning on doing kid's music stuff again and trying to reclaim my life.

Wish me luck!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Hello people on the 545. I am, in fact, not dead

I haven't written to you folks in a while. I'm still there every day, but somewhere between being incredibly frantic to get things done at work and desperately grasping at the notion of feeling settled in my not-work life in Seattle, I forget to acknowledge you.

The collective "you" that is one of the few constants in my Seattle social scene (...SNAKES--because the chance to continue the alliteration was just too tempting)

So one time last week, I actually got to speak to one of you.

Girl that works at Nintendo and was reading a book in Japanese: it was a pleasure to meet you and I want to thank you for being one of the first women on the bus to acknowledge my existence.

To recap for the rest of last week, nothing else happened.

One thing I have started to notice: the best way to keep an open seat next to you is to make eye contact with everybody that comes down the aisle. It's like all of a sudden I have the power to make a person realize I exist and I'm not just a warm mass of tissue next to an available seat. 545 commuters, and Seattle in general at times, seem to really just be uncomfortable dealing with you when you exist in their social experience.

Or maybe I'm just that unappealing. Who knows. Either way, I have figured you out and now I get to sit by myself most times :)

It certainly helps in my now almost-certain pass out sessions on the way to and from work. Sleeping on the bus used to really weird me out, but now I kind of love it.

But I'll certainly always wake up the next time Nintendo woman comes or some equally friendly soul walks down the aisle. I seriously doubt every individual that happens to be male on the bus is as creepy as you seem to think they are.

Anyway. I'll try to come up with something more interesting to report soon.