The Mysteries of ehh whatever blah blah blah

In fantasy and science fiction one creates a universe, and then however much it differs from the real one, makes that universe internally consistent. With this in mind, the world of A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones) could totally fit in the universe of my second-most major unwritten novel and thus, by extension, our own.

What is this novel about? Well ... Never mind. (I have, by the way, written a little of it. As with all my work, about half the first chapter is all I can cop to, but there's a hell of a back story and general summary jotted down, and seen from a stratospheric perspective it is of course quite brilliant.)

Saturday we had a double-date and hiked the Steep Ravine Trail from Pantoll Campground down to Stinson Beach. The forest was far more beautiful than I had imagined it could be. After hanging around the beach awhile I was happy to hike back and get the car, because frankly I wasn't sure all of our party could make the return trip. I barely did myself. The trail climbed fifteen hundred feet in three point two miles, which isn't too bad -- it's not exactly the Muir Trail climbing up out of Yosemite Valley -- but it had a lot of stairs, and a ladder at one point, and with that and how dark and quiet it was in the waning day, towards the end I felt like Sam and Frodo climbing the Ephel Dúath. What pleases me most is that over subsequent days I felt almost no pain at all. My glutes ached a little on Monday, but otherwise nothin'. I'm in better shape than I deserve to be.

I bought a house, you know, a couple three months ago. I guess today it's been three exactly. Since then we've replaced the flooring in the hall and three rooms, and replaced ugly wallpaper with new semi-rough texturing and bright colors in those rooms, and done a very good and inexpensive re-do of the hall bathroom ("inexpensive" means Sunya stripped and refinished the existing vanity rather than replaced it, in addition to the walls and fixturing), and had all the fifty-year-old windows replaced with vinyl-framed dual-pane, and I have a tree scheduled for removal next week. I met with a solar panel guy last night but I'm not convinced that makes sense at this time. Now I am on the edge of being broke and am happy to slow all this down and regroup and consolidate. This includes go through mounds of stuff and find ways to get rid of it. This is extremely difficult. The keeping of intrinsically worthy stuff is a strong genetic trait, as proven by the fact I have things of my great-grandparents' ... and when Mom dies, I will have still more. Worse, my greatest regret when it comes to great-grandparents' stuff is not that I have so much of it, but that my great-grandfather Paulsen's biographer (his daughter) wrote that his 1910-era mimeograph machine was in my possession, and it is not. One more piece of old junk somehow not in MY dragon mound. Hmm. I suspect Pete. He is a grandson of said ancestor and has his 1920s-era radio (as well as the bicycle he himself got for Christmas in 1946). If anyone has it, it would be him.

He wants my father's old Handbook of Physics and Chemistry, the 1948 edition I will give him when I get the chance. Why he wants it I don't know. He's a strange fellow and for all I know wants it so he can solve world hunger without having to buy his own copy. He lives in Oakland so I haven't visited mostly from bad planning. I go to the City often enough, a side trip to Oakland shouldn't have been so tough. But I have a trip to Oakland proper intended a week and a half hence, for a music festival. I am hoping to remember to add in a visit to old Pete.

Lastly, I am again in one of my periodic funks, nearly convinced I will soon be unemployed. My group has derived its work for several years from a particular architecture. That architecture's roadmap provides the framework that keeps us employed. That roadmap is now empty -- nothing new coming in. Also, there was recently a major reorg. Our group was merged with another. The managers are looking at a problem: They have to align existing resources with upcoming projects. When they do, they find they have too many resources. There will soon be some changes made to correct for efficiency. These efficiency moves will have an impact on resources who somehow appear to be the least useful - which isn't to say they aren't useful, just that there isn't enough apparent work for them. I am at serious risk of being in that category. Why? Because business, and not networking. I don't network. I'm just not very social. Never was, and though I fake it well in the party space -- I have learned I like to party, and it's about time -- I have long known that the social side of corporate engineering was an opaque cloud to me. A certain level of networking comes naturally to a lot of my colleagues -- it just happens. Not so with me. When it happens -- networking, flirting -- I'm pretty much oblivious.

But I do have a niche, and work of my very own, and in fact am shortly meeting over the phone with a guy in Israel whose work I intend to build on. I'm very glad he's talking to me because that work needs doing, even if it's not officially mine yet, and if I don't do it, I think he will. There are a number of people who'd rather it was done here and not there just because it's always difficult, for logistical reasons, to work closely with Israelis, so his willingness to work with me is a good thing. And then I look at his name, and wonder: Was he one of the guys I got to know when I visited in 1999? Could be, and he might remember me, but of course I have no idea. Maybe I should just ask. That was a great trip. I need to digitize my pictures, and wonder at the mysterious power of networking even when one doesn't realize it's happening.