I listened to Dad talk for twenty minutes today, about what his financial plans are now that he’s “fifty-eight and a half.” He got talking about his financial situation and how he has put himself in a place where he can spend a little money now. He talked about the “icing on the cake” of finding out his long term disability should last until sixty-five instead of sixty. I can’t quite tell if he expects to be alive when he’s sixty-five. I don’t think so.

Thus, the next car will have heated seats, and he’s going to get the house painted.

I just realized what that strange feeling was that comes with dating women in their early twenties. Its that I’m dating women in their early twenties still. I’ve lived my life so upside down, ageism be damned.

5:30am. Brewing coffee. I adorn my giant orange volunteer parking hoodie from MOFGA CGCF.

I had a dream about Matthew and Peggy. We are at my Grandparent Saunder’s house, bickering in that little way about something to do with the diesel sedan we were taking somewhere.

I got this message on Goodreads last night, “you’re adorable and i like what you read. cheers!” I like being adorable.

Waiting on coffee, then a few hours of webex trainings for the Red Cross.

Then I should leave town. I never do really. Last night I thought about it, and the new bike isn’t set up for it yet. I laughed though, I do have two trucks. That still counts. I’m sure I’ll just nap though, having only slept a few hours tonight.

Maybe I’ll just “work”. I wrote a gitorious redirector the other night. That was fun. Hpricot and screen scraping wasn’t really that bad.

I’ve spent the last three days with the flu, the bulk of which in DC. I managed to sleep most of the flight home, to which I attribute the fact that I didn’t vomit. Since I landed, I’ve been sleeping and watching netflix. As time goes on, the insanity and confusion settles and more of reality seems to stick.

I watched Blue State. A vocal liberal man who is disgusted with Bush’s reelection decides to move to Canada in protest. A woman, who turns out to be running from her redeployment to Iraq for the Army, goes along with them. Politics ensue. It’s well written. The more I think about it, the more I realize this. I stopped at one point and considered if I’m being a bit hypocritical for considering myself a critical thinker when I’ve never been one to take music or movies apart much, but rather look for solace in them.

The background music is now a Bukowski film. It reads like one. I mean, it watches like one.

While traveling through Canada, they stumble across a draft dodger who has been living in Canada since the Vietnam war. He lives in a hand built log cabin in the middle of nowhere and they reconsider if they want that life. This is, of course, striking to me. I’m not entirely accustom to this yet, to the difference between returning and escaping.

Ultimately the movie was about taking a stand for what you believe, and I’d like to think it was also about the depth and difficulty of politics.

I’m in the front of an airplane to LA using my phone to have a pissing contest with my friends on the internet about which of our well-paying jobs’ offices has the better liquor cabinet and I think I probably have no right to complain about anything ever again.

I can agree with the sentiment of that. I’m regularly reminded of how much I have compared to what I started with, while I’m still unsure if it is worth the while. When this flu began, it started with a panic attack. I reached out to M.

When T and I caught up after my trip, I went on for a bit about different ways of loving people, and different relationships. What being in love with M meant these days.

Facebook tells me one of my aunts is going back for more surgery for cancer. We’ve got pretty high rates of cancer in my family. I wonder if they’re higher than normal. Another Aunt goes on about a soda can leaving “under god” off the pledge of allegiance. Turns out it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it is interesting to take some time out to read about the history of the pledge of allegiance. In particular, “under god” was added in the 1950s, and wasn’t part of the original pledge as written in 1892, by a Christian socialist no less.

Meh. It’s all just surface.

Choices to be made.

M and I went to see the Old 97s tonight. She was shocked I liked music and invited her to a show. I told her not to tell anyone. While in the Showbox I was looking around thinking about how contrived everything was. and I thought of Burning Man. When I came home and I was poking around I saw this photo from the missile silo at toorcamp getting a few views today. Work has been really tough lately. Looking back at these other events, and getting ready to head off to DC for another Shmoocon, I’m really glad I don’t take the easy road.

When I talked to J today about struggles at work, she turned it around and said at least I could get practice dealing with that situation. Hmm.

Posted to facebook, which is a black hole.

Kate,

My fathers family is from northern Maine, amid endless paper company timber land. When I was young, we would often go to a number of camps deep in the woods for vacation. My father and friends had built one cabin [1] so deep in the woods that we would either he would fly us out in a float plane, or we would take the snowmobiles in the winter. When I was very young, there was still a flying service that would fly you into the sporting camps. I first hiked in when I was two, I believe with my mother and grandmother, carrying my own pack basket and fishing rod. Those camps and the people who ran them [2] are a big part of my good childhood memories. These days, you can drive nearly anywhere on logging haul roads, but when I was younger, it was quite remote and isolated. It is still as wonderful and quiet as it was, but somehow feels too easy to get out there. There is a lot of history up there. I spent a lot of time around people who were connected to the woods, something I’ve lost on the west coast where there is more of an attitude of recreation, and less of a connection.

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/sets/72157594485837423/
[2] http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=jerry&w=70143998%40N00

My grandfather became a commercial airline pilot, and after my great grandfather [8] passed away the family farm was eventually seeded as a tree farm though a government program. [3]

[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/sets/72157623905721597
[8] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/5307997474/

I grew up neighbors to my mothers parents. The family is ‘land rich, dirt poor,’ so to speak. My ‘back yard’ growing up was over a thousand acres of forest land, including a great deal of lake front property and even some islands. When I was young, my father and grandfather would harvest timber by tractor and split firewood ever year for the house. I would often wander the traces of old cut roads and listen to stories of the history of the land. Such as where there used to be cabins, who lived in them and what they did. Before the lake was flooded to increase available water to a nearby paper mill, the road to the neighboring town used to cross our land and remnants of it are now underwater, supposedly with old abandoned farm equipment. I used to wander for hours out in the woods, sometimes the entire day. Out at the head of the pond is Puzzle Brook [4][5]. I remember when I was very young the old log bridge, and I can remember seeing it underwater after the beavers dammed the brook. Later we worked with the state to remove the dams and restore the habitat, and we built a new haul road with a causeway [6] over the old one to restore access [7]. My friends and I would sometimes drive out to the end of one of the haul roads or canoe out to the islands and put up a tent for the night. My grandparents have been strict stewards of the family land. The lakefront property would surely be worth millions for development, but they have conserved it as a working forest and habitat.

[4] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/4588992518/
[5] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/5155112573/
[6] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/5155724502
[7] http://www.flickr.com/photos/btmspox/sets/72157625488122228

Over time, I’ve realized that my other cousins on both side of the family didn’t grow up so close to the woods as I did and they don’t feel as strongly about conserving them as I do. I’ve been talking more with the family the last couple years about the forest management plans. Where I grew up, the grandparents want the land to continue in conservation in perpetuity. I want to ensure that happens as well.

I have also been thinking for the first time about how long I plan to live in Seattle. Since I plan to be here for the immediate future, I have been looking for timber parcels within a few hours drive of Seattle that are as remote as possible for a cabin and for timber investment. Being such a huge part of my heritage, it is hard having it all so far away.

When I was younger, I ran ops for a small ISP in Maine. At some point technical support was outsourced to a company in the south. We were having an issue with certain users not being able to auth to the SMTP server, or so I was told by the owner of the call center. I couldn’t reproduce the issue, nor get him to provide me the name of a customer that was having the problem. I eventually discovered he was giving users the ip address of his mail server as his “solution.” However, in the interim, he yelled at me about how much experience he had, then a week or two later, he died.

I suppose I’m dating again. Helllooo 2011. I was describing to someone a course of events and stumbled upon goals from November 2009. It’s a surprisingly hard post to find with Google, I’ve tried a few times and given up after a minute. I watched Cashback last night. I think I like it more as it settles. It ended strong, albeit magical. I watched a lot of movies this weekend, in an attempt to try to do less. It was that or drink, and I’m really trying to make drinking remain a rarity for now.

I suppose things are changing. Again. Forever.

QC strikes again.

You’ve built a nice little life for yourself here, and that’s not something to be taken for granted.

My father implied recently that the last thing he would want is for me to move back to Maine because of his health. When I talked to him about building a cabin he said that I’d made a nice life out here.

Even if you and Dora didn’t work out, you’re still surrounded by people who care about you.

T and I drove around the region the other night picking up some random parts for the new suburban. At Best Buy, I flirted with the cashier. After, T and I joked about how I wouldn’t have done that five years ago.

Five years ago.

T and I talked about the situations where friends tell you to “just get over it” as if your feelings can be turned off. M felt the same way toward me, that I could stop caring the way I do. I’ve stopped talking to her about that, but it remains at the forefront of my thoughts. It shapes so much.

I think about a story M told me about buying a part for her car, and scrounging around for it because it was so expensive. This weekend, I bolted on a part to the new Suburban that was not only expensive and new, but I bought a third party modification to try to reduce the likelihood of its failure as well. I could have built that part myself. Why didn’t I? In short, because I have more money than time. The fact that I live a much more consumer oriented lifestyle than M hasn’t ever mattered, but I wonder if it did if we spent more time together.

J offered recently that I remove myself from a few projects and situations where I’m a leader, where I carry the weight of responsibility, and that I spend more time focused on myself. What if every weekend was open to do whatever I wanted, alone? I can’t remember that.

Tonight, I have dinner with M2, a past girlfriend and great person. And last night, M3, a friend of friends, asked me out, so a coffee date tomorrow. I haven’t dated since K. In another way, I can’t measure the distance between my life and M’s. It doesn’t make sense. But it is.

M4 and I drove the new truck to my mothers yesterday so I could put some miles on it and test out the new parts. It snowed in Eatonville, and I felt at peace. I really want out of the city. Still, when I came back that evening and dropped into Pioneer square to leave something at the office, it was nice to return. Frost.

let the huggery commence

I spend so much time trying to figure out my heart’s bias toward M. Some days it is nice to stop.