The Sounds of Spring

I walked out of work this evening and heard peepers for the first time this spring. At home, the small frogs are chorusing in earnest. Flowers are springing, birds are singing, and spring seems to be starting in earnest. 65 degrees and sunny!

Unfortunately, silver closed at 11.195. That's diseased. What the hell is going on?? They're cleaning out the market in fine style.

Movie: Inside Man

The movie rocks. Moral thieves, corrupt businessmen, the works. Wonderful movie.

Favorite quote, "Can I see your shoe?"

Mr. Handsome

I went out contra dancing tonight at Goff Hall, and had a wonderful time. My family had dinner early, but we ended up talking until almost 10 o'clock. Being that late, I almost didn't go. However, I went anyway, paid my $6, and started dancing.

This is the first time I've gone contra dancing in my new dance shoes. I didn't really like it, because I can't seem to feel the floor at all. I guess it depends what I'm there for. If Nightingale or Groovemongers are playing, the shoes come off and I dance barefoot. If it's the normal music, then I think I'll wear the shoes and dance for the social aspect; namely, girls.

One long-time male dancer grabbed his partner's place and swung as the 'woman' with me. There was a time when that would have bothered me greatly. But, that changed. Does that make me gay? Nope. Just having fun. I am sure of myself and my path.

I got several positive comments on the beard, which was fun. With my hair parted differently, it dramatically changes my appearance. That, and whenever I look in the mirror, I make a point to say, "damn, you're hot!" which of course makes it true.

Nothing like catching a pretty girl's eye and getting a nod and smile to boost the ego. It's a little game. They glance, I'm watching, I look and smile, they look again, smile back, and bam! instant rush! Those ancient patterns are wired deep. I used to feel embarassed about it, but I got rid of that a couple months back. Why be embarassed about being human and young?

Damn, I'm hot!

(Although I wish I had a partner to share my life with, who would dance and laugh with me, and catch my eye and smile back. Soon enough...)

Still Missing Heidi

I still miss Heidi something fierce. My mother said it could take three months to really get over a reasonably strong relationship, and it looks like it'll definitely be a full three months. It's been two months since I started the discussion, and exactly one month since I actually broke up.

Oddly enough, my dowsing has changed, and now indicates a very strong positive for "Heidi as my partner." That question has been consistently negative since I first met her, except for a brief time when it switched to positive to keep me from doing something stupid a while back. I don't trust it, though. A tarot reading put "Death" in the "Self" position, which I think is more accurate.

Her mother is pissed that I'm not going to be a future son-in-law. Here she has two daughters, and she can't get rid of either!

V for Vendetta

Tonight I went out and watched a late showing of V for Vendetta. I was very impressed with the movie. I have previously read Alan Moore's graphic novel, V for Vendetta, and the movie did stay reasonably close to the book. However, there were some important changes in the movie, especially concerning the handling of Evey. I understand Moore's wish to avoid giving his name to the movie.

Evey's encounter with the fingermen in the beginning is remarkably changed.

I enjoyed the "modern" influence; avian flu, the U.S. war in Iraq spreading bigger and bigger, and so on. The portrayal of pharmaceutical companies was interesting, and different from Moore's vision. The use of a biological agent instead of nuclear war was interesting.

The whole story is especially poignant considering the 'fortification mentality' that large corporations are adopting all around the world. They are developing private security forces simply to protect their assets and processes. Keep in mind that private corporations always do things better and more efficiently than government. If you think governments are good at killing people... "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Oh yeah, one more thing: Agent Smith, indeed.

Greasy Hands (Car Trouble)

Yesterday, I drove down to Middletown to help my coworker move computers back up to the office in East Providence. I drove all the way down there, but coming back, my transmission started acting up. The thing wouldn't shift, and I had to really slam it around to get it to change gears.

It's a manual.

I've been hearing a whine for a couple weeks, but I thought it was the front right wheel bearing. Guess I was wrong.

Today, my brother helped me change the transmission oil. We took a little over a quart out, and poured 2.5 quarts in. I also noticed some leakage around the drain and fill plugs. The dealer probably didn't tighten the nuts enough during the 50k service (62k now).

I just hope I didn't fry the 5th gear. If I did, then I'll try to get the dealer to replace it free, but I might end up just replacing the tranny with a 6-speed.

This is the first time I've gotten my hands dirty on my car, and also the first time I've been under it. I was absolutely shocked at how simple and well-laid-out it is from underneath.

Bodhran, Violin (Growling Old Man)

Yesterday, I went to a swing dance lesson, and then another bodhran lesson with Mance Grady. I decided I'm going to get a bodhran, but I think I'm going to go for the full $540 edition. Unfortunately, I don't really have the money for it. My dad chipped in, and if I combine my birthday money and a couple more weeks of paychecks, I'll have the cash to do it. Yay, drums!

Andrew Grover taught me the song, Growling Old Man, more than a year ago. I've played it, and played it, but now, I'm starting to vary the 'A' section. I'm switching the note patterns, using triplet scales instead of alternating two notes, and changing the note rhythms. It's wonderful.

Work and Dance

Today was pretty much back to normal. I left for work, worked all day, and went to the swing dance at the Cape Verdean club in the evening.

When I left home, I felt like I was abandoning my post. I'm the only one that can deal with the situation with my aunt, but here I am, walking away. How can I not? What can I save? I don't know what to do!

The swing dance was wonderful. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, especially after the swing lesson I took last Thursday. Nothing like some professional expertise to help things along!

And another opens

Looks like we'll be moving in as little as two weeks. Traumatic, but good.

Another Chapter Closes

It looks as though we will be moving. I overhead some serious Bad News brewing, and we will probably be moving within two weeks.

I sucked down another beer, and we went out walking and talking in the misty night. We went walking down the street, out in the woods, and around. Stress, but release too. This has been a long time in brewing.

It's a beautiful night. Bright moon, misty air. A night for release.

Audio!

My brother and I stayed up very late setting up an old amplifier with two old speakers in the sleeping room. He had to do some fiddling to tie down a loose ground in the amplifier, but now we have an audio set in the room. It's old, and about as far away from "audiophile" as it's possible to get, but I love it. I hooked my Rio Karma up through plain-Jane RCA, and I'm rockin'!

I picked a fight with W. My first, and hopefully last. Interfamily conflict is stupid and dangerous. But what the hell, she insulted my mother. Bad news, woman, if you're going to insult my mother, stick to the facts!

One of my bosses bought me a shirt while she was down in Florida last week. It's a white shirt, with a bold black box on the front. On the left, it has a picture of a flower pot, under which sits the word, "pot." In the middle is a green marijuana leaf, labeled "grass." On the right, you can see a caricature of Bush, labeled "dope." This morning, I was dressed in my worn travel pants and that shirt. No shoes, no socks, no underwear, but a silver chain. I mussed up my hair a bit, and wandered up for breakfast... and of course my mother flipped out. :) My brother kindof looked at me, and said, "it makes a coherent image." It must be the beard, that's it, the beard. :D

OK, that was a bit of mindless fun.

C, C#, and Cross Calling

It's actually 3:23 in the morning, but I'm back-dating this post a few hours so it gets listed under the 10th.

Today sucked big time, and I don't know why. Just a bad day. A coworker would say something, and I'd be staring at them blankly, "What..?" Maybe it's the Spanish tapes, but I had some serious trouble comprehending people today. I ran a couple miles during lunch, but I haven't done that since before my vacation in Europe, so I'll be sore tomorrow. I attribute the day to my post-relationship rollercoaster mood swings. Frightening. Maybe I knew I'd have to change a flat tire before going home.

But this evening... that's another story! I played around with C# a bit, trying to figure out how to call managed code from unmanaged C or C++. Everyone and their sister wants to call C from C#, for compatibility purposes with legacy code. However, I want to write a wrapper for Adobe FrameMaker, and I need to be able to call C# code from a C DLL. Without that capability, I might as well stick with the Python wrapper I already wrote and keep fighting the PyWin MFC monstrousity. Unfortunately, google doesn't really understand how "c call c# callback" is any different from "c# callback call c," so searching is really difficult. But, given enough time, inspiration, and dedication...

I got it. Well, actually, I copy-and-pasted, but it's the thought that counts. Damn, I'm good. Now I'm going to turn around and spend two days next week and write hundreds and hundreds of lines of wrapper code, and learn a new language while I'm at it. Ho hum, another day on the job. I love my work!

I also figured out how to compile .cs from the command line, which is worth the price of admission several times over.

Bodhrán, Swing, Dance Shoes (A Day of Firsts)

After work, I drove immediately to my dance lesson. On the way, I picked up the pair of dance shoes I ordered last week. New Capezios, and they are very, very nice. I wore them to my dance lesson, and I am already extremely happy with them.

The dance lesson went well. It's my first private lesson. I asked for swing, because that's what people dance down at the Cape Verdean club on Wednesdays. I learned a lot in that short half-hour. I keep hearing how well I'm doing, but I wish I really knew how well I'm doing. It still feels awkward and contrived.

Afterwards, I drove up to Cumberland for my first Bodhrán lesson with Mance Grady. The lessons are a full hour, and he spoke at length. I'll probably end up buying a drum. That drum I held was a wonderful thing, beautiful and soft and warm. Mance himself is an interesting person. I like him.

I don't know how I'm going to do all this stuff, though. It's expensive, and a major time commitment in the evenings. I piled it all on in an attempt to move on from Heidi, and it worked, but now I have all this fun stuff I'm doing...and not enough time, or money. I may switch off every-other-week between violin and bodhrán. On the weeks Heidi goes to violin practice, I'll go to Bodhrán. The private dance lessons are going to be a rare splurge; at $55 per half hour, they go through paychecks like an industrial shredder.

AlphaGrip

It occurred to me as I opened the packaging on my new AlphaGrip that the name sounds like a sex toy. Well, it isn't, although it might as well be considering the amount of time needed to be good with it.

It's slow to use. It's cool. The buttons are irritatingly easy to press when I put it down. It has an onboard mouse. It required both hands, so it is useless in an in-car computer interface. You can hold it. Women's hands, being smaller, will find it easier to operate. It seems well-made. I like it.

It is slow to use, at least in the beginning. However, it frees me from needing to sit at my desk, or a table. I can lie on the sofa and program away, without needing to perch the laptop on my knees. For that alone, this thing is worth every penny.

First two sentences;

This is a test to see how easy it is to type on the AlphaGrip.
And the answer is that it is very, very slow.

Those two sentences took me about 4-5 minutes to type. But, I'll keep practicing!

Work is not so fun!

I have to get up ridiculously early to go down and set up a client's website. Argh, I hate crawling out of bed before 8:25. My usual routine involves rolling out of bed, stumbling to my car, dragging myself through the door at the office at 8:55, fixing myself some oatmeal, and then starting work with a bright, cheery smile at 9:00. But tomorrow, I have to be at the client's site at, get this, 7:00 AM. Horrors! Actually, I'm pretty good at getting up early and looking presentable. I don't drink coffee, so I just jump up, stretch, and roll. Tomorrow I do have to remember to comb my hair, though.

Today, I went down to the swing dance again. I couldn't stay long, but I did have a good time.

After work tomorrow, I'm going down to the Paris Dance Academy for a private swing lesson. Then, I'm driving up to Cumberland for my first Bodhrán lesson with Mance Grady. I can't wait!

My mother did a wonderful job helping me with Heidi. As of now, it seems like a dream. I can look at pictures and reminisce, and it hurts, but the actual time I spent with her seems so long ago. I put two years of my life into that, and now I've walked away like it never happened. Incredible. Also a little bit frightening, but I couldn't see the point of crying over spilt milk. Just to be safe, I cancelled my violin lesson next week, which is the only time I would see her.

I would very much like to find a partner, though.

Work is Fun!

Today, I worked on a project for my boss, pretty much all day long. It was good work, and keeps me interested. I grew up with a useful mantra; "work is fun!" Sometimes my mother apologizes for wiring that particular point into my head, but I think it's useful. I just have to be careful not to work too much.

I am not practicing violin enough. I need to start doing it every day again, along with pushups when I get up, kettlebell drills every couple hours, and walks outside... ok, I'll start with the violin.

I turned 22. Not much of a birthday celebration, but this period is a momentous point in my life. Very little is stable any more. Lots of things have ended, but I haven't seen many new beginnings yet.

I had hoped that Heidi would wish me a happy birthday, but no go. I still keep hoping, even though I know she's gone. I saw the perfect card for her a few days ago, and bought it for her birthday (in four months!). That makes me officially wierd, but I'm allowed that right now. I'll see if I can keep it safe yet available for the next four months, and see if I'm willing to give it to her when the time comes. Probably mail it.

Things like eating half a box of oreo cookies are allowed under certain extreme circumstances. This qualifies.

One day at a time

I didn't get a nap today. Oh no! Just lots of work. I wrapped up a very interesting licensing system. It is smooth and effortless. It queries the user for their name, and then goes to a central server and gets a license. No restrictions, no errors, and it automatically continues cleanly if the server can't be reached.

Of course there are some catches, and the software is set up to start restricting in the future. Lots of fun, although not on overtime!

I went to the contra dance at Brown this evening. It was fun, although the vast majority of people were very, very new. I think I'm going to keep the beard. Either the beard gives me the confidence to be attractive, or it's just plain attractive. Regardless, I get lots more attention from the girls. Plus there's the occasional girl that likes it rough -- a little zip to the dance, and now I give it to them. Actually, I kinda push them as far as they'll go, and if they push back, cool!

Being a good dancer helps a lot.

I danced with two notable people -- one a stunning Scandinavian woman who could easily be a model. I could get all warm and fuzzy and say that the gradual warming up and eventual smile was because of my charming personality ... or she was high. Certainly wasn't very present. She was remarkably beautiful, though; I couldn't believe I managed to ask her before she got snagged by someone else. The other person was a middle-aged woman who had never come to a contra dance. She was highly skilled in other dance, and it was absolutely incredible. I've never danced with someone that skilled and level and crisp. When we were out at the end, we just swung, the whole time. Unreal. She knew exactly where she needed to be, and I put her there, all through the dance.

I also spoke with Mance Grady, and he is taking students. $40 for an hour lesson. I'll call tomorrow.

Another Day (3)

Apparently, Heidi went to the Paris Dance Academy for the start of this month's intermediate dance lessons. She said she might, and I figured she would. Apparently she even asked J to come, but oh well. I feel mean to just drop her, especially considering that I broke the rules. I knew when I started that she wasn't going to go any further than "just friends." But what the hell could I do? The only solution is to find someone who interests me more than Heidi, and to do that, I need to break away. Otherwise, I don't even see other women.

Carrying on as "Just Friends" was the single most painful thing I have ever tried to do. That does not work for me. If she wants a dance partner, or a friend to hang out with, or whatever, she can either find someone else, or stop shutting me out. Life is too short for me to spend time on a dead end. Friends are good, but not the kind where I give and don't receive. That just isn't fair. That statement isn't fair either, but I gave my heart, and I certainly didn't receive. Duh, I shouldn't have given my heart. Hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe it was just time to move on.

So anyway, I arranged to take private swing lessons at the Paris Dance Academy on Thursday evenings. Expensive, let me tell you. I hope it's worth it. I wish I had a partner, because then it'd be proportionately less expensive (the fee is time-based).

Holy crap I miss her.

Dance! (4)

I've been having a problem with my Windows 2000 computer's SMB authentication system failing. I finally searched for a solution, and found two relevant knowledge base articles on Microsoft's website. Both said to contact Microsoft to obtain the hotfix. So, I did. Took me about 30 minutes, and it was done. Hotfix worked. Didn't have to deal with license validation at all. My first support call to Microsoft! Free, too, since it was their fault. Interestingly enough, the hotfix comes from SP5...

This evening, I drove over to the Cape Verdean club on Grosvenor Avenue. They have swing dances every Wednesday. Beginner's lesson at 7:30, dance at 8:00. Live music! I had a wonderful time. Lots of middle-aged and older women. Evelyn introduced me to a couple older women who were happy to teach me some, which was most helpful. I started out slow, but then it became easier and easier. Tried a few different things, some worked, some didn't. Danced with two younger girls. One was stoned out of her mind, and the other was Kristen. A female version of me. Lithe, strong but not overly strong, pretty, and her first night on a proper floor outside of dance lessons. Same skill level. One of a very few people wearing glasses. Same apology when we screwed up. Wierd.

As small as it was, it felt good to think about another woman. Very good.

Funny, though, I still felt immature. Perhaps because I am, but I felt a little goofy and young. Oh well, life rolls on. If she comes back a couple times, I might ask her on a date.

Am I being rude to start looking so soon after breaking up with Heidi? I don't know, but I certainly have no desire to mope around for another month, pining away for her. I've lost enough weight and enough time, thank you very much. Is it dishonorable? Sure, but since she doesn't feel the same way I do, the dishonor is felt only by myself. So why bother? I was given the opportunity to move on, and I have no intention of letting that 5-of-Cups scenario screw up golden opportunities.

If beautiful Heidi comes back to me, I will think, and dowse, and ask my friends and family. I am willing to bring her into my life, and I'd start by introducing her to my parents. Also, I'm helping pay her dojo membership, unbeknownst to her. So, I consider my heart to still be soft and open. I believe that's more important than pining away for honor's sake.

Aftermath

On a whim, I put Dido's Life for Rent on this afternoon. The first song is "White Flag,"

And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was there
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on....

As the hours pass into days, and life slides by, I find I still miss you. I took my emotions, opened them all up, cried my heart out, and released them with my mother's help. Afterwards, I am calm. But yet I miss you. A hole in my life is not filled just because I released the emotions. Only the pain has gone.

Is it dulled? I am learning to be happy again, in little magical moments of sunlight and smiles. I am not dulled, just rediscovering my world. I feel like I am recovering from a long illness. I watch the sunset with happy wonder, turn and falter for a moment, and drive home in the silence of the dusk.

I am beautiful.

Long Day

Rolling. Back to programming. Good dinner, warm fire, and a beer. Now I'm tired. My mind keeps returning to Heidi, and looking for the pull, but it's pretty much gone. Just a shadow.

I took the day off work. Rest, sleep, reconsider my life. Reconsider my goals, and decide how the next chapter should play.

Big question: am I ready for a serious relationship? And if not, what do I need to do before I am ready?