lateral career move to Senior Domestician

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Laura’s maternity leave gave out in early November. Since then I’ve been watching Riley during the day, just the two of us here at home. I’ve also still been working for IBM, 20 hours a week or more. So I haven’t accomplished much else for a while.

It’s gotten steadily more difficult to meet expectations at work as Riley’s gotten older. He’s at the stage where’s developed enough to want to interact and explore, but not developed enough to accomplish much himself. So he gets bored and frustrated unless you’re right there entertaining him all the time. Which of course I’m perfectly happy to do, but then I can’t be working too. (Not that I haven’t tried; sadly, watching me type is as boring to him as it would be to anyone, no matter how dramatically I read aloud as I do it.)

When I started out, Riley was napping for two or three hours every morning, and at least an hour every afternoon. Then after a few weeks his naps kind of evaporated. So for the past month or two, most of the work I’ve been able to do has been at night after he’s gone to sleep. About the last thing I want to do at night is read dry technical articles about database software. So I’ve felt less and less motivated to go the extra worker bee mile.

As much as I like my job (and I really do, despite how this must sound), I don’t want to end up resenting it or doing it badly. So I’m phasing myself out of it now. I’ll stay for another month or so, while they find someone to replace me, and then take a hiatus to focus completely on Riley. My manager said he’d love to have me back when I’m ready, which is great. The idea here is to leave while that’s still true. I would like to come back eventually, if it’s feasible.

Meanwhile, I can’t believe how fast Riley’s grown. I look at the earliest photos of him now and can’t fathom that he used to be that small. See for yourself. He’s so much more fun these days, he smiles and babbles at us a lot. He responds well to music, and really loves getting swung around in the air. He also loves going out wherever and watching new people. We’ll be doing a lot more of that once I’ve stopped working. He’s going to love it.

Riley arrives

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Around 8:00 on Friday night, while we were having dinner at home, Laura’s water broke.  We were sort of surprised; this was the first sign we had that
she was going into labor.  While we gathered our stuff and headed to the hospital, she started getting more painful contractions. They got stronger over the next couple of hours, while we got checked in, evaluated, and finally moved into a birthing suite.

Laura got an epidural at around 11:00 pm, which made a world of difference.  Sometime around 1:00 am, things got to the point where she could start actively pushing.  She was amazing.  At 1:33 Saturday morning, our baby was born.  He weighed 7 lbs 3 oz, and was 19.5 inches long.

I will never forget how it felt to see him for the first time.  Nor will I ever be able to describe it adequately.  I was just overcome with joy and excitement.

It took us a couple of days to settle finally on his name, but we’re calling him Riley.  There are a few photos here. I’ll add more there soon. It’s hard to catch him when he’s not sleeping or eating, but now that we’re home we’ll hopefully have better luck with the photo ops.

Everyone’s doing fine.  Laura’s pretty tired, but feeling better each day.  Riley’s eating well, and is in good shape all around.  I’m very proud of them both — much more than I feel like I deserve to be, given that I was basically a spectator for the whole thing. :)  But I’m doing what I can to keep him settled between feedings so that Laura can sleep then.

We’re both very grateful to have Laura’s mom staying with us for a while.  Without her help we would probably have left our wits’ ends far behind by now.  Instead, we get to focus on the baby and eat very well. :)

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I started at IBM on Monday. It’s quite the corporate behemoth, and a very different work environment than I’m used to. With the team that I’m on, though, the general feeling is kind of like being on a Federation starship: you’re part of something huge and fairly bureaucratic, but your immediate group is a bubble of relative autonomy. There’s an extremely collaborative atmosphere. Everyone’s been really helpful to me so far, while I’ve been acclimating. It’s a really good group of people.

I’ve enjoyed the work itself too. I think I like editing more than writing, as it turns out. I’m off to a modestly decent start, and everyone seems pretty pleased with my work so far.

It seems like everyone I meet there asks me, “Have you ever worked for IBM before?” I’m starting to see why that’s such a common question; they do some things in kind of peculiar (or at least special) ways. They rely very heavily on Lotus Notes, for example (which is probably not so unusual for a company this size, but I swear that island in The Odyssey didn’t use this much Lotus. But then, it is IBM’s product after all). I guess it’s a testament to their organizational consistency that “working for IBM” is its own skill set.

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I got a contract job at IBM. I’ll be on a team of editors working on their developerWorks site. I’m excited about it, I’m sure I’ll be learning a lot. I start next week.

In other news, my 15th high school reunion is coming up. I haven’t been in touch with anyone from my high school at all, pretty much since graduation. That’s mostly because I expect that a lot of these people probably still think of me as a doughy, spoiled, somewhat judgmental prude. And sure, I’ve probably just been mostly paranoid about it anyway, but it hasn’t been worth it to me to find out. To the extent that this opinion of me was based on anything real, I would feel embarrassed to be around these people, and to the extent that it wasn’t, I would feel indignant. Either way, it’s meant no class reunions for me, at least up to now. But when I look at myself and how much I’ve changed since high school, and realize that everyone I knew back then could very well have changed as much, that does make me kind of curious. I can’t go anyway because the timing is bad with the new job, but I do have the chance to get in touch with some old classmates, so I am. If I don’t even give them a chance, I’m the one who’s being unfair.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the film)

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Stop what you’re doing and go see this movie right now. I’ll be here when you get back.

I’ve been a fan of Douglas Adams since about 1983, when I first read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in novel form. At one point, years ago, I could recite the radio series in its entirety from memory (before there was a Tertiary Phase :P), and I could probably still get through quite a bit of it today. This is my context; I am a fan. I adore the story and the way it’s told, even while recognizing that it hasn’t been told the same way twice in any two of its pan-media manifestations.

So it was an effort to keep my expectations in check when I went to see this film. But it rose to them with weightless ease. It was gorgeous and very entertaining. I suspect it might be a bit too anti-formulaic to achieve blockbuster popularity here in the States, with the narration breaking things up as it does. This is an essential part of its charm, though, and what makes it so faithful to the whole Hitchhiker’s œuvre. If you enjoy having your mind blown, you’ll love this movie. Plenty of brain food to gorge yourself on over multiple viewings.

Spoilers here (and not the kind that Lazlar Lyricon might put on a star buggy along with his infrapink lizard emblem). Even if you know the story already, beware. This means you, Lawrence. :)