I love cites in the morning. Marching through the brisk air with a spring in my step and head buzzing with ideas for what I want to accomplish, it is finally time to admit that I missed this. I still pine for the people we left behind in the States, but most of the life we precipitously abandoned causes me no pain of loss. But this... these cool mornings in a city just waking up, the air fresh from sea breezes, the sky almost painfully blue, the commuters all around pushing through the crowds with feet on auto-pilot while they check email on their phones, the busses rumbling by and the cars getting jammed up at the corners. This city is so familiar, and this walk is reminiscent of hundreds of similar mornings in That Life. The one part of that life I unequivocally loved was going to work downtown with people I absolutely adored, respected, savored.
I play a game as I walk, people watching and trying to match the outfits with their job description. The women are easy, the young ones in tight little outfits with costume jewelry say new to the business world, probably working as assistants, clerks, receptionists. While the wiser, older women in the same outfit are much sleeker, the gold and gemstones real, the shoes fine tooled leather and the overall look so much more polished in a way that says management or executive. Males in New Zealand are either white colar in blue, black or grey suits, open dress shirt of a light color and faint pin stripe, no tie, leather shoes, or they are blue colar and sport some form of flourescent vest. Sprinkled throughout are the geeks -- the IT professionals are an entire gender-less class in expensive jeans, software branded t-shirts, ear buds firmly lodged under hair cuts that are inevitably at least a month past their prime. There are a few students either young enough for school uniforms or scruffly shlepping their way to University. They are hard to distinguish from an entire subdivision of the service sector on their way to retail shops. The baristas are, of course, already in place as are all the many newly arrived entrepreneurs who have opened Korean, Thai, sushi, curry, and Chinese food shops all over the city.
It amuses me to wonder what I am saying to the world with the look I sport this morning. The rough, tattered backpack says tourist or college student, but the iPhone says money and the expensive leather boots say management. The wash and wear haircut, no jewelry, no makeup put me squarely in the old-school feminist camp but the gawdy tanzanite and diamond ring DrC likes me to wear is so girly it messes with my dyke groove. But the strongest signal I send this morning is probably the jeans and t-shirt look.
A confession... During those dot-com boom and bust days when I was a pregnant, tech writing matron, it's true that I found it delightful to watch the eye candy of Hbunny, Noey and Greg parading around in their artfully aged, insanely expensive jeans. The boys (and they were boys at the time even if now they are quite clearly attractive men who would balk at the diminutive) were appealing in a way that a mother, wife and manager should not ever admit. So yes, they are the inspiration for my current outfit. Because it's 10 years later, and I can't resist painting these pants on to my newly sleek legs. Every time I pull on a size 10, I chortle and preen. I strut through the city with the slight bell sliding over my black, pointed boot toe and like to think that I am even half as sexy as my lovely young friends were in the same styles. Of course, the very fact that I am hiking up Queen Street in jeans that cost roughly the same as a smartphone screams tech.
A casual people watcher might be confused about the mixed signals I send with my basic tech mixed with executive and college student look. That's okay. Frankly, I'm confused, too. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Part of me wants to stay scruffy, barely off the boat and picking up the occasional contract to plump the cruising kitty. Another part wants to dive hell-bent into the management career track I left in Seattle. I love telling other people what to do. As with my clothes, the only clear signal my heart is sending my head is tech tech tech. I want to stay in software and hardware development if I can. I love the gadgets and the newness and the constant change and the insane schedules. I like the sexy young engineers who don't know they are sexy because they are so frickin' smart and so incredibly dorky. I want the bleeding edge crap that breaks every time I work with it and sales teams who straddle some strange line between engineer and carnival barker. I love the feeling that I know what's going on in a world that most people find necessary to their very lives but completely incomprehensible. I want to crawl back into the black box.
My pack weighs heavily on my back, chock full of a Windowsian brick, power cords, and a newly emptied to-go mug as I turn the corner on the last stretch to my client. Today, I get to restructure a single-source database for a software company in the business of electronic medical records. It's a start in the right direction. Passers-by can attribute my little smile as amusement at the podcast feed trickling into my ears, but I know it's because I'm exactly where I want to be.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Kidz These Days
It probably comes as no surprise that I am a big fan of Dan Savage, the Seattle-based sex advise columnist whose philosophy could largely be summarized as play nice with friends, lovers, and strangers. I'd say it was the Golden Rule except he does advocate "Do unto others what they ask you to do to them even if you wouldn't ever in a million years want to have that done to yourself." Which, you have to admit, is a rather significant variation.
How Dan enters this blog is that he routinely fields questions from people who have been prowling around in someone else's online space and found stuff that terrifies/horrifies/saddens/maddens/freaks them out. To which Savage points out, you wouldn't have known about this if you hadn't been a slimy, spying twink hacking into something you had no right to poke into.Then at the same time, I keep reading links, posts, articles for parents and about parents where the story is identical, just change the players. Parents hack the computers and online accounts of their off spring and find things that just twist their knickers into hysterical bunches.
Turns out our teenagers are really horrific people with crude sensabilities, miserable grammar, no ability to spell whatsoever, and about the same sexual mores as minx in heat. They are not like us. Kids these days just do not know how to behave. They listen to awful music, dress in ways that encourage licentious behaviour, and eat poorly. They drink when they shouldn't, make bad choices regarding companions, and *gasp* talk about sex drugs and rock and roll all the fing time.
Surprise surprise! The generation gap isn't different or more extreme than in any prior generation. It's just gone digital! Technology enables the snoop parent to actually walk in the shoes of their spawn, dive into the sticky morasse of teenage lives. It's icky. It's a bit scary. It's oft times stupid, and it's sometimes dangerous. However, there is really nothing new here.
So just keep moving. Do not hack your child's account. Do not try to log into their Facebook page. Resist the tempation to look over their virtual shoulders. Just because you can does not mean you should. You are not helping your child become a good citizen of the networked world by becoming yourself a twink and a spy. In fact, you suck. You are modelling the worst kind of trollish behaviour.
We teach our kids to be safe and healthy online the same way we teach them everything else. Model smart, supportive, safe behaviour online. Participate in discussions for which you have passion and knowledge. Lurk in those for which you have an interest but are as yet a n00b. Friend people you know, ignore people you don't, follow people who interest you, but don't stalk them. Only put online information and photos which you do not mind sharing with absolutely everyone in the world including the government, your mother, and the creepy guy that stands at the bus-stop breathing heavy as the nubiles parade past. Block people who send you spam, ask you for money, or solicit you for sexual acts (unless you actually want to deliver them). Stop being a monkey and clicking everything! Avoid flame wars, do not feed trolls, avoid breaking Godwin's law, make a regular habit of doing a vanity search on the major search engines to make sure your name isn't being taken in vain. Own your own domain.
Can you do all that? If you can't, get your own house in order before you start trying to tell your teenager how to behave online. If you can and do, then make sure your kids know it. It doesn't hurt to market your blog feed, web site, Twitter handle, and Facebook profile to your kids. Link up with them when they let you (it goes in phases), follow them, read and comment in meaningful ways on what they post. It's okay to friend their friends IF you consider them friends in the Real World. Same with the parents of their friends. When your kid drops you like a hot potato or puts you into a ghetto circle where nothing is visible, be patient. They get over it and start talking to you again eventually.
Will your children do something stupid online? Of course they will. Will it be a part of their permanent record? Yep. Welcome to the 21st century. Are the college admittance officers and employers of the future going to take all this drunken photography, illiterate rambling, and questionable linking seriously? Not if they want to keep their own youthful puffing-without-inhaling on the downlow.
How Dan enters this blog is that he routinely fields questions from people who have been prowling around in someone else's online space and found stuff that terrifies/horrifies/saddens/maddens/freaks them out. To which Savage points out, you wouldn't have known about this if you hadn't been a slimy, spying twink hacking into something you had no right to poke into.Then at the same time, I keep reading links, posts, articles for parents and about parents where the story is identical, just change the players. Parents hack the computers and online accounts of their off spring and find things that just twist their knickers into hysterical bunches.
Turns out our teenagers are really horrific people with crude sensabilities, miserable grammar, no ability to spell whatsoever, and about the same sexual mores as minx in heat. They are not like us. Kids these days just do not know how to behave. They listen to awful music, dress in ways that encourage licentious behaviour, and eat poorly. They drink when they shouldn't, make bad choices regarding companions, and *gasp* talk about sex drugs and rock and roll all the f
Surprise surprise! The generation gap isn't different or more extreme than in any prior generation. It's just gone digital! Technology enables the snoop parent to actually walk in the shoes of their spawn, dive into the sticky morasse of teenage lives. It's icky. It's a bit scary. It's oft times stupid, and it's sometimes dangerous. However, there is really nothing new here.
So just keep moving. Do not hack your child's account. Do not try to log into their Facebook page. Resist the tempation to look over their virtual shoulders. Just because you can does not mean you should. You are not helping your child become a good citizen of the networked world by becoming yourself a twink and a spy. In fact, you suck. You are modelling the worst kind of trollish behaviour.
We teach our kids to be safe and healthy online the same way we teach them everything else. Model smart, supportive, safe behaviour online. Participate in discussions for which you have passion and knowledge. Lurk in those for which you have an interest but are as yet a n00b. Friend people you know, ignore people you don't, follow people who interest you, but don't stalk them. Only put online information and photos which you do not mind sharing with absolutely everyone in the world including the government, your mother, and the creepy guy that stands at the bus-stop breathing heavy as the nubiles parade past. Block people who send you spam, ask you for money, or solicit you for sexual acts (unless you actually want to deliver them). Stop being a monkey and clicking everything! Avoid flame wars, do not feed trolls, avoid breaking Godwin's law, make a regular habit of doing a vanity search on the major search engines to make sure your name isn't being taken in vain. Own your own domain.
Can you do all that? If you can't, get your own house in order before you start trying to tell your teenager how to behave online. If you can and do, then make sure your kids know it. It doesn't hurt to market your blog feed, web site, Twitter handle, and Facebook profile to your kids. Link up with them when they let you (it goes in phases), follow them, read and comment in meaningful ways on what they post. It's okay to friend their friends IF you consider them friends in the Real World. Same with the parents of their friends. When your kid drops you like a hot potato or puts you into a ghetto circle where nothing is visible, be patient. They get over it and start talking to you again eventually.
Will your children do something stupid online? Of course they will. Will it be a part of their permanent record? Yep. Welcome to the 21st century. Are the college admittance officers and employers of the future going to take all this drunken photography, illiterate rambling, and questionable linking seriously? Not if they want to keep their own youthful puffing-without-inhaling on the downlow.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Little Obstacles
Small changes can really bollux the day. Today, the problem is a kayak. The floating tennis court next door (otherwise known as s/v Pzazz) has always been a large white shadow next to Don Quixote. She's absolutely enormous. Her engines are incredibly loud, and she's embarassingly clean. We really like the owners, of course, but let's face it. Pzazz makes us look bad.
But as I said, the problem today is actually the kayak. First, it doesn't match the rest of Pzazz. Kayaks are inevitably made of some highly visible shade of orange, red or yellow. This kayak somehow manages to be all three simultaneously. So the big white building in the dock next us is now a big white building with a toothpaste toob of fluorescent flame. Worse, the kayak is somehow ideally positioned to completely block our view of the rest of the marina, including the brand new Lagoon 400 which moved in last week on Dock E.
So on second thought, maybe the kayak is a good thing. If there is one thing worse than being an old, abused family catamaran toddling next to an elegant modern mega yacht, it's being an old, abused boat across the aisle from a brand new boat of the same model. The neighborhood keeps getting nicer. This is going to be a problem when we go to sell the old girl.
The whole thing reminds me forcibly and metaphorically that I too am an abused, old family boat surrounded in beautiful younger models. I thought it was distressing when the girls started to outgrow the sobriquet 'little girls' as they became teenagers. This recent phase of becoming young women, however, is so much worse. As is often the case, the newer models fix many of the deficiencies of the earlier iterations. The new ones are prettier, smarter, faster, and all around nicer than their increasingly canterkous, much-patched mother. The metaphor breaks down only when we start talking storage space and bilges. Let's be honest. I've got them beat all over when it comes to places to store extra calories.
While I could itemize the many broken bits on the good ship Toast, it seems a pointless waste of bytes. I'm more interested in this damn kayak blocking my view. The owners are good people. As soon as I bring it to their attention, they will move the kayak. As I am given to lyrical metaphor and infected with GTD goodness (having committed to rereading the complete David Allen oeuvre as penance for not getting a job fast enough), I wonder what this kayak really means to me. What other obstacles are there between me and what I want. What flaming walls of smelly new plastic stand between me and my hopes and dreams?
Six months ago, my horizons were literal. I am mean literal in the most literal possible sense of the word. The horizon was the HORIZON. It doesn't get any more horizon-ish than staring out across the big blue Pacific 500 miles from anything. Now it feels like there are stoppages and blockages between me and absolutely everything. In only months, the family has accumulated so much cruft it feels like we are already due for a good colonic. We are literally trapped in this slip by weather, broken engine, and inertia. Even if we could get out, we can't get together as every time I try to schedule something, one or more of the crew have a prior committment. It's exciting to see everyone engaged in off boat activities -- plays, climbing mountains, netball, friends, boyfriends (okay that's just weird), music lessons, jobs. However, the family that spent so long living with only each other, now appears to be have burst apart like an overfull water balloon on hot concrete.
It's hard to go from unlimited outlook to a kayak in the face. Even if all I have to do is go over and ask them to move it, it's still there. Getting it out of the way takes time and effort. Getting the kids mustered out for a weekend up in Russell took time and herculean effort. Unfortunately, what stands between me and my children is my children who are not children any more but sexy new models ready for boat shows and yacht races and all sorts of new adventures. And no amount of bitching about it is going to move them out of the way to restore my view of our future as a place where we all bobbed along side by side, linked by a network of docks, lines, and shared goals.
But as I said, the problem today is actually the kayak. First, it doesn't match the rest of Pzazz. Kayaks are inevitably made of some highly visible shade of orange, red or yellow. This kayak somehow manages to be all three simultaneously. So the big white building in the dock next us is now a big white building with a toothpaste toob of fluorescent flame. Worse, the kayak is somehow ideally positioned to completely block our view of the rest of the marina, including the brand new Lagoon 400 which moved in last week on Dock E.
So on second thought, maybe the kayak is a good thing. If there is one thing worse than being an old, abused family catamaran toddling next to an elegant modern mega yacht, it's being an old, abused boat across the aisle from a brand new boat of the same model. The neighborhood keeps getting nicer. This is going to be a problem when we go to sell the old girl.
The whole thing reminds me forcibly and metaphorically that I too am an abused, old family boat surrounded in beautiful younger models. I thought it was distressing when the girls started to outgrow the sobriquet 'little girls' as they became teenagers. This recent phase of becoming young women, however, is so much worse. As is often the case, the newer models fix many of the deficiencies of the earlier iterations. The new ones are prettier, smarter, faster, and all around nicer than their increasingly canterkous, much-patched mother. The metaphor breaks down only when we start talking storage space and bilges. Let's be honest. I've got them beat all over when it comes to places to store extra calories.
While I could itemize the many broken bits on the good ship Toast, it seems a pointless waste of bytes. I'm more interested in this damn kayak blocking my view. The owners are good people. As soon as I bring it to their attention, they will move the kayak. As I am given to lyrical metaphor and infected with GTD goodness (having committed to rereading the complete David Allen oeuvre as penance for not getting a job fast enough), I wonder what this kayak really means to me. What other obstacles are there between me and what I want. What flaming walls of smelly new plastic stand between me and my hopes and dreams?
Six months ago, my horizons were literal. I am mean literal in the most literal possible sense of the word. The horizon was the HORIZON. It doesn't get any more horizon-ish than staring out across the big blue Pacific 500 miles from anything. Now it feels like there are stoppages and blockages between me and absolutely everything. In only months, the family has accumulated so much cruft it feels like we are already due for a good colonic. We are literally trapped in this slip by weather, broken engine, and inertia. Even if we could get out, we can't get together as every time I try to schedule something, one or more of the crew have a prior committment. It's exciting to see everyone engaged in off boat activities -- plays, climbing mountains, netball, friends, boyfriends (okay that's just weird), music lessons, jobs. However, the family that spent so long living with only each other, now appears to be have burst apart like an overfull water balloon on hot concrete.
It's hard to go from unlimited outlook to a kayak in the face. Even if all I have to do is go over and ask them to move it, it's still there. Getting it out of the way takes time and effort. Getting the kids mustered out for a weekend up in Russell took time and herculean effort. Unfortunately, what stands between me and my children is my children who are not children any more but sexy new models ready for boat shows and yacht races and all sorts of new adventures. And no amount of bitching about it is going to move them out of the way to restore my view of our future as a place where we all bobbed along side by side, linked by a network of docks, lines, and shared goals.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
How Do You Eat a Boat?
Obviously, one bite at a time... and invite absolutely everyone you know.
Our trip is over. As with any great life passage, we punctuated our journey with a big party at the beginning and end: opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympics, baby shower and wake, bridal shower and girls' recovery night out, bon voyage and fin du voyage. Our Bon Voyage party was in May 2008. We invited our neighbors, our friends, our family. It was a stunningly beautiful day as only Seattle can be when the weather is perfect. In fact, the mountain was out... a statement meaningful to anyone who has lived in the Puget Sound for any length of time. We were happy and scared, excited and absolutely ready to embark on completely new lives.
Our Fin du Voyage is a bit diferent. We are bringing to a close an amazing phase of our lives. We aren't quite moving forward into something utterly new and strange. Yet, we aren't really doing anything we've ever done before. Living aboard a boat, going to public schools, working... it's been a long time. Morever, when we did these things last, we were very different people with utterly different priorities. It's possible that our emotional roller coaster could be described using almost the same adjective: happy, scared, excited, ready for a new way of life.We broke our Fin du Voyage party into several separate gatherings. If we've learned anything over the intervening years, it is that there are a finite number of people you can host on Don Quixote at any given time. A few too many and she starts to sink. Her waterline way back when with all those people on her was a bit terrifying in retrospect. So we broke the party into bits hoping that the fickle weather gods of this Lousy Summer from Hell would cut us a break and at least one of our parties would be pleasant. Give those fickle gods credit for consistency. The weather sucked each and every time. As a rule, the weather was perfect either the day before or the day after each gathering. On the day of the BBQ, cruise, or gathering, however, it was either a) super windy, b) overcast and drizzly, c) colder than Idaho caves, or d) all of the above.
As a result, we had a far fewer guests joining us during our Fin du Voyage do's than we had hoped. It's also fair to say that we just don't know all that many people yet. We know a few amazingly cool people, mind you, but it's not like we spent our first year in New Zealand becoming the social life of the Auckland party. DrC and I are not all that good about getting out of the house as it is. Give us the mistaken notion that we're only going to be in New Zealand for "a few months", and we basically failed to extend our reach beyond a very tight, close circle in Pukekohe.It is probably time to change that approach, however. First, Pukekohe is 30km and 45 minutes south of here. We can't simply pop over for a glass of wine of an evening when we are in the mood. So as a start, we are making a concious effort to reach out to our marina neighbors. The summer (that really an inappropriate word for it but for lack of a better one...) is winding down. The fair weather sailors and the owners of stunning dock jewelry are gradually abandoning the liveaboards for the duration. The nights are chilly, the parking lots emptying out, and our sense of the marina as belonging only to the live aboards increases weekly. Time to dig in for the winter.
So to speak.
To kick off this spirit of neighborliness, I've been pushing for bi-weekly liveaboard dinners. I have read countless accounts of liveaboards who talk about their marinas as the best neighborhood possible. Liveaboards in good marinas take care of one another. They take care of the boats around them. So, we kicked off dinner this month at the lounge with a feast of boat cake.
The boat cake was the best idea ever. The genesis -- as with so many good things -- was over a glass or two or three of wine while we visited with a friend before leaving for Mexico. Peter's vocation is computer geekery. His avocation, however, is cake making. He crafts the most amazing cakes. We thumbed through pictures of his many creations ooo'ing and ahh'ing. Somewhere it just popped out, "You should make US a cake! When we get back!"
"What do you want?" asks Peter.
"I don't know... the sea, the Toast Floats logo, our navigation path..." my voice trails off.
Aeron pipes up, "Don Quixote! You should make Don Quixote."
I think DrC and I laughed. Whoever heard of a cake boat. Or a boat cake. Far too fancy. Far too much time and trouble. Never mind. The Don Quixote cake was stunning.
My favorite bit was the dinghy on the davits at the back complete with a wee outboard motor. I think I'll just throw a bunch of pictures on this post and call it done.
The cake really speaks for itself.
 |
Our Fin du Voyage is a bit diferent. We are bringing to a close an amazing phase of our lives. We aren't quite moving forward into something utterly new and strange. Yet, we aren't really doing anything we've ever done before. Living aboard a boat, going to public schools, working... it's been a long time. Morever, when we did these things last, we were very different people with utterly different priorities. It's possible that our emotional roller coaster could be described using almost the same adjective: happy, scared, excited, ready for a new way of life.We broke our Fin du Voyage party into several separate gatherings. If we've learned anything over the intervening years, it is that there are a finite number of people you can host on Don Quixote at any given time. A few too many and she starts to sink. Her waterline way back when with all those people on her was a bit terrifying in retrospect. So we broke the party into bits hoping that the fickle weather gods of this Lousy Summer from Hell would cut us a break and at least one of our parties would be pleasant. Give those fickle gods credit for consistency. The weather sucked each and every time. As a rule, the weather was perfect either the day before or the day after each gathering. On the day of the BBQ, cruise, or gathering, however, it was either a) super windy, b) overcast and drizzly, c) colder than Idaho caves, or d) all of the above.
As a result, we had a far fewer guests joining us during our Fin du Voyage do's than we had hoped. It's also fair to say that we just don't know all that many people yet. We know a few amazingly cool people, mind you, but it's not like we spent our first year in New Zealand becoming the social life of the Auckland party. DrC and I are not all that good about getting out of the house as it is. Give us the mistaken notion that we're only going to be in New Zealand for "a few months", and we basically failed to extend our reach beyond a very tight, close circle in Pukekohe.It is probably time to change that approach, however. First, Pukekohe is 30km and 45 minutes south of here. We can't simply pop over for a glass of wine of an evening when we are in the mood. So as a start, we are making a concious effort to reach out to our marina neighbors. The summer (that really an inappropriate word for it but for lack of a better one...) is winding down. The fair weather sailors and the owners of stunning dock jewelry are gradually abandoning the liveaboards for the duration. The nights are chilly, the parking lots emptying out, and our sense of the marina as belonging only to the live aboards increases weekly. Time to dig in for the winter.
So to speak.
To kick off this spirit of neighborliness, I've been pushing for bi-weekly liveaboard dinners. I have read countless accounts of liveaboards who talk about their marinas as the best neighborhood possible. Liveaboards in good marinas take care of one another. They take care of the boats around them. So, we kicked off dinner this month at the lounge with a feast of boat cake.
The boat cake was the best idea ever. The genesis -- as with so many good things -- was over a glass or two or three of wine while we visited with a friend before leaving for Mexico. Peter's vocation is computer geekery. His avocation, however, is cake making. He crafts the most amazing cakes. We thumbed through pictures of his many creations ooo'ing and ahh'ing. Somewhere it just popped out, "You should make US a cake! When we get back!"
"What do you want?" asks Peter.
 |
Aeron pipes up, "Don Quixote! You should make Don Quixote."
I think DrC and I laughed. Whoever heard of a cake boat. Or a boat cake. Far too fancy. Far too much time and trouble. Never mind. The Don Quixote cake was stunning.
My favorite bit was the dinghy on the davits at the back complete with a wee outboard motor. I think I'll just throw a bunch of pictures on this post and call it done.
The cake really speaks for itself.
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