Friday night, the Celtic rock band Tempest played in Davis, and of course a few of us went to see it. Hmmm. ‘Of course’ may not be the best way to put it – until last night I didn’t even own a Tempest CD, but at least I’d seen them before. The last time they played in Davis, to be exact.

The concert took place (this year and last year) in a tiny little building that looks, from inside, to be a converted barn, and a rather dilapidated one at that. It comes complete with a rather compact tortoiseshell barn cat who sauntered onto the stage while one of the band members crouched down to adjust some equipment before the concert started. In typical tortoiseshell fashion, she curved around his legs, rubbed against one of the mike stands, and then made her leisurely way down to the audience to demand attention from those seated and waiting for the show to begin. (Yes, I notice cats when I’m in places. If there is a cat there, I will see it. This heightened ability to narrow in on things feline comes with the addiction, you see.)

They put on a excellent show. Their music is very energetic and it would take someone with incredible self-control to avoid tapping one’s toe or clapping along. The lead singer and the fiddler (who, in my friend’s opinion, is a fiddling god, and frankly, I think she’s got it about right) are very in tune with the audience and tend to wander around a bit. In fact, the lead singer even came down and sat in my lap.

I suppose one might ask why I go to see this band whose music I don’t even know? Because my friends like them and invited me along, and so I went. We sat in the front row, which was an acoustical mistake in my opinion because we got blasted by lots of noise and it was a bit hard to distinguish voice from music, but to my friends – all diehard fans of this energetic group – this was a price worth paying. And I suppose they might be right. After all, the lead singer chose my lap on which to perch, and would that really have happened if we weren’t right there in the ear-bleeding seats?

I did buy a CD last night, simply because after two concerts (even though they were a year apart), they’re growing on me. Or maybe it was the up close and personal touch, jeans to jeans. Hmm

I had dinner with my old synchronized swimming buddies from college last night.

It was so strange that it had been 3 years since we’d all gotten together. And in a way, it is sad that we are all so busy that years go by in between gatherings, even though most of us live within 20 minutes drive of each other.

The dinner brought back memories:

• Swimming late at night, air so cold that our breath came out in little clouds every time we surfaced.
• Listening to music and visualizing choreography…and how that still happens when I hear an interesting new song.
• My duet partner and I frantically sewing the sequins onto our suits while flying to Ohio for the National competition.
• Listening to the soft ooh of amazement from the crowd as we executed a complicated maneuver, the lights turned off and they reacted just as we had hoped.
• Dashing through suit changes during the shows – peeling off wet suits and slipping into dry ones is not easy when you have to hurry, and we often wondered if that security camera over the door was on, and whether they were watching.
• Feeling smug amusement when those who laughed and claimed that what we were doing was simple, couldn’t even stay afloat for the simplest of maneuvers when they finally were coerced into trying.

I read, many years ago, a description of synchronized swimming, written by someone who understood the sport. It is dance in an uncertain medium. Ballet with no floor. Gymnastics without the balance beam or the parallel bars. A graceful test of endurance and the bounds of gravity.

We sat in the restaurant for several hours and laughed and caught up on the past few years. We all posed in a big group as the obliging waitress took our picture with all our cameras, then lingered outside the restaurant, exchanging email addresses, hugging goodbye.

I sat at dinner and listened to them and realized that they all have their kids and houses and all the other trappings of a typical family life, and I felt like somehow they have slipped away from me and gone down this path I will never follow, just as I have gone down a path that is very different from theirs.

I drove home with the songs from our last show together echoing like misty ghosts in my heads. It was bittersweet.

I spent most of today working on business process designs.

Are you just thrilled to pieces? Are you salivating to hear all about this fascinating topic? No, really. I mean it.

I didn’t think it would take that long. Seriously. I’m so naive. Or optimistic. Or clueless – I don’t know. But first there was lively debate on vocabulary terms. At that point I noted that I didn’t care if we called the steps George, Henry, and Fred – these were the steps we were currently using and could we get past this for pete’s sake. Then there was a need to find a white board and a projector. I do not understand this mindset. Perhaps it is the repressed science nerd in me, or else the code geek coming to the surface, but why must things be planned using white boards and projectors? Why can’t we all scribble it on regular notebook paper and think it through before making pretty diagrams on the fly? I suppose that programs like Visio are useful and all, but not for people like me who prefer detailed steps to flow charts. Flow charts mean nothing to me. They are lovely shapes on paper, yes, and make more visually appealing slides, but in reality they tell me very little information. Give me numbered steps any day and I’ll be much happier.

By the end of that lovely twelve-hour work day I was exhausted and really not thinking of much of anything except getting home and maybe banging my head on the most convenient wall for a while, just to make the pain all go away. But a friend invited me to go to a club with him, and on a whim, I said yes. It was amateur night and I’d never been to something like this, and well, it was on the way. So what the heck.

A handful of people performed at this club last night, and I think I can safely say that, with very few exceptions, the quality of the music performed was mediocre at its best. There was the guy who stood up in the beginning and started to make noise. I won’t even call it music – it involved random harmonic screeches and guitar strumming, but there was no tune involved. Then he got really annoyed because no one was paying any attention to him. I think that everyone was still trying to figure out if he was just tuning – because surely that wasn’t a *song*. So he stomped off in a huff. Later on, a woman sang who apparently believed that she was Ella Fitzgerald reincarnated. Except that this involved lots of hand movements, facial expressions that looked as if she had just swallowed something extremely sour, and then occasional bouts of bouncing about on the balls of her feet. I suppose I’ve got to give them all credit for enthusiasm, and for being willing to stand in front of a room of strangers and sing songs they’ve poured their hearts into. Anyway, the evening made the day that much better, so despite the occasional cringe at missed or offkey tones, it was well worth it.

I went to a Ladies Tea with my mom on Saturday. Her church women’s group puts this on every year, and it really is quite fun. Each table is hosted by one lady, who is responsible for decorating and setting it…and it’s a really good excuse for some of them to pull out all that gorgeous old china that they’ve had stashed in the back of their cupboards for decades. There’s a theme as well – one year it was fashions around the world, where people donated outfits they had from their travels, and were then modeled by volunteers from the group. One year it was a Mad Hatter’s tea party. This year it was a Victorian theme, with a trio of actors from a guild nearby, who came dressed appropriately and talked about Victorian dress, hair styles, and fan etiquette. Yes, I said fan etiquette. According to these people, there was this whole language associated with what a young lady did with her fan. Tapping it on the cheek, fluttering fast or slow, pulling it through her hand – all of that had secret messages. It sounded extremely complicated and I had to wonder just how many of the gentlemen actually understood all the messages that the ladies were sending them via fan-mail, but anyway it was an interesting tidbit of information.

These teas are always fun, and I think one main reason is that it’s a reason for a lot of these ladies to get out and dress up and actually *be* ladies. I don’t mean that they’re not ladies every other day of the year, but this is one of those rare opportunities for them to get all fancied up and wear their best hats and eat cucumber sandwiches and tea cakes from fine bone china and sip tea from cups so delicate you can see through them. It’s not a common thing anymore in normal society to have something quite like this, and the little old ladies all seem to enjoy it so much. The presentations are geared toward woman – there may be a few men involved in the tea, playing the piano or serving the food, but this is something done by the ladies, for the ladies, and it is no place for testosterone.

On a completely unrelated topic, in my brief time as interim manager, I had to change desks. The new desk is in the same big room that we’ve all been stuffed into. This means that, until this morning, I was no longer next to my phone. Oh, I was next to *a* phone, but not mine, and I couldn’t forward the calls to this phone because it went directly to someone else’s voicemail. I should point out here that all the phones in this room have exactly the same ring (and the acoustics in here are horrid, based on the fact that the walls do not go all the way to the ceiling, for example), so when a phone rings on this half of the room, it really is impossible to tell whose it is, and there are a number of us that go leaping for them. The fact that I’ve been sitting in a different desk only makes it worse because this means I’m forever rising from my chair to holler “Is that me?” when a phone rings. The people sitting around my old desk are probably rather happy that today I finally can get my own darn calls. The guy who came to switch my phone seemed very concerned about that fact that I won’t be able to transfer or get my messages without going through a complicated series of number punching until this afternoon. Heh. I don’t care! I can finally get phone calls without having to dash across the room, leaping recycling boxes and random laptop bags in the vain hopes of catching my calls.

I went grocery shopping last night.

You may not consider this a big deal. You may look at that statement and wonder just why it is that I felt I needed to devote a significant portion of a journal entry to such a mundane topic. I can understand this feeling. Really. It’s just that I haven’t had a chance to go grocery shopping since I returned from Singapore…and that was two weeks ago. When I opened my refrigerator, I could have hollered “Hello!” and it would have echoed bleakly. Over the course of this project my cupboards had been reduced to a few random boxes of pasta mix and the occasional can of tuna. In the refrigerator, all that was left was assorted condiments. Try scrounging something to eat from that.

Last night, I finally had time. I left the office while the sun was still shining. I went home and poured through a few cookbooks and wrote up a list. And then I went to the store and wandered up and down nearly every aisle.

There is food in my refrigerator now. An entire drawer stuffed with the makings of a fabulous vegetable soup. All the things necessary to get my bread machine running happily again. There are cans and boxes and bottles in the cupboards, and yes, even the freezer is looking full. I’m so happy!

Word is filtering down that there’s going to be yet more reorganization at this project. I’m the interim development manager (interim meaning that they were willing to give it to a consultant only until they could get an actual in-house employee to take over), but that may change fairly soon and I’ll go back to what I was before (and the amusing part, I suppose, is that the work I’ve been doing this week as development manager is exactly the same as what it was in my previous ‘position’ here). I’ve got mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, there would be a sense of relief if I am not in this position – managing friends is not always such a fun thing to do. On the other hand, I spent a bit of time trying to convince myself that I could do this job, and so there is a teeny part of me that at least wants the option of trying. Anyway, we’ll see. The reorg could take a few weeks or longer, and in the meantime I’ll just plug along doing what I’ve been doing, regardless of what title they want to give me.

First, some happy news that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this entry. I finally heard back from my company and the cell phones are not required for us consultants! Yes! Happy dance! I will not be forced to carry a horrible icky cell phone! I can keep my cute little pager!

Okay, I’ll quite gushing. Back to your regularly scheduled entry.

Last Tuesday the manager of this project I’m on took me aside to tell me that there was going to be some reorganizing within the IT system.

This is not necessarily news. Reorganization has been the name of the game since we started this project – the company for whom I am consulting has recently split from their parent company and they are still going through growing pains, so we’ve all learned that in order to survive in this project, one must be flexible. Very flexible. So I nodded and figured that he was going to tell me that I was going to be reassigned – either to another piece of the project, or to the position I’ve been filling temporarily.

What I did not expect, however, was for him to tell me that his boss is moving to a new position, he is moving to a new position, and both he and his boss figured that I would be the best choice to replace him. Very big gulp.

With this project I’ve been wearing hats that I’ve really never worn before…or thought I would be able to handle. I’m a coder. When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them I play with databases. Really big databases. Sometimes I’m assigned to a project by myself, sometimes as part of a team. Sometimes I’m fixing an existing system, cleaning up the performance, tuning and tweaking. Other times I’m developing an entirely new piece of the puzzle…but regardless, I am a code nerd.

Not so on this project. I sort of volunteered to be the lead for analyzing all the requirements that we’re gathering…only out of default since no one else wanted the position. Then I was pulled into working directly with the customer themselves, collecting the requirements, acting as the IT techno-geek representative to the business team. And yes, in a way I’ve been sort of doing some administrative things, by deflecting and directing questions and tasks for the development team. So I suppose that this new position is merely an extension of what I have already been doing all along. That doesn’t make it any less mind-boggling though, because I just don’t think of myself as manager-type material.

Ever since Tuesday, I’ve been holding my breath, wondering if, like lots of things on this project, the decision would change to something entirely different. Wondering whether I could really do this. Wondering when it was that the project manager and his boss would wake up and suddenly realize “Have we lost our minds? We actually think *Jennifer* can do this? What *were* we thinking?” But they announced it to the rest of the team on Friday, and…well…here I am. I’m not sure exactly what my title is (if anything), and I’m not sure exactly what all this position will entail (except lots more of the same thing I’ve been doing), and I am finding it kind of amusing that despite always being a code nerd, I’m getting further and further away from the database as this project continues. All I know right now is that – despite the long hours and frustration over last minute changes and unreasonable requirement requests and scope creep and gentle reminders from my friends and family that gee, they’d really like to see me sometime and am I still alive out there – that I like this project. I am having *fun* on this project. I’m more than a bit flattered that these people think I’m capable of doing what it is that they have asked me to do. Now if I could only convince myself…

Picture the following scene. It is mid-afternoon, on a truly gorgeous sunny day in San Francisco. Friends have gathered because one woman has flown in from out of town, and they have all decided to play tourist for her sake. “Let’s go to Coit Tower,” says the woman who has flown in, and the rest of them agreed. So they set off in two cars. They are all Having Fun. The first car is a convertible. The second is not. The three woman in the second car are feeling smug. They have air conditioning. They have the radio on and can actually hear it. They are looking forward to this. The two cars have approached a hill. It is a steep hill. No. That is putting it mildly. It’s a NASTY hill. The driver of the second car is not worried though. Oh no. This is a nearly new car. This is an automatic transmission. Ha. She had nothing to fear.

She pulls her foot off the brake, preparing to move forward as another car leaves the stop sign way, way up the hill. And promptly rolls backwards. Say *what*? She is not supposed to roll backwards! She is driving an automatic! This is why *she* is driving and not one of the others in the car with her, who all own cars with manual transmissions. She stomps on the gas too hard in response, and screeches her tires.

Her friends reassure her. Yes, even on this ugly hill that now appears to go up completely straight and is getting steeper by the minute, every car will roll backwards.

The driver gulps. Okay. She can handle this. No sweat. Brake. Foot off brake and over to gas. Roll back, roll forward. No problem….hey! Why is the jerk behind her trying to climb into her back seat? What part of ‘cars roll backwards on this hill’ does he not understand?

Hands grip the steering wheel. The driver gets a set look on her face. She is Not Having Fun. She is resorting to saying Decidedly Unkind Things about the person in the little grey car behind her. Her friends try to reassure her. If you hit him, they say, he is at fault. On this hill, if he is stupid enough to tail that close, then he should know better. But, the driver whimpers, this is her nearly new car. She does not *want* to hit him. No. Scratch that. She would gladly hit him. But that would involve stopping on this truly horrible hill and getting out and exchanging insurance paperwork and trying to keep from decking the idiot driver who does not seem to grasp the concept that everyone else on this hill has understood – that when you drive on this hill, you roll backwards.

The top is finally reached. The car no longer rolls backwards. Now they get to drive down the windy brick road that is Lombard street, and the driver is once again Having Fun. No more rolling backwards. Of course, she makes a mental note to *never* go up that hill again if she can help it.

Or at least make someone else do the driving next time. So that she can sit in the passenger seat and do the reassuring.

It’s official. I’ve been too busy for far too long.

I wandered around my house today and, for the first time, realized that the philedendrons are all shriveled and looking pathetic, and chock full of dry brown leaves. They’re not dead. Nothing, I have determined, will kill a philedendron. Which is precisely why they are the only plant in my house, because with my crazy mixed up schedule (ah, the glamorous life of a consultant. Or something), any plant that lives with me must be very forgiving if it doesn’t get watered more than once every other month or so when I walk by and remember.

When I noticed the poor water-deprived little plants (and yes, I promptly watered them *and* apologized profusely, and we really do not need to go into the psychological implications of Jennifer talking to her plants), it struck me that I might be missing other things as well. The cats are impossible to ignore – besides the fact that they have me completely and utterly trained to do their every bidding (well, almost), I do head counts every day before I leave work. This means that I usually have to find Zuchinni’s latest hiding place, but at least I know he’s still alive because otherwise I’m lucky to see more than a darting blurred furry shape at night, or as a nervous face peering around the corner to watch me with that faintly panicked look that always seems to me to indicate that he is certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that even though in the entire four years of his life that he has lived with me I have been nothing but kind and loving towards him, any day now I will suddenly turn on him, eyes shooting out the Evil Ray Of Death. I often ponder why it is that he can watch the other cats swarm me, purring happily, thus proving that I am not a maniacal cat murderer, but yet he still won’t trust me. I realize it’s psychological with him, and after all, this paranoia of his is why no one would ever adopt him, and I ended up keeping him anyway, and amazingly enough, this is actual *improvement* over the years, but even so sometimes I almost feel insulted.

But I digress. I was going somewhere with this, wasn’t I? After taking care of the green things inside it occurred to me that I ought to poke my head outside to see how the backyard was doing too. It’s something I do once a season, whether it needs it or not. Yes, I have a postage stamp of a backyard and this incredibly huge deck that I never, ever use. I hire a gardener to come and take care of the front and back, simply because 1. I’m not home often enough to keep it up, 2. The landlord lives across the street so there’s more of an incentive to keep it up, and 3. I despise yard work. Anyway, I noticed to my astonishment that the viney thing that has been taking over the deck roof the past few years has bloomed – beautiful purple flowers that sort of hang down (and will eventually turn into gnarled bean sort of things. So I didn’t take botany. I’m sure the viney thing has a name. Heck if I know what it is though.). It took me by surprise because I guess it’s just another indication that it’s actually spring here in California…and when did that happen?

My rescued onion is also still alive. I did mention I’m gone a lot, right? A few months ago I purchased an onion and it sat very patiently in a dark corner of the kitchen counter waiting for me to do something with it….or perhaps it wasn’t quite so patient because after an indeterminate amount of time I suddenly realized that there was a rather large green sprout emanating from the onion bag, and gee, maybe this onion was wayyyyy past its prime. Okay, call this a misplaced guilt complex, but I just couldn’t throw the poor thing out. Not after it had expended so much time and energy to produce such a strong and healthy looking shoot. I took it outside and planted it in this huge flower box that lines one side of the deck in the backyard I never go into. This garnered a laugh from the friend who was there at the time because my shovel was a soup spoon (hey, it worked!), but anyway, it’s still alive and getting very tall. I suppose at some point this summer I ought to check to see if it produced more onions…..but knowing me and my schedule it will probably get a chance to spawn even more of its little oniony buddies before I ever get back to it again.

I suppose the most important thing from this little walk around the house to check on plants was that I realized that I’m starting to neglect things and that I’m starting to let work get to me far more than I ought to. Lately it’s been getting harder to leave work at the office….and considering recent developments I’ll discuss in greater depth soon, I have a feeling it may get even more intense…..and so I need to remind myself that there are other things that need my attention too. Like family members whose birthdays are being missed because I haven’t had time to go shopping, nor have I been home to visit them. And friends who, I’m sure, are beginning to think that I’m mad at them because I rarely see them anymore.

And unlike the philedendrons and onions, whose forgiveness can be obtained in trade for a mere cup of water or a tiny patch of dirt in which to root, these other aspects of my life may not be so resilient.

I’ve been gone for a while – out of the country. And I don’t get my email from work very often anyway because, as a consultant, I’m not often in my office, and the current project site only has one dial-up line to access outside networks, and quite frankly, I hate Lotus Notes and so maybe this is my passive way of rebelling against having to use this horrible new email system that my new company oh so graciously bestowed on us during the merger.

So when I swung by the office on the way home tonight to get my email there was quite a bit of it. Nearly two weeks worth of messages, most of which I promptly deleted after merely reading the header, since they fell into the ‘doesn’t apply to me’ rule. Then I saw a message that filled me with dread.

It was a cheerful message. In bright red letters, it announced that all of us consultants are just soooo lucky because (insert cries of happy joy and astonishment here), we’re getting cellular phones. We’re all to call the number listed, and sign up for cellular phones, and turn in our pagers.

Perhaps I am an oddity (I’m sure there are some people who would say there’s no ‘perhaps’ about it), but I don’t want a cellular phone. I don’t like them. I can’t stand them. They are annoying, irritating devices that somehow seem to convince the average rational human being that they are slightly more important than the rest of us and therefore more entitled to be rude. The idiotic things go off during movies. They go off at dinner. They go off during meetings. People talk far too loud on them. I’m not sure I’ve yet heard anyone talking on a cellular phone who doesn’t end up shouting. And you don’t want to get me started on the subject of people using them in the car. It could get really ugly. Trust me.

I know that there are those of you out there who just love your little phones and can’t imagine life without them. And I’m sure that you’re reading this, shaking your head with dismay at how I can actually not like them. You’re also all saying under your breath “but I’m a good phone user. I never annoy people. I always turn my phone on vibrate when I’m at the movies. I don’t let it rule my life. I know how where the ‘off’ button is. And besides, it’s only for emergencies.”

Uh huh. Okay. Yeah. I believe you. Really. Not. Whether you want to admit it or not, you’re tied to the things. You can’t escape it. Oh sure, it’s convenient, but deep, deep down, don’t you really wish some times that people really weren’t able to contact you *anywhere*?

This is not the first time I’ve dug in my heels and tried to avoid enforced telecommunication improvements. I didn’t want the pager either. I successfully avoided that for over a year, til my company at the time was purchased by another one, and then presto, the pager arrived and I had to carry the darn thing because they all knew how to get ahold of me. I’ll admit that I actually have grown to like the darn thing. It’s a handy way for people to get ahold of me. Friends and family can send me little text messages letting me know they’re on their way, or that I should call them, or asking what time we’re meeting. Coworkers can get ahold of me when we’re working on projects over the weekend.

So you might think that, by virtue of the fact that I have grown to tolerate, and yes, even *like* the pager, that I might do the same for a cellular phone. However. There is one big difference between the two. With a pager, I know someone is trying to contact me. But it is still up to my discretion when and how I return that page. If I’m nowhere near a phone, well they’re basically stuck. I have the perfect excuse for taking extra time to return a call. With a phone I have no excuse. And I have a sneaky feeling I’ll only be able to use the ‘I had the phone turned off’ excuse for so many times before people start glaring at me.

Sigh.

Besides, I think I see a trend forming here. With each merger/acquisition my company goes through, the tracking methods get worse. I shudder to think of what might happen if this current incarnation of my company is ever acquired by a larger fish. I can see it now – all of us consultants trapped and radio-tagged. If they want us, they just transmit a mild electric shock. In a meeting, if you ever see the consultants flinch, or suffer from some odd muscle twitch, well, just assume they’ve been contacted by the home office.

I sent an email back to the business office asking if this cellular phone thing is a requirement or a choice. I have a sinking suspicion that it falls into the requirement category. I’m sure they’ll get a good laugh at my email. “Hey George, check this out. This woman doesn’t *want* one. Can you believe it? She actually said she’d rather hang by her toes than carry one. Whatta ya know.”

It’s progress. Gotta love it. Right?

Whimper.

On the flight to Singapore, I used my numerous frequent flier miles to upgrade to business class. There is something vaguely snobbish about flying in business or first. You get to board before the rest of the plane. You are seated in comfortable chairs being plied with drinks by friendly flight attendants while the rest of the unwashed masses file sullenly past to their tiny, cramped little seats in the back of the plane. There is a foot rest. The chair reclines back more than two inches – back enough so you might actually get comfortable. In business class on the international flights you have your own personal little TV screen to watch the movies so that you don’t strain your neck trying to see the fuzzy little screen hanging from the ceiling. They bring you food on a real plate and you don’t have to glue your elbows to your side while eating. They give you noise-reduction headphones. And in general, even when on an international flight that is 14 hours long, it is comfortable.

On the flight home on Saturday, I was not so lucky. The plane was full and (sob) I had to *be* one of those unwashed masses in coach. While I did not have an obnoxious child kicking the seat behind me, there was a screaming baby two rows ahead who was possessed with lung strong enough to clear the wax from one’s ears. Even for someone short, like me, there is no possible way you can ever get comfortable in those seats, and forget about getting any sleep.

I think that the people who design airline seats for coach should be forced to fly in them weekly, across the country (I’m so nice – I’m not even requesting international flights. Heck, 4 hours across the US should do it, right?). Stick them in the middle seat between two burly linebackers who refuse to give up an armrest, have the person in front of them recline the seat into their lap, and then sit an obnoxious, seat-kicking child behind them. Then lets see how long it takes before those people start figuring out a way to make flying more comfortable.

But anyway, I’m home now. The cats are all thrilled to see me. I had dinner with a small group of friends and we all laughed until we were practically crying. Yes, I had sea-dwelling creature for dinner, but I knew what spices were used, there weren’t any tentacles or other odd accessories, and all eyes, fins, and anything else that would have given any clue as to its appearance when still alive had been removed. Outside the sun is shining and the air is blessedly dry.

It’s good to be home.