I’m on vacation this week. Glorious do-nothing, be lazy vacation. I’ve earned this, too many times over this past year and I wish I could take a longer one, but with this project, it simply hasn’t been possible. I left email addresses and phone numbers for how to contact me should something happen, but so far, I’ve only been fielding two or three emails per day and the phone has remained blessedly quiet.

This vacation has been wonderful. Lately, it has been too easy to forget how nice it is to relax. With everything going on, Richard and I often have our weekends planned far in advance, and time to just sit and do nothing has been a rare luxury. I’ve had a whole week of it, although despite my best intentions, I’ve not managed to have a completely unproductive day yet.

When I’m on vacation like this, it’s easy to start to pretend that it could be like this always – that somehow, I could simply quit my job and stay home. I love my job, really (despite the stress and the hassle and all the complaining I do), but there’s also a part of me that wishes so desperately that I didn’t have to go back. I love cooking, busying myself in the kitchen and timing it so that the house is full of wonderful scents as Richard walks in the door, home from work in the evenings. I love being able to lie in bed just a little bit longer in the morning, and then taking just a bit more time to savor a cup of coffee over the morning paper. If I didn’t have to work, I’d take classes – perhaps join Tae Kwon Do again, perhaps take quilting with my mom, perhaps learn how to build furniture. I know that if I were truly home all the time, I’d be scheduling all sorts of things throughout the day and I’d probably end up just as busy as I am now. But somehow that kind of busy seems infinitely more acceptable then this overwhelming, mind-numbing work-busyness that I’m stuck in the middle of right now.

I realize that even though both of us are earning far more than we need together, we simply couldn’t make it on only one salary – not with this house we’re building, at any rate. Our plan is to retire as early as we can so that (perhaps by the time we’re 50) we will be able to enjoy living instead of working so hard. And part of our goal is to pay off our mortgage as early as we can – another incentive to keep working these high-stress but high-paying jobs. But still, it’s hard not to dream of waking up one day and knowing that I don’t have to go to work, that I could spend the day puttering in the garden (we *will* have a garden in the new house – we certainly will have the backyard large enough for it!), or sit out on the back deck with my needlework, or whip up curtains for the house, or any of too many options to ponder. And having had just a little taste of it this week means that going back next week is going to be very, very hard to bear.

Ah, Christmas. The gathering of the families. The opening of presents next to the twinkling lights of the tree. The traditional food – homemade sticky rolls for breakfast, cookies and snacks throughout the day, the candlelit dinner. There’s something very comforting about going home for the holidays and knowing that things will be the same.

Except things aren’t the same. They never really are, no matter how much you want them to be. You don’t wake up at your parents’ place anymore and gather, giggling, with your sisters at the foot of the stairs while your mom fusses with the camera. You wake up at home when the cats stomp on you and insist that you get up and play with them, and then drive over to your parents’ house at a more acceptable hour, when the sun has already risen. You do the traditional opening of the stocking presents before breakfast, but somehow it isn’t quite the same when two of your sisters are missing. You eat the sticky rolls – which are just as good as they always are – but unlike when you were a kid and didn’t care about things like calories and fat, you actually stop when you’re full instead of continuing to suck them down because they are so darn good, and you drink juice and take a vitamin that isn’t shaped like a cartoon character, but comes instead from a bottle that says, somewhere on the label, ‘mature’.

You perch on the couch instead of the floor when opening your presents because your knees like it better that way, and instead of the coolest new toy, you get things like ladders and industrial measuring tapes and books on home repair, and you’re pretty darn excited about it because that’s really what you wanted anyway.

In years past, the whole family has gathered, but now that the sisters are married with children, and one lives in another state anyway, you don’t have that ‘whole family’ thing going anymore, and when the older sister shows up with her husband and son in tow, it’s more like they’re visiting then that they belong here in the first place.

You were once the one who was ripping open presents with child-like wonder, but now you watch your nephew do it, as he carefully tears the paper off and gets excited about whatever is inside each one (“Wow! A box!”). You all lose bets on which toy he will love the most because even though the wagon that your father painstakingly built for him in the garage garners a lot of childish glee, what really keeps him entertained for the rest of the day is the umbrella made by Crayola, with wide stripes of color. And he keeps coming up to you showing you his umbrella. “Jeffer! Grabrella! See grabrella!” and you are ridiculously pleased about how he keeps asking you and no one else to put the cover on, and then remove the cover, and all the while he watches soberly before running off with his favorite gift.

You all sit around the table for ‘lunch’ and eat crackers and dip and cheese, but you know you’re getting older because you worry about the fact that there’s really no vegetables for the meal and you try to limit the number of cookies you cram into your face, even though Christmas has always been the one day that mom and dad didn’t watch what you ate and let you stuff yourself silly.

And then when your older sister leaves and the house is suddenly quiet, you look at your mom who has been quietly miserable all day with a nasty cold and you tell her that if she is wanting to cook some huge dinner just because she thinks that you’ll be disappointed, that you won’t be, and you’d rather just do leftovers or something. So instead of the traditional holiday meatloaf and mashed potatoes and baby peas served on the fine china, with grape Kool-Aid served in the ugly green pitcher, you all pile into the car and drive around all of Solano county until you find the one place that is actually open on Christmas and you join hordes of other hungry travelers over burgers and fries and shakes. So maybe it’s not festive and it’s not by candlelight and instead of the dulcet tones of a brass quintet playing holiday tunes on the CD player in the other room, you hear the din of a short order cook and the snarling tones of the woman behind the counter who is making it painfully clear that she would rather be anywhere but here tonight. You joke about how your last Christmas dinner at ‘home’ wasn’t the traditional one and how it will scar you forever and you’re sure to need counseling (all said tongue in cheek when your mother dithers out loud about how this is just not what she had in mind) until your mom finally realizes that it’s okay, you really don’t mind at all, and that what matters more than the presentation and the food itself is that you’re laughing and eating together and having fun, and that’s what’s most important anyway.

At the end of one of my favorite books Watership Down, as everything is back to normal, the main character – Hazel- passes one of the female rabbits who is telling some of the young rabbits stories of the Black Rabbit’s adventures. As they pause to listen, they hear a fantastical story, and even though it seems unbelievable, there is a grain of truth, for the story she is telling is really the story of Hazel and what he managed to accomplish with his friends. Yet it is incorporated into the legend of the Black Rabbit – the one magical, mystical rabbit that watches over them all.

It’s Christmas Eve, and as usual, I am pondering the existence of God and of “The Reason for the Season”. I have questioned this as long as I can remember, unable to take the Bible for anything more than a collection of stories that might or might not be true, told and retold over the years until someone finally wrote them down, with no idea how accurate they might be, but with the understanding that these stories perhaps evolved from truth, much like the stories of the Black Rabbit evolved from true life in Watership Down.

My biggest problem is that I cannot believe in God as a father figure, watching over us, guiding us. I cannot believe in the presence of a Satan – of a distinct Good and a distinct Evil. I have read too many creation stories from different cultures that all have a common theme – that of the choice between life and death (sometimes humans make the choice, as in Genesis, and sometimes the choice is made for them). I am, unfortunately, too practical, too scientific to blindly accept this sort of thing on faith. It is easier for me to rationalize that the myth of the Supreme Being(s) makes it easier for people to follow rules if they have the threat of divine retribution, and allows them to explain the unexplainable, like hardships and pain and death.

I believe that Jesus was a man with a lot of radical ideas for his time. I believe that he was a compelling speaker and was able to convince people to share with each other, to think about things in a different light, and for that, he should be remembered. I can not, however, believe that he was capable of miracles, that his mother was a virgin, that any angels spoke to anyone about his birth, or that he rose from the dead. This, I know, makes me subject to eternal damnation in the eyes of some of those who are on the more fundamental side, but what they fail to understand is that the lessons he taught are just as important, and somehow mean more to me if he was a plain, ordinary man, than if he was really this magical ‘Son of God’ creation that right-wing Christianity has turned him into.

Jesus will, therefore, never be anything more to me than just a man – a man who said some important things, but still just a man. And I don’t know if I will ever be able to believe, completely, in God. I can accept that there is something out there greater than myself – some power that has the ability to alter things, although whether it is one or many I do not know. My mother, who was recently consecrated as a minister in the Methodist church, is probably one of the most accepting and open people I know when it comes to religion, and she and I have had a number of conversations on this. I don’t quite grasp her faith and her conviction in the existence of God, but I do admire her for it. She has this faith, not because she was told to believe it, but because she has found it for herself, somehow, somewhere. In a way, I envy her because, and perhaps this may seem odd, despite everything I wrote above, I *want* to believe. I want to be able to get my arms around that higher power and understand this thing called faith. I just don’t seem to be able to.

It’s Christmas Eve. In a few hours I’ll change into something a bit more presentable than an old flannel shirt and my favorite jeans, and go join my parents at the late night service, same as I have done for years. I’ll greet everyone with a smile and possibly a hug, and we’ll sing all the familiar Christmas hymns, and when we light the candles at the end and sing to that flicker of candlelight, I will get that same shiver up my spine as I listen to the voices around me. And as the last note fades away, the congregation will file silently out into the chilly night, not speaking above a murmur until we are outside because somehow it is more appropriate that way. After arranging times to meet at my parents’ house for Christmas morning, I will drive back home, my favorite Christmas album on the stereo, and then I will stand outside in the dark and look up at the stars as I have done nearly every year since I struck out on my own and let the spirit of Christmas settle in the silence of the night. I may never fully understand what it is, but for now, as it has been each year, it will be enough.

Happy holidays to all of my readers, whatever belief you embrace, whatever occasion you choose to celebrate this winter. And special thanks to Rob who managed to put into words his thoughts about God (which are eerily similar to mine) far more eloquently than I ever could.

It happened again – this time while we were sitting in the bank talking to an investment counselor about planning for our future (our goal is to retire as early as possible). I mentioned that at least we didn’t have to worry about saving for college educations and such because we weren’t planning on having children, and the man gave me that patronizing stare and a nod. “Yes, that’s what we said,” he noted in that tone of voice I’m beginning to hate. “I think my wife was about your age when we had The Talk.” I can only assume that this Talk was about her ticking biological clock, because he now has kids.

It finally dawned on me why it might be that so many people tend not to believe us when we say that we really don’t want kids. There is this myth out there that every woman hits some magical age where her hormones go all wacky and all she can think about is baby powder and diapers and gets an insane urge to paint one room pastel colors and go shopping for cribs. And I think the general thought is that when I say ‘we’, I probably mean that Richard is the one who’s driving this and I’m just going along with it until the day I’ll get suddenly weepy at an Osh Kosh B’Gosh commercial and tell Richard that we’re having a baby Right Now.

I laugh it off when people give us that tolerant smile and make some comment that indicates that they think we’re complete idiots who are destined to change our mind (when that big hormonal surge happens to me, I guess). We usually make a joke about how the only pitter patter of little feet around the house will be the cats, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t believe us – and most especially, they don’t believe me.

But even though I don’t let them see how I feel, it is starting to get to me – this too-common reaction to this sort of announcement. Neither of us came to this decision lightly. Prior to Richard and I getting together, I was in a relationship with a man who wanted very much to be a father. And because I cared about him, I tried to make myself believe that I wanted children too. Eventually, though, I realized that despite how I felt about him, I couldn’t be something I’m not and I’d regret that – and him – later. I’ve rationalized the decision upside down and sideways over many years, and I know that it’s the right one for me. Richard agrees with me – obviously, or we’d not be getting married because it’s something I’ve never hidden and we actually discussed it early on in our relationship. Our families seem to have accepted the news with little or no concern. Why is it that so few others can accept what is really our own decision? Where is it written that two people who marry must have children?

Sometimes I have wondered if there was something wrong with me for not wanting kids. There’s social pressure on women – we’re supposed to have maternal urges. It’s supposed to be ingrained in us to desire to procreate. Not me. When my biological clock (such as it is) starts ticking, it’s because I’m getting kitten urges, not baby urges. Baby drool makes me nauseous (Just ask my sisters. It’s a running joke in my family that you don’t hand a drooling kid to Aunt Jennifer). The thought of dealing with children for more than short periods of time makes me cringe. When we’re out and some small children nearby start to misbehave or scream or do something else annoying, Richard and I murmur ‘Dozens. We’re having dozens’ in our most sarcastic tones of voice to each other. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that we don’t *like* children. We both adore being aunt and uncle to our respective nieces and nephews and godchildren (related by blood, and simply by friendship with the parents), and we enjoy spending time with well-behaved children (note the caveat there) but that’s as far as it goes. I love my niece and nephew dearly and should anything happen to either of my sisters and their kids were going to be tossed into foster care, of course I’d take them in a heartbeat. I just don’t want one of my own.

There is a subculture out there that a lot of people try to pretend doesn’t exist. We are the Childless-By-Choice, and our numbers are growing. At least half of my acquaintances have decided to not have children. Some are married, some are still single, but all have given it just as much thought as we have. Most of the people Richard works with are married without children. And apparently, to some people out there, our mere existence is a threat. It’s as if somehow our choice to remain childless is a direct affront to their choice to breed. I’m not sure what rational reason there is for this reaction – most of us who are childless by choice have no objection to others spawning; we just don’t see the need to do it themselves. Of course, not wanting children means we often end up with a much lower tolerance for them. We don’t find it amusing when little children run screaming while we’re watching movies. We would love to have restaurants institute a no-children section, much like they used to have non-smoking sections prior to the marvelously wonderful “No Smoking inside” law they passed a few years ago in California.

I accept with a resigned sigh the fact that Richard and I will not escape the gentle pressure – however well meaning it is – to have children, until we’re simply too old for it. I accept that I will continue to find ways to joke politely when I’m asked who will take care of us when we’re old, or am told that I’ll change my mind when I’m older. No matter how much I might want to snarl back at those who do this to us, there is no point because I’ll never convince them.

I’m 31 now. I figure we’re going to have to suffer through about ten more years of this before people finally take us seriously.

Sigh.

Richard’s been working from home this week – three days, in fact. This meant, of course, that he got to drive out to the house during lunch and see it in all its glory and I had to be content with simple pictures that he would take and upload for me (Did I whine at him about it? Yes I did). I’ve got the latest house picture as my wallpaper on my computer at work. People are probably getting sick of me showing it to them. (Do I care? No).

So all this week I’ve been impatient for Saturday so I could see it myself. This morning we bought breakfast food and then we drove out to the house, tromped around, and sat on a pile of boards to eat breakfast in our soon-to-be breakfast nook (Go look at the house page if you want to see it. Yes – a picture of me in there. How amazing is that?).

Okay, so it’s still just frames and no solid walls and no ceiling and no second floor, but at least we are getting a good idea of what it’s going to look like, finally, and it was so incredibly cool to wander through, pointing out rooms to each other (like we really didn’t know what they were). “Here’s the laundry room! Check out the size of our dining room! Oh man, this breakfast nook is the *perfect* spot for gaming!” Ah, even in the midst of yuppyness the nerd stuff sneaks in…

We actually got to meet a neighbor, finally. He came over and introduced himself, then pointed at a few houses around us and noted who we are going to be living among. One of them owns several fast food restaurants. One of them owns a highly successful shutter company. He rattled off more impressive facts and Richard and I looked at each other and grinned. Even before this we’d already determined that in our new neighborhood, we’re most likely going to be the youngest couple there, and our house will probably be the smallest (which, considering that it’s a tad over 2100 square feet, is definitely not a problem!). But his comments indicated that we’ll probably also be the least affluent people out there, and probably the most liberal. I think if we’d been out there prior to this past election, we’d have been the only ones with a ‘Vote for Gore’ sign in our front yard. This should make things fun, yes yes.

But all joking aside, nothing I’ve learned has made me any less excited to be building in that neighborhood. It’s quiet and calm, and we’ve been there at all times of day or night. The people seem friendly. One night when we were there, we heard the faint sounds of the local high school band warming up and that brought back so many memories (yes, I was a band geek.). We’ve talked about occasionally walking down to take in a high school football game. We’ll be able to sit in our back yard and watch the fireworks in the park that’s right behind our fence on the 4th of July.

It’s just a bit over three months left now, and I know we haven’t even begun to deal with all the really complicated decisions (like trying to decide once and for all whether we want a fireplace in the master bedroom. We’ve been going back and forth on this one for a few months now). But it helps to go out there now and have something concrete to see. The subfloor was nice and everything but it was, well, just a floor. Now we’ve got rooms. I’m starting to get a picture of where our stuff might go. The piano will go against the wall where the stairs will be (well, when I get a piano that is. Someday. Sigh). We’ll have couches around the fireplace. We need to find a round table for the breakfast nook (and because there’s all those windows, there’s no way we’ll ever keep the cats off of it so I don’t think we’ll even try). We have to paint the bathroom walls and learn how to marble paint on walls. We’re still figuring out which corner the TV will live, not that we ever watch it. Poor thing is probably feeling neglected.

It’s getting closer and closer now. And sitting there on a pile of boards, squinting because the sun was really really bright this morning, looking around and actually *seeing* it somehow makes the wait a bit more manageable. Does this mean you don’t have to listen to me whine about how long it’s taking? Don’t hold your breath. What it does mean is that our excitement is building and we know that this house is going to be beautiful and wonderful and perfect – just for us.

We’re behind on our development schedule for this project, but considering the lack of design freeze and the fact that they’ve tried to cram three months worth of work into the last month, this has come as no surprise to me. The problem is that even though we’ve tried to gently indicate the delays, the higher-ups weren’t listening and now all of a sudden it’s smacking them in the face, and as I started a conference call this afternoon (I volunteered to participate in a consulting forum that meets monthly via phone), I suddenly was handed a paper by one of the admins who looked uncharacteristically sober and was told that there was a mandatory meeting I was to attend, no excuses.

The meeting was, as I expected, called to figure out just why we were behind. The thing is, of everything else we’ve done, this is less than 5% of total development, but that didn’t matter. All they cared was why weren’t we done, and when would we be completed. The development manager and I sat on our end of the phone and stared at each other and tried to explain the situation, and through it all I started to question my handling of this. Did I not communicate the delays well enough? Did I gloss over them too much? I’d been responsible for sending out the status reports the last few weeks – had I made them too cheerful? So after the meeting ended, and we were both sitting there a bit shell-shocked and trying to recover, the manager turned to me and said the last thing I expected. Instead of a reprimand for somehow failing in the reporting, he apologized to me for my having to deal with that meeting. And then he shook my hand and told me in a firm voice that I was doing a great job – almost as if he was trying to make sure that I didn’t take that phone call personally. It was a little reminder that despite everything, it’s all going to work out in the end.

Tonight we had a team dinner for all the consultants from my particular company (there’s probably over a hundred consultants on this project, all from different groups, and my company’s got about 25 people here on site). The testing manager planned it all – he’s in the unique position of actually being a recognized project manager within our company, whereas I’m merely project manager of this particular project by default because the customer is the one who put me there (although it’s been made fairly clear that nearly everyone else on the project wouldn’t want to touch my job with a ten-foot pole). So he’s the one who organized the whole shindig, and he’s the one who stood up and did a little speech after we were pleasantly sated from dinner, thanking all of us for our hard work, and giving special note to some of us. He started with me, since I suppose that in the big scheme of things I’ve got the most high-profile position on the team. And what he said took me back a bit too. He noted that of all the people on the project, I’m the one who is completely irreplaceable.

He’s not the first to tell me that, and if I look at it logically I know I have to agree. It’s not that I’ve tried to put myself into this sort of position, but it’s simply ended up that way. I’m in a very unique place on this project, straddling the line between business and development, fingers in both sides of the pie, running from planning meetings to technical design discussions to prioritizing bug fixes. I’m the sole input into our side of development – if it doesn’t get past me, it doesn’t get done, although I’m not exactly thrilled to be the one with that kind of power, because it often means that even on days like today when I’m fighting a head cold, I still had to be at work, to deal with status meetings and testing issues and all the other normal little crisises that pop up each day on this project.

But it has made me think. Recently I put my resume online, and I’ve gotten a fair number of calls – enough to let me realize that, despite my worries and insecurity, I’m definitely marketable. But it is time to take that resume down. This is not a good time to leave – I may not like it, but the fact is, this project would suffer if I left and I’m entrenched too deeply to want to go anyway.

I’m not giving up on my dream of leaving consulting, and I’m starting to put out feelers for any opportunities I can to improve my chances the next time one of these management positions open up. But that’s a goal for the future. I know how to deal with these people. I know what reports the business needs, sometimes before they even ask for them. I know what to monitor and who to prod and push in order to get things done when I need them done. I know how to wheedle the technical analysts into doing their job, even when they don’t want to. I know how to handle the business folks and how to smooth over the rough spots. It may be crazy and hectic with the usual ‘what’s the plan today?’ type of situation, but at least it’s an insanity I’ve grown used to. And for now, it’s exactly where I belong.

Two years ago I got a Christmas tree. I went with a friend, who’d never done the whole ‘chop down a tree’ thing and found it quite fascinating, and the two of us put it up and decorated it, with music in the background and cats assisting in every possible way. And then she left and I was all alone in my house and that entire Christmas season I turned on the lights exactly once, and I wondered why the heck I had even bothered? Decorating the house just didn’t seem all that worth it if it was only me to see it and to appreciate it. Turning off all the lights to watch the tree sparkle is kinda dull when you do it yourself. I wasn’t lonely – it’s just that Christmas, to me, has always been something to share. I’ve shared the spirit with roommates and friends and family for so many years that having no one to share it with beyond the initial set up of the tree was more of a let down.

Last year we had Christmas up in Seattle with my little sister, so that was as good an excuse as any to not have a tree. But I didn’t plan to get one anyway. The year prior, one of the cats managed (despite my purchasing the most sturdy, stable-looking tree stand I could find) to pull the tree over, and I just didn’t want to go through the hassle for something that really ended up being a waste of time. (Oh, and helpful hint – when you’ve got cats who think that the sparkly things on cords on the tree look edible and must be taken away into hiding, it’s best to drape the lights back and forth instead of wrapping them around. This way, when the afore-mentioned cat grabs the string of lights and runs, the lights come off and the tree does *not* come with them).

I hadn’t intended to get a tree this year either. I figured I’d do the annual tree hunt with my parents and then we’d sit around poking holes in fresh-baked gingerbread men, stringing popcorn, and pulling out all the family ornaments to decorate their house. And then I’d go home, drag out my fake poinsetta (because when the cats sit on this one, it can be brought back to life) and put on some holiday music and all would be well.

Of course, that was before Richard moved in with me and suddenly I found myself with someone who – among all the other reasons we’re so compatible – loves Christmas as much as I do.

We got our tree today. We treked out to the nearest tree farm and chopped down a little incense cedar. I know it’s impractical to have a real tree, but there’s nothing like the scent of pine in the air to herald the coming holidays. This was the first time he’d ever gotten to ‘hunt’ his own tree, so it was fun for both of us.

We brought it home and, after distracting the cats with new toys, put it up and decorated. We decided that next year, Jennifer will listen to Richard when he suggests checking the string of lights *before* we hang them, and we hung all the non-breakable ornaments near the bottom of the tree because they’re the ones that have the greatest tendency to leap off the branches and scurry off to other rooms – all without any assistance from the furry residents. Mm hmm.

But when we were done, we turned off all the lights in the house, turned on the lights on the tree, and sat down and just drank in the setting. The fresh smell of pine in the air; Christmas music playing softly in the background; lights on the tree, and he and I snuggled together on the couch. And for just a little while we could forget about all the stress of our respective jobs and everything else that seems to be looming over us and just *be*.

I have seen bad movies before. There is no lack of them in the world, and despite my best intentions, I’ve seen quite a few. Sometimes you go to the theater with the knowledge that this movie will probably be bad, but you’re willing to see it for some other redeeming factor. Sometimes you get lucky. Last night, we did not.

We went to see Dungeons and Dragons tonight. Before you start snickering, we all assumed that this would probably not be very good. But as it was a crowd of gamers, we figured we had to at least go, just to see what Hollywood thought of our little subculture.

Hollywood apparently thinks that people who role-play have IQ’s that put them in par with your average kumquat, and aren’t capable of understanding the difference between acting and not acting.

I don’t know quite what happened. I don’t know if the director was in the middle of a vendetta against the writer, or if the person who wrote the lines refused to give any other insight except “Stand here and be…um…dramatic”, but it was bad. So bad that it was amusing, despite how seriously it tried to take itself.

The acting reminded me a great deal of that which was seen in Star Wars: Episode I (a statement that, I’m sure, will anger you hard-care Star Wars fans, but tell me honestly that you thought that that movie was well-acted and I will ask you what drugs you were taking at the time). However, Star Wars at least had a few people who redeemed themselves, despite the director’s best intentions. Not so with Dungeons and Dragons. Not remotely so. Jeremy Irons’ character was a one-dimensional bad guy – complete with wild gestures, grimaces that were supposed to make him look more evil (but often made him look as if he was pondering revisiting his dinner), and dramatic statements of his evil intent. It would have simply been easier (and a good deal less painful to watch) if they’d merely painted “I’m the bad guy” on his chest and had been done with it. His sidekick was just as bad, and what’s even worse is that I’ve seen this guy in other films and he really *can* act. Perhaps the fact that he was forced to wear badly applied silver-blue lipstick throughout the film inhibited him, who knows. The empress’s long drawn out speeches to the mages’ council were painful, and serious moments became laughable because of how woodenly the lines were delivered.

The plot was typical of an AD&D game – one run by a novice Dungeon Master, that is. There were gaping holes, but gaming usually requires the players to suspend belief in reality and in feasibility quite often, so it was, ironically, true to form. The characters acted the way I would expect first level characters to act, played by people who’d just picked up the books and were reading along, and even the incredibly bad acting was somehow reminiscent of first-time players I’ve seen (I was probably just as bad when I began gaming so many years ago too, sad to say). However, while quite appropriate to a group of new gamers, these little quirks only proved the incompetency of the either the writer, director, actors, or perhaps some dismal combination of all three.

We discussed various reasons for why it was so bad, after we had escaped the theater and managed to stop our hysterical laughter. Perhaps, one person offered, this was to show that gamers are really not evil Satan worshipers, as the religious right-wing likes to claim. “See – how evil could they be if they’re truly *this* stupid?” they would exclaim and go home to worry about the nasty influences of Harry Potter and leave the gaming community alone for a while. The more practical reason, however, is most likely that the company that markets the AD&D books and materials has started to realize that their average gamer these days is over 30, and if they’re going to make any money, they really need to hit a younger crowd. And what better way to get younger people all fired up about the game than to make a movie out of it!

If this is truly what Hollywood thinks of the gaming community, there’s a lot of us who should be more than a bit insulted. And it seems we have more insult to come – the film ended with an obvious lead-in to a sequel. The only way I’d be willing to watch that thing again would be if we rented from the bargain shelf and watched at a party where we could yell and laugh and poke fun at the sheer badness of it, and we had a remote control to forward through the truly painful parts.

Dungeons & Dragons was struck by a Curse of Bad Everything. And unluckily for those of us who were watching, haste spells don’t work in real life, and there *was* no saving throw.

We’ve not done much visiting of the house site lately because in the evenings it’s just too dark and foggy to see much, and even if we do sort of angle the car so it’s up on the curb with the headlights shining, there’s enough ditches and other things on the lot that we could fall into or on that we really haven’t done much more than drive by, peer at the interesting piles of dirt, and vow to come back someday when the sun is shining.

So Saturday before we headed down to spend the weekend with his family, Richard and I drove by the lot, armed with digital camera, to record the existence of our very own subfloor.

It’s not even remotely what I expected. I heard ‘subfloor’ and pictured some sort of flat thing, balancing on those obscure little cement posts that were scattered all over the ground inside the ring of foundation where our house is to be. But no, this thing looks sort of like a cubicle maze for really short, skinny people, with curious pipes and hoses popping up here and there.

I tossed together a quick page with the pictures we’ve taken so far. If you want to have the endless thrill of following along on my little house-building adventure, check out the progress so far. You, too, can thrill to the view of trenches at dusk. Peer into the cube maze and try to figure out which pipes go to which bathroom. Share our excitement at having our very own fuse box. Hey. It is exciting. Trust me. Quit snickering.

Our general contractor came by tonight with a few catalogs of front doors because – well, I bet you can’t guess what our next big decision has to be, hmm? Front doors are far more expensive than you might imagine. I’m not talking about the boring old metal doors you find on college rentals, or the hollow doors inside between rooms. I’m talking about solid wooden doors with gorgeously detailed windows and frames, with prices that were much better left hidden. He took me by surprise way back when we first sat down and came up with a budget, for how much he’d set aside for the front door. I can see now that he really wasn’t kidding. Eek.

Richard and I sat down and looked at the selection, then picked one out. True to form, we both managed to pick exactly the same door. It’s that shared brain cell thing, see.

When he came by to drop off the door catalogs, our contractor mentioned a few tidbits of information. The best one was when he said that he thinks they’ll be all done building by March. That’s only four more months. Woo! He also told us, however, that our neighbors-to-be are asking about us, and are curious. This does not surprise me that they’re curious – although over the past five months we’ve been out there tromping around on the lot we have yet to meet one of them. However, it has started to make me think of all sorts of evil little things we could do, just to make the new neighbors wonder. Perhaps start moving some of the gargoyles in early. Borrow a drum set from someone with a surly teenage boy and have him move it into the garage. Drive up and park a van painted with flames and ‘Free Love’ on the side.

Ah, the possibilities…

After I heard about the job on Wednesday, I actually surprised myself with how disappointed I really was. I’d been telling myself all along that I wasn’t going to get the job, but I guess I had started to make plans about how nice it would be when I would be able to work so much closer to home, with more regular hours. I think the loss of that dream hurt worse than the loss of the actual position. There’ll be more, and I have a really good chance, I think, if I jump through the hoops I’m sure they’ll give me to prove my worth.

But not getting the job has made me think about what I really want to do, and I find that I really don’t know. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I used to think that being a computer nerd was the end of the road – that that was exactly where I should be, and at the time, it was true. But now I’ve had a taste of something more with this project, and I’m starting to lean more towards a career that is, perhaps, a bit heavier in the management, and a bit lighter in the coding. And then I question myself if this leaning is merely a flimsy excuse for that constant nagging voice in the back of my head that has, since the day I started this career, told me that I’m never going to be quite as good as I should be because of the training that I lack. It’s frustrating, in an almost comical way, that I am over thirty years old and am reduced to dithering about my career. I told Richard that I thought I should just buy a Starbucks franchise and spend my days whipping up lattes in a cute little coffee shop, with a store cat (I can imagine how many health laws this would violate. Let me dream, okay?). The nice thing is that I know that he’d support me in whatever I chose to do.

In the meantime though, while I’m dithering about which direction to take, and sulking childishly about not getting the management job, I decided to do something that is both slightly productive, and good for the ego. Last night I dragged out that resume I’d worked so hard to create for this job I didn’t get, and tossed it out onto one job search site, just to see what sort of response I’d get. I’m not doing the all-out job search yet, so I figured that one site would be enough to start – just to get my feet wet and find out if I was even remotely marketable. And because I feel more than a little awkward about having recruiters call me on my business phone, I put in my cell phone number for my contact info.

Finally, an acceptable use for the darn thing. It’s both a phone *and* a piece of exercise equipment! See, because the phone’s reception isn’t so great anyway, and it’s even worse in the building in which I work, every time it rings I have to grab the phone and dash madly outside before it stops ringing, answering as I bolt out the door in the hopes that they’ll be able to hear me well enough through the static so that they won’t hang up. After the first few calls, I finally caught a clue and now my scramble to get outside with the phone also includes grabbing a pen and some paper.

It has been quite the ego boost so far, getting these calls, although I think I’ve disappointed lots of eager young recruiters who sound so crestfallen when I tell them that my main goal is to get *out* of consulting, not simply take another job of the same ilk. On the plus side though, they usually rally back after a quick pause and tell me they’ll see what they can find.

So far there have been a few phone calls to peak my interest, and it’s been rather refreshing to realize that I have the luxury of time for this job hunt. Yes, I want out of consulting, but I am in no hurry to just jump into the first thing that comes my way. I intend to take my time and find the perfect job – or something approximating that, at any rate. This project I’m on is in no danger of ending any time soon, nor am I in any danger of being transferred. If it takes me a few months, well so be it. In the meantime, I’ll get lots of exercise doing the ‘ohmygodthephoneisringing’ sprint three or four times a day.