Seeking Ferret

My grandmother, my mother's mother, passed away last Wednesday at age 91. She's been struggling with a variety of ailments for the past several years, two weeks ago she added liver cancer to the list and it was very quick after that. My mother was there when she died and says that it was peaceful.

My grandma was the person who taught me to solve crosswords, I have many memories of sitting next to her in her kitchen with the NY Times Sunday magazine working on the puzzle together. She solved in pen... erasable pen. (My mom says when she was younger the pens weren't erasable) Her house was just a few blocks from the beach, so after the puzzle we would pack up sandwiches and walk down to the beach. I would run around in the sand with my siblings and cousins and the grownups would talk or read or swim.

She raised four kids to be smart and kind and thoughtful and loving, just the way she was. At the funeral and Shiva everyone had stories of her overwhelming generosity to the people she loved. I remembered that when I was about seven I was obsessed with reruns of the Adam West Batman show and for my Batman themed birthday she found a pattern and sewed me a complete Batman costume, which I assure you I wore for more than just the birthday party.

She was an amazing cook, too. Her latke recipe is one of my most treasured recipes and it's one of a million ways she lives on in me and everyone else who knew her.

I haven't posted much, I've been busy. I live in Boston now!

Happy Purim! Last night I went to a party at a Jewish bar in Somerville called Lehrhaus, they had Purim themed cocktails and I ate a samosa hamantaschen, which definitely makes this the most hipster Purim I've ever had. But Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars played and even though I didn't know anyone at the party, it was so much fun to dance to their music in a crowd of enthusiastic Jews who refused to stop singing "Mishenichnas Adar" even after the band stopped. FLKBA is such a great band, they play fusion that, er, fuses so relentlessly that it almost feels like parody, but the common denominator is playfulness and fun and joy. I treasure that joy.

Anyway, Purimgifts went live! I didn't sign up this year because life is chaos but it's still pretty exciting.

So the original original plan was that I would take off Friday 12/23 and head up to Boston to see my girlfriend. I haven't mentioned her much here, but we started dating this summer, I think I wrote briefly about our first meeting, and anyway she is really great and long-distance sucks and I was looking forward to spending a weekend together.

Then three of our people at work down on an installation in Houston got COVID and we were set back a bunch by that, so my boss asked me to fly out last Sunday and spend a few days in Houston helping us to catch up. I was supposed to fly back Wednesday afternoon, so the new plan was get back Wednesday, spend Thursday in the office, and then head up Friday as originally planned.

But when I got down to Houston we were further behind than anticipated, so my boss asked me to extend my trip another day. I said fine, as long as I could switch my flight to go straight to Boston. So the new new plan was to fly out Thursday afternoon, get to Boston, and then spend the long weekend with R.

Fine, that all worked out reasonably well, the week in Houston was long and extremely exhausting and mentally and physically taxing, but we made a lot of progress and I flew out Thursday afternoon. Or evening, really, because the flight was delayed almost two hours because of mechanical problems, but I made it to my hotel in Boston around midnight.

And then R texted me Friday morning that she'd just tested positive for COVID, so there went a lot of our plans for the weekend, and we had to regroup and figure out a new plan. I see from reading my rlist that a number of you have had plans changed by COVID in the past few days, which makes me feel a little less alone, but still, it was very frustrating.

We ended up cutting everything down to a couple hours each day of outdoor masked hanging out, basically until we hit our physical limits given the temperatures in the 20s or 30s for most of the time I was there. I had a nice Shabbos dinner at the house of a local Rabbi and dealt with meals otherwise in my hotel room. R ordered me Chinese food for Shabbos lunch. Sunday we went for a walk in Coolidge Corner, getting lunch from a bagel place and stopping in at a bookstore. It was still really good to get to spend in person time with her, but it was so disappointing to have to settle for what we got.

Sunday evening I did the semi-non-tradition of watching a terrible Christian movie with Jewish CTY friends. We watched the new nativity musical Journey to Bethlehem, from the music director of Glee, with Antonio Banderas as Herod and an amazing donkey. It was bad. Very bad.

And then Monday I took a train back to Jersey and I am back at work today. With all the travel, I feel a little off balance but I'm hoping I will catch up to myself soon.

Hello from unexpectedly in Colorado. Not entirely unexpected, I've known for a couple weeks there was a chance I'd have to go, and then Monday my boss was like "Okay, yes, you should go to Colorado on Wednesday." So here I am. I flew out Wednesday morning, 7AM flight that I had to wake up at 3:30AM to catch. I fly back tomorrow morning. I am tired, but the trip's been productive at least.

For better and worse, my 20th high school reunion was exactly what I thought it would be.

-I was the only person there wearing a mask. I didn't expect a lot of people to, but I didn't think it would be just me. That off the bat made me feel out of place, a little, and also it made it a little harder for people to hear me talk.

-But that was a side issue compared to the fact that the reunion committee booked a DJ and they were blasting loud music the whole time. I did not really understand this. A few people danced but mostly people were there to talk to people they hadn't seen in years- why would you want music drowning out the conversations?

-Also, for whatever it's worth, the popular music of 2003 that they were playing was not the soundtrack of my high school experience. Sure, I recognized most of the songs, but setting aside the ultra-weird music I listened to when I was on my own, when I was with friends we much more commonly listened to hard rock or metal, or indie rock, or folk- depending on the friends. We did not listen to top 40 radio.

-All of this just speaks to the way I did not think and still do not think the same way most of my high school classmates do. And I'm okay with that.

-In the end, I spent a bunch of time talking to people, but I also spent a decent bit of time chilling in a corner watching people, because I have limited introvert energy to handle big crowds and I probably have less now since my interacting in large group skills have atrophied during covid.

-Of the thirty people I was closest to in high school, two were there. In retrospect, of course the friends I had in high school didn't go to this reunion, they knew just as well as I did what it would be. But it was really good to see the two guys I did see and catch up a bit. And it was kind of nice to talk to some of the other people that I was never close to, but that I just had a long history with. So I'm glad I went, all in all.

-But I feel like the biggest piece of the puzzle is the realization that if I do want to catch up with the people that I actually was closest with in high school, I have to do that work myself. I'm... not sure I want to do that work, and it's okay if I don't. But maybe I'll reach out to some people.

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

Reread (Listen to the audio, actually) for two reasons:

One, as a retreat to a familiar favorite Oxford novel after reading Babel and The Royal We, but honestly I don't have much to say about that. I don't have very strong feelings about Oxford or the Oxford novel. naraht had an interesting comment on some of the Oxford inaccuracies in Babel.

The second reason is that my 20th high school reunion is happening in a month and I am having feelings about that. I haven't gone to any previous reunions; My tenth was scheduled, like Prom and many other important social events when I actually was in high school, on a Friday evening. Don't worry, I'm not still spiteful about that. :P But they scheduled our 20th for a Saturday night so I can actually attend. There's a lot of reunion literature about returning and wanting to project a certain image of yourself to your old classmates, but that's not really a concern of mine. I was a weird eighteen year old nerd in high school, and I am now a weird thirty eight year old nerd, and in twenty years I expect I will be a weird fifty eight year old nerd. I was never afraid to be at least a significant fraction of myself in front of my high school classmates, no matter how little they liked me as a result.

But that's why I think I find Gaudy Night such an interesting touchstone for reflection. Harriet is certainly concerned about reputational issues, but more than anything her reunion gaudy is an opportunity to ask herself "Is the self I am now consistent with the vision I had for my future when I was a student, and if it is not, am I okay with that?" She looks at her former classmates with a concern not to how they judge her, (moreso, an exhaustion about how they judge her) but with a concern to how they all represent different paths she could have gone down from the same starting point. And I have to admit I am very curious along the same lines to see how the many classmates I have lost touch with have fared. There's only a very small handful that I have been in contact with, and even that has been sporadic and/or Facebook-mediated. I left high school behind, with gratitude for the good parts and with a clear sense that I was leaving something behind that had limited me. So it feels a little paradoxical: On the one I hand I feel genuinely excited to see some of my classmates again, on the other hand it feels somewhat selfish and petty to want to see them again given that I don't anticipate any rekindling of friendships, just the satisfaction of curiosity. I suppose there are worse reasons to go to a reunion.

One early datapoint of where people have ended up: A few weeks ago, the reunion committee passed out a list of my classmates who have passed away in the last twenty years, asking if anyone knew anyone else who should be added to the memorial list. I hadn't heard about any of the deaths, and I spent a couple of days googling obituaries and just feeling aimlessly sad about people I'd known as early as elementary school, but who admittedly I'd always known I would lose touch with as soon as we left school.

The central tension in Harriet's reflections on her Oxford experience and its aftermath is on whether women can have both personal and professional success, or if they have to sacrifice one for the other. There is a sense that this question is particularly fraught for women because they are judged suspiciously even if they do manage professional success. But I resonate with the question anyway. Does a successful life require success in both, or success in the right one, or what? If I had made different choices about balancing the two spheres, would I be happier and more successful now?

It'll be interesting to see how I feel coming out of the reunion.

I had my court date a few weeks ago, I don't think I ever posted about it. My lawyer did an excellent job and I was able to plead to failure to present insurance, which carried a small fine and no other penalty. I am very relieved. The judge made a point to make sure I understood how easy I was getting off, and believe me I'm aware. Between lawyer costs, car repairs, court costs and uber fees, this has been an expensive mistake, but thankfully it's only money I lost. A license suspension would have made my life a lot more challenging.


We're now in the midst of Pesach. My plan to slowly convert my kitchen to Pesach mode over a couple of weeks mostly worked, but with sliiightly more procrastination than hoped for. I had to get a bit creative with the last few chametz meals but mostly it wasn't too onerous. I actually made challah in my slow cooker again for Shabbos Hagadol, since my oven had been converted over in preparation for the matzah baking. I went to my parents for Sedarim, which was overall a good time. My aunt and uncle and cousin and a family friend joined us for first Seder, then it was just the four of us for second Seder. In both cases it was great food and a lot of good arguing about text. My matzah was, well, the one non-whole wheat matzo where I sifted the flour was quite good, and then the whole wheat matzos were, um, texturally problematic. Edible but not great. Lesson learned for next time, I guess, if there is a next time. The rest of the chag was three days of shul and eating and napping and reading. I read a whole book on Biblical criticism and read a good chunk of RF Kuang's Babel, which so far is great. It was a good time, but I'm also glad I don't live with my parents full time and was very glad to sleep at home last night.



The next few weeks are going to be crazy with work, but I do have some social stuff to look forward to. I marked my Gregorian and Hebrew birthdays at the Seder with my family, but am hoping to coordinate some sort of belated in-person friends celebration after Pesach is over. Also, the Heliosphere con is in a few weeks, and since it's literally a mile from my office I can't resist going. And ghost_lingering and I signed up to work on a piece of the Vidukon Frankenvid together and I'm excited to vid with her!

I'm heading into what is likely to be a thoroughly exhausting week: Tomorrow I flow out to LA for a couple days of meetings with a customer who just placed a big order. We fly back Wednesday. I'll have most of a day at work and then Thursday night I take the train up to Boston for the Mystery Hunt.

I'm so excited to be going back to Hunt in person. Palindrome's on-campus operation is going to be a lot smaller than usual and it will have a bunch of new logistical wrinkles both from COVID (MIT is not requiring masking, but our team has adopted a masking and testing policy) and MIT new policies (We have to move out of HQ and leave campus at 1AM each night), but it will still be Hunt. After a couple of years of virtual Hunts, I'll take that.

Palindrome's avowed policy is to do whatever it takes not to win this year. Our captain has threatened that if we're looking like we're close to winning, he will cut off our internet so we cannot submit answers. :P Given that, it's possible I will get a lot more sleep than I usually do at Hunt. Nonetheless, the goal is still to work hard at puzzles, see as much of Hunt as possible, and have as much fun as possible together. It should be a blast. I've seen over the years that even at its most frustratingly opaque, Hunt is fun the way Palindrome does it.

Friday morning I was in a car accident on my way to work. The car ahead of me was turning into a driveway, but I didn't realize how sharp his turn was- he apparently stopped partway through his turn in order to maneuver. I wasn't paying close enough attention and I slammed straight into the back of his car. Neither of us were hurt, thankfully, and his car took only minor damage, but my car took considerable front end damage.

My bigger problem is that when the police showed up, it turned out that my insurance coverage had lapsed. It was set on autopay and I wasn't paying attention- it looks like when my credit card expired, they failed to contact me successfully to get it updated and ended up cancelling my policy. Because of bad timing I don't think I ever received the cancellation notice, but obviously I should have realized.

I'm still waiting to hear back from lawyers, but my rough estimate of the damage: I'm on the hook to pay to repair the car I hit (and hopefully no medical bills), I'm on the hook for whatever fines will be levied by the city for failure to carry insurance, and I'm likely to have my license suspended for a year. I'm okay for the likely amounts of money, but the license is a bigger problem... there's no reasonable mass transit to work and ubering daily would be a painful (but I think manageable) cost to carry. I'm about six miles from the office, I can bike to work, but it was 22 F this morning and we're looking at a lot more days like that for the next several months. Hopefully I can find a lawyer who can help me minimize the suspension. In the meantime, I'm uncertain about repairing my car or getting a new one- if I won't be able to drive it, I'm better off waiting.

I spent a chunk of the weekend uselessly catastrophizing about this but I think I'm mostly past that. In the end, I was very stupid and very careless and there will be consequences for that, but I'm lucky they weren't any worse. The limits of the damage as I see them are bad but not unsustainable. I'm very fortunate that my financial position means I should be able to survive this.

In the last two and a half years, I've left the state about a half dozen times- two trips into NYC for the opera, two trips into NYC for puzzled pint, a wedding in the Hudson valley in New York, and Discon in DC. That's literally it. Oh, wait, no, I also had a day trip to Boston for Hunt logistics last fall. In the next two months I'll have three out of state trips. I'm presently planning to go to Fanworks Con and Worldcon, both in Chicago in August. And I'm planning to go up to Boston for the in-person Boswords crossword puzzle tournament in late July.


I'm not sure which I'm most excited about!

I'm finishing up my Fanworks con vid premieres- It will be at least one MCU vid and at least one Star Wars vid, but I might have a third premiere. I'm really pleased with how all three are coming together. And I've submitted my Natasha "Handlebars" to the recap show highlighting vids from the online Fanworks cons- I'm really looking forward to seeing it on a big screen.

I just got notified that I will be on program at the Worldcon, though I'm not sure what the contours of that will be. I offered, roughly speaking, in two major areas: programming about fanworks, and programming about engineering and science. I also offered to run a Sunday morning crosswording hangout. I'm not sure which area they are interested in having me participate. I'm supposed to find out in a few weeks.

And Boswords! I'm going to do terribly but it'll be the first in-person crossword tournament I'll be able to go to so that's just exciting anyway.