A Guy, Two Girls and a Pup

The end of another long week, and it’s a holiday! Happy Halloween to all you ghosts and goblins out there. We were told to expect enough kids to use up 3 huge bags of candy — I think we’ve had about 20 kids show up. Doh! More candy for us.

In answer to the inevitable questions, Meredith was NOTHING for Halloween. Seems kind of silly for a kid who can’t even have candy yet. She did receive a black/orange polka-dot Halloween dress (with butterfly wings!) from Michelle’s daughter Cate, so she was briefly a butterfly princess. Until she got rice all over it from dinner! (Pictures soon, I promise!)

Interviewing continues at a brisk pace. I counted — I’ve had 27 meetings and interviews with companies and recruiters in the 2 weeks since I was laid off. Needless to say, I’m sick of talking about myself. I’ve still got lots of good leads — I have a good feeling that things will happen soon. In the meantime, more phone calls and interviews next week…

Suddenly, Meredith figured out how to walk her bee around the house, so now she’s wheeling it around talking to herself like a crazy bag lady. It doesn’t help that she’s slightly too tall for it, so she wheels it around all stooped over, hooting to herself. All she needs is about 500 pop cans in a garbage bag. In other news, she’s doing GREAT standing by herself — very steady. She’s taking a few steps here and there, mostly toward us when we reach out. As the saying goes: “Baby steps!”

Week 1 of unemployment is almost finished. I feel as though I’ve done 87 phone interviews. Things are pouring in — some quickly, some slowly. I don’t have anything that’s popped out as being THE ONE yet. Still looking…

Kevin’s almost over his cold (we hope) — lots of hacking around the Bingham house this week. Let’s hope Meredith and I dodged the bullet!

So when I walked into work Friday morning, I had no idea that I’d soon have the afternoon off, as Zillow laid off 25% of its staff. You can read all about it here. It was shocking news, after so many meetings where they told us that things were good, everything was OK. Apparently they saw which way the wind was blowing and wanted to preemptively make cuts before things got REALLY bad. So I’m feeling a little down that my skills didn’t warrant surviving layoffs — apparently they were looking to the other devs that had far more scripting/programming experience. I knew that I wasn’t quite at that level, but now I have proof-positive, I suppose.

But there’s no use dwelling, other than to use it as a learning experience and go forward. I already have my resume updated in the all the usual places and have applied for 3 new positions. Otherwise, it’s business as usual and keeping my head up. It’s a bummer, though — I hate interviewing, and, when I get a new job, I hate that low man on the totem pole/learning a new job period. It’s funny — I was thinking on Thursday about how much I’d learned already and how I was just starting to feel comfortable and — gasp! — even slightly knowledgeable at my job. Time to start over.

In other news, I had been feeling like I wanted to take up an instrument and play music again, so Friday I started back down that road. Rather than go back to the clarinet or saxophone, my previous experiences, I decided to do something completely different. So I found a super-cheap used mandolin that I’m now in the process of teaching myself! I’ll take some pictures when I have new strings on it (the E-strings got snapped in transit, it seems). I can already play a scale verrrrry slooooowly. Someday — a song!

This has been a huge day. HUGE. Hyooooge.

Firstly and most importantly, we now have a confirmed sighting of walking! Meredith and I were talking with Aunt Christi on the webcam when Meredith stood for awhile and, with much coaxing from Momma, decided to take 3 steps! Woooo! This is the day I’ll look back on when I chase her down for the 12 thousandth time in a day and say “WHY did I ever want her to walk?!”

A couple of other firsts: she sat in the grocery cart seat like a big girl, ie NO car seat! OK, Kevin says she’s already done this. STILL. She thoroughly enjoyed herself, yelling all through the store and holding out her hand to everyone she passed, like a politician working a crowd! She also got big people food for dinner (chicken and potatoes) and no baby food! Hopefully she’ll keep that up!

OK, that’s it. Otherwise, a long day at work and a long evening ahead without Kevin. :}

Kevin’s been dropped off at the airport again for yet another week in Wisconsin, although this time it’s a special case as he heads to Michigan first for a memorial service for his grandmother and grandfather. So it’s the 3 Amigas for a whole week without him. We’ll muddle through somehow as we always do. Meredith is sleeping right now in her carseat placed in the crib — we left right after her bath, so she got a bottle in the carseat on the way to the airport, all snuggled up in her dinosaur pajamas. Hopefully she’ll sleep for a couple of hours like that. 

We have an unconfirmed walking, people! Michelle reports that Meredith took a couple of steps unaided today before she seemed to realize what she was doing and quickly plopped down on her butt. We’ll see what the next few days bring…

Amazing! Tonight the little girl stacked a tower of blocks 6 high all by herself! As Kevin said, it was the first time she had shown deliberation doing something, rather than just flailing around. It’s almost like we’re growing a person here or something.