A Guy, Two Girls and a Pup

I thought I remembered writing a blog at some point… Sorry for the lack of updates — things get busy and then get away from us, as usual. We girls have said goodbye to Kevin again for over a week this time, so we are trying to keep ourselves amused. (For Meredith, this mostly means dragging me around the backyard by the hand. :>) We can tell that Daddy is still on Meredith’s mind, though — the very first words out of her mouth this morning were “Daddy go?” Yes, Daddy went to Australia…

New little things here and there: Meredith is starting to read along with us when we sit down with her favorite books at night. Well, she’s still not very patient about the books and flips forward many pages while we’re trying to read. But when we reach a spot she likes, she’ll say the words with us! She’s also becoming a champion puzzle-solver — where just a couple of months ago, she couldn’t even match one shape, she can now get them all pretty much on the first try, and quickly! She also goes gangbusters on her shape sorter. She’s starting to get the idea about singing — she often wants Kevin and me to sing for her (especially “Tingle-bye” — Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). While we’re reading her Mother Goose book (which has lots of nursery rhymes and songs), she’ll talk her little Meredith language but do it in a sing-songy way that’s obviously meant to be a song of some sort. Hopefully she’ll be able to carry a tune better than her daddy. ;>

Otherwise, not much new here. After more than a year of looking, I finally found a replacement for my old office chair, which is now sitting at my desk. It’s black leather and looks very similar to the (fake) Eames chair in our front room. And the best part? NO CASTERS. So now anyone who sits at my desk doesn’t go rolling toward the front window as soon as they sit down…

So the girls are counting the days until Kevin gets home safe and sound — I know that, halfway around the world, he’s doing the same. Maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll log in and post an update if he gets bored…

Hugs for everyone! Meredith is really into hugging right now: Baby, Devi, random people on the street. (Well, maybe not that last one. YET.) Which is just so cute it makes your teeth hurt. :>

Kevin and I are both working hard the last few weeks — I have a big project that is keeping me occupied all day, every day. It’s fun and challenging, but hard work that keeps the ol’ thinker ticking. Kevin is likewise working on learning the ropes and finding out more and more every day about how Cray is put together. His Australia trip has been pushed back to August, which is kind of nice, since he’s in the middle of building our fence for the backyard! It’s coming along really well — I’ll take pictures when it’s farther along.

Meredith is doing better and better and getting to bed and falling asleep by herself, and she’s even getting back into her sleeping-through-the-night routine. Yay! I’m sure part of it has been a veritable explosion in vocabulary — that will disrupt anyone’s sleep schedule, for sure.

Otherwise, things are good here. Kevin and I are looking forward to date night tomorrow, going to dinner and the Experience Music Project. Sunday, we’ll be doing the Furry 5K race (me running, Kevin and M walking). And summer has finally come to Seattle — temps climbing steadily (today was almost 90!) At least it’s a non-humid heat — add some wind and it’s almost pleasant! (Almost.)

I am now, verbally, the newest employee of Cray Inc.

It was a difficult decision, which they did not make any easier by refusing to negotiate on anything from their initial offer. But, I picked the job that I found myself daydreaming about potential issues and solution sets for, despite the inferior compensation package… I think that will be the right choice, as it’s still certainly enough for us to be solvent and prospering on — just not on par with the other offer. I should be starting next week sometime - date not yet determined.

OK, I’m going to go have a minor stress relief breakdown now.

-K

… but I don’t know where.

I have had a crazy week of smashingly good interviews, with four different companies. One I’ve only done the second interview with, so I cannot count them in… and I’m not sure I would want the job there, anyway. But I smoked their rapid-fire, unexpected, technical interview out of the water… one of the questions was, much to my amusement, the same as one I used at K-C to trip up people trying to pass themselves off of experts, but only knew the book work. Also? When asked “Name two security things you would Never do in an Exchange environment,” the proper response to a Director-type interviewer is “Nothing; every environment is different and while some activities are inappropriate for most companies, everything has a place Somewhere. But here’s one from my last company…” Heh. Technical interviewers do not appreciate that answer quite so much.

So. I have an offer from Company A, for a contract to Microsoft, which I totally did not expect. I turned down the initial verbal offer, as we didn’t think we could manage me working second shift indefinitely. So apparently the MS team I interviewed with liked me well enough that they went and CREATED a daytime position to match, just for me, which is extremely rare. The weird part is, I totally did not get that from the interview - they play poker quite well.

Company B has been my front runner for a long time now; a very interesting position that would let me develop both my technical and soft skills, on an international basis. I advised them of the other offer and found that they are waiting on the CEO to make the approval to extend an offer to me. Hopefully, I should that offer by the end of tomorrow.

Company C was a grueling technical interview today: five Engineering and Operations staff on one side of the table, me on the other. I think I did well, but got conflicting impressions from the review board members. I contacted the recruiter this afternoon to advise her of the time lines, as well. They have one more candidate to interview tomorrow, but she’ll touch base with me afterwards, to let me know what they are thinking.

Now, I pushed off the idea of the MS contact with Company A for a long time; second shift really lost points with me. But now it is a day shift, and the work sounds interesting and the opportunity is rare… but so is Company B… and C, for that matter.

Difficult decisions to be made this weekend… but it’s a damn nice problem to have.

-K

So… Interview #3 for Cray is lined up for next Tuesday. Interview with a Hiring Manager for a second-shift contract job with Microsoft is pending. Interview with an international legal firm downtown is pending, likely Friday. Waiting, always waiting…

Christi is due in for the weekend on Friday; we’re excited. Offered to take the neighbors to the airport at the same time, since they’re heading out for the weekend, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. Not sure what all the weekend will entail, or exactly how Friday night dinner will be handled. Waiting, always waiting…

Got a few emails out to friends to see how things are doing with them. Nothing currently in my court that I’m aware of. Thinking about working with my sister to manage the twenty-year class reunion in a few years. Waiting, always waiting…

Need to make some Jello, because we haven’t had any in a long time and M would probably have fun with it. And so I can wait for that, too.

What are you waiting on?

-K

Christi says I’m not blogging enough — fair enough, but it’s kind of hard to grab free time when you’re going to bed ever night at 8pm like I’ve been doing for the past week or so. Meredith has infected the entire house with the plague, so we’ve all been slowly recovering in our own time, and I seem to be bringing up the rear. It’s pretty nasty — lots of coughing and congestion and clogged sinuses. Meredith seems to be just about over it, except for a runny nose. Kevin is in the middle somewhere, and I’m still getting clogged sinuses, but I haven’t been hacking QUITE so often…hopefully a couple more days and I’ll be good to go!

Work is still going well! I took a sick day on Monday (see above :P) so the last couple of days have been a little bit of catchup. We’re doing a release tomorrow of some sort — not sure what it encompasses yet — something to do with adding more Schools to the website (like Engineering, I think? You can tell they don’t tell me anything. :>) The stuff I’m working on isn’t part of that, but I’m sure I’ll be in the thick of the next release.

Kevin had very good feedback from his interview, and he is feeling cautiously (VERY CAUTIOUSLY) optimistic. He had some really kind words from the IT manager he interviewed with (praising his diligent preparation for the interview!) and really prompt replies to questions/followup, which he’s taking as a really good sign. So cross your fingers…not sure when we’ll hear back next, but hopefully soon!

Meredith, like I said, is getting through the ickies of her cold. Tonight we helped her put two and two together and start learning how to blow on command so that we don’t have to use the nose sucker anymore! Is it too much to hope that tomorrow she’ll be able to work her own Kleenex and everything?

We are tentatively on to round two with the Cray interviews. Kevin is still networking his tail off, but arrangements for the next set of interviews (technical interview, IT Director) are in-progress, planning for next week!

In other news, the whole house has little M’s cold right now. The nights are long (short?) and the days are hard.

Also, it snowed today.

-K

Another day, another long night thanks to Miss M. I think Kevin and I were awake more than asleep, up and down with her. At 5am, I finally took her to the guest room so that we both could get a little bit of sleep. Poor girl has the stuffed nose phase of her cold, so she is snorty and miserable.

Today was a good day at work — I was complimented on my Javascript and I got to do some good work and pick up the slack where my manager hadn’t had time to do the work. So I looked majorly indispensable. We had a BBQ cookoff, too — lots of meat to be had! I brought bread. (Hey, I wasn’t going to try to get meat for 30 to work on the bus!!)

Kevin is still waiting to hear from Cray, but networking his tail off in the meantime. Keep those fingers crossed, please!

We found out today that Christi is going to come see us in March! Of course I had to open my big mouth and suggest she come the weekend of my run (March 15.) What was I thinking?! Of course, it will be nice to have her here for that…and Meredith will love to get to spend time with Aunt Christi!

Gosh it’s been a long time since I posted, hasn’t it? Not a lot is going on, but a lot of little things, I guess, mostly dealing with the Divine Miss M.

Firstly, Esmerelda is working out really well! We like her a lot and she seems to adore Meredith and Aurora. I was especially impressed when she showed up Tuesday with a guitar! Fun!

Meredith seems to be cooling it on popping out the teeth — I think she is working on only one right now. (Thank goodness!) In the meantime, she is putting the new ones to good use, chewing all sorts of things, including her first big girl sandwich!

She is also learning and mimicking new words quickly — astoundingly so. Kevin was amazed the other night when she was attempting to shove him out of the way in order to go (fall) down the stairs. He said, “Say ‘move, please’”. And she immediately said “Moo plee”. THE CUTENESS IS PARALYZING. We’ve also been reading her flip book a lot that teaches about parts of the body: her newest one is ‘elbow’. She now knows ear, eye, tongue, hands, elbow, BELLYBUTTON (favorite), leg and foot. AND, amazingly, she is able to not only point it out on herself, but tonight she was pointing out MY foot and eye. Wow! It’s like she’s a person!

And then she goes and does something like pooping in the tub on Monday, the first time she’s EVER done that. Guess she just had to do it once.

Daddy bought her three pairs of shoes today at the consignment store, since her current ones are getting a little short for her. Here’s the current pair. I’m not exactly keen on the pattern, but they’re like new and they fit: what more can you ask?

Kevin has a phone interview coming up with Cray, which makes enormous super-computers like HAL from 2001. Kevin’s job would be, of course, to keep them from going insane and killing people. He couldn’t keep back a grin when telling me about the interview: let’s just say that the nerd-factor of interviewing there is extremely high.

My job is going really well — I’m doing cool work that is challenging to me, which is GREAT. Better than twiddling my thumbs! I’m working on a component that will allow people to login to the University of Phoenix site in order to leave comments on posted articles (kind of like you can do on our blog here.) But there are nifty form switching things and I’m working closely with another guy that’s writing the back-end stuff. It’s all very cool.

I’m also still keeping up with my running program. I’m up to 30 minutes at a time (this is week 8 of 9) and hating every minute of it. No, not really — just the last 29 minutes. I can honestly say, though, that, so far, I haven’t once slacked off and walked when I should be running. I may run so slow I might as well be going backwards, but it’s running, not walking. Go me! I’m trying to incorporate a few hills here and there, because the 5k I’m doing on March [mumble mumble] (15, I think?) has some long, LONG hills. Ack. I think I’ll be walking.

Devi is hanging in there — she comes running with me, although for her it’s a fast trot and she probably wishes I would either go faster or walk so she can sniff all the interesting things going by…

If you’re wondering what we did for Valentine’s Day, the answer is NOTHING. Well, not technically: Kevin made a yummy dinner and CHEESECAKE for dessert. That’s a perfectly fine V-Day for me!

We are going to dinner at our neighbors’ (Raja and Lipika) house on Saturday night! Apparently, Lipika has also been laid off from her job, so we’ll have lots to talk about… Then Sunday are the Oscars, of course: I’ll be watching, even though I haven’t seen any of the movies. Kevin will be otherwise occupied playing D&D into the wee hours of the night. (Maybe.)

There, how’s that for an update?

Time flies when you’re doing stuff! So, let’s see… tomorrow will be the end of my first full week at my new job. I love it! Well, other than the extreme frustration of getting the enormous University of Phoenix project up and running on my machine. Today it finally happened — I can actually do some work now! Sigh. Otherwise, I really like it so far — the people are outstanding and have been extremely welcoming. I can cock my head to the side about 4 inches and look straight at the Space Needle. And I have a bus pass again! Yay for subsidized transportation.

This is also the end of the first full week with Meredith’s new nanny, Esmerelda. We really like her so far — she’s taken the girls (Meredith and her new 9-month-old pal Aurora!) to the park or out for a walk every day so far. And, best of all, Meredith hasn’t been bursting into tears when I leave her at Aurora’s house like she did at Michelle’s. I don’t know if she just has more fun there or if she’s moving past the separation anxiety thing…either way, I’ll take it! No broken heart first thing in the morning is a good thing. :>

What else…Kevin had lunch with an old friend from his hometown who is living out here right now. AND had an excellent interview that might lead to good things in the near-future, so cross your fingers on that. (I’ll let him elaborate on that if he wants.)

Devi is still Devi: adjusting slowly to the fact that there are new people showing up at the house every day…

Cute Meredith thing of the day: she’s learning how to blow. Earlier at dinner, I was blowing on her grilled cheese sandwich to cool it down for her. After dinner, when Devi was eating, she was standing there blowing as though Devi’s dinner needed cooling…