Monthly Archives: March 2009

Day 1304: And Then It Hit Me

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Clay left a very perceptive comment on my last post: “Wow, man, watching that episode the same week or so you leave New Orleans.  Heavy.  How are you keeping it together?”  Barely, Clay, barely. 

My childhood journal-keeping and this blog started to sort my rushing thoughts by writing about them and then making lists.  So, it’s no surprise that my mantra for this already-busy 2009 is “Breathe, make a plan, execute.”   Here goes.

I am leaving my friends, life and job in New Orleans for my family, new job and new friends (?) in Ohio.  This wasn’t real, it was all happening to someone else whom I answered for … until the anxiety dream set in last night after a long, strenuous evening of packing boxes.  You know, the one in which you wake up, show up to your new workplace on the first day, everyone stares at you because you aren’t wearing a stitch of clothing but for the navel fuzz and you’re two hours late?  Yeah, that one.  Great, I can’t shake off this type of dream for days.

The anxiety is a very low-frequency, high-amplitude wave.  It comes rarely, but when it’s here, watch out!  Only understandable given how much is going on all at once, right? Leaving here means saying goodbye to friends, wrapping up work projects and handing them over to the right people at the right time, wrapping up Krewe du Vieux work and handing that over to the right people at the right time, going to forward mail and realizing we don’t yet have a mailing address up there, PACKING like mad people and setting stuff aside for Bridge House (parting with things lovingly stored is such sweet sorrow, even if you didn’t look at one of them sideways once in the last five years) and the paperwork and apprehension a new job, in R&D management, entails.

No, no, don’t cry me a river.  I have been swimming in nothing but responsibility galore over the last few years, this is only the next adult step.  Yet, step back a little and consider how much material, paperwork and duress modern living entails.  Take one more step back and see what a strange bookend this move is to six lovely, frightening, strange years in the city of New Orleans, as mythical and fraught with peril as Atlantis to the rest of this country.  We’re moving back to America, folks, and my dueling senses of culture and civilization quiver in equal parts terror and joy.

There is a profound physical toll, too, and the person I feel for the most in that regard is D.  While I start work anew on Monday, he flies back to New Orleans, drives a truck full of work stuff to Florida, unpacks, hunts for an apartment, returns to New Orleans in a week, packs some more and then drives his car to Florida.  Following that, whenever we manage to close on a house up in Ohio (and don’t get me started on banks’ mortgage lending practises in this economy, the wankers!), he comes back to New Orleans, coordinates the loading of all of our stuff into a moving truck, flies up to Ohio to oversee the unloading of the same truck (hoping that everything has made it up there in one piece) and then flies back to Florida for work.  Meanwhile, I shuttle my stuff and an overnight bag between the homes of my parents and various relatives, hoping that one day I will have a place to call my own which isn’t located in Mom & Dad’s basement.  Fifteen years after leaving the homestead for FREEDOM!, the prodigal daughter returns.  With fifteen years worth of crap in a truck to show for it. 

Alternating between the front and back burner of this hot moving stove is work, my career, what I provide to earn a paycheck.  Leaving a relatively safe job in the oil industry - one that I trained for and have made great strides in, at a company that rewards its employees handsomely for performance and where I have made a ton of friends, on a team with colleagues a corporate cog can only dream of – is hard.  Starting over at the base of another learning curve, despite that I went to school for this as well, is daunting.  At work or at play, I’ve never needed a book to tell me how to win friends and influence people, but I will be the new kid on the block once again.  Makes you wonder where your roots are.

With all of this, I have to remember to have no expectations.  To go in with an open mind and give everyone and everything a chance, just as I ask them to do for me.  Already, folks up there are asking after my costumes and D’s New Orleans cooking, so we’re going to have to host a “gumbo party” (still can’t keep myself from laughing out loud every time I say that phrase) real soon.  And, through it all, my friends who gently propel me forward with “I hope those Yankees appreciate what they’re gaining,” “No one I know who left the oil industry regrets it,” “Enjoy your move back north … happy quality of life,” “Deep breath” and “Want me to come give you a real hug?”  The world tells me that this, too, will pass.  Maybe.

I feel a little better now.  Thanks for letting me talk about it.

Day 1301: Battlestar Galactica Is Gone

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Battlestar Galactica has achieved its momentarily snake-oil-ish, then bittersweet and then somewhat uplifting ending.  There are only two soaked kleenexes at my side and all of the characters are where they should be.  So, I don’t feel as bereft as when Babylon 5 ended in 1998, but close.

Gaius Baltar finally grew a pair and gave us the answer:  “I see angels … Dreams given to a chosen few … whether we want to call it God or Gods … it doesn’t matter.  It’s here.  It exists.  God is a force of nature, beyond good or evil.  We created good and evil.”  So did that harbinger of death who lead them to their end after all, Kara Thrace:

… the people who were standing beside you when you became who you are, when Ron Moore’s God wants to get a message past the firing line, that’s who He sends.

He sends Starbuck Leoben, the first person who ever knew about her mother. He sends Kara her father, too, angels to angels, gods speaking with gods. He sends Gaius the first person who ever showed him completely unselfish kindness. He sends Caprica the first person who showed her love. He sends the men and women of the fleet, he sends Lee and Bill, the girl who walked between the stars and cheated death a thousand times. He sends them an angel. He sends them Kara Thrace to show them the way home.

Angels whom you can hug, talk to, kiss, punch. Angels who hold guns and shoot. Angels who don’t know who or what they are.  In other words, angels I can deal with.

“All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” Funny that Edward James Olmos takes us all the way from Bladerunner to Battlestar Galactica.  Both movies warn humanity of the same thing: our hubris.  While discussing the trailer of the new Terminator movie (and years ago after watching The Matrix and A.I.), I asked a fellow scientist if Armageddon is inevitable despite our best efforts to avoid it. If it is in our nature to explore, discover and push our boundaries, are we not going to tinker with the nature of being and have that hurt us?  If this is Ron Moore’s God’s way of telling us to back away from the Aibos and Ursulas of the world lest they some day take us over (and eventually humiliate themselves by wearing red plastic sashes to fight alongside us), we must first kill our desire to make and prolong life however we can.  We must do away with our unrelenting need for rebirth, freedom from death and everlasting life, for Resurrection.  There doesn’t have to be some kind of way out of here.

Humans are what we are, however.  It is in our nature to explore, create and attempt to dominate.  To get away from our limitations, our confusions and to get relief.  Therefore, everything we do will ultimately end in ruin.  We start over and do it again.  It’s the way of our inner beast.  (Or, at least, our inner Japanese beast.  For the love of humanity, what’s going on in The Land Of The Rising Android?)  Make us stop.  Just try and make us. As long as we are humans, an Armageddon of our own doing is inevitable and it is alright.  This and love, that wonderful aid and antidote to total destruction, are what we are here on earth to learn.

A few programming notes:
- The Cylon centurions rocked the house! I feel bad for the “toasters” on both sides, treated like mere collateral damage. They’re machines, but are they?
- When Africa’s outline and the early Homo sapiens tribe popped onscreen, I totally called the whole “Out Of Africa”-”Hera as Mitochondrial Eve” thing. East Africa? Hera? Duh? Also, earlier on in the season, D opined that it would turn out that all modern humans are descended from Cylons.
- Roslin’s last flight tore me up inside.  After just watching that scene again, my contact lenses are in my tear-soaked palms.  Oh, break my heart, Galactica.
- So, if God doesn’t like to be known by that name, would he rather be called Jimi Hendrix?  Jimi Hendrix thought he was god.

We’re powerful, creative, resilient, beautiful creatures that were meant to pass into the night, but we refuse to realize this simple truth about ourselves.  All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Day 1301: But Who Wears Top Hats Any More?

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My new favorite blog is Futility Closet because they post clever and useless-but-to-me tidbits like this.

“Place a glass of wine upon a table, put a hat over it, and offer to lay a wager with any of the company that you will empty the glass without lifting the hat. When your proposition is accepted, desire the company not to touch the hat; and then get under the table, and commence making a sucking noise, smacking your lips at intervals, as though you were swallowing the wine with infinite satisfaction to yourself. After a minute or two, come from under the table, and address the person who took your wager with, ‘Now, sir.’ His curiosity being, of course, excited, he will lift up the hat, in order to see whether you have really performed what you promised; and the instant he does so, take up the glass, and after having swallowed its contents, say, ‘You have lost, sir, for you see I have drunk the wine without raising up the hat.’”
– Samuel Williams, The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations, 1847

Day 1299: Boxes, Pack Thyselves!

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We’ve hired movers to ferry our worldly possessions to Ohio, but are keeping costs down by packing much of it ourselves.  The professionals can have at the kitchen and every last pot and glass in there, though.  I don’t do pots and glass, not at all.  (I don’t do pots, she says.)

Eighteen years ago, losing everything in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait felt terribly humiliating and oddly liberating all at once.  Sure, I’d love to have my mama’s saris, baby photos, teddy bear and they-don’t-make-’em-like-that-no-more family heirlooms back, but did we really need all the rest of that stuff?  My mind dithers between “Hey, those were my George Michael posters and Rick Astley tapes!” and “Thanks, some Iraqi dude, for violating the sanctity of our dwelling, taking that crap down for me and burning it in a giant pile along with our dark-brown wall-to-wall carpeting, which I never liked in the first place.” (There, mom, I said it.)   So, let’s just say that my moves and the attendant sorting/trashing/packing of things are not without pathology.  Hoard, hoard, hoard.  Then, without reason or warning, shed, shed, shed, like none of it meant anything to me.  My very own stuff vs. Who cares, it’s just stuff?

I’m sure some of you felt and still feel this way after Katrina and The Flood took all of your things.

Speaking of hurricanes, my house looks like one hit it.  This sets into motion another pathology, the compulsive need for every last speck of dust in my immediate surroundings to exhibit order, symmetry and neatness.  There’s nothing better than attempting to control nature and thus conquer the reality that you don’t control much of anything.   So, what do I do all day these days?  Sit at work and fret over all that is yet unpacked and OHMYGOD WE HAVE TO LEAVE TOWN IN A WEEK AND STUFF’S JUST SITTING THERE AND WE’RE GOING TO THROW EVERYTHING IN LARGE BOXES AT THE LAST MINUTE AND THE PILLOWS WILL BE SMOOSHED UNDER THE WEIGHTS AND DOES NO ONE CARE ABOUT THE CAMPING GEAR AND THE GUEST TOWELS AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!1!!  D is no help – he does as much as he can every evening and says, “Yes, we are, in fact, all going to die some day.”

And what do I do all evening these days?  Attend farewell dinners because, even if my inner Monk wants to run home and pack until I fall asleep on top of the Glade smelly things, my heart knows that spending time with my friends for life is more important than stuff getting to Ohio.  Things like that do take care of themselves.  It’s a miracle.  (Well, not really, but let’s pretend.)

Packing and moving.  A mundane topic, I know, but one people get paid a lot of money to write self-help articles on.

Cape Canaveral National Seashore
Serenity now!

links for 2009-03-18

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Day 1296: My Plans For This Blog

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1. VatulBlog existed long before New Orleans and Katrina.  It will continue to be my online voice no matter where I physically live.  I’ve been a journal keeper from a very young age and don’t plan to stop soon.

2. Once I leave New Orleans, I will still read all of your blogs and continue to pass on your important messages and opinions to readers.  However, I will no longer keep track of how many days it has been since Katrina’s landfall.  As Michael Homan notes, it’s only healthy that I let that go.  Come to think of it, I don’t even know why I started doing it other than to keep time while I was away in Houston and perchance to say, “It’s Day 1500 and the recovery is complete. The floodwalls offer us Category 5 protection, all homes and schools are rebuilt, the economy is off the charts and crime is the lowest it has been since 2005.”  A girl can dream.

3. More 3D modeling, visualization and simulation talk.  While employed by an oil company, I haven’t been able to grow the technical aspect of this blog for proprietary reasons.  Sure, there will be projects and technical developments at my new job that I cannot divulge, but data visualization technology takes from and gives a lot back to the OpenSource and OpenData community.  I’d like to learn and teach more in that regard.

4. Genealogy.  Now that I will be closer to family on both sides, writing up our family trees and scanning old pictures can finally happen.  Be on the watch for old black and whites of Tamilian and German-Dutch relatives.

5.  We’re moving to a town that somewhat/somehow thrives while economic devastation consumes surrounding areas, including the Rust Belt to the immediate north and east.  We will also be right in the heart of a farming and Amish stronghold, of which the latter interests me from a community-sustainability standpoint.  How are the Amish and their lifestyle going to weather this storm?  How did they survive the Depression?  But, first, do they want to and how would they interact with a curious female documentarian of Indian origin?

6. Lots more photographs.  One thing I will have more time for is exploring the countryside and figuring out my under-utilized Canon EOS’s bells and whistles.

Never fear (or go right ahead and be scared), VatulBlog and I are not going anywhere.

Day 1295: Leaving New Orleans

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“Saying goodbye doesn’t mean anything. It’s the time we spent together that matters, not how we left it.”
– Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Tweek vs. Craig

D and I have often talked about moving back to the Midwest to be closer to home and our families.  It’s happening.  We are leaving town in exactly two weeks for Small Town, Northern Ohio, pop. 24,000.

This is the small town of my grandma, uncles, aunts and cousins, while my parents and brother live 45 minutes away in Slightly Bigger City.  The family needs me, their daughter, right now – my grandmother grows fainter by the second, my mother is slated for major back surgery and my father should not have to deal with this by himself.  D’s dad, whom we’ve not been able to spend much time with since D’s mom passed away, and his family are only a few hours’ drive away in Wisconsin. And, as most of you know by now, Loki and Lex will be three hours away in Cincinnati.  How is this all possible?  A growing Ohio technology company offered me a really nice research & development position and D has been given the go-ahead to commute between Ohio and Florida, where his job moved recently, for a while.

It’s hard to fathom leaving New Orleans, its wonderful culture, color, cuisine and craziness, and all of you, my amazing friends and blogger buddies here.  Without you guys, the Exile would have been truly unbearable and, on our return, we made something good together.   New Orleans is my love.  I died a little when I told some of you and the wonderful Krewe du Vieux organization that we’re leaving.  During yesterday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, we walked up and down Magazine St., ran into dozens of friends at various rocking parties and ate some of the best food America has to offer.  Where else can we own the streets like this?  Where else can all of this happen?  Later, listening to Izzy Stradlin’s Shuffle It All in our kitchen, D and I wept like little children.

But, at what cost do we own this city?  I’m not going to miss people being killed outside my house, friends dying or being assaulted across the city, gunshots every night, hurricane evacuations, our dysfunctional mess of a city and state government and the crap crappier crappiest recovery (not to mention my own deep-seated pathology, the gigantic fraking pterosaurs we call roaches).  That, and our resultant emotional deflation, we can get away from for a while and spend our energy on family.   New Orleans is my love, but I’ve broken up with people for less.

So, with Loki moving to Cincy and me to Near Cleveland, what is it about the I-71 corridor in Ohio that is so attractive, you ask?  Come on up and find out, if you are out that way.  You will always have a home at mine.  (No, seriously.  If you drive north for the next evac, stay with me.  Don’t be dumb, it’s free room and board.  And cocktails.)

There’s always Jazzfest and Rising Tide 4 – Bigger, Longer and Unshitr-ed, folks.  Meanwhile, D and I will ply our midwestern neighbors with jambalaya and sidecars, play them our finest music and let them know what New Orleans is really all about.