I’m going through old posts in this blog, adding categorization, and I just came to the one from 10/20/08 when I said I was learning Spanish. Um, yea. I think I made it to lesson 3 or 4. Guess I just wasn’t that motivated… maybe someday I’ll get back to it.

Obviously, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with this blog. I never seem to think about posting to it while I’m actually at the computer. But Wayne and I do spend a fair bit of time in front of the computer, and lately I’ve had my laptop with me most of the time. So I’m going to try to post something every time we sit here, even if it’s just about what I had for lunch. I’ll try to make it more interesting than that, though. :)
So did y’all have a good Christmas? Things went very well around here. It was our first Christmas together; we met on a Meetup hike on Christmas Day last year so we’ve now known each other for a year. Our first date was on New Year’s Eve so our official one-year anniversary is coming up on Thursday.
Zoolights (at the Oregon Zoo) seems to be extraordinarily popular this year. We went on the 23rd and it was packed; we went back tonight hoping the line for the train would be shorter and it was packed again. I’m glad to see them busy, but I want to ride the train, and time is running out!

Yea, so I haven't posted anything personal since July 1st.  What can I say but "Sorry, been busy"?  Both the personal and professional sides of my life have been bursting at the seams lately.  So let's catch up, shall we?

Personal

Most important – yes, Wayne and I are still together and going strong.  We haven't had a fight yet – sure, we get annoyed with each other from time to time, but that's life.  I have no significant complaints, and he doesn't have any either (that he's willing to admit to, anyway :).  It embarrasses him to no end when I say this but I still feel like a knight in shining armor rode up on his white steed and swept me away…

A fair amount of time (and money) has gone into our RV.  Mike had gotten it in the divorce, but he hasn't been working and couldn't afford it anymore, so now it's mine.  Wayne and I have gone on a few trips with the dogs and a good time has been had by all.  We've done a bit of traveling around Oregon, to the beach and the mountains, and we'll be taking it to Nevada to spend Christmas with his dad.

Wayne's 40th birthday was October 21st, and I made sure that was a Big Deal.  Originally all I had planned was a big party with all of our friends, but then fate intervened – the guy I do contract iPhone work for called us all to New York for a week of training and it happened to be Wayne's birthday week.  So we spent the week staying at Alex's place in Manhattan, three blocks from Central Park and one block from a subway station.  We had dinner on the 21st at an awesome restaurant , and then came back just in time for the original party, complete with limo ride.  I'm guessing he'll be remembering this birthday for a good long while! :)

Pet-wise, we still have the two dogs, and are now up to four cats.  Mike had found a new home for Angel;  she likes to pee in inappropriate places, which makes her somewhat unsuitable as a house pet.  We had hoped she would stop doing it if she was the only cat in the home but no, she continued until they finally gave her back, which meant she came straight back to me (don't ask).  She now lives in a decent-sized kitty cage in my office.  I don't like confining her like this, especially since she's getting *really* fat, but I don't know what else to do with her.  In the past the only option vets have had was to give her kitty Valium, which works but makes her groggy all the time.  At this point I'm not exactly sure I know which is worse, sleeping all day due to a medication, or due to being stuck in a cage with nothing to do…

Professional

Speaking of my office (how's that for a segue?), a few months ago I upgraded a bit.  I had been in the back bedroom since we moved here in 2005 and I decided it was time for a change.  So I got a new, much larger desk from Ikea and a super-duper powerful Mac Pro computer with dual monitors.  It's an awesome work space.  In order to fit all this, I moved my office up front, into the living room, which we never used for anything else.  It's a bit odd to walk in the front door and have my office be right there, but I've always been one to arrange things around how I use them more than how they look (though being able to accommodate both is nice when it works out).  

It's a bit odd at night, when I have the lights on and I know that everyone walking by can see me through the front windows, but I've learned to adjust.  The next challenge will be figuring out what to do with the Christmas tree;  it's usually in the front window, but that's not necessarily going to work this year.  Although having the tree there blinking colorfully in front of me could be very festive…. or it could drive me nuts, I'm not sure.

I won't get into too much work detail – I'd lose most of you.  The short summary is that I've lost a bunch of old clients this year, but have picked up new ones.  It remains to be seen if I will be able to completely replace what was lost, but we're doing fine at the moment.  Subject to change… the big difference is that my previous income came mostly from hosting websites, which is free money most of the time, punctuated by the occasional total panic requiring 24/7 effort until things are fixed.  My new work is mostly hourly, or fixed-price contract.  It's going to require me working a lot more hours to make the same amount of money in the new world order.  I can't say I like that, but it's not exactly unreasonable.  I've had kind of a free ride for a long time, and I always knew it would not last forever.

The main thing to know is that I'm now building iPhone applications, which is fun, though hard, work, and is about as cocktail-party buzzword compliant as you can get right now in this industry. :)  Right now I do all my work as a subcontractor for Codefab, run by my friend and colleague Alex Cone, but eventually I plan to pick up some clients of my own, and I also have a few ideas up my own sleeve that I would like to build and sell myself.  It's an exciting time to be a programmer who likes Apple products, that's for sure.

I think that's it for me – how are *you* all doing???

So yesterday was our 6 month anniversary – I've been calling it our half-anniversary, since an anniversary is supposed to be annual. To celebrate we had dinner at Bar Avignon, the place we went to for our first date and have gone back to on several "monthiversaries" since. As always the food and company were excellent.

In addition, yesterday was Wayne's last day as a renter; he now officially lives at my house. One glance at the garage will confirm that, no doubt. :) He has unofficially been living here for about 3 months, but now there is no escape hatch! And now his mail comes here, which somehow makes it seem more real than having him actually here. Weird how that works, eh?

I've been thinking for several days about what to write here to mark the occasion. My last post about him embarrassed him to no end, despite my efforts to tone it down, and I don't want to make him cringe every time I post here. But sometimes there's no other way but to go all mushy…

I haven't had very good luck with relationships in my life, from my parents on down. I've had a boyfriend (or husband) in my life nearly continuously since I was 17, but most of them have not really been right for me. And I am not always the easiest person to be with, either – as I once told a friend (Hi Marina! :), I am both easily annoyed and have a high capacity for annoyance. In other words, it's easy to make me unhappy, but not easy to drive me away. Or, as my last therapist said, I stay in relationships too long, and my picker is slightly broken. :)

Well, it appears that my picker somehow got recalibrated, because this time around things are working out *much* better. We agree most of the time, and when we don't, we actually compromise! It tells you something about my life before this that that is a true novelty to me. We have a lot of fun together and he's doing an excellent job of adapting to my go-go-go lifestyle. And I'm learning to actually sit still on the couch sometimes and *watch* the television. What a concept! :)

He loves the dogs and likes the cats… he mows the lawn and puts away the laundry. We haven't had to divvy up the chores, because both of us pitch in and everything just gets done. He encourages me in the things I want to do, and sometimes motivates me to do the things I would rather not do, but must. He's just as cuddly as I am, and has adjusted well to being expected to hold my hand as we walk. :) In short, my life is the best it has ever been, and I am the happiest I have ever been, with him in it.

I have been accused of still having my rose colored glasses on, so I will say that not everything is 100% perfect all the time… we've had our moments just like everyone else. The difference is that we talk it out and get past it, and no-one ends up feeling disrespected in the end. There are a few things on which we don't quite see eye to eye, but how you deal with those is really the true measure of a relationship. And so far we're doing just fine.

Happy 6 months and one day, Wayne… I love you.

The new boyfriend…

(more…)

Last weekend I went to a course called Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women. I’m not sure I’m either celebrating or satisfied just yet, but it was an interesting course.

The basic idea is that we (women) tend to judge men by comparing them to what the ideal woman would do, but they are not women. So we criticize and poke fun at all the “stupid” things men do, when sometimes they are not stupid at all, just not the things we would do.

There were various strategies shared for getting men to do what you want – not of the manipulative variety, but more the right way to phrase requests so they appeal to a man’s natural tendency to want to do things for us, instead of sabotaging ourselves with our word choices as we so often do.

We aren’t allowed to share our class notes, so I won’t go into more detail, but as time goes by I may share some stories of having tried the techniques and how well they worked. I can already say that I’ve had some success with this in getting a certain person who often doesn’t reply to email, to reply to the ones that really matter. That’s progress already.

I heard this one in the car on the way home from voice class last night. I’ve heard it many times but never paid much attention to the words; for some reason this time it grabbed me, so I went and looked up the lyrics, which are posted after the jump for posterity.

(more…)

Well, so far I’ve talked to a rental broker in New York, and a real estate agent and mortgage broker here. Next step on that front will be figuring out if I should try to refi now or wait and see what happens; it’s a pretty sucky time to sell (no surprise there) so that’s probably not a good option any time soon.

Right now I’m thinking of keeping the house and renting it out. If I stay in New York, home/apartment prices are so high that I’m not likely to ever be able to purchase one, so it’s not like I need to sell this one in order to buy one there. So my next stop on this train is probably to talk to one of those services that will manage your rental for you.

I think the next big task to tackle is changing my last name. I should get that completed before I start signing things in my new life, I suppose. So one of these days soon I will be Janine Anne Rivas once more!

Technically my name is already changed, because it’s in the divorce decree, but it’s not real until I start using it and have everything changed to reflect it. Which means not only the basics like Social Security and the DMV, but all the credit cards, utilities, and everything else. What a pain in the behind! I don’t think I’ll ever change my name again, unless it’s really important to the guy. But if he’s the right guy for me, he probably won’t care.

I’m not busy or overwhelmed enough yet, so I’ve taken up something else – I’m teaching myself Spanish, with the help of the Coffee Break Spanish podcast.

I should already speak Spanish; my dad was a native and he tried many times to teach me, but he was too impatient and I rebelled. Then I took a couple of years of it in high school and did fine, but I never used it after that so I forgot it all immediately.

I’ve been meaning to get back to it for years, and now that I’m thinking of going to live in a place with a huge Hispanic population I thought that maybe now is the time to get serious about it.

The cool thing is that I can do this while I walk the dogs; multi-tasking at its finest! The downside is that since you have to repeat words along with the student in the podcast, I have to find places to walk that are outside of the neighborhood, so I don’t scare people by walking down the street talking to myself in a strange sounding language. They’d probably think I was a terrorist, or these days I guess maybe I’d be a witch…

The dogs are strangely uninterested in the whole thing. I guess that just shows now not-focused on me my dogs are, which is something I had, sadly, already noticed. They just let me babble on, with no noticeable concern about not understanding a word I say.

Next I need to figure out how to type Spanish-specific characters on an American keyboard…

Hasta luego, todos! (see you later, all!)

Lynne, Jessica and I had breakfast on Sunday, and were talking about some situations in our lives. Lynne said that when she was in a place similar to where I am now, she was inspired by a song that was on the radio at the time. She couldn’t remember the song, but she did remember the main line she liked from it. I went and found the song, which was “The Longest Time” by Billy Joel, and I think I’m adopting it because this is perfect:

I don’t care what consequence it brings

I have been a fool for lesser things

I’m not exactly sure yet if I’m heading into the next grand phase of my life, or stepping off of a cliff, but whatever it turns out to be, I certainly have been a fool for lesser things…