Make It Happen

DragonCon 2008

I went to DragonCon 2008!  It was my first time, and it was overwhelming in a very positive, "I'm so delighted I can't hardly process all this" way.   Oh, I'd been there on a get-a-quick-view kind of basis, many years ago, but I'd never had a ticket and actually attended and really experienced it.  I had even more fun than I thought possible.... 

Some of the Thrills:

• So much incredible creativity and talent all together in one event, expressed in so many diverse ways
• wall to wall fantastic costumes
• people unafraid to show their enthusiasm and passion for whatever it is they love, or that  they admire
• very crowded, but absolutely minimal pushing, shoving, shrieking etc. - there was just general politeness and courtesy as a rule throughout the 4 con hotels.

Yes, there were mammoth lines; and big crowds, and lots of places with no cell phone signal so meeting up with people was nigh-impossible.  Yes, the parking was completely sold out by late Friday night for many blocks around.   Yes, it was very expensive.  I don't care.   It rocked.

I'm back at home now, exhausted and grinning and very, very happy :) 

I'm working on uploading some photos now.

Great Korean restaurant in Duluth: Honey Pig

My daughter & I went out to Honey Pig, a Korean restaurant in Duluth, GA this past Saturday… it was really fun!

We ordered sliced pork belly, which was cooked on a dome grill at the table along with kimchee, soy sprouts, onions and a couple of mushrooms. It came with lettuce, rice cake and daikon slices as wrappers; relishes included a marinated lettuce situation, pickled onions, miso paste, sesame oil and chili paste. We also got their signature “Honey Pig” dish, which was delish as well.

At the end of the meal, they took all the stuff we didn’t finish and made it into fried rice to take home.

Yummy food; high tech service (push a button if you need the waiter; it buzzes them like on an airplane); very clean; reasonably priced and fab bathroom with a bidet, no less...

Big tip of the hat to the Blissful Glutton blog, where I found out about this place!

Working on it...

It's pretty easy for me to forget to build my day to day life as well as I build my career.

After all, I'm an achievement junkie: I thrive on accomplishments.  Work offers plenty of opportunities for both a personal sense of achievement as well as external recognition.  Events in my daily life tend to have a lot less defined "finish line", and therefore don't offer a "Whew!  Done! Great Job!" feeling very often.

The problem with concentrating the majority of my effort on my job is that jobs are not permanent.  My overall daily life IS.  Until I die, this is it - what I make of it is all I get: it's supposed to be primary.

It's also much harder to work on building up my day to day life.  Doing things costs money; it costs time; and it can be emotionally risky to self-evaluate, determine deficiencies, and create action plans for resolution.  It's much easier to just "go with the flow" - and try not to wonder why I'm not happier and more satisfied.  It's also very easy to get overwhelmed at the sheer number of steps it would take to accomplish any particular goal - and with no one but me pushing for the goal, it's easier to "grease the squeaky wheel" (of work demands) than it is to devote the time and effort to my daily happiness.

"Just let me get past (X deadline), then I'll see about something nice for me." 

Never happens.  X deadline is replaced by Y urgent deadline which is replaced by Z.   

Using the 43things site is proving helpful in recording some of my personal goals - which in turn, helps me remember to focus on them.

I did pretty well this past weekend:

1. Had friends over for a beer & cheese / late night blab fest on Friday
2. Went out boating on Lake Lanier with other friends on Saturday
3. Played board games on Sunday
4. Visited my little sister & met her new puppy on Monday

I managed to combine socialization, culinary adventures, activities I enjoy, and changes of scene, into all four days.  I still had time to actually talk about mid-range plans with my husband, read two books, tidy up the house a bit, do a little cooking, run some laundry, do a little shopping for supplies, catch up on my gardening and cooking shows, and take a nap two days in a row. 

That's pretty satisfying.  Even if most of it was fairly serendipitous - I'm still going to give myself credit for working on my day to day life, and the achievement of balancing "gotta" with "wanna" for four days in a row.

Moving

Movers come today to pack.  The house cleaners are going to the new place to scrub from top to bottom, and vaccuum up the insect & arachnid corpses that the bug bombs I deployed last night hopefully created. 

Closing tomorrow afternoon = no more Mortgage Based Disposable Income Limitations.  While the house was well below our reach when we bought it, my life has changed - and I'm tired of rattling around in more space than I can use.  Let someone else enjoy 5,500 square feet - I need and want less than half that size now.

Move out Friday morning.  Some going to storage, some coming with to the new place.  Although 5 full car-loads of stuff has been given away, I still don't really see a dent in the volume of items.  More purging will need to occur, but it'll have to wait.

I've got some loose ideas on where the furniture that's staying will go, but I envision a lot of evolution on that over the next month or so.  One step at a time is all I can handle.

Finding Time for Fun

Sometimes, I have to argue with myself to find a way to say yes to fun.  It's as though I'm my own strictest of all possible Governesses - one who believes fun and adventure should only be allowed if every single thing is in order, taken care of, neat and sound and correct - and oh, I better have been very productive and very 'good' to even consider frivolity.  I have to remember to say, "Phooey, Governess" or I'd never have the volume of adventure and fun I want.

My girlfriend and her new husband are buying a pontoon boat today, and invited me to come along for the test drive and subsequent (assuming all goes well) inaugural boat outing post-purchase.

"You're getting ready to be gone for a week to South Carolina," says the Cruel Governess, "You need to be getting things done before you go.  You need to pack, and get organized, and everything."  True - but there's little that must be done that is truly urgent or critical - and I can pack in the morning.  "You don't have any sunscreen, and you know how quickly & easily you burn", she continues.  True, but there's this neat invention called STORES where you can scoot in, make a purchase, and be right back out on the road within minutes.  "It's a long drive and traffic up to Lake Lanier is going to be bad, and coming home will be worse with all the construction," Evil Governess says, "It's a waste of time and gas, especially since you will have to drive the same route to get up to SC tomorrow - it isn't efficient to be back tracking like that."  Oh, and what outing wouldn't cost both time and gas?  Who cares if it's back tracking? Am I supposed to stay home all my life?  "You don't really have something appropriate to wear", Governess says, "and who knows where your life jacket is?  It's probably hidden away all full of dust and cobwebs."  Ok, now you're being really ridiculous - I have plenty of things I could wear and I'm sure 10 minutes of digging will reveal the life jacket's hiding spot.

And so goes the internal dialog.  Governess doesn't win, when I stop to think things through.  Her arguments are usually fairly easily defeated.  The fact is - it IS easier and less complicated not to break out of routine activities.  But the more important fact is: doing things - going places - trying new things and stepping outside of my day to day world in even minor ways - is a key part of what makes me happy.   Although Governess' voice is loudest when I'm sad or troubled, that's when I need to defeat her the most.  When it seems like too much trouble, too much effort - that's when I need to consciously identify what's really bothering me - because it's almost never the excuses Governess trumps up.  Today's root cause?  I don't feel like I deserve to have fun right now, because so much of my life is frankly not going smoothly.  I feel like I should try to focus all my efforts on fixing the major issues I face.

Guess what.  I can't fix them right now, or I already would have done so.  I can only continue to chip away at the problems as best I can - and I don't have to further punish myself by withholding fun, or by refraining from adventure and frivolity until they're resolved. 

I'm going boating.  And I'll come home in time to relax a little, get some sleep and then pack and head up to SC, stopping to see my daughter along the way for an added bonus.

Catching Up - kinda

Today marks the third day at home, after being gone for 12 of the prior 14 days.

First leg was up to NY (fun before work) and NJ (just work):  my boss, just prior to resigning, asked me to come up to discuss the state of the department and what more my team could contribute, since we're succeeding in our current agenda.  Of course, once he resigned, it quickly turned into a four day swamp of politics, positioning and posturing at its Dilbert-esque best...  The good part was heading up the Saturday before all the meetings began, so I had some time for fun & adventure.  I visited my milliner, so my two winter hats could be properly sized - and managed to order two spring/summer ones while I was at it!  A variety of shopping and a few lovely restaurants capped off the weekend quite nicely.

Home for a day - just long enough to rotate the business clothes out of the suitcase and replace them with casual day wear, before jaunting off to the second leg of the journey:

San Francisco with my older sister & nephew for six days.   My subscription to Zagat's  served us well, as we were able to explore several really good restaurants in between all the shopping and turista stuff we did.

We had a big time - more on that later - but by the time I came home Friday, I was glad to be coming off the road for a bit of rest.

Of course, since I'd been gone, all the houseplants needed watering - and the patio containers all needed to be dead-headed, rotated and tended (I hired the neighbor's children to keep those watered during the trips).  I had no less than eight loads of clothes to wash, and needed to replenish both personal and household stock items - necessitating trips to the bookstore, Harry's Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Tuesday Morning,  Best Buy, Bruster's, Publix and Koger.  With two weeks worth of mail to sort through, stuff to unpack and put away, and the fact I was more than ready to do a little cooking... well, let's just say I'm not ready for Monday even though it's rapidly approaching.   I did manage to make some dark chocolate chunk pecan brownies; some lamb / feta burgers (using my home grown mint, oregano & thyme; served with a lovely galangal scented jasmine rice); and a pair of Enchilada casseroles - one for now, and one for the freezer.  I also managed to finish two books, watch some TV with hubby, catch up with a girlfriend, and walk the yard surveying the frost damage a few times.

Why do I list all this out?  To console myself, really.   I can take some comfort in all that's gotten done - instead of focusing on everything NOT yet done, such as:

• Writing & posting my resume - because with aforesaid boss's resignation, I really can't afford to ignore the handwriting on the wall at work any longer
• Actually taking action on the stack of mail: pay it, file it, shred it but one way or the other - get rid of it
• Picking a realtor & listing the house, even though 60% of me thinks it's going to be another exercise in futility
• Finding that cleverly organized envelope of year end paperwork and getting over to the accountants to file taxes
• Finding stuff to purge that equates in value to the new acquistions made on these two trips

I won't apologize for being driven.  But I do need to be a little nicer to myself about it, and remember that it's really ok to pursue the stuff I want to do - like travel and dine out and read and cook and shop and visit/socialize - the non-fun stuff doesn't ALL have to get done immediately nor must it all be complete before I allow myself to do things that are strictly for my own gratification.  This isn't a "eat your supper before you get dessert" situation - it's my life. 

And I'd much rather spend Sunday evening thinking of all the fun I've had than thinking of all the not-yet-finished "gotta do" items.

Off to a Wedding

My best girlfriend is getting married tomorrow up in the wilds of Dalton, GA. 

I'm heading up there this morning; to hold her hand, run last minute errands, help with the reception set up and just generally try to be supportive and helpful.  It's what chicks do: after all, this is the same gal who fastened up my unmentionables for my wedding.

Why would I let her fasten up my unmentionables?  Why would I be there to fasten hers if she needs it  (both in the literal as well as the allegorical sense)? 

We've known each other at least a decade.  That's a lot of  shopping, movies, bookstores, dinners, mutual venting, & idea explorations, coffees, lunches, and overall adventurous excursions.  We've worked together professionally as well.  Spending time together across a very diverse series of settings and experiences lets you see people for who they really are.  It builds trust; it builds comraderie and genuine affection - or it lets you learn that your time is better spent elsewhere.   There's no substitute, no shortcut, for shared experiences; it's the only way I know to really learn another person because you see them in action in good times as well as tough times; you see them when they've got their public face on as well as when they're too tired or angry or sad or happy to remember to conceal themselves.

The wedding will be small - about 40 to 50 people - with the reception back at her parents' home.  I'm looking forward to it, as I'm truly happy for her. 

I'll be back late Saturday night.

Weekend Possibilities

As posted previously, I'm actively trying to find ways to fit more fun, adventure, exploration and socialization into my life. 

This weekend is looking promising so far:

• Friday night - Bunco with the neighborhood ladies (ok, it's not exactly dancing until dawn but it IS a social outing)
• Saturday morning - hair appointment; pedicure (critical to feeling Femme)
• Saturday & Sunday daytimes = multiple possibilities:  1) Attend the Atlanta Garden & Patio show 2) go to my favorite used book store  3) play in the workshop - my woodworking buddy may actually show up too!  4) play with my new pole mounted chainsaw (we just love new power tools)! 

• Sunday evening - wine tasting dinner with friends

I'm pleased with all the possibilities ahead :)

Movie Date

Hubbie invited me to the movies for tomorrow; offered to take me to see Casino Royale.  I'm looking forward to it, especially since he liked it and is known for having excellent taste in, and memory for details of, cinematic adventuring.