Another baby step

The first real estate agent (of two scheduled thus far) is coming to look at the place tonight. Dearest has been doing the heavy lifting--literally and figuratively--on schlepping the extraneous stuff off to storage-exile. So much clutter still left to go--what happens when two pack-rats with weird hobbies park under the same roof for nearly a decade.

But incremental progress is progress nevertheless. Being the ex-Physics major, I can smirk all nerdy-hipster smugly and remind myself that velocity, not acceleration, is a part of the formula.

Two down, three to go

The boss-man doesn't have a problem w/having another remote office, although I know from past experience, I've edged myself closer to the chopping block for the next downturn. Was planning to do some serious professional networking once we've landed at our next address anyway.

Had brekky with Dad this morning & gave him the heads-up with the proviso that Mom is not to know until a little of the dust in her life has settled. P.'s not due into town until next month...if then. Best Friend will be the hardest...if I don't start losing it during that, it'll be a miracle.

I feel like I'm hectoring Dearest on the home renovation schedule--I hate that feeling. Couldn't shake that feeling all through crashing out the moving "inventory" for landing, and should have known better than to think I could kiss it goodbye until moving time. Gack.

Next up: Carpet/Linoleum shopping. An ideal couple-building exercise, to be sure... [eyeroll]

One from the Dept. of Small Mercies

Immediate family has been cranking me off a lot lately. Mostly in the sense that I feel like I'm kept outside the loop even when I'm supposed to be in it. Which is enough fodder for crankiness. But this being pushed to the outside of the herd makes it that much more tempting to think that Dad might have actually had a right opinion or two all these years. Fortunately, all I have to do is remember that, even if he did, he did f***-all about it.

But in the grand scheme of things--in this case meaning my life--it does considerably ease the guilt of not sticking around. If the fact that there's no such thing as unlimited, unconditional love from me makes me a bad person...so be it. You might be, in some cases, less obvious about looking at me as the family moneybags. Or--in other cases--bother to live by the "values" into which I was indoctrinated. Or--in all cases--acknowledge that the lessons of the past apply to you.

In one sense, it's liberating to write that. But mostly it's just pathetic. Why? Because it took me so effing long to stop fooling myself that nearly anyone can change, given the right mix of incentives. And that's because the first step is self-awareness--something this branch of the family tree seems to be pretty thin on. Myself included.

Done...and done

Belated post by nearly a month...but on a blog that's been shamefully neglected for closing on a year and a half, it's proverbial coals to Newcastle.

Long-excuse-short, The Gods do, sometimes, look out for fools. This one in particular. Again. Go figure. We're officially permanent residents, with paperwork and everything. Although we need to...you know...actually relocate now. (In all honesty, though, I can't stop myself from envisioning the scenario where we apply for the PR card and then learn that the nice CIC/border agent--with the gorgeously Gallic nose--missed something during the "landing" process, and, well, too bad for us: Do not pass "Go"; do not collect $200.)

It's still largely a secret. Oddly, my (non-Dearest) best friends don't know. Dropping the bomb on Mom has been postponed b/c she's already lost one of her "babies." I don't think Dad--to whom I had to go for certain familial details for the application really takes it seriously. But we've been a full time zone apart since 1979, so what's another time zone, really?

The Office Illuminati d--n sho' don't know. Normally, I'd let the chips fall where they may--"Short-timer's Syndrome" is already setting in. But information is power. And not much insight has been coming my way lately, so I indulge a certain semi-spiteful payback in kind. It won't last much longer, though: It's just not sustainable.

In the meantime, I'm trying to cultivate an ethic of trying to accomplish one thing toward the goal of moving per day. That's not going so well, but the dust is already settling re: recent "extracurriculars," both planned and not. With each little inch forward, though, I can feel the sense of adventure rising, and that's a feeling I wouldn't mind developing an addiction to.

Shout-out to Kansas

I understand that the jury took less than an hour to find "pro-life" Scott Raeder guilty of murdering someone in cold blood after years of low-level terrorism. Now, if only that mouth-breathing thug Phil Kline and the mouthpiece of the anti-choice Al Qaeda (a.k.a. Operation Rescue) could be tried and convicted as collaborators, I'd call the justice complete.

I've said it before, but I don't think it can be stressed enough: If these douchebags would give a tenth of the hyperventilating to the children who die of malnourishment, disease, genocide, disaster, abuse, etc., we could have a productive discussion. But to them the abstract of a fetus or a happy middle class white baby on a billboard is all that matters. It might be more productive trying to have a rational discussion with a rabid pit-bull in heat.

Big ups to the prosecutors in this case for the immediate accomplishment and also for demonstrating that the entire state hasn't in fact gone over to the Religious Reich.

Really, PHP, really?!?!?!?!

If I want to use an HTML <SELECT> drop-down list that allows the user to select multiple items, PHP requires that its name end with a pair of square brackets, []. Otherwise, PHP only recognizes the last selected item. Wow, even Microsoft's much-maligned "classic" ASP can do better than that.

I guess I'm just stunned by the arrogance of a language that required programmers to change standard HTML naming conventions to process REQUEST data. That the naming conventions will mostly likely break any JavaScript references to the <SELECT> list is even more stupefying.

Documents in Montreal

FedEx came through, and the package representing much collective effort (on my part and Dearest's) was delivered--so far as I know--without incident. I'm annoyed with the paralegal for not replying to Tuesday night's email asking him to skim the list of enclosed documents had any red flags. Will nag tonight. On to finding something else to fret about, be it a screw-up on my/our part or a particularly crabby CIC agent reviewing our app. & documentation or whatever...