That not to say we’re anywhere close to finished. There are still a host of boxes that we can’t divulge ourselves of until we can add some more furniture to our place, like bookshelves, bedroom furniture, a desk. But for now, both Shannon and I have to focus on each drawing some paychecks and taking some time to pay down debt and refill savings accounts — both casualties of the costs of a cross-country move.

For the most of this past week, I’ve been taking things easy, but those days of freedom are winding down. A very, very small part of me is sad about that, but that slice of my psyche is almost immeasurable. The vastness of my being is ready to get back to work in the real world, a phase that starts this coming Monday when I report for duty at Redfin.

But therein lies the rub. The choices out here in this tech savvy city border on horrible. Remember all that competition that the 1996 cable deregulation bill was supposed to stir up? Yeah, we all know how that turned out for consumers. For where I live, if I want cable and internet in one package, my only choice is Comcast.

Fuck. Me.

As you can tell by my artfully placed expletive, I’ve been a Comcast customer before, and I don’t relish rejoining the fold. They have a near monopoly in San Francisco, which means the already high cable rates I was paying in New Jersey are even higher here. (Of course, that might be changing for Jersey soon in more ham-handed deregulation attempts). I could get better TV service, and maybe I could get better internet service, but not from the same place, and at the cost of some of my previous equipment investments (namely my cable modem and my TiVo).

I beg and plead for the day I can just get a big open pipe with as much bandwidth as I need, and I get to select what channels or shows I get over it. The news that Netflix might be getting into broadcasting a brand new, first run TV show says to me the writing is on the wall, and it’s all just a matter of when it happens, and not if.

But for now, I guess I just have to suck up my pride and bite the bullet on this one. I’ll try to keep my bitching to a minimum, as I’m willingly giving my dollars and soul to the soulless. But the very instant I can cut the cord and get everything I need from the net, I’m running for the door and laughing like a madman the whole way.

I have to respect that, though there is a tiny bit of dread in my gut about having to prove my knowledge of the rules of the road for the first time in 16 years. Really, every driver should be mandated to retake the written portion of test every five years or so, just to keep us all honest. And once you get past a certain age you should probably be made to take a road test every few years as well. Of course, I highly doubt that would happen. Too many people see driving as a right and not a privilege, and anything that gets between them and their cars is always prime for scorn and ridicule.

UPDATE: Tests have been passed. Photos and thumbprints taken. Our Cali licenses should be in hand in 4-6 weeks.

Because of time constraints with the start of Shannon’s new job and the fact that NO ONE in San Francisco would talk about an apartment with us until we were here in person, we were limited in what we could do to get our life’s worth of material goods from New Jersey to California. If we had time we probably would have driven them cross-country. Instead we were forced to deal with a moving company and keep our fingers crossed. While everything has taken the maximum time quotes (and then some), we’re finally getting close to feeling like we’re really moved in.

Of course, not everything made the trip. I shed almost all my furniture and Shannon got rid of just as much, including her bedroom set, so we’ve been able to do some shopping for things. But I think Sears and Ikea must be in league with United States Van Lines, because even something as simple as getting a mattress and a bed is going to take forever and an eon to get delivered.

Until then, we’re just gonna have to keep ourselves calm and make due with the air mattress and the few dishes we have. But believe me, we’re both counting the days.

For certain, my life hasn’t been dull since last I wrote. My work has been satisfying in ways it hasn’t been for years. The skills I ply for my trade of choice have never been sharper, and as I write this I’m on a train to Boston to give them a further tune-up. The majority of my writing these days has been focused in the professional and personal realms, mostly sequestered in the walled gardens of email. And I’ve even managed to add spice to my life where relationships are concerned — slow and steady, but satisfying to a degree I’ve never known before.

I can say with no sense of sarcasm that it’s never been a better time to be me.

Of course, to make all this new Andrew version 3.3 work, some deep changes in old habits and expectations have been made. Old hobbies that were dead on the vine (like the podcast I always expected to get back to “someday”) have been pruned away. Spoiled expectations (such as my decade of 10 am start times my work day) have been brought back to the new reality — I’m an adult. Time to fuckin’ act like one.

I’m generally healthy, mostly happy, and the chance to make the most of all these newfound opportunities is there in front of me. I just have to be brave enough to take it.

…I’ve been learning so much more about this craft of mine.  I’ve found it humbling and exciting all at the same time.  Thanks to a lot of great info out there on the net and the wonder that is jQuery, I’m actually starting to learn how to program.  I give it two years until I’ll be as confident in my scripting as I am with my CSS and HTML, but it has been fun as hell so far.  This is kind of how it felt just before I had my “matrix moment” and could actually picture a layout in my head just by reading the HTML.

…I’ve tweaked some things around here.  Mostly back-end optimizations so far as I experiment and put what I’m learning into practice, but you might notice some of the fonts look a little nicer, courtesy of Typekit.  There will be more of that to be sure, but this place has been like a fallow lot as of late, and I have to fix a lot more of the structure before I can really think of giving this design — which to be honest was never truly finished — a long overdue remix.

…I’ve decided that “design-in-progress” I wrote a dissertation on back in the summer of unemployment will not appear as shown.  That bundle of code was born when time was plentiful and goals were lofty.  Since then, that seed has grown and morphed as I’ve used it as the basis of about every project I’ve worked on since.  There’s a lot I love about the artwork and the ideas, but I think I’m taking it to the chop shop and using some of the parts here and some on my portfolio remix.

And if it wasn’t for Twitter, a lot of you would think I was dead.  Am I right or what?  ^_^

But like the unforgiving surf on a stormy day, there was another wave lurking. Unseen. Ready to blindside me. My second swim in the job market started much like the first, but this time I didn’t surface so quickly. There were long series of interviews that ended nowhere, bad matches, and taking what projects one could find freelancing. I gasped and struggled at times, and I’m sure there’s more gray in my hair now for having survived it.

The sanctuary I found has turned out to be a much greener pasture than I first realized. The turmoil certainly isn’t gone, but it feels more healthy than malicious. The kind of chaos a growing company needs to thrive. There’s a challenge ahead, but I really feel we’re up to the task. You can be damn sure I’m doing all I can to push things in the right direction.

Next Time: Cryptic recap of the year in the personal. Or maybe not.

It’s funny how much living you do before your life ever starts. Your world is measured in minutes and seconds, not days and weeks. Much is exciting and new, but still so much more feels stable and unchanging — solid like the earth itself. You have no clue that the thoughts and ideas you hold so dear are going to morph and change as time cozies up to have its wicked ways with you. Times had been rough before, but you were sure that was the worst it was ever going to get. You and yours had earned your peace — the bad days were gone, and the sweet life was yours for the taking once again.

Oh for that morning, it would be my reality. That morning….

Mom and I were driving to work in the minivan, talking about plans for the day. She told me she would be late getting home because she had a doctor’s appointment; a fact that version of me wouldn’t have inquired further about. But for some reason, the way she said it belied the fact that she had concern. The answer was going to be upsetting, and she had no desire to broach the subject. If only — she knew she must. She had found a lump.

That night, some of my friends and I had ventured out to the Seaside boardwalk, with designs on slacking and nothing of consequence. As you might expect, my mind was elsewhere. When my silence finally was pressed to subject, I told my friends. To a person, everyone reassured me. One soul even offered up a personal tale of his mother’s own triumph over this looming specter. The sentiment was comforting, though my inner cynic begged to differ, knowing this time…something was…different. Mom was always so strong, but in that briefest of moments, I had sensed how this was different by the way she told me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that night the clock on my life had officially started.

The beginnings of ends

The fight was back and forth, with more than a few times it looking like mom was getting the upper hand. In the end, her foe was just far too relentless. I did all I could to help, but to this day I still lament those moments for not being able to do more. There is still guilt in those moments I tried to live my old life and not in the reality I was facing. But you have to be scared to learn when you can escape from life and when you have to face the music.

During her final week, she had been resting in what was once my bedroom in our little ranch style on River Avenue. I was in a basement bedroom just below it. My job had me keeping late hours, which meant a quiet house in which I heard my mom’s laboring through the floor, whether I wanted to or not. No matter if I was trying to sleep, or lost in my cyber life as I tried desperately to escape. But there were no delusions anymore. I knew what was happening now, and I knew that soon enough, I was going to have to face it all. Unfair or not, life would never be the same.

Ten years to the day, my mother passed away — surrounded by loved ones in the room of my innocence.

Her hands were still warm when I rushed to my bedroom, to mark the time in what had until that moment been my escape from that reality. I never could have dreamed how it would become the genesis of my new reality.

Riding in the wake of passing ships

Today, Shannon and I gathered to spend the afternoon together. We picked up some flowers, visited mom’s grave, and went to have an early dinner at the Squan Tavern; a place she had been named employee of the year at (while she was holding down two jobs, no less!). Just the fact that ten years on and we were sharing that meal together — still thick as thieves — would make mom smile.

I had to grow up quickly in the months that followed, but it’s amazing how little I tend to think about that these days. There are new circuses of strife and folly to face, and I can’t escape into fond memories of a once ago as often as I’d like to if I want my own personal storybook to continue. Both Shannon and I admitted to not knowing if we’d be as mature and stable as we are had mom not left our lives so soon, though I still think we would have done okay. But there’s a part of me that’s quite certain I would probably have lived quite comfortably in my basement bedroom world for years and years. There was a great deal of comfort in that life.

But my, oh my — how time does fly! The world can’t be made to wait, much as you wish you could just hit the pause button from time to time. There’s always this subtle little nudging, stabbing you in the back. A voice unheard repeats the same mantra, again and again: move forward. It was that constant pressure from the seen and unseen that led to a sense of quiet desperation, which in turn led to a career I dared not dream for, so vibrant and rewarding. You never know what the waves in life’s events will do with you once they take hold.

In the end, I have to turn to the words Shannon and I finally agreed to when we were ready to buy mom her well-deserved headstone. We argued for years about what we wanted; a testament to how mom raised two completely different individuals. In the end, it’s the simple things that tend to ring truest:

Best friend
Beloved mother
Gone too soon

I think she would have liked that.

It’s now a shade over one month since I started working full time at Inform, and quite the busy month at that. We’re probably two weeks away from launching a new site overhaul, and I don’t see the workload fluxuating anytime soon. Then again, after a summer of just staring at my apartment walls all day, that’s actually a good thing.

The new job is set in the Murray Hill section of midtown; a spot that actually makes it easier to walk to the office from the bus terminal than to deal with the Subways. I timed the difference one day, and all that climbing up and down steps and waiting for trains saved me a grand total of 10 minutes. I’m sure I’ll use them more when winter rolls around, but for now I’m enjoying my twice daily hike across midtown.

But by far the biggest change would have to be in the personal side of my life. You see, shortly after starting my new job I also I broke up with my girlfriend Jill after a year and a half. It’s not something I planned to do, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking about this for a while. I’m leaving out the gory details, and will probably keep any future relationship talk from these pages for a very long time. I certainly wouldn’t mind if she still wanted to be friends, but in the end, all I can do is wish her the best of luck in her life and leave the ball in her court.

Since last week I’ve been hanging my shingle at Inform as resident web designer. Yeah, last you heard I was doing part-time work at OMGPOP. Well, it turned out not to be a good fit on either side the relationship. Put it this way: I’ve already put in more hours at the new gig than I did there. Had I not been scrounging up freelance work and carpet-bombing New York with my resume, I might have actually written about it. Still, good guys and good games — best of luck.

More later. I have to get back to finishing one of those aforementioned freelance projects.

Here’s the breakdown: last Wednesday I started working with the fine folks over at OMGPOP, a game company with some stellar multiplayer Flash games and a decent upside ahead of it. Not a bad gig at all, but there is a downside: they can only afford to have me there part-time at the moment.

Yep, two months of searching and that’s the best this ecconomy will offer me. It gets me out of the apartment and off the unemployment doles, but I’d rather be there for 40 hours a week and not 20.

Sadly, life doesn’t always give us what we want, right when we want it. But I’m not complaining here, just explaining. After all, good things come to those who wait, and right now, patience is a virtue I have no choice but to exercise.

Clutch playing at House of Blues in Atlantic City

While I made the drive for the music, I decided to stay and get a sense of things — maybe even try my luck at a game of chance. I wandered through 6 or 7 of the boardwalk casinos, trying to find the least expensive blackjack table I could, but even the $15 tables I saw at Caesars weren’t low enough for me. I’m just now getting some work hours after two months of being on the sidelines (more on that later), so gambling away chunks of my grocery money is hard to justify. Still, just experiencing the sights and sounds of the casinos, the boardwalk, and the surrounding streets was more than enough excitement for me.

It was more of a trek than I usually make for a show, but I had a blast and would certainly do it again. Hell, maybe I’ll even get up the nerve to sit at one of those blackjack tables next time. Of course, the odds of all that happening go up if the right band(s) decide to book some performance dates.

Meanwhile, our hero has:

• Helped install a rooftop TV antenna (without breaking my neck).
• Seen a parade chocked full of Mermaids and muscle cars (in a lovely rain sauce).
• Favored friends and strangers alike with my presence at bar-b-q or two.
• Finally stepped foot on the High Line…and it was good.
• Repeatedly learned that web developers are more in-demand than web designers, and that recruiters can’t tell the two apart. Seriously: READ the resume and not just the damn Dice keywords!

There…I feel a bit better. With this paragraph I hereby proclaim the ends of the first half of 2009. Far more tumultuous than I ever dreamed it would be, but that’s life, right? Anyway, stay tuned for the second half, because I guarantee things will be just as exciting. After all, unemployment can’t last forever, right? ^_^

For once I’m not bemoaning the fact I find it hard to post as prodigiously as I used to, but how with age has come a level of self-censorship my younger self would have laughed at.  Many have always thought it peculiar to write about your inner most thoughts, advertising them to complete strangers.  All the more strange when I think about how much of an introvert I tend to be.

Chances are the idea of it all held a great deal of magic to me, in the fact that I was unique in what I was doing in that point.  An early adopter in this new field, free to do what he wanted — to redefine his poor self image by bearing his soul and becoming enigmatic and mysterious instead of off center and to looked at as a walking oddity of social inadequacy — worthy of psychological study in his own eyes.  But the very act of writing was cathartic.  The more life started to give to me, the more I shared, the more people reacted, and the better I felt about me.

But as the rest of the world work up to the reality of personal publishing that the internet brought, I felt the internal censor that permeated my real conversations begin to creep into my virtual sessions of shouting into the void.  And what’s more, those who came after me found much greater success with it then I could ever have dreamed possible.  No longer was I unique, but I now I wasn’t even as good as what I was doing as I felt I was.

That’s why it’s so much harder to write than it used to be.

There was also more of a willingness to share the large mistakes I made in my life, and peer into the inner darkness of my true self.  Even if you’ve read my words and though I’ve exposed a lot what goes on in my head, trust me — I haven’t even scratched the surface.  Over the last month and a half I found that to be true beyond truth.  Some seriously dark and misguided thoughts ran through my head; sinking me into levels of depression I hadn’t faced in a while.

I know there were ways it showed outwardly, and it spurred on some self-destructive behavior — mostly in my dietary choices and lack of motivation to leave my bed when I didn’t absolutely have to.  Then again, being forced back into the sea of uncertainty about employment will make you think of terrible could be’s and horrible what if’s — given enough time and silence.

All the more reason to now redouble my efforts of seeking catharsis, just like this.

Shortly after six it was out the door and onto the Light Rail to Hoboken Terminal — bike in hand.  The ferry terminal looked closed, so I descended into the PATH station where I found similarly situated citizens.  In fact, there was more people with bikes than without on the platforms, and those numbers only grew as we headed to the World Trade Center station, and exploded exponentially when I reached the intersection of Warren and Church.

Just me and 30,000 friends

This past Sunday was the 31st annual Five Boro Bike Tour, and sick or well, rain or shine, I was there to press my luck — 42 miles on two wheels.  I had never done anything like this before, so just finishing was going to be a big accomplishment.

Just before 8:30, the pack of riders I was in finally started moving — not the first get on the course, I’m sure.  But did I ever try to catch them.  I kept a pretty brisk pace as I raced up 6th Ave. from lower Manhattan to Central Park.  I just can’t properly describe how exhilarating it is to ride unobstructed through those streets!  Even if I had only ridden than leg of the course, I think it would have been worth the effort.  The only real obstacles were the few impatient pedestrians who tried to dart across the course instead of heading to one of the intersections being controlled by the bike wardens or police.

Through, over, past, down, up, and down again

Things slowed down as we entered the bottleneck of Central Park.  Still, it gave me a chance to enjoy the view more.  Strangely enough, while we had control over the majority of the road, the bikes had to give up use of the bike lanes on this day.  The joggers apparently needed somewhere to run without the threat of becoming a speed bump — go figure.

Soon enough there was a steady pace going and the scene of trees was replaced by the stately looking buildings in Harlem.  The first boro crossing of the day was at hand, and I was getting excited.  Up the entrance ramp of the Madison Avenue Bridge we rode, across the Harlem River to the south Bronx, and less than 4 minutes later we were crossing the Third Avenue Bridge and leaving the south Bronx.  It almost feels like cheating to call that a trip into the boogie-down, but if the organizers count it, I guess I can too.

Back in Manhattan, we began the next leg of our trip by heading south on FDR Drive.  I started to see a bit more variety in the types of bikes being used, with recumbent bikes, two person bikes, and even some guy riding a unicycle.  There were also groups of riders with similar helmet adornments:  beer bottles, wine glasses, birds, butterflies, carrots, and some with just handfuls of cable ties arranged into interesting configurations.

Of Queens and bridges, parks and pandemonium

As the Queensboro Bridge appeared on the horizon, the true scale of this event started to dawn on me.  To see a street full of riders was one thing, but to see riders from one end of the bridge deck to the other was somewhat awe inspiring.  Somehow I managed to make the assent up the bridge without having to get off my bike at any point — a feat I would not be able to repeat on many of the other assents on the course.  While all the rain and mist was conspiring to rob us of the truly grand views we could have had, it was still cool to see the 100 year old double cantilever bridge up close and at a leisurely pace.

We descended and turned north as we made our way to Astoria Park and the not-quite halfway point rest stop set up under the RFK, er, Triborough Bridge.  There was free food for the riders in the form of bananas, orange slices, and the like.  I got an additional pick me up with some kisses from my girlfriend Jill and some smiles from my friend Erin, who were both volunteering at the rest area for the afternoon.  I was there just long enough to chow down and then it was back onto the course.

Now the real work begins

As the course snaked its way down along the riverfront towards the Pulaski Bridge and Brooklyn, the rain started to pick up, and the weariness in my muscles started to grow.  Every mile was felt more acutely than the last one, and making it to the end of the course would mean going five miles further on a ride than I ever have before.

Of course, I’ve never been one to do things the easy way.  Part of my pain was due to the fact that I was one of about dozen people who decided wearing jeans on the trip was a good idea.  Jeans and athletics are normal for me.  I’ve worn jeans for roller hockey, touch football, basketball, bike rides; summer or winter, spring or fall.  Of course, I forgot to figure in the fact that wet denim is heavy as all hell and my pants would be acting like a sponge.  My pack was still full, and I was gradually gaining weight with every revolution of the pedals.  Viola!  Instant agony multiplier.

Onward we rode; through Greenpoint and Williamsburg, past the Navy Yard and Brooklyn Bridge Park (both present and future).  The twists and turns in the course were reinvigorated me a bit, as did the near miss I had when someone in front of me had a blowout.  But that all adrenaline drained soon after I turned onto the B.Q.E.

B.Q.E. to Gowanus to Belt Parkway to hell

Leaving downtown Brooklyn behind, we were now biking on expressways all the way to the Verrazano.  You would think that would make it somewhat easier, but this was the point when the rain and wind was actually the hardest all trip  The climb over the Gowanus Canal was more brutal for me than the Queensboro had been, and the whole Gowanus Expressway was elevated above the buildings, giving the elements all the more power to make the riders miserable.

By the time we hit the Belt Parkway, I was damn near delirious.  I kept waiting to see the outline of the Verrazano, but with all the rain and mist, I couldn’t be sure if I even would see it until I was almost on top of it.  I must have walked my bike about a half-dozen times to give my legs somewhat of a rest, and I laughed quite crazily when I finally made out the bottom of the Brooklyn tower of the bridge.

Putting it into perspective

I didn’t even try to peddle my way up to the bridge deck level of the Verrazano — I knew that was a fools errand in the state I was in.  Instead, I took that opportunity to rest and snap some pictures, enjoying a structure I could never see on foot if not for this event.  As I looked down upon the Belt Parkway, I really had a growing sense of accomplishment, knowing I had just survived that crowded, rain soaked mess.

Of course, there was a greater sense of accomplishment when I finally reached that magical equilibrium point on the bridge where it stopped ascending and started descending into Staten Island.  Hooray! — the long, long coast had begun!

There was a festival set up at the foot of the bridge, on the grounds of Fort Worth.  Free massages, music, food…and all I wanted was a quick bite to eat and to head home.  As far as I had come and as much as I had accomplished, I was still far from Weehawken, and the Staten Island Ferry terminal was still three miles away.

In the end, I found that salvation looks very much like a street sign….

NOTE: More pictures from the tour are available on my Flickr page.