Life

Life

I was going to write a Q1 update, but life got away from me, and here we are in mid-May. 0_0

January

I don’t remember too much about January. January was full of rain, and yoga. I went to the annual David Bowie birthday party / drag show at The Chapel, and as usual I left feeling inspired and hopeful about the new year.

Another semi-tradition… I was doing Yoga With Adriene’s annual 30 days of yoga, and was vegetarian for the month, which led to me eating such gems as this BBQ jackfruit from SouthPaw. It’s not “similar to pulled pork” at all, but was still delish.

Umm what else…? The freezer fan broke, creating a loud and terrible buzzing sound that slowly drove me insane. I think my roommates handled it better because their bedroom was not sharing a wall with the offending kitchen appliance. After having our handyman inspect it, find nothing, and declare that the noise must have been from a handful of frozen peas that got caught in the fan area, I got frustrated and fixed it myself. I’m pleased with myself now, but that was a stressful week.

February

Ryan started getting really skilled with the sous vide. His ribs and steak have come out perfect every time. The vegetables on the other hand… have been a waste of electricity.

A killer tiki bar opened near my house.

My company has a Mexico City office. For a while I’d been joking with coworkers about taking a group trip there, and in February I organized it and made it happen! Mexico City was wonderful as always, and it was great meeting my Mexican coworkers in person. Surprisingly, they were very similar to their video/chat personas. It gives me hope for the future of remote work.

March

After Ryan’s near drowning at the Yuba last year, I was pushing really hard for formal swim lessons. We finally signed up for a pack of 8 classes at our local Y, and it came at the right time, to be honest. Work became really shitty and stressful… then my friend died, and that was a bit of a breaking point. I started swimming hard, 2-4 times per week, and it really helped clear my head. My hair on the other hand, has become a disgusting brittle mess. I figure it’s worth it.

We celebrated our 9th anniversary, crazy.

April

Ryan was in New York for work around his birthday, and decided to stay in Philadelphia afterwards to spend time with friends and family. I flew out to join him, since it was a good chance to poke around and get a feel for the neighborhoods and the housing stock, just an exploratory mission to see if owning a house in Philadelphia was doable.

A realtor showed us around, and combined with a few open houses, we ended up seeing like 25 houses in 4 days. It became very clear over the course of the visit where we ought to live. Unfortunately, the more houses that we saw, the more evident it became that we’d definitely have to make some compromises.

One strong contender had a back “yard” that looked into a Dunkin Donuts/Liquor shop parking lot. Now is that a plus or a minus? Torn.

One house had everything Ryan wanted (finished basement, a yard, newer construction in a hip walkable neighborhood), and almost everything I wanted (safe neighborhood, lots of space and light, not that terrible skinny Philadelphia home layout, pet friendly).

Ryan made up his mind to make an offer and then it all happened so fast. He put in the offer the night before we left for home, and after a few back and forths, our offer was accepted, right as we boarded the flight back to SF! Under asking price! Totally unlike the Bay, it was wild.

Closing is in two weeks, when we’ll head out to pick up the keys to the house. Our actual move date is still up in the air, but would probably be July. Surreal!

May

And here we are in May! I snuck in a quick trip up to Washington to see Jill and Brett.

In the next 6 weeks, there’s more travel planned. Going to see my mom, then head out to Philly to get the house keys, then Providence for a wedding, then Philly again finally. Poor Ryan has a few extra trips on top of that.

So I guess things are going to still be stressful, but at least it’s all for a good reason. Anyways, that’s it for now!

Life

So, I never thought I’d write this, but my friend Tristan died. About a week ago – on a Friday morning – Ryan walked in to the living room bearing the bad news, after seeing a few articles in the SF Chronicle and TechCrunch. He was in the tech community, so I suppose his death was tech news.

Tristan was my oldest friend, I’ve known him since I was maybe five. His parents owned a futon shop in the same quiet strip mall where my parent’s Chinese restaurant was located. We spent many long summer afternoons running around causing all sorts of trouble. Catching frogs, playing with his mice and monitor lizard, running toy cars up and down the sidewalk, camping out in the Drug Emporium and laughing at the ‘adult’ aisle. So many kid memories.

I don’t remember when, but eventually his family moved away to New York, and I remember being sad. Years passed, and every now and then I would wonder about him. This was before Facebook, so I kept wondering.

One day when I was living in San Francisco (about a decade ago), I got a Facebook message. It was from Tristan! He had looked me up. And what a coincidence, we both lived in the bay area! And he had co-founded Square… what? I was shocked by the randomness of it, but proud of his success. And so our friendship continued, but this time as adults.

Our adult friendship was a little bit different. Because as adults, there’s just so many other responsibilities vying for your attention. Work, home, family, and in his case majorly… relationships.

Many times I would try to hang out with him, and it would have to be worked around his significant other’s schedule. I remember one time we had finally nailed down plans, and he ended up cancelling on me that night because his girlfriend’s plans fell through. What the hell, man? You live together, you’ll see her at home!

We had good times together, but over the years his romantic drama became more intense. There were breakups and engagements (3). Then breakups again. I always knew to reach out when he was in a breakup. That was when he for sure would be ‘available.’ Kind of reminds me of the lyrics to the Smiths song “Hold on to your friends.”

But now you only call me
When you’re feeling depressed
When you feel happy I’m
So far from your mind
My patience is stretched
My loyalty vexed
Oh, you’re losing all of your friends

Then his life took a different turn when the money came in from Square. He stopped working a nine to five and started doing… what? I’m not really sure. Travel, school, photography, a number of different things. It was a lot harder to relate to him, but I was glad that he had this unique opportunity. I was jealous, what can I say?

The last few years were bad. He got into another romantic relationship. All of his relationships were up and down, but this one made being friends with Tristan harder than ever. I won’t go into details, but there was a specific moment that my heart just broke and I’d had enough.

I decided right then and there that I had to let this friendship go. I wasn’t going to kill it, but I wasn’t going to nurture it anymore. It hurt too much to be disappointed every time.

So from then on, I mostly observed from a distance. I saw him have a daughter. I saw him share his struggles with addiction. I saw him move to Los Angeles. About a year ago I remember unfollowing him on Facebook, and not responding to a text message from him informing me of his new phone number. I just had to take a break from it all.

Now that he’s gone, I feel incredibly guilty. I somehow mucked my way through the workday that Friday, and at the end of it I dragged Ryan to Last Rites, our neighborhood tiki bar, to pour one out for Tristan. I hate that the last memories that I have of him are of him going through hard times. I hate that I couldn’t help him more, and I hate that his life became a weird oddity, almost a running joke between me and my friends. Like hey, what crazy shit has your friend been up to?

I got really drunk at the tiki bar, but I did remember some good things. I remembered how funny, and present and alive my friend always was. He was so creative and geeky. He was a mega Apple fanboy, and I remember visiting his apartment, and seeing every model of i-anything decorating his room. He was very affectionate and sentimental. Sometimes he’d send me a text saying “Hey! I’m passing your favorite Starbucks, thinking of you!”. I don’t even really go to that Starbucks that much, it was just something that I’d said offhand one time when we were walking down Market Street, but he remembered. I still have a weird plastic friendship bracelet he made for me at summer camp, which is stored in a memory box in my room. Reminds me of better times. There was a reason that I tried to stay friends with him, even though it wasn’t easy to maintain.

Thankfully, I do have at least one adult memory of him that is pure and uncomplicatedly happy… One perfect day biking in the rain out to Sausalito. I even blogged about it. It was nearly 8 years ago to the day.

I’m so sad about losing you buddy, but I’ll try to keep this day and this version of you in my mind. You will be missed.

Life

Fall is here. I know because Trader Joe’s won’t let me forget. They’ve really bet the house on pumpkin spice. But also it’s that magical first week in October, which means it’s Fleet Week AND there’s the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. So tons of sailors are roving in packs all over town, and bluegrass fans will soon be swarming Golden Gate Park. There’s a buzzy energy in the air right now. Biking around in this weather feels great.

I don’t think I’ll be able to go to the festival or even a friend’s birthday party because I’m dogsitting, and Hopper is pretty needy and whiney. Can’t even write this blog post! He wants attention. This is a two week gig, which I feel like I regretted immediately after accepting. I always book these sittings in the hopes of treating it like a writer’s retreat. Go hole up in a big apartment in a sleepy part of the city, be focused, and knock through my to-do list as best I can. It never works out that way. Since I got home from work today I’ve watched a Lady Gaga documentary and made a chocolate cake mug(or is it ‘mug chocolate cake’. Wait it’s ‘chocolate mug mix’, what?). Now it’s almost bedtime. Where did the time go?

Having long stretches of time where I can do anything often leads to me doing nothing. The same thing happened when I went to North Carolina with Ryan for a week. I had high hopes of working on some personal projects, but it just didn’t happen. I returned home refreshed and newly interested in paddleboarding, but also feeling guilty for squandering the time.

That was nearly two months ago!! and I still haven’t made progress on my side projects. I’m feeling worse and worse about it, which is no good. It’s completely artificial pressure. I need to figure out a more realistic way to move forward and be productive, at least a little bit every day.

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In general since about April I’ve been in a weird place emotionally, mostly due to work. April started a period of being bounced around from project to project, having to ramp myself up on a new codebase and fit in to a new team (or company!) each time. I was on Project #1 from April to June. Then for a week or two I worked at another agency, pitching in at the last minute on a high stress launch. I came back to the first project after that. Then from the end of June to August, I did staff augmentation at an entirely different company. Then at the end of August I finally came back to Grio for Project #4, but we moved offices, so that was also different.

Changing projects in April was incredibly disorienting, which I suppose was to be expected because I was on my previous project for nearly a year. Then heading in to be a contractor at other offices, it felt like I didn’t even work at my company anymore. I saw my coworkers like once or twice a week when I came back to the office for free lunch.

It takes me a few weeks to feel like I’m up to speed on a project and starting to really contribute, and when I’m changing projects every 6-8 weeks, I don’t get very much time to feel good about the work I do. Mostly I’m just stressed out trying to prove myself, I have a few weeks of rocking it, then it starts all over again. Currently I actually feel pretty optimistic about my new project. There is the usual deadline stress, but I’m working with people I like and learning React Native, so at least I’m growing.

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What else..? I was incredibly saddened when Anthony Bourdain died. My food and travel hero, RIP. I was up extra early, picking up my bicycle at the shop when it came over the radio. It just felt so surreal. I stayed away from all the news, and even now I can’t bear to watch any Parts Unknown episodes on Netflix, even though I know they’re going to take them down soon.

I still think about it from time to time, and it worries me that you can fight your whole life against depression, live what appears from the outside to be a meaningful and fun life, and still not make it. I don’t get as depressed as often as I used to thanks to bupropion, but I’m terrified of going back. What if it stops working? My depression was never that bad, but I don’t want to go through feeling down like that ever again, especially since now I know that I don’t have to.

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Travel to see friends and family has been happening steadily. Spending time with my people has added some reassurance to a generally unstable time work-wise. In July we went to the Yuba River with friends. We stayed in a really nutty Victorian house that had some terrifying bedrooms. Ryan almost drowned. Nobody got sunburned. We broke an oven door and were losing puzzle pieces down the sink.

August was North Carolina with Ryan’s family. My racism antenna was on as soon as I saw my first confederate flag on the highway. Ryan thought that these people were neo-nazis because of their license plate (looks like NO 88), but no, they just went to Duke. Phew.

There was lots of food, and lots of time in the water. Ryan and I bought a puzzle one of our first days there, and we were able to complete it by our last night.

Before we left we went to a BBQ place that according to one Google review had a picture of a grand wizard on the wall. Walked all over the restaurant very casually eyeballing every frame and couldn’t find it. The BBQ was great, so I really hope that review was bogus.

Went to Los Angeles in early September. It was fairly uneventful, I didn’t even take pictures! I guess it’s nice that seeing my family doesn’t have to be a big eventful thing. I’ll be headed back there in November and December as well.

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Puzzles. Ever since the encounter with puzzles in Oak Harbor, puzzles have been a mainstay, both on the road and at home. We’ve been ordering our puzzles off of Amazon, and have leveled up to using this puzzle wrapper thingie that lets you roll away your puzzle when you’re not working on it. You can see it below in the New Yorker puzzle. It’s pretty low tech (a big piece of felt, a cylindrical balloon and some elastic bands to hold it together), but it works! I was thinking of starting a puzzle club to share my puzzles with friends, since how often do you do a puzzle the second time?

Ryan did this insane 2000 piece Times Square puzzle all by himself.


I worked happily on most of this New Yorker puzzle. Back in 2009 the magazine was 4.99 an issue. Now it’s  8.99!

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Well ok now I reaaaaallly need to go to bed. Til next time!

Life, Travel

Back during my analyst days it was all about the reports. Daily reports, weekly reports, monthly reports, and of course, the big bad quarterly reports. Every April, July, October and January was a manic haze of work, stress and anxiety. I’ve left those days long behind me, but I still think about time in that way. It’s April, so Q1 is very much behind us. I don’t think I proclaimed any personal goals at the start of the year, but here’s what I’ve been up to lately.

Becoming my dentist’s MVP

Back in November I went to Mexico City and popped my crown out while flossing. I hadn’t been to the dentist in a year and a half since I didn’t have dental insurance while I was an apprentice, and then my dentist wasn’t covered by my work insurance, so I dragged my feet on finding a new dentist… With a broke tooth there was no way to procrastinate, and thus began four months of seeing the dentist pretty much every other week… I just checked my calendar, and I went to the dentist NINE times since December. Last week was my final dental appointment until my next cleaning, and it feels like such a relief. Now that I’m all done, I’m seriously babying my mouth now.  I’ve even stepped up and bought the trendy coconut floss my dentist recommended. It smells nice and supposedly coconut oil is antibacterial, but I haven’t noticed much of a difference. I mean, it’s floss.

Jill Visit

I visited Jill in Atlanta in January. I had to work, so it was mostly a lot of just hanging out with nothing special in mind, but I still got to see a little bit of the city, and eat a little BBQ. I became obsessed with how incredibly low food costs were, and took to regularly texting photos of our restaurant bills to Ryan.

What else… not to knock Atlanta’s interest in Paul Thomas Anderson films, but there was NO ONE at all in the theater for a late screening of Phantom Thread. It was a treat being able to have an entire theater to ourselves. I found that when I watched the movie again at home in San Francisco, the audience laughed at different parts of the film. It gave me a different understanding of how you might interpret the movie. Some films are best seen with an audience, I suppose. Films like this include: action movies (Black Panther!), Tyler Perry and Quentin Tarantino movies, horror movies.  Films best watched alone: documentaries, dramas, John La Carre movies, romantic comedies.

MoviePass

Speaking of movies, after many weeks and ZenDesk complaints, I finally got my MoviePass. Friends, it is everything they say it is. There are a few catches of course, but with San Francisco prices it’s totally worth it to sign up (9.95/month for a subscription that gives you one movie per day, while SF movie tickets run 10 – 16 dollars per movie).

Mom Visit (aka my mom runs away from her family too)

My mom visited for Chinese New Year in February. I had originally wanted to head down to Los Angeles to see the extended family, but she stressed that it would be a total mess. Instead, she wanted to head up to SF. I think she was probably right. Her visit was nice and laid back. We’ve been seeing each other a bit more often lately, and surprisingly, I think that has helped us to have more fun, since there isn’t as much pressure to cover all the big life questions. Of course this does mean that I debate the cost/benefits of purchasing a house every single time, but that’s unavoidable. 

Audiobooks

In January I got super obsessed with Call Me By Your Name. After watching the movie I had to read the book. I saw that the audiobook was narrated by Armie Hammer, so for about the fifth time, I started up an Audible subscription. Since then I’ve been listening to a ton more audiobooks. Most are from the library and through the excellent Libby app, but Audible’s frequent and generous sales have convinced me to stay a member. Favorites lately include: The Last Black Unicorn,  World War Z, Norse Mythology, Call the Midwife, and Ubik. I’ve actually been updating my books page!

March no spend

February was kind of spendy, so I did a ‘no spend’ month for things that weren’t food or basics. Normally an ‘experiment’ like this would warrant its own blog post or two, but honestly I made it through without much hand-wringing. I replaced my headphones when they broke, that’s about it. Oh, and CocoFloss. LOL. It’s now the middle of April and I still haven’t bought any non-staples. I might go on through the end of the month. Now if I had to give up eating out, that would be a real challenge. 🙂

Mission Techies

A friend of mine from school got a job as the program director for Mission Techies, a training program that helps minorities transition into a tech career. He needed some help planning content, so he asked if I could help out.

The thing that made the most sense from a time and resources standpoint was planning a site visit. I got the go-ahead from folks at work, and then all of a sudden I was planning a tour and a Q&A career panel for the students. If you know me, you might know that being the center of attention, public speaking, and event planning are all my least favorite things to do. I really wanted to help out though, so I pulled it together, and thankfully the event was a success! I’m planning to write about it more on my coding blog, but I’ve been lazy…

Let’s see… what else work-wise… I went to the ForwardJS JavaScript conference for the second time. I gave a talk about it at work, which was stressful, but went well. I’ve been debating this with friends – so public speaking is uncomfortable for me. Because I’m stressed out about it, I put in a ton of effort, rehearse, rewrite, etc. Then when I finally give the talk, it goes fine, maybe even great. I know they say you need to practice a lot to get good at things, but what if being stressed the fuck out is a key ingredient I need in order to perform decently? How terrible is that? Maybe next time I’ll try a little more improvisation.

A Little More Social Time

Last year I felt like I fell out of touch with a lot of friends. I was just busy with work. I made a bit of an effort in January to see friends even when it wasn’t convenient (because really, going to Oakland is never convenient). From there, things have kept rolling steadily, and I’ve had a lot of fun weekends. Concerts, big steak dinners, Russian festivals, dance shows, clubs, bars. It feels good to be out and about again.


Anyways, that’s it for me. Later!

Life, Travel

Spring

Last month I hit up the Codeland conference in New York. Codeland was a completely new conference run by the folks behind the CodeNewbie podcast, and I had decided to attend on a bit of a whim (you know this is starting to be a theme with me and conferences, I should really put some more thought into this). At the time when I booked everything I was feeling a bit bedraggled, and the thought of getting out of town, even for a conference, sounded good to me.

Coffee believes in me!

Battle of the bootcamps – Pros and cons of bootcamps, or… are bootcamps a scam?

It turned out to be a good choice. The conference had some really strong content, and an amazing vibe of acceptance and inclusion (it was woke as fuck, as I said in my coding blog). It’s strange. How do you create an atmosphere like that? One thing that they did do was offer tons of scholarships. I think there were 50+ programmers there for free.  It was a conference focused on new programmers, so that might have checked some  egos at the door. It was also a single track conference, which was new to me. I was stuck in the same room with a couple hundred other people 9-5 for 2 days. We should have gone insane, but we didn’t. The Bollywood dancing helped. Oh! I also ran into a few folks from my bootcamp that I recognized from their Github profiles. Great to meet people in real life.

We’re BFFs – Best Food Friends <3

I got to stay with my friend Michelle and even though we didn’t do too much, I somehow ate SO MUCH FOOD. Food bloggers, sheesh. Feeling like I should be social, I also set up a few happy hours and met up with some other friends, new and old. It was exhausting to fit that in around the conference, but the right thing to do.

Cherry blossoms @ Brooklyn Botanical Gardens === selfie time. Peep the fashion blogger in the middle. She was standing stone still while her photographer (boyfriend??) clicked away. So awkward in real life.

3 people, 3 pizzas, duh.

Taking my friend Natalie’s dog to the park for some beginner puppy training. Informative for everyone, and the pup pooped outside for the first time ever!!!

One thing that surprised me was that while I was there, I had absolutely no urge to live in NYC. Everything just felt like so much effort/so far away, and I was in Times Square for the conference, which probably was the worst possible place to be.

I also had terrible public transit luck, getting stuck on the subway during a massive power outage on my way to day one of the conference. I was stuck for a half hour, missing the first few talks. Others weren’t so lucky, and sat in dark trains for an hour or more. Then on my way out to the airport the AirTrain was busted. The unmarked shuttle bus was packed with unhappy people, and whenever we stopped at a terminal, people waiting to get on couldn’t because tourists did not want to get off or move in away from the bag rack to let others on. One lady who I guess was really late for her flight begged for people to move back to make space, but nobody moved. She became angry, and yelled at us as we puttered away. Sitting next to me was a very dapper gentleman rage posting on Facebook about the incompetence of the MTA(“This is sooo New York”). Once I got to JFK, my flight was delayed an hour. Then 2 hours. Then 3 hours. I later learned that SFO was doing some pre-scheduled maintenance of the runways, going from 5 runways to 1*. WTH. It was chaos, and flights to SFO were getting pushed back and cancelled. I didn’t get in until 2am, and had to pony up forty bucks for a cab home, which normally I would bitch about, but really I was just so relieved to be home and done traveling. What a mess!

* For 9 weekends April to June there is maintenance. It’s still a shitshow, I learned as Ryan’s flight the other day was delayed terribly just like mine. This is just going to continue, so why can’t they just reroute flights to Oakland? It’s better than a 3-6 hr flight delay/cancellation every weekend.

Drowning my transit sorrows in Shake Shack. And then there were like  3 more hours to fill.

2 am, time to find a cab

Speaking of homes, I’ve made more progress in the process of applying for a Below Market Rate apartment.  I finished my apprenticeship in April and got hired on full time as a software developer, just barely making the max income cutoff. With my income looking steadier, I was finally ready for my one on one counseling session to go over my goals and budget for househunting. The housing counselor was initially kind of hostile and challenging toward me. He was giving me shit about my proof of income, then he really wanted me to tell him about Yale, and how pretentious my classmates were, but I wasn’t biting, and hello college was forever ago man. Eventually he softened up, and by the end he was encouraging, saying that I was in a good place to buy (good income, no debt, etc.). He approved me, pushing me on to the next step. I just need to get pre-approved for a loan, and then I can start applying.

I feel a little anxiety about going to the next step, and it’s for a silly reason. I have to pick a person from the suggested list of providers, and then call and schedule an appointment. Then I have to gather all my paperwork and go there, and go over the numbers all over again. I’ve got inertia, and it’s because I don’t want to make a phone call and go to a bank to do more paperwork. Isn’t that stupid? Why can’t I just do this online, I said to myself. But no. PHONE. HOOMAN INTERACTION. I think the internet is making me socially stunted.

I still waver between “meh” and “no” on the whole buying an apartment thing, but  even if I don’t continue, it felt really good to run the numbers with an objective third party and hear that if I wanted to, I could buy an (below market rate…) apartment by myself. These scenarios involve tapping my retirement or borrowing $ for a down payment, but let’s just ignore that and say I’ve made it! Woot!