Welcome to the machine

Fall is here, and we've seen snow again. Settling into a routine, which is good for everybody. Getting used to the environment, hard to believe it's been almost a year here. So far, the new job is good, new boss is good -- but it's rather like taking a job in Poland or Hong Kong -- there is so much to learn that's not on the surface and visible, and it's the subtle nuance that matters most...

My favorite thing to do is still to haul the pups to the Dog Park near home. Fargo's still as ball-crazy as ever, and Brock is... getting old. I know Irish Wolfhounds don't live all that long, but it will be horrible when he dies. But death is a reality, I know -- I just don't want to face it.

Sometimes when he gets up in the morning, I can tell how stiff and sore he is -- and he's, what, almost six? That's NOT that old! But he still turns heads when he's at the bark park, that's for sure!

Something I have in common with The Sopranos

This will probably end up being a trivia question, should I some day become famous enough to warrant trivia questions.

Q. What do Laura and The Sopranos have in common?
A. After Pussy was whacked, Carmela Soprano spied Pussy's widow standing in the supermarket, handing out sausage samples! Whoa. That was me!

I don't care -- when you are short of money and family to help out, you do whatever you need to do to take care of your kids, and that's what my Sausage Time was all about.

Shilling sausages

Money's tight, and freelance work has been tough to come by. So, thanks to a Craigslist post, I actually took on a job scheduling sausage samplers for a California-based sausage company. Mostly in Safeways and Costcos in the greater Denver area, though once I had to drive damn near to Pueblo (which is a LONG freakin way) to cover for someone who couldn't make their Safeway gig.

It's a bizarre job -- but it covers a chunk of the monthly expenses. I roll into Safeway or Costco, strap on my khaki apron, set up my little folding table with red-checkered tablecloth, lay out the crock pots and set in samples of Chicken Apple, Andouille, Jalapeno, or other types of sausages to heat up and start smelling yummy. Then I waylay shoppers-by with sausage samples.

When I worked at Carme, selling Mill Creek shampoos and Allercreme cosmetics, I remember hitting some of the American Academy of Dermatology annual conferences. The docs would all be "in sessions" while their wives (mostly male docs = mostly wives) would hit the trade show exhibits trolling for freebies. The Safeway shoppers are usually polite -- but the Costco foragers make the ridiculously greedy doctors' wives look like saints! Don't these people EAT before they go shopping? And can't they learn to control their damn kids?

Anyway, mostly I help to hire and schedule other folks -- but in truth, working the "store events" is actually kind of fun. Plus, it's certainly helping me to learn my way around the Greater Metropolitan Denver Area -- I know Castle Rock from Westminster or Evergreen now.

The things we do for love...

Still getting used to the differences between here and the West Coast. I'm sure I will at some point. But I imagine it will take a LONG time.

It's strange here, even after a year, foreign to my ocean-grounded sensibilities. The buildings are mostly new and beige (VERY beige) in the suburban enclave where we live. The people more slower. And they are so... very... NICE. I'm not used to that. I miss big trees, and redwood forests.

The Borg vendor gig ended -- I was hoping to squeeze a couple more months out of it, but that' the reality of their "internal processes".

So, I'm getting on with it. Plus, it's summer, it's lovely, and I'm overall pretty happy. And, thank GOD, Marty's doing SO much better, it's just about amazing. Thank god he has incredible healing capabilities. Not sure what's next, but I'm both job-hunting with a frenzy, plus trolling for freelance work as much as I can.

Stranger in a strange land.

555

May 5, 2005 -- should that be a magic day? Actually, it's just been another day. Marty's finally over the worst of the craziness from his back surgery -- but I do not want to dwell on that. Suffice it to say that so far this year, it's been just an awful time. He had horrible complications after the surgery, and it was just... hard to hold things together. Hard. Hard. But, bit by bit, we see the calendar pages continue to flip. With all his health issues, that's honestly the best I can manage.

Got a trip to Seattle coming up very soon. I'm SO looking forward to seeing Puget Sound again! I still love the Pacific Northwest. I'm sure I will always love that area, rain and clouds and all. I may never live there again ("never say never," whispers a voice in her head) but I still love the GREEN and the TREES there.

555. How I hope that 666 is better...

The Borg, the Borg

Halleleujah! I landed a vendor gig at the local Borg software sales office. It's GREAT to be back in the saddle with my former employer, even if it is a pseudo-relationship instead of straight employment. The money's OK, even if it is tech, which I SWORE I wouldn't do again. But, that's OK! I'm able to take care of the girls and pay the bills -- and that's the job of a parent. Right now, that's what matters most. Eye on the ball.

I am still working to get plugged into the local community, though. We started attending church at the local mega-barn christian conglomerate -- whoa. It's a flippin HUGE place, a Complex. But I have to admint, Sundays are interesting now, and have structure.

But my Catholic granny is probably spinning in her grave -- it's "Christian" but not Catholic. Still, I know it's good for the girls, even if B hates going. A seems to like it... maybe join the Choir????

Library Love

I have fallen in love with the Douglas County Library system. After suffering through "substandard" libraries in both Marin and Seattle, even though we've always lived in more upscale areas that DO support their libraries, nothing can hold a candle to DCL, in my book (Hah!).

OK, the main Marin County Library, located just under the blue dome of the Frank Lloyd Wright County Building in San Rafael... welll, it was always fun to just enter that building, but the selections were weak at best, and the hours so skimpy it was ridiculous.

Douglas County Libraries, though... man! SEVEN days a week! NICE librarians! And, all sorts of really cool media available to check out.

This library has been my friend since we moved here, and I love the library. Just needed to say it.

start at the start

It's been a few years since I've had a blog up and running. When we lived in SF, I had a fun blog, with all sorts of random goodies... but I killed that in late 2003. Too much was happening, not much of it good in our lives... and it just felt pointless. We didn't know where life was going to take us, and I was flat-out tired. So I killed that account. It's probably in the internet wilderness somewhere, but hopefully the server's been scrubbed.

So. How do you re-start a bloglife?

I used to be one of the most flippin' bleeding-edge techies -- but in the past few years, I've basically let go of the reins. Figure this:

We had an Osborne Portable Computer in our house in 1983 -- Wordstar, baby!

We were AOL 1.0 users -- with a free overhead account due to my husband's association with a big PC Magazine Kahuna.

I started working in Tech in San Francisco/Silicon Valley in 1992 -- right as things were heating up. We did a big project for Oracle -- a rap song called "The Record-Breaking Oracle" -- when they first broke $1M in quarterly sales. Woo hoo!

My first true Internet gig was at the Seattle start-up, Spry, that created "Internet in a Box" - the first consumer packaging of the Mosaic browser. (I remember the sales rep in the cube next to me, all surfer-twang the say Compuserve bought Spry - "Dooooode! It's Awwwwwesum! We're gonna make gnarly millllllions, bro!")

I'm a Microsoft Corporation Redmond Washington HQ alum -- last gig there was running a marketing team that was part of the big Windows 2000 Launch Juggernaut.

Sick of the rain in Seattle, and left to run marketing at another tech startup, a digital rights management security software co. based in the UK.

Then, back in California, I did a stint as Managing Editor of Reports for Anne Holland at MarketingSherpa, which I still consider to be one of the finest publishers of marketing case studies and practical information, even though Anne Holland is more batshit than Osama Bin Laden.

But that was then.

Now, I'm in Denver, Colorado -- the "West Midwest" -- and it's been a weird ride since getting here.

So, this blog is to be... whatever the heck it will be. Read it, or not -- I'm going to write it, and that's enough for me.