I know this guy.

Okay, so I realize that most of my followers here are the same people who follow me on Twitter (and who can see what I like on Facebook--creepy, btw), but I had to share it again.

This? This is my friend Kevin:

Fostering Tech Talent in Schools

A few years ago--like, after I knew him--Kevin needed an extra challenge on top of his day job, and he started teaching first period (actually, I think it was technically zero period) Computer Science at a high school near his apartment. Then he decided to use his master's in education (may we all make such good use of those graduate degrees that we feel so compelled to collect), and that other CS grads like him should be doing the same thing if we really want to continue matching the hiring needs of tech companies around the world. Then he found a way to make that his job while remaining a full-time employee at Big Company That Pays The Bills(tm) and using the company's resources (people and money) to grow the program. *Then* he was featured in the BCTPTB's recent yearly company meeting...and then in the New York Times.

I'm so insanely proud, you guys. To know someone who's stumbled on their life's calling, and then made it an official job, and then got a ginormous company to throw some money at it (maybe not directly related, but still a nice connection), and then got recognized in a world class publication? Add that to the variety of excellent people that I've met between high school, college, and beyond, and damn. We're good people, guys.

...And one of these days I'll convince my husband to start getting up early so he can join this program. Time to use that CS degree (in addition to your current job, whatevs), sweetie!

Sat down and I wrote this…post

Well, I was going to start rereading the first Harry Potter book tonight, but when I opened to the first page I found myself daydreaming about where I was when I read each book and saw each movie, and how much my life has changed since I first discovered the books in college. After a couple of minutes of thinking I put the book down and started writing for real, and I ended up with the brain dump/essay below. I hesitated to share this here as it includes a lot of navel-gazing and it’s not my best writing, but I figured if I managed to voluntarily write a two-page essay, I might as well let a few people read it.

[TL; DR: I read the first Harry Potter book a really long time ago. The final movie comes out this summer, two days before my wedding. Things have changed a lot in those eleven years.]

The Boy Who Lived

I’m restarting the Harry Potter series tonight. I’ve read many of the books more than once (especially books 1-4, which featured prominently in my college senior thesis), but this will be my first time reading the entire series straight through. I’m doing this in parallel with three of my best friends with whom I’ve traded theories and imagined endings over the past several years, and our goal is to have each reread the full series by the time the final movie opens in July.

So, just how much has my life changed since I first met Harry?

Early spring 2000: I’m nearing the end of my freshman year of college, and I’ve just pulled one of my first nearly all-nighters finishing some sort of paper. It’s a Friday afternoon and I’m trying to stay awake to get back on a normal sleep schedule, but I’m definitely taking the rest of the day off from schoolwork. It’s a cold, windy day, so I borrow my suitemate Sara’s copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and spend the afternoon in a coffee shop with my good friend Colette. She sketches the people around us for her art class while I finally dive into this book that I’ve been hearing so much about. By the time we head to dinner a couple of hours later, I’ve finished most of the book and I’m hooked.

Summer 2000: I land a semi-regular babysitting job for a family friend’s nine-year-old daughter. Celeste and I enjoy our evenings playing games and watching movies (including “Mystery Men,” which is highly underrated), and at bedtime she likes to be read to. Mostly we read fairy tales, but she’s a Harry Potter fan and we discuss Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban, which I borrow from Colette during what turns out to be my last “normal” summer. When Goblet of Fire is released, I read a couple of chapters out loud to Celeste before begging her to let me read from any other book so I don’t spoil the story for myself. (This is when I begin to realize I have a problem.)

Skipping ahead a bit: I acquire my own paperback copies (including South African editions of books 2 and 3) of the series to date by fall 2002, when I hit upon the idea of making a senior thesis out of the Harry Potter series. I’m majoring in religion, so I figure I can draw some religious ideas out of the lessons Harry learns, and for good measure I throw in the Left Behind series as kind of a fundamentalist-Christian parallel to Harry’s world of witchcraft and wizardry. While my ultimate argument feels somewhat weak (Harry Potter espouses morals that are just as “Christian” as Left Behind, so churches should stop banning it!), I’m graded well and my advisor points out that a religious scholar will be giving a talk comparing the very same books at an upcoming conference. It seems my idea isn’t totally unfounded.

Skipping ahead some more: Order of the Phoenix is released the summer after I finish college (and of course I put my name on the waiting list for friends’ copies), Half-Blood Prince comes out the very night of my last day of work before beginning graduate school (future wedding officiant Danielle and I annoy our fellow hotel guests by reading aloud at breakfast from the book procured at a midnight launch party in Pennsylvania during the first of six yearly amusement park road trips with Matt and Kat), and my pre-ordered copy of Deathly Hallows arrives, courtesy of Danielle’s parents, as I am unpacking and procuring furniture for my brand-new apartment in Seattle. I’m so busy setting up my apartment that I implore my visiting mother to scan news sites before I’ll look at them, just in case CNN or the New York Times has accidentally posted a spoiler. It takes me several days to get started, but once I’ve sent my mom back to California and opened the book I spend hours in a new favorite coffee shop finishing the series that I’d begun in a coffee shop seven years earlier.

Along the way, I’ve been going to see the movies shortly after they’re released. Some I watch in the first few days, some I see at midnight on opening day, and one I watch on Christmas night with two childhood friends since there’s nothing else to do. And now the very final movie is coming out just two days before I get married. Let’s look at that again:

Spring 2000: When I first meet Harry, I’m an 18-year-old who’s still vaguely afraid of boys, sitting in a coffee shop on a cold day in Connecticut with one of my oldest friends. I have two living parents and only the slightest idea of what I might major in, much less what I’ll do after college, much less what I’ll do after that.

Summer 2007: The final book is released as I’m embarking on what for me is a huge life step. My now-widowed mother is helping me move into my first solo apartment in a city I barely know, which I’ve moved to because I’ve managed to land a job at a company I knew next to nothing about just a year earlier. I’m scared and lonely, but for several hours over a couple of days I’m in the company of familiar characters, and when I finish the book I discuss the ending with close friends across the country whose emails remind me that I’m not alone.

And now I look ahead to summer 2011: I’ve made new friends (and kept the old), and one of those new friends turned out to be someone I’d like to spend the rest of my life with (and he picked me too, which is awesome). Eleven years ago I spent an afternoon reading with Colette; this summer she’ll be a bridesmaid at my wedding. Nearly six years ago Danielle and I read out loud to each other from the second-to-last book; in a few short months she’ll be making my marriage official. Almost four years ago Kat, Matt, Danielle and I discussed the full series in great detail; in July Matt will be an usher and Kat will be my maid of honor. I am very seriously considering potentially ruining my sleep schedule shortly before the most-photographed day of my life so I can watch the very first showing of the final installment of the Harry Potter series, hopefully surrounded by all of these people. It just seems fitting.

Part of me thinks it’s silly to draw parallels between a book series and standard life events. Lots of college freshmen have no idea where they’ll end up a decade later, and it’s certainly not unusual for someone to move to a new city and find a life partner among a new network of people. What’s unusual, though, is for a series of stories to have such longevity that it spans life stages. In the past eleven years I’ve matured from an awkward, directionless college student to an awkward, somewhat less directionless adult with one fewer parent but a future husband who embodies many of the qualities I miss most about my father. And as Danielle has pointed out, kids who first encountered Harry as pre-teens in the late 1990s will be viewing this final movie as college graduates. I seriously doubt JK Rowling had any idea how significant her modest character would become, but I’ve grown up with Harry. I’ll probably be emotional when the final movie ends, not only because it doesn’t have the happiest of endings, but also because I’ll be reflecting on how much has changed since I opened the first book. As in the series, I’ve lost some of my favorite people, but I’m ready to move forward with the ones I have left.

 

Happy (early) new year!

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, so just popping in quickly to say that 2010 turned out to be a pretty good year (with some great surprises along the way, i.e. unexpected job satisfaction, the occasion for the photo at right), and I’m hoping 2011 will be even better. There’ll be the Big Event in July, of course, but there are other great or at least big things to look forward to: getting to know a friend’s new baby, supporting another friend as she introduces her boyfriend to her parents and gets engaged, and perhaps some career changes next year as well.

I’m a little apprehensive about creating a detailed list of the things I expect to happen in the next year just in case they don’t happen or the year sucks or something, so I’ll leave with a snapshot of the good things happening right now: there’s a mug of ice cream in my belly, a glass of mulled mead is waiting for me to take a typing break, and I’m surrounded by some of my best and oldest friends as we celebrate the new year together. Good times.

Happy 2011!

Dresses, obelisks and cake

I bought my dress!! I took a couple of mirror pictures with a sleeve option semi-attached (I need to decide by the March fitting whether I’m having them add sleeves or making my own shrug), but I will resist temptation to post them here. It’s a great dress, though, and now I just need cute but comfortable (and ideally blue) shoes to go with it. (I should also get these arms in shape. Yikes.)

I went to DC! The Boy and I spent Thanksgiving with his family in northern Virginia (also joined by my mom, so the families have finally officially met), and since my mom had never been to DC before we did some sightseeing. No captions on these photos yet, but here’s an idea of what we saw:

Thanksgiving 2010 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I made a cake! This has nothing to do with anything except that I baked and iced a cake for Thanksgiving dessert and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Boy and I tend to get our birthday cakes from the local Chinese bakery, and they’re beautiful and light and delicious but I’m thinking of trying to recreate them at home for the next occasion. Just what I need seven months before a wedding—a new reason to bake

Things are coming together

Trying to keep this on the short side, as it's been a while since I've posted and this could easily turn into a minute-by-minute recap of the past few weeks. I will not let this post get out of hand. Pinky swear.

Life update: I had a birthday (sigh...I mean, it's great that I keep having them; I just haven't gotten used to the fact that the darn number keeps getting higher). Our Brady Bunch of cats continues to not like each other very much, but blood has yet to be shed. Work continues as always, but I'm working on a sizeable project and solidifying some long-term goals. Christmas knitting has begun a bit later than it really should have, but I think I'm in good shape to have all projects completed by their respective gift-giving opportunities. (Whether they will be wrapped is another question.) I have an awesome new phone that doesn't make me want to throw it at the wall every time I interact with it. It has apps and everything!

Wedding update: We took engagement photos with our awesome (and awesomely-priced) photographer, and they came out really well. I had my third bridal store expedition last weekend and came away with two dress finalists, and after ruminating for a few days I think I've settled on one. It's one of the store's most popular dresses, but it's beautiful and it makes me look skinny and as long as I don't see it in a wedding between now and next July I think I'll be fine. I'm not even concerned about the copycat-ness of wearing the same dress as a friend; I'm more worried that the friend will come down the aisle and I'll turn to The Boy and say "hey, that's my dress!" before I can stop myself, and then the wedding day surprise will be spoiled. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Next up:

Time to figure out the bridesmaid dresses. I'm having what could be described as an existential crisis about dress colors (do they wear the very bright color that I like on paper but find a little overpowering in person, or do they wear a less-vibrant but still coordinating color and possibly make for unexciting photos?), but I'm heading back to the bridal store this weekend to spend some quality time with the color options. I hope to come away with either a single color (everyone picks their favorite style) or a collection of shades, so everyone can start making appointments to try things on a their local stores and lock things down in the next few weeks. There's technically plenty of time--it could probably wait until January--but the sooner I can stop worrying about this task, the better.

This post isn't too long, but it's threatening to get there and I can tell how boring it is, so let's run through the other open questions quickly: finalizing a design for the Save the Dates and getting them out the door before Christmas, staying sane/rested during choir concert season (which kicks off tomorrow), looking for flight deals for our Christmas/New Year's travel expedition (two weeks, three states, very few vacation days), wishing my right shoulder would just unknot itself already.

There. That should cover it. If you've made it this far, I'll reward you with a photo that may or may not show up in a later wedding-related communication:

Edited to add: Blogger.com and IE 9 beta do not play together well. I've tried to fix what I can, but apologies for formatting weirdness.

Happy belated to me

I wasn't planning to do a workiversary (work + anniversary. I made up the word, but the concept is big here) post this year since I've been feeling less than cheery about my livelihood lately, but today's annual performance review changed my mind a bit. It turns out that the people I work with--the ones whose projects I help make happen, whose problems become my problems, whose prose and spelling I constantly correct to make things customer-ready--actually do value me! In an official (involving money) way, even! The money part's not the point (I'll take it, but unless I win the lottery I'm not paying off my student loans anytime soon); it's that my record now shows that folks at this company think I'm doing a good job and expect me to continue doing well. To someone who thrives a bit more than is probably healthy on the appreciation/approval of others, this is a big deal and has been the cause of much smiling this afternoon.

I don't love what I do every day any more than I did before, and I still want to take my career in a different (but perhaps related) area someday...but man, it's nice to know that the time I spend here isn't a waste of time. Phew.

I'm celebrating tonight with a trip to the gym (where I'll listen to my new favorite podcast), followed by Korean barbecue and catching up on new episodes of my favorite web series, then going to sleep early. Me = lucky, lucky girl.

Back in the habit

I was doing so well about posting regularly, but then I went on vacation and lost steam. Whoops!

No pictures yet available of said (awesomely awesome) vacation, or even of the place where we are officially getting married on July 17, 2011(!), but I'll upload them soon and probably do another photo-filled post. (Mid-packing means that camera and USB cable are rarely in the same house, and when they are I'm too tired to use them.)

It's the beginning of what promises to be a busy work (and life) week, so rather than launch into a full-fledged discussion of life stuff, I'll do a quick list of what's on my mind:

• Moving. Sucks. The outcome will be wonderful--streamlined stuff! living with my fiance!--but I've never been a fan of sorting through clutter (which is how I accumulated so much in the first place) and the weather isn't cooperating. I'm glad the Pacific northwest remembered that it's summer, but packing in an un-air-conditioned 5th floor apartment when it's 90+ degrees outside is a bit much.
• Third workiversary!...Yeah, so I hit the three-year mark while on vacation, and I thought briefly about doing a milestone post but then decided it wouldn't be much fun for anyone. I still love this company and I believe in its mission and products, but I'm much less enthusiastic about what I do every day than I was last year (or two years ago, and certainly three years ago) and I'm feeling stalled/stuck in a role I wasn't actually hired to do and losing the passion I need to convince the people who matter that I'm capable of something different. I could do a whole series of posts on this, but I won't.
• Holy crap we're getting married! Last Thursday I chatted with a friend who's planning a wedding for the week after ours next summer, and they've already picked their colors and are arguing about invitation styles. Um...The Boy and I like blue? We'll swing by the local wedding expo in a couple of weeks, but after the rush to find a venue and lock down a (hopefully) sunny date, I was looking forward to chilling on the planning for a few weeks. I hate feeling like I've fallen behind. Sigh.

Anyway, time to get to work. Photos of my recent travels are forthcoming...

This blog just got girly

So...this happened:

We couldn't be happier, and my super-awesome fiance (holy crap, that's the first time I've used the word) is living up to his adjectives by smiling happily through the minor freak-outs I've already had about details, dresses, money, etc. We've set up a shared workspace for wedding-related documents (including a spreadsheet for the guest list--yes, we're nerds), I've built a profile and a bare-bones wedding site on theknot, I bought my first Brides magazine today (along with this month's Cosmopolitan--old habits die hard), and as previously mentioned the (minor) panic attacks have started. I generally don't enjoy uncertainty, decision-making, or massive life changes, so until we put down a deposit on a wedding venue and start throwing darts at the wall to settle details I'm going to be at full freakout mode on all three. (The third will likely wear off just in time for me to get pregnant.)

But as much as the whirlwind of this past weekend scares me, every time I look down (or see my Facebook wall posts, or open my email inbox, or look at my wonderful fiance and our healthy cats, who will hopefully someday get along) I'm reminded that I'm a lucky, lucky girl. This marriage--whenever, wherever, and however it begins--is going to be GREAT.

Workiversary

There's a tradition here that on the anniversary of your first day of work, you bring in as many pounds of M&Ms as the number of years you've worked. I had to approximate (turns out the medium bag is only 14 oz, so I added some truffles), but within minutes of announcing the presence of candy outside my office I'd received a few visits (from the true chocoholics) and several congratulatory emails.

It's a little mind-blowing to look back over the past year and think about how much has changed. I'm probably supposed to say something like "it went by so quickly!" or "wow, it's like I've always been here!" but somehow neither is appropriate. Some parts of the year went by quickly -- the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example, when I was scrambling to schedule meetings and reach milestones before everyone cleared out for the holidays -- but others, like the never-ending winter of nothing but rain for 6 months, ...well, they never seemed to end. Even now, as I take a break from a couple of large and less-than-thrilling projects to write this post from work (I'd normally be home by now, but my modem decided last Saturday that it didn't feel like working anymore and the cable guy can't come out until tomorrow so I'm taking advantage of the internet wherever I can get it), I can already tell that the 7 days between me and vacation will involve both mind-numbingly boring meetings and moments of panic when there aren't enough hours in the day to write decent web copy for 5 new pages. (Or 6. The number keeps growing.)

It might just be the fact that I'm sitting in my office as I write this, but the past year for me has been completely dominated by work. It'd be an understatement to say that my relationship with my job has been rocky -- I've gone from totally overwhelmed to madly in love with the Pacific Northwest (although I'll point out that that post had nothing to do with work) and back again in the space of a few weeks -- and at the moment I'm a couple of last-minute-bombshells-from-the-boss away from hitting another low point. But one thing I've learned in the past few months is that this is actually kind of normal. There are various remedies ranging from asking your boss to assign you to something that doesn't make you want to shoot yourself to looking for another position within the company (which at least a couple of my co-workers have chosen). Right now I'm sticking with the first option, and it's likely I'll start looking at other positions/departments next spring or early summer, which is totally normal at this point in my career.

Life outside of work has picked up, too, despite my fears of spending the rest of my existence friendless and lonely in Seattle. I've made some good friends at work (although I'm starting to see the downside of being close friends with workmates -- arguments make the hallways awkward), and between b-school classmates and friends of friends I've got a nice little network of people to hang out with. The rumors of single, attractive men swarming the streets of Seattle (and the halls of my office building) have largely proven false, but I haven't given up all hope just yet. It's a big city, and it's entirely possible that one of these friends of friends will turn out to be a good matchmaker.

So...yeah. I had all these plans to spend this post ruminating about the lessons I've learned in the year since I moved and all of the ways my life could have turned out differently (what if I'd turned this job down to keep trying for the CPG marketing job I so desparately wanted? What if I'd stuck with non-profit management like I planned going into business school? What if I'd gone to law school instead? What if I'd decided to stay in California for college?), but now I'm tired and will be hungry by the time I get home, and even if there's no internet in my apartment (*sob*) there's still a New Yorker to read and a sock that needs knitting and episodes of Firefly to watch (and you wonder why I'm single). So I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from the team birthday lunch I attended yesterday and be on my way.

And "workiversary" = work + anniversary. I'm trying to make it a thing. Help me out?

I really should've gotten this OR the BLT, not both.