The beginning of the Christmas season. The beginning of the shopping season. The beginning of the navel-gazing season, if you're me. (Yes, I know every season is navel-gazing season for me. Stop laughing.)
Too soon for the Year in Review; but how about the Month in Review? A month ago today I lost my kitty, and I'd be lying if I said I was over it. Em asked about her out of the blue the other day, and I stumbled, trying to explain that she wasn't around anymore. "Bella upstairs on Mummy's bed," Em said wisely - that's often where Sabella would be when Em went looking for her. I thought it was a lovely thought, but it made me cry. People who tell me it's silly to mourn an animal so much have never had a pet. I did everything I could for her, but I couldn't make her life longer. I wonder if I'll ever stop missing her?
And work. Ah, work. So much I can't say in a public forum. I'm in a class next week, which should be good (way over my head, as usual, but I'll pick up a little and it'll be a nice break from the real thing); and then I officially start my new job. Which should be...interesting. I will be working with a kid I helped hire back in 2000 when he graduated from college. He's the technical lead on the project, since he knows the technology we'll be building in better than anyone else. He's also, with a single exception, the least experienced engineer on the whole project - and, unless he's changed since I worked with him in 2001 (which is entirely possible), he does not like to answer "I don't know" to any question, even if he doesn't know, and he doesn't like to listen. In the year he was on our project he repeatedly suggested we ought to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. It's a lovely, naive idea that most engineers have believed in passionately early in their careers, before they knew A SINGLE DAMN THING about writing and maintaining software. Unless you've got something that's a catastrophic failure or technically obsolete, the bugs you know are ALWAYS better than the bugs you don't.
What the future holds for this new project I don't know. I will do the best I can. I'm supposed to be writing the user interface (which is already being designed, and I have already heard of one design point that I'm going to feel obligated to argue with, even though I'm the newbie on the project: pop-up windows, which are to 21st century web pages what blinky-text was to 20th century web pages), which is going to allow me to learn some pretty cool things. I've already been practicing the easy part (the display stuff); the programmatic things will be more challenging. But everything I'm learning will future-proof me a little more.
Of course, we're still hoping to work from home. No recent updates in the paper about the light department's broadband wireless project; but last week some hot-pink spray paint appeared at intervals along our street - one right at the edge of our property on the road. If that's where they put the pole, it's hard to imagine we'll have connectivity issues. Last week I asked the project lead of my new group about working from home; she said they didn't care where I worked, as long as they could reach me and things got done.
Steve and I are going to try to pencil in some time to work on my office. There's not a lot to do (from my perspective - he's got a list of shelves he wants to build for me, but I have enough furniture to get started). We've got to wash the walls and then paint them (the color scheme I've chosen will horrify anyone but me, I am certain; I will post pictures when it's done), and then I can move the furniture back in and start making it comfortable.
I'm thinking of foregoing the loveseat I was going to put on the short wall and putting my piano there instead. The cost of tuning it will be very high - it hasn't been tuned in something like 25 years - but worth it, I think. It's too early to tell if Em is at all musical - although given what a phenomenal mimic she is, I'd be surprised if she wasn't - but I'd like to have the piano somewhere she can play with it anyway. And maybe I'll play with it a little myself. I was never a spectacular player - I didn't practice enough! - but I did have some fun.
Now I'm going to go on-line and do my own Black Friday shopping. From the comfort of my own sofa.