Ho ho ho

Happy holidays, all. Many apologies for delays on posting. The moving situation was nutty to say the least. It always is - like a wedding, every move has a story. My favorite twist came when after signing all of the closing documents, the bank's attorney informed us that the bank hadn't wired the money for the house to him yet, but that we could hang out - the bank was good for it after all... This came the day after Citi Group announced that it was broke. A few hours later all was well, but...good times... good times...

Just wrapping up work today and tomorrow and then off for a week and a half. A much needed week and a half off.

Marlene and I had our annual Christmas party on Saturday night, and much of the usual gang of hoboes and hooligans showed up - Gabe "The Gospel According to Science Fiction" McKee, Gwynne Watkins of Nerve and Babble fame, The Right Reverend Gareth Edel, Evil Twin Stephan, Perennial Presidential Candidate Mark Hugo and many others. A gift of the magi event took place when I gave Mark a World of Warcraft gift card for Christmas. (No, he hadn't sold his world of warcraft characters in order to buy his gift for me.) Mark in turn, in addition to some cool loot, hooked me up with a gift of a free trial to World of Warcraft. As our friend Travis quipped a couple of years ago when we all first got bit by the WoW bug, "Wow, it's like someone said, 'hey here's a free trial to drug addiction!'"

So, yes, fine readers. A disappearing I shall go, as for at least the next 10 days of my trial (and then, who am I kidding, forever after) I must return to The Sentinels server to help the dwarves and elves combat trolls and other nefarious critters in some long, drawn out fight over good and evil.

Huzzah!

And Happy Holidays,

Tyler

Playing the waiting game

My wife and I are prepping to move. We're down to the final days of the waiting game. Lots of anxiousness and malaise as we wait for all of the pieces to fall into place. It's tough on somebody whose job has been project management for years to know that there are tasks and dependencies that are completely out of my control.

On the plus side, the bank has said we're on target to close this week, and it's looking like work that was being done on the house is either done or being wrapped up. Living with a living room full of boxes (and a very confused cat) may be coming to a close and moving towards normalcy.

Now if only I could find the right carrot to encourage my pals to help me move, when we know that we're moving... ;)

V Bar

I've been working to migrate my old website over to Word Press for about 6 months, but the amount of time to migrate the individual pages over has been a bear. The more I live via my smart phone rather than actually sitting down, plugging in a laptop and connecting to wireless has made things even harder and harder. So, I feel a bit like I'm giving in to the easy solution, but Blogger, here I am...

Pardon any typos you see in this - chances are the posts are being submitted via a Palm Centro with my enormous sausage fingers on wee tiny keys.

***

I'm sitting here in V Bar in the Village, after a meeting at a client's offices nearby. Greenwich Village provokes all sorts of lost memories and scorn on my misspent youth. All those Summer days I took the Long Island Rail Road in from my parents' home, or later my apartment in New Jersey, for a specific purpose - taking a summer class at SVA or NYU, working at overrated and understaffed dot.com's - all without ever taking the opportunity to stop and sit and take it all in.

And now here I am, 30 years old, and stopping to sit for just a moment at an internet cafe after a business meeting, keeping track of the things I have yet to do today - errands and obligations, follow up emails to customers, and so on. My wife just texted me that she got me an awesome anniversary gift, and I realized I hadn't gotten her anything yet. It had crossed my mind as I browsed a vendor's stall on Bleecker Street, but I hadn't found anything to fit. "Don't get me anything. Wait, get me a cheesecake from Junior's. That'd be nice." read the text. Score. One more subway stop away from Penn Station and I'm good...

Before the client meeting, I sat in Caffe Reggio on MacDougall Street, in the seat by the door, next to the mirror, facing towards the door. The mirror made the place look so much bigger, and gave me a better vantage point of many of the old paintings. The Caravaggio - ahem, "School of Caravaggio" - was to my back, but how many times had I sat and stared at that painting as a 21-year-old working at a dot.com a few doors down from the Cafe, located over the "Off the Wagon" bar. Funny that - that internet start-up that was going to change the world is now long gone, but "Off the Wagon" is still there. Dad was right - I should have married into some famous liquor-producing family.

With the harpsichord music tinkling in the cheap sound system of Reggio's, I stopped for a moment, put my Centro handheld in my suit jacket pocket, and sat and stared at the table, or the lesser non-Caravaggio works on the walls. For a moment I was 21-years-old again, just excited to be in the Village, the haunts of Kerouac and Ginsberg, and this was some focal point of Feng Shui to being countercultural.

Then my smart phone buzzed to remind me that I had only 30 minutes to go before my meeting.

Jack and Allen, where are you?