Survery Jones: My Political Compass

It's been a while since I have updated this blog. I've been overwhelmed this summer. For most of the month of June, I was down with kidney stones, a sprained ankle and moving. Since I got better, I have been working my behind off trying to get the city house ready to sell (JUST in time for the housing market to go completely south). But, I was reading Crooks and Liars yesterday morning (as usual) and I came upon this nifty little political test.

The idea behind it is that there are two components to conservatism. There is an economic scale defined by the extremes of Communism (communalism) vs neo-liberalism (libertarianism) and there is a social scale defined by its extremes Authoritarianism (fascism) vs Libertarianism (anarchism). Put more simply: authority vs anarchy and communism vs unrestrained free markets. For example, here's how some famous world leaders rate on the political compass:



So, I took the test (I'd really love to see my neo-con friend Heather take this test. It's interesting!). Here's where I fall:





It appears I am just to the right of Gandhi, which I do not mind. I am a bit more liberal than I though of was, perhaps because of my libertarian leanings (and libertarians normally consider themselves on the right). But on this scale libertarian socially is left while libertarian economically is right and I tend to be more libertarian socially than economically.

But what's really telling is this image from Crooks and Liars about where the candidates fall. Even the MOST liberal of the democrats are FAR more authoritarian and far more economically libertarian. They are not very darned liberal AT ALL. No wonder I am not terribly thrilled about ANY of the presidential candidates!

I should note, at times, I found the test to be a bit too black and white. There were questions where I didn't exactly agree or disagree. Where the question itself seemed unreal. Anyway, so much for my survey jones. I'll be quite pleased when skating season begins again and when I have time to follow it.
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In other news, my husband made Chief (E7). In the Navy, this is a BIG deal. They put you through a six week indoctrination that involves a lot of silly stuff, more volunteer work, and a whole lot of working late. I am presently conducting my marriage my cell phone. And after 5 years of not smoking, it took exactly five days for the indoc process to stress him out enough that he is back to killing himself.

No, I'm not very happy/

Five weeks and counting til pinning.
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I've joined a new team blog. I haven't posted yet, due to email problems but when I do, the new blog is Mama Needs a Book Contract. It's a blog about writing and parenting (or in my case, women's issues). Looking forward to seeing you there!

The last day... and an ob figure skating

This week has been hellish, I tell ya.

My mother is visiting this week and as my MIL says, "houseguest are like fish, they stink after 3 days." No, honestly, I love my mom, but she is tiring herself out and she really seems to resent the fact that I am working my ass off from dawn to dusk. I don't know why that is. She feels put upone because she's not allowed to bother me. Okay... she's not allowed to bother me. It's a fact.

But I shouldn't get annoyed when she calls it "guard duty" when my US Navy husband has "duty." He's not guarding anything, he's just covering the night shift this week. It's inacurate. But I shouldn't nit-pick.

Truth is, I am TIRED.

I've been busting my ass for weeks. It's allergy season. I had two week long projects this week each of which would have taken the whole work week and I had to do BOTH of them. I did, but at the cost of not being able to do much else that wasn't optional. I spent 2 days at the doctor (one for me and one for Akey). I spent 3 days working. I'm beat.

The good news--if it can be called good news--is that I finished the project for the employer which is laying me off. I've spent some time prospecting and sent some resumes. I don't see much, but I guess I can keep prospecting. I sent a couple "perfect" ones, but no response so far. I find myself more drawn to regular working job that guarantee X hours per week rather than individual articles.

I made some major headway on writing chapter 9 of Google Analytics 2.0. Jerri says that Google announced that they are beginning migrating everyone to the new version. This is great, as Google Analytics 2.0 went up on Amazon already. I've started tracking it with my booktracker. It's pretty pathetic at present. It'll improve. The current edition Amazon Rank Tracker is still doing okay.

So, last but not least, I saw this video this morning and the first thing I thought--before I saw the caption--was, "boy, this looks like modern figure skating." So, here's your video this week.



Enjoy...

And yes, they are the famous Ross Sisters singing contortionists. The video is from 1944.

What a bad week...

This has been a crazy, stressful week (on top of about 8 crazy stressful weeks just passed). My anxiety disorder is in high gear, meaning that I'm constantly on edge and restless and worried. We've put a contract on a house that could well be overwhelming, but is what we can closest afford (or COULD have afforded). I'm deep navy blue over the shootings at Va Tech. And yesterday, to top it all off, I got a call from my most major client, the one which has, for the last few months provided 25% of our income (and the only REGULAR income I, personally, have, and about 75% of my revenue), and was laid off due to plummeting profits.

I just kind of stood there, listening to my supervisor (this was an actual part time job rather than a contract) nodding and going "uh huh" at appropriate times, trying not to freak out and cry in front of him. It seems the SEC has changed rules about how the kind of research we do has to be expensed. So instead of being paid out of commissions from the trading desk, it has to be paid for up front in "hard dollars." Real money. As a result, revenues plummeted, and people were being let go. My Red Hat project, for which I was supposed to be lead, wasn't picked up. And as a relatively new hire, I was laid off. I imagine a reporter with more seniority will take my place on my existing project.

I'm still freaking out, really. It's not that I can't replace the revenue. It's that it's damned hard to replace regular, dependable revenue that requires as little energy and brain power as this job did. Yes, I can replace the income, but at the cost of 3x the work... which I really don't have the oomph to do.

And to have it happen NOW. We're buying a more expensive house. I expect costs for our internet service to double (twice as much money for far less bandwidth, sheesh!). Our mortgage will rise by 50%. It couldn't really be much worse--I shouldn't say that, it can ALWAYS be worse. Just when things begin to go well, the sky falls. We never get ahead because through absolutely no fault of my own, bad things happen. Pardon me for whinging, but WHY, OH, WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?!

I don't need to be depressed and de-energized this week. I have a book project that is still behind. I still have one last project for this job which I will have lost as of April 30. I have a moving to orchestrate and the last bits of paperwork for the mortgage to do. I have kids to get from one thing to another. I have laundry--that never ends.

This sucks. It just sucks.

Close to Home...

The slaying of 32 people at Virginia Tech has been all over the news the last couple of days. I was shut up in a community center in Hampton Roads, VA (the south-east corner of the state) most of the day Monday doing taxes for the AARP's TaxAide program and did not hear anything until nearly 2 PM. My response was the same as everyone else: incomprehension at the senselessness of the violence, parallels to the Texas clock tower shootings of so long ago, a sense that somewhere in Iraq LOTS of people whose names we will never know were dying in senseless violence too. That didn't change the horror that some disturbed soul could walk calmly into a university building and start shooting.

One of the victims was Lauren McCain, age 20, of Hampton, VA. Lauren worked at a pool frequented by more than a few kids from my children's school. Lauren's father works with my husband. I never knew Lauren. We never will.

Please send your prayers and good thoughts for the comfort of Lauren's family and the repose of her soul. This one hit too close to home.

45% Certifiably Crazy

So, it's been an insane spring time. My arthritis is still bad, but I finally have a medication which controls the pain (Celebrex, ie yi yi, regarding the associated risks!). I wrote a novel and a quarter. I visited San Francisco (on business) for the first time in 8 years. I am hip deep in writing the second edition of Google Analytics (officially Google Analytics 2.0).

About 2 months ago, due to several factors, we decided to move to a nearby rural area. The location of and appalling road traffic near our present house, crime and poor services in our town, an unpleasant incident at my children's private school where the principal did something very unjust to me, and a general desire to get OUT of the city and go back to being country people--it was just too much. It took me 18 years to get OUT of the country and another 18 to get back IN! So, we've been house hunting.

We are trying to move to a MUCH more expensive area, with great public schools. Our house has doubled in value in the last 4 years to about $200K, but out there, houses of this size on the kind of land we want are $300K-$350K when they are available at all. Comparably priced houses tend to be 25% smaller than the one we currently own--which is already smaller than we need. It's been tough to find houses we can afford that have at least a little land around them. We wanted 5-10 acres, but it looked like 3-5 was more do-able. So we've downscaled some.

We found one house that needed a fair amount of work, but wasn't too old. But they took another, better offer, even though we offered full price. Then we found a second house, one locally known as "The Triangle House" because it was that all-roof chalet style. It was a charming house, on about 2.6 acres of almost virgin timber (that was was one of the things I loved) and it had a garden tub with a whirlpool which was a distinct attraction for my aching joints. But it had some problems, namely the 13 deadfall or falling trees that needed removing, and the weird set up where my office would be upstairs on the second floor and my kids would congregate downstairs in the basement with a concrete slab and 2 flights of stairs (one with a very low, slanted ceiling) between us. It just didn't seem practical. Plus, there were water infiltration problems (PUDDLES! UGH!) in the basement and no idea how hard that was going to be to fix... if it could EVER be fixed so that it really never leaked.

It was not easy telling this to my husband that since he was deeply in love with the place. I tend to spoil him, letting him have what he wants. I figured i could live with it. When the seller backed out of the contract, DH was devastated. He didn't have any of my reservations about the place. He was enthusiastic about felling and splitting all those trees (and the new toys he would get to buy to do it with). He doesn't really spend a lot of time in the house, whereas I am there quite a bit of the time there. Anyway, finally, I just blurted it out, the reasons why the house made me so uneasy. It wasn't until then that he finally seemed able to let it go. It took TWO WEEKS of stress and raging for him to let go of this house that we never really had.

To his credit, I guess, I have to remind myself that over the years, while we've bought 3 houses, he's been overseas, or otherwise occupied for every single house. I've done all the hunting, all the "oh my gosh we can't afford ANYTHING," all the moping because I've looked at everything there is and there's still nothing. He hasn't really had to cope with the heartbreak of not getting the house he really loves before, while I've learned the hard way that in house-hunting you cannot afford to fall in love. You HAVE to be able to walk away from any deal. You don't "have" a house until you sign the closing papers. It's not yours. You cannot lose something that is not yours.

Anyway, we've been looking and looking, even at houses further up in the price range, up to $350. I know this seems pathetically cheap to some of you, but that is FAR more than we can afford to support. I have been house-poor and don't want to repeat the experience. But we still weren't finding anything. We found two houses on 6 acres for $350K, thinking we could get my brother to move into the small one. But the bigger house was just TOO small. Then, we found two manufactured houses--TRAILERS--on 7 acres for $300K. But trailers... we have to sell this place in 5-6 years when DH retires from the Navy and we move on. Some people (like us) are very uneasy about buying trailers, no matter how nice. We were beginning to get really bummed out about our prospects of finding a house we could afford on "some land" in the right school district.

During the course of our travels out in the county, we came upon a likely looking house. It was for sale. It was WELL within our price range. It was big enough for us. But it was under contract pending a home inspection. So we went home, feeling blue, kept looking, kept not finding anything. And Monday, we followed up with our agent about that likely looking house. Turns out, the home inspection had come through and the buyer had backed out of the deal.

We got a copy of the home inspection and found some interesting bits. The house has only one bathroom. The plumbing is part galvanized and part copper (a BIG no-no)... and part, as the inspection report says, "There are at least three repairs made to the water supply lines of the bathroom sink and toilet area, which are made with rubber hose and automotive clamps." When DH and I stopped laughing like hyenas we read the rest of the report. The house needs pretty serious work-though some has been done--and it has a BAD case of half-ass disease. Oh, and did I mention that is ONE-HUNDRED-EIGHTY years old?

That's where the 45% certifiably insane comes in.

I grew up in an an old house. half was pre-Revolutionary and the other half, pre-Civil War. I know how much work a place like this is and what a money pit it can be. It's kind of scary, because I know what I am getting into. It needs all the plumbing pipe replaced (fortunately, there is not much of it). It needs the floors jacked and supported. It needs foundation work. It needs work in the bathroom and kitchen (if not a totally new bathroom and kitchen). It needs central heat and air. It needs dampers on the FOUR fireplaces. $50K? $100K? That is the bad news.

Yes, I am panicking.

The good news is, of course, with property values being what they are, if we do the work, we can surely get the money back out when we move. DH has friends in construction who are willing to help him with the foundation work. The house is stable and livable, and actually fairly nice on the inside. Yes, it needs a kitchen and bathroom, but we can use the ones that are there for the time being. There is room for a garden and fruit trees. There are KIDS living next door. There are outbuildings for all our junk and maybe for a few animals. There is a creek (or as we say "a crick") out back! Okay, I'm excited. I am not thoroughly cynical. I've fallen for this house.

The house has a name, Carroll Plantation (est 1820), and stories and history. And I have to say, I can't wait to ferret all this out. I am considering starting a blog about the place (as if iIneed another blog to maintain) and our remodeling/restoration efforts. If and when I do, I'll let you all know the URL. In the meantime, if you ever thought I was crazy...

Now you know.

My baby won second place!!!

Okay, so it's not figure skating, but I had to share this because I am absolutely going CRAZY with joy! Both my big girl GG and my middlest Akey tried out for the talent show this year. They only took 13 children and Akey beat out two older girls singing the same song to make the show. And then she went and won SECOND PLACE in the PK-4th Grade division. I took the following videos and pictures with my cell phone (Quicktime required to view).

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Oh, and I forgot! Last night, right around 5:40 PM, I finished—YES FINISHED, The Barunian Incident. It clocks in at 87K words. I am delighted to be finished, even if it is just the draft. Now, to critique. To editing. To querying! Well, really, to a drawer for about a month so I can approach it with fresh eyes. I already have a list of about 10 things that need fixing.

Figure Skating through Halloween.

I really enjoy Judith Warner's blog Domestic Disturbances at the NY Times. She's so delightfully imperfect. I am far from the perfect parent. My kids always have dirty faces and the house is never just so. Normally, I am right there with her when she complains about over parenting, or overly perfect parenting. But on this particular day, I couldn't have disagreed with her more. Here's a comment that I posted on Judith's Hapless on Halloween entry. After I wrote it, I thought, "you know, I want to put this on my blog too." So I did. Skate America conflicts with Halloween almost every year and that's always a problem for me since Halloween is my favorite holiday. This year, I ditched skating for candy and blue dogs.

You know what? I LIKE Halloween. Okay, so my kids don’t have the greatest costumes–and when they do, my mom makes them. She’s retired, has time, and was always a fantastic costumer. But I carve the pumpkins–we always have the best ones in the neighborhood because I love carving pumpkins. I’m teaching my oldest to carve. She is decent enough with a knife not to cut herself, but very ambitious and oft comes to grief. I make sure they’re dressed and warm and then Daddy takes them from door to door.

And while they are trick or treating, I sit on my front lawn in a sling chair with our bichon frise Killer which we have dyed blue for the holiday (Blues Clues? Blue Dog Democrat, anyone?). And I sit there and remember all the great Halloweens from my past. The one where mom made my brother a frog head and he went as a frog prince. There was the year I was an alligator and won a year’s pass to the skating rink for best costume. There was the fun of running pell-mell from house to house in the cold, spooky dark, shrieking all the way–no matter what we were wearing.

When I fade back from memory into reality, there’s candy heaped high in an antique wooden bowl–the same one we used when I was a kid. It’s bliss to hand out handfuls to the ever dwindling clumps of children–there are fewer ever year.

And it breaks my heart.

Most kids who trick or treat in our neighborhood come up from the poor inner-city places, where drugs, crime, and hopelessness, lack of opportunity and yes, downright laziness, have made it too dangerous for a child to walk up to a house and say “trick or treat.” Too many tricks down there. Some people might say they don’t belong here. But they make no trouble and something in me wants to scream how these kids deserve just as much as mine to have fun on Halloween. They deserve to have fun running gleefully from house to house, parents trailing along behind. They deserve a handful of candy from someone who thinks Halloween isn’t a chore. They deserve to be children.

And for one night in October, so do I.

Perl Poem Tribute to 9/11

Okay, so 99% of the people who come to this blog are only going to be able to read the English version, and have probably never heard of Perl Poetry. But... suffice it to say, I'm a software developer and one of the programming languages I know is Perl. People actually write poetry in Perl and it is considered to be an exceedingly difficult thing to do. It seemed like a fitting tribute ina whimsical sort of way. My poet friends are all writing poetry of surpassing beauty and heart-wringing emotion... but this morning, I was writing code. My friend Yemi, who a most incredible writer and poet, and a fine person said this. "Event follows event with the inevitability (in hindsight) of a program. What better metaphor?"

A Program for 9/11

warn ("Al Queda Determined to Strike US");
exec(0);
open(MYPETGOAT, "Story-Book") or die "11, 175, 93, 77"
while (<MYPETGOAT>){ exec(0);}
for (i=1; i==2752; i++) { if (!!ur==0) {kill; kill; kill;}}
$red = $white = $blue = "gray";
$together = $black + $white + $republican + $democrat + $young + $old;
goto (Afganistan);
if (!m/Osama Bin Laden/) { delete("Iraq"); }
split (/sectarian lines/, "$Iraq" . "$US");
if (!m/insurgency/) { our(soldiers) = $iraqicivilians = $civilliberties = 0)
exec(0);
exit("fail");

#it reads like this:
#
#Warning: Al Queda Determined to Strike US
#The President does nothing.
#Open My Pet Goat while death approaches for flights 11, 175, 93, and 77.
#While reading My Pet Goat, the President does nothing.
#And 2752 people die.
#And the red, white and blue turns gray.
#But all of us become one.
#
#We go to Afghanistan,
#but when we cant find Osama Bin Laden
#we attack Iraq.
#And we fall apart--the US and Iraq--splitting along sectarian lines
#while the insurgency rages,
#our soldiers die
#iraqi civilians die
#we give up our civil liberties
#The President does nothing.
#To exit is to fail