Update

It has been a few weeks since this and I think you deserve an update. You can find the last update in the comment section.

Our last stand was that we went to the counseling session. She decided to go on the week long holiday she had booked beforehand, to get her mind cleared. I used that time to sort my thought too. I realized that I suffer the least if I assume that this is going to happen, that she will keep the child because then I could think about solutions to the problems my mind was producing and not cling onto the hope that she will get an abortion.

The counselor gave us the contacts of all clinics and doctors that perform abortions in the area and she asked me to get an appointment with one so we get all the information and could make a decision. So I did, after 5 of the addresses were closed in that time (due to holidays) I managed to get an appointment the Monday after she comes back from her holidays.

I pick her up from the train station, we talk, and about an hour later she tells me that she decided to keep the baby.

By that moment I had been detached from the thought that she might go for an abortion and honestly, the decision relaxed me, because it was a decision, after 3 weeks of unknowing. This was also the first time we did not talk about my family, or our worries, it was the first time we talked about how life could be, for her and for me with the baby coming.

Nevertheless, the next day, we went to the doctor's appointment to be informed. We learned that many things that we found on the internet were wrong and she seemed to fear the procedure more than anything. The doctor gave her two days to decide whether she wants to have it or not. As time was passing and we shouldn't wait too long.

We discuss and talk more and she decides to call her parents, to know how they feel, as in case she is going to keep the baby, they will be the people helping her the most.

On Wednesday morning, I get a call from her telling me that she has an appointment for an abortion on Friday that same week and asked if I can accompany her and take care of her for the following 24h. On that same day in the evening, she also said that she wants to end the relationship in a few weeks, when it is all over. The way I reacted was not the way she expected me to and she doesn't know if she can be with a person like me.

Friday comes, we drive there, she has the procedure done in 10 minutes. All went well, she takes 2 hours to recover from anesthesia and then we head home. Spending the day watching TV shows and eating. A day later some friends of her were coming over as it was her birthday on Sunday. We celebrate and have fun, as much as we can, at least.

Sunday evening, just before bed, we talk and realize that there is no sense in prolonging it much longer. Monday morning she tells me she is taking all her things and leaves... I was shocked, but also realized that it is probably for the best. On one hand I want to be there for her in that time, but on the other, it is her decision and a clear cut is the best for both of us.

What a roller coaster.

Two weeks ago she contacts me, to talk. Questioning whether our decision was right. She expected me to stop her from going. She was angry that I did not contact her to ask when her post-procedure checkup was (which turned out well, everything back to normal). We talked, we cried, we hugged, I told her that I am starting a therapy (had my first session last week), she was happy for me.

Still a roller coaster, distracting myself with work and my plans for summer. Conference in Berlin in two weeks, Burn (The Borderland) in Denmark in 4 weeks, meeting the girl from Israel in 6 weeks...

"Life is long and weird, and strange. There are plenty of questions that we can't know the answer to until much later. As you're only human, be as human as you can." - humanodon

Tagging everyone that might need an update: b_b, oyster, lil, _refugee_, steve, humanodon, goobster, kleinbl00

Thank you for listening to me and giving me the chance to pour out my guts

Holy shit, we actually made it past the group stage?! All drinks on me! Shout out to the Swedish fan who spent a fortune to go to Moscow only to fall asleep in the stadium wearing a Pippi Longstocking wig!

Brief update.

Back in the ER for the second day in a row. There is a bundle of muscle clamping down over my LAD, also known as the widowmaker. I'm receiving conflicting advice from one doctor who is simultaneously telling me that I can return to work and should immediately report to the Emergency room whenever I feel bad.

I am in the process of finding a new doctor.

My German coworker has absolutely no chill about football right now.

I spent some time completely offline. No Youtube, no websites, no any of this fuckery. The Universe and I had a pleasant chat, Nature send a million bloodsuckers after my precious bodily fluids, then I spent a few days in a room doing nothing by playing UT4 with 400 other nerds.

There's a homeless guy where I run up in Seattle. He says hi and eggs me on. About a year back I was running through the park and I saw him getting the absolute living shit beaten out of him. I called the cops. They came a'runnin'. He was pretty fucked up for a while but he's always got a smile.

About two weeks back I saw him. I always urge him to come with me and this time he did. We traded names. He'd found Jesus, had been two days sober (but was not giving up weed), had gotten all of his "misdemeanor trespass" (IE, homelessness) charges dropped and had gotten slotted into a halfway house. He ran a mile with me. It was dope.

I went running this afternoon (amazing how arduous it is when your body has switched over to "we bike 150 miles a week" mode). He was there, and he went running with me again. He's 17 days sober now, still in the halfway house and had been offered a job by the parks department - "after all, they know me pretty well." And the dude was tan. It's like he'd been out during the daylight and shit.

NOW LOOK AT THIS FUCKING THING

It could be mine for a mere $15k. It will make pens a dozen at a time. It has a PLC and pneumatic control to apply a 300-year-old technology to fine writing instruments. It is quite possibly the most ridiculous mechanical device ever made. And oh, the Dieselpunk absurdity of it. The lust I feel. It hisses and whirrs and clanks as it works. It is truly an amazing thing.

I made the mistake of meeting with a machining tools rep a couple days ago. He supports what he calls "CNC art" and pointed out that he sold my school a 7-axis turning-machining center at cost. It's the thing in the corner that everyone's afraid of. It could make fancy-ass pens out of flippin' bar stock if I program it right. And it could do them at high speed, three phase, carbide cut and fog cooled.

My wife pointed out that the ridiculous pen machine is a third of the way to a used 7-axis mill-turn.

So I didn't spend used-car money on machine tools this week. I guess that's something. But I can tell this particular piece of wierdness is going to haunt me for a while.

Here's a video of a machine that makes chicken wire.

My wife is really having a rough time of it, right now. She consumes a lot of social media, and we all know that landscape is full of the Republican apocalyptic hellscape that America is becoming.

This weekend we went to our favorite little Burning Man event (the only BM thing we still do), on Vancouver Island, called Otherworld. We've been going for several years. Got lots of friends up there. (A surprising number of them not on any social media at all. It's an Island Thing.)

It was gorgeous, and filled with love and happiness and people just having a really lovely time together.

And we cross back into the US, and ... the Trumpian shitstorm that is everyday life in America today.

I have a 9-5, and can focus on that all day. But she works for herself, and only picks up new clients when she needs/wants to. So she has a lot of time. She runs the dog. She does most of the shopping, and the standing in various government lines to get forms signed. So she flips open her phone, and ... she's back in the shit again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... curate... filter... blah blah blah. There's only so much of that you can do, because all of it requires you to have already seen the stuff you want to filter out. If you can't define what you don't want to see (because you've already seen it), then you can't filter it effectively.

So yeah.

It's hard to watch her spin out of control on this.

I distract her, draw her out of it when I can, but she's in the passenger seat as we are passing this colossal car-wreck in process, and she can't help but look. And much of her business takes place on Facebook, Craigslist, eBay, affinity groups, etc. So turning off the tools she uses for her business would just leave her even more at sea, with even less to do.

Anyway. It's hard watching someone you love trying to pass a stone like this one... there's not much you can do, but be moral support...

---

Next week, we shoot fireworks (we are professionals and shoot a city's annual 4th of July fireworks show every year... ask KB for photos...), and the next day we fly to San Diego for the Major League Rugby Championship game (hopefully between the Seattle Seawolves and Glendale Raptors), and to celebrate our anniversary weekend.

Visiting friends. Watching rugby. Beaches. It should be pretty dang good.

Fingers crossed...

More last minute work-travel. Camping/hiking this week, back-packing next week, fitting time in with girl in-between, turning down invites to other things because I'm already booked up, and wondering where things are going from here.

Just got off work a an hour or so ago, I'm in Watertown, NY this week. I spent yesterday after work checking out the river fit for white water rafting, that runs through the town, and, a little drive away, Sacket Harbor Battleground from the War of 1812. I'm not a huge history buff but it was still an interesting walkabout. I'm gonna grab some sleep in a bit and drive to check out Salmon River Falls before work tonight. Being on the road gets lonely but staying busy outside of work has made it less so. All in all though this is my first time in upstate NY and NY itself. It's gorgeous out here in a way I didn't expect. Also being 30 minutes from Canada without being able to enter has convinced me to renew my passport when I get home haha.

Anyways, have a good day hubski, I wish everyone productivity and progress.

I'm starting to wonder if employers have any idea what they even want from their candidates. Even the interview I got through internal recommendation was delayed twice before someone called to tell me that the position is no longer open. And at the one place where my interviews went really well, people told me I'm overqualified. So I'm somehow overqualified for an entry position, but lack the experience to get anything above entry position. Pointing that out wasn't persuading anyone. Maybe I should chug some cough medications before my next interview? You know, to get a good amount of handicap.

I'm literally back to where I was seven years ago (and ever since): teaching maths and science to highschoolers threatened with repeating a grade. It's so fucking disheartening, and motivation is pretty much the only thing I have.

Library

Part 1

Part 2

So I recently talked to the manager of my local library branch and they were able to give me a lot of helpful information. Sorry if this is typical information to anyone else, but as a guy who used to always just buy any book he wants, this is all new to me.

- With a few rare exceptions, all of the books in the libraries that aren’t in the central branch are considered a floating inventory. They can be ordered from any branch in the city and be returned to any branch in the city. Wherever they’re returned is where they’ll remain unless someone checks them out and returns them to another branch. If you look at my post from last week, you’ll see that I’m contradicting myself. That’s because I misread a book’s status on the library’s online ordering system. Mea culpa or whatever some latin dude said.

- Pretty much all of the branches have a pretty sparse non-fiction section, with mostly filler and a few diamonds in the rough. I wasn’t given a reason for this, but to be fair, I didn’t ask.

- The central branch has a ton of good books. Unfortunately, a lot of the really interesting books cannot be checked out because they’re any combination old, expensive, or rare, and the library often has only one copy of them. This is a rule set in place to prevent these hard to replace books from getting damaged or lost. Any branch manager can request s non-borrowable book be transferred to their inventory temporarily for the convenience of a patron, but A) the book cannot leave library grounds and B) the request can be denied.

- Additionally, if there is a book that a patron is interested that is not in the city library’s inventory at all, a librarian can help them try to order the book through a statewide loan system, of which many of the colleges are a member of and we all know colleges tend to have some really juicy choices. I did not ask whether or not these books can be taken home to read once ordered, but if I had to guess, it’s a case by case basis.

- There is a team of people that work at the central branch that decide what books to order for the libraries. From what I can tell, they work with their own criteria and public input doesn’t have much sway. However, I can donate books specifically to be added to the library’s inventory (instead of being put up for sale for fund raising purposes), but anything I donate will be added to the floating inventory and as such, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay at the local branch.

For a ten minute conversation, I learned a heck of a lot. My local branch manager was very helpful and friendly and just all around pretty awesome actually. I kind of wish they were my boss.

Surprise Mini Ask Hubski

So with that said, if you were given the option to donate just one book to be put into your local library’s inventory, what would it be and why?

Headed to Houston, then a couple of days in SF.

My wife and daughter just left to China for three weeks. It'll be some serious FL time, then a break to the North.

I have plans to paint a lot, and I'd like to remove all JS from Hubski.

We went camping recently, and I whittled my daughter a bow and arrow. I love whittling.

After months of not really finding a good replacement for my RAM-fried OnePlus 2, I finally found one that checked all the boxes and got a Huawei P20 this weekend. It has the best camera (105 DxOmark) and battery (3400mAh) in the smallest form factor and at midrange prices. It basically looks like an iPhone X but has all the software benefits of Android / Nova Launcher. I like it much more than I thought, and it cost me only €40.

I'm two-thirds into Piketty after about ten days of listening. I can say that it is the most interesting boring book I've read in a long time. I'm considering getting the hardcover when I'm done with it - partly to impress people, but mostly because some day I want to have a long bookshelf of big, heavy, amazing books that I can look back on.

I now also have Instagram. It's fun, but I wish I could buy off the ads.

I live in an area now where white people are a statistical minority. I'm pretty often aware of my whiteness and the otherness that implies in this area. And I realize that this is the American experience for every racial group that isn't mine in every place I've ever lived