well well well i'm still in that whole "today is amazing" and "today is fucking terrible" phase and doing way too much shit all of the time. This weekend is going to be an awesome nightmare. I'm climbing tonight, have a date tomorrow night, going to a concert with a couple of friends Friday night, going down to Mount Rainier National Park to instruct mountaineering skills Saturday (kleinbl00 I still gotta send you those details), going to a concert Saturday night, and going climbing Sunday. Big yikes. Last Thursday was amazing though. Let's talk about that. Went to see my favorite band, Yo La Tengo perform for the 2nd night in a row. The 1st night I went solo, but on Thursday I went with a good friend of mine who I do a lot of mountain climbing with, and his friend who also happens to be his boss. So few things. Got an AWESOME dinner at a cash-only Thai place before-hand. Got along really well with his friend/boss. Keep in mind, my friend is mid-40s, his boss is probably 60. Lifelong research in childhood oncology. Incredibly good/well-known at what he does. Skier, former climber, big into music. We go to the show, drink a few beers throughout the night. YLT is amazing as always. We're the guys in the back of the main floor, against the railing. Cute girl next to me all show. YLT does their shows where they do a 1st set, 20ish minute break, 2nd set, then an encore. This girl was there by herself and I was like I'm going to do something different, let's try talking to her. So do that, it goes well. Between the 2nd set and encore I get her phone number. Now we're going on a date tomorrow night! I know nothing about her and am kind of excited about that? Also at the end of the night, my friends boss invited me to a concert at his house that is this Saturday. They've done 80+ shows and had some big names come through their house, I'm so excited. What's funny about the girl/date situation is literally the day before I was telling kb and one of my other friends that people don't meet at concerts anymore and was very adamant about that, so fuck me. The other exciting part about all this is I really want to reintegrate more music and art and that side of things into my life, as awesome as running and climbing is, I don't want to be 1-dimensional in my interests and hobbies.
I’m so glad I took the time to read this. Hats off to you for having the courage to strike up a conversation. I hope the date went well, but even if it didn’t you should be encouraged. Not many people could pull that off. Seriously. It takes a ton of courage. Fear of rejection is HUGE for most people. Myself included. Great work. How was the band at the house show?
Hey thenewgreen. Thanks for the encouragement. Couple of updates: On that girl - okay so we didn't go out last week as described in the 2/22/2023 pubski. We DID go out on a date last night at a bar owned by one of the DJs from KEXP. Awesome night of fun conversation and flirting. We have a degree of similar interests, and other than that, not a lot of commonality. We're figuring out a night next week to go out again - either a concert, or dinner (or both?). House show - the band was Heavy Gus which is this girl, her husband (who plays in The Lumineers), and the former drummer from Blind Pilot. Awesome night. Beautiful house on one of the lakes near Seattle, open and spacious living room with high ceilings, you walk in and there's 40ish chairs set-up, a mostly older crowd of well established science-y and tech-y people, some of whom had their kids (who are more around my age), and super friendly atmosphere. I guess it helps when you know the host. Wine...everywhere...I got kind of wine drunk. Gorgeous piano in the room, man, just a fun night of music and meeting some new people. Hoping to go to the next show this new-friend is putting on in April.
The show sounds amazing. How cool to put something like that together. Inspiring
So after a week of back-and-forth with some immigration lawyers, it turns out my Mom qualifies for Slovakian citizenship (generational limit means she's the last one), but once she gets it I would be able to. But it's also a ~2 year process for her, so it'd be minimum 4 years for me. And those lawyers want an insane amount of money. So I'm going to keep searching around for different firms and also see what the likelihood of me being able to do it myself are. As far as if my mom is willing to, probably not. Today on the phone she claimed that Slovakia stands with Russia because they were behind the Iron Curtain... Yeah she's definitely got a bit of beef (read: probably racist) with Eastern Europe but she's also Eastern European. It's a fun combination. But I'm going to keep chipping away because I'm a child and I'd love an escape strategy for this country should I need it. The Supreme Court these days really worries me and there's about no chance it gets fixed anytime soon. Otherwise thesis goes slow and job search goes poorly. I'm pretty burnt out but just gotta keep it up for another two months. Then it's back to the real world, with income and free time on weekends and after work hours.
I am being sent on a study trip to North America and Europe for work. The world is ticking back up.
I don't really talk about my political activities on here since it's usually hyper-local or involves the kind of activities that you don't discuss in public if you want stay out of trouble and/or employable. That said, I feel like I'm burning out. Poet Athena Farrokhzad once said that "if Europe wasn't burning I would have wanted to talk to you about trees". Well, Europe haven't really stopped burning, and it doesn't look like it will for the foreseeable future. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I guess I'm tired and want to talk about trees?
This is a good place to start talking about trees.
An interesting work development. One of my colleagues finally had enough of our boss (I've mentioned her once or twice) and went to her boss late yesterday, to let it all out. A solid hour of explaining everything all of us have been dealing with under her reign since 2021. Apparently he was blindsided. He had no idea about these behavioural issues, about 50 odd administrators basically avoiding any contact with her, my colleague explained all 6 of us have resignation letters penned and are just waiting for an opportunity to come knocking. Not even the right opportunity, just the nearest. Explained how our boss will do anything to appear right, knowledgable, useful and "important", no matter how many people she steps on. He asked the colleague what she wants him to do with this, be it further info-gathering, immediate meeting or HR; and she said "Nothing. If you act on it, she'll destroy us entirely." And I think that offered some perspective without asking for anything to be done. This is all what she told me last night when she called at like 7pm, a little frazzled but proud she had done it. Gonna grab a coffee with her soon and get more information but.. Man.. I dunno how this is all gonna go. As I type this, one of the 6 handed in their resignation this morning. AND we just had a managers briefing with the COO, detailing a review of our operations division. I can smell the savings.. A touch of malice, a hint of voluntary redundancy, an overall nose of "everyone for themselves". Other than that - life's ticking over! Partner had a job interview for a new role, I'm enjoying all the hobbies. On leave for 10 days next week and attending A) a whisky festival and B) a theatre rendition of Back to the Future. Chuffed.