just married

Anna and I got married on Saturday. So that's a thing. We're honeymooning, which means lots of eating and staring off into space and reading novels, and not so much with the brilliant coherent essay-writing.

At some point my friends pointed out that our anniversary is Guy Fawkes Day, that most twisted of British holidays, which we would never have heard of if not for Alan Moore's V For Vendetta (which you must go read right now, if you haven't). So that's entertaining.

The guest book didn't get put out, so we don't have an exact count, but it was about 170 people. It was a Zen Buddhist ceremony, which is funny because there are no Buddhist weddings outside the West: they're typically either civil matters, or handled by a more visceral local religion, like Shinto in Japan. This is part of the transmission of Buddhism to the West, though, so here, we have Zen weddings. Our teacher did the honors, I sang the Magnetic Fields' "Book of Love" as Anna came up the aisle, and we had a first dance (I hate dancing) just so ninjas could interrupt and attack us. Me, Anna, and J successfully fought them off. It was awesome. No video of the ninjas, I don't think, but there are some photos that I'll put up soon.

Our witnesses were both named Ann, so mine was the Best Ann and hers was the Ann of Honor.

Before the vows, Anna and I each had a chance to say something: Anna said many funny things about the unlikelihood of her ever getting married (e.g. during the toasts, the Ann of Honor said, "It's a cold day in hell, and somewhere, pigs are flying"). That warmed up the crowd for mine, where I started by saying that before I met her, my life was a friendless, meaningless void. With, what, 100 of my friends watching? Very silly.

The wedding gave me a lot to think about in how I and others perceive me. For one thing, I'm struck by how surprised people were. I guess I don't pay a whole lot of attention to how much and in what ways I'm a private person, or what I do or don't share with different people. Apparently, when Anna and I started dating, someone advised her to be cautious, because they hadn't seen anything that indicated I was interested in or particularly capable of returning deep emotional connection. That's pretty wacky, given the decades I've spent learning and experiencing those deep emotions. It's not like I'm hiding or anything; I guess I just haven't found a reason or useful way to bring my deep sentimentality into everyday conversation.

Later, a woman from our dojo said, "I didn't know you had it in you", meaning the comic timing of what I said during the ceremony. I responded gracefully, but I was taken aback, because honestly, I'm pretty funny and the timing of my delivery is usually excellent. I thought about my relationship with her over the years, and I realized that when I've made jokes, her response often indicates she doesn't quite know what to make of me, so I've toned everything down around her. Maybe I shouldn't? Hard to say.

I guess that kind of sharing is what I wanted for the wedding: to invite a bunch of people I know in all different kinds of ways, and bring everyone together for this one focal moment of standing up and showing ourselves. The two most common comments were "Amazing ceremony" and "Wow, you have incredible friends." That's pretty much what I wanted to hear.

Steve came all the way from Chile! And brought me a bottle of Mistral Nobel pisco, so I can share the, uh, "joy" of pisco with everyone here. (That's the good stuff, but when I was drinking it straight on ice so I could actually taste it, all the Chileans looked startled and repeatedly asked if I didn't want to mix it with some Coke or something. I like it, mostly, but it can be an acquired taste.)

J was part of the ceremony too, and I think it did something to cement for him the commitment of our little family: he's been looking forward to it for a long time, and I perceived a shift in our relationship afterward, where he seemed a bit more relaxed and I got a long, long hug goodbye when he went to school Monday morning.

The weirdest thing about getting married is that there was this huge crowd of 170 people, and now it's just us. It's so...quiet.

it seems I'm awake

We're experiencing some household-wide Epic Sleep Failure here at the Snugglehaus. I often sleep erratically anyway, then Anna came down with this brutal cold and cough, and now I have the cough, though it seems not as bad as she did. (As a girlfriend told me years ago, in a delightful fake Russian accent: "Strong, like bull. Smart, like tractor.") Our sangha's retreat is this weekend, and if I feel like this, I won't be able to go. I'm normally fairly robust, though, so there's a good chance I'll be better. If not, I have a quiet weekend alone in the house, which isn't so bad.

I can do 15 push-ups! The last 5 hurt my upper incision, which is healed on the surface but will take some time to knit together underneath. It's hard for me to imagine how debilitating a traditional open surgery must be, where they make a huge incision in the abdominal wall. It's such a strange feeling to try and use a normally-reliable muscle and it's just...broken. A couple years ago I was throwing a football around with some kids at Thanksgiving, and after one particular throw my shoulder hurt and one of the muscles (the front part of the deltoid, from the diagrams) stopped working for a few months. I couldn't do push-ups, which meant I couldn't get up in aikido the way I was used to: where before I would put my hands down and push up, I learned to put my elbow down instead, and use my sturdy, jointless upper arm for support. I assume I tore the muscle or something: it got better very slowly, and it was at least 18 months before it was fully healed.

It turns out, though, there's no working around the need for my upper abdominal muscles.

J's excitement at programming in Scratch continues. Sometimes I show him stuff, sometimes he figures things out; he found a bunch of code examples I didn't know were there, and picking those apart seems to be a good way for him to learn. He digs through the icon library and makes varyingly elaborate stories about how the knight was mean and so he's being punished by J making him spin around and grow small. It's pretty adorable.

Not that I've been at work much this past month, but we're finally done with our Quality Initiative (which left me with a single vague assignment I wasn't interested in) and back to re-designing the transcoding system (which is really interesting and it's what I want to do). Now, of course, I have to design and build extremely high-quality components from scratch. This is something I can do, of course, but I feel like it's not necessarily something I have done, so there's a certain sense that I'm now playing with the pros and this is the time to bring my A-game. There's a strong leadership aspect, too: the team already has a leader, but they're looking to me for the vision of the re-design, and I need to communicate with and get everyone understanding and participating. There are several parts of the thing that I don't actually know how to build yet. (It's a big, complicated thing. The broad strokes are clear, many details are not.) I'm happy to be back onto that.

And apparently I'm getting married in three (3!) weeks. We have the expected last-minute RSVPs and cancellations, crabby or insane relatives, ordering cupcakes, writing checks, sorting out final details. Anna and I finally picked witnesses to stand up and sign paperwork and handle logistics the day of the event (because we shouldn't have to worry about stuff, even if we'll be able to, which I doubt): they're both named Ann, so I decided mine would be the Best Ann and Anna's would be the Ann of Honor.

recent events

I tried going for a run Friday!

I'm not trying that again for a while. The impact made stuff hurt. I do need some exercise, but something less jarring. I guess I can try swimming; sadly, the only things I really like doing are running and aikido, and I can't do either right now.

We had a weekend of doing roughly nothing, since Anna's not feeling well and I think I'm fending off whatever she's got. There are various wedding things to do, even for me, so losing the weekend doesn't feel stellar, but it'll be fine.

Speaking of: less than 4 weeks now! We're looking forward to it, and we'll be very glad when the marrying part is over with and we can continue on with being married. For our honeymoon we'll be getting sloppy drunk in all the highest-quality strip clubs of Portland.

Well, I will. I think Anna was planning to go look at art museums or a quilt convention or something. Whatever. Chick stuff.

I've had several opportunities to remove Anna's power of speech over the years: early on, by jokingly using the word "girlfriend"; then a couple of times by oblique reference to marriage; once we were engaged, I once made her seize up completely by referring to her as "Mrs. D---". (Behold my feeble attempt at blog anonymity.)

However, she has decided to escalate everything by changing her name. I'm not sure I can top that, at least without some planning. I'm sure I'll think of something.

It brings up some interesting stuff for me, though. It's this very unexpected jolt insisting that I'm all grown up now. Which I am, of course. I now have a matching set of dishes to prove it. I've fulfilled my life's ambition to own a butter dish. I thought I was as grown up as I could get!

Imagine my shock.

the state of things

We were gone over the weekend, but the Elephants upstairs have been, if not quiet, subwoofer-free in the evenings. We'll see if that continues through the weekend. Their landlord sent us the text of his email to them saying he wasn't renewing their lease and asking them to move out before it expires. It seems there have been various other complaints from other complex residents about them, including some concerns about a rotating cast of people living there. The landlord asked the Elephants about this, but somewhat incredibly, the leaseholders don't return his emails or phone calls. There's circumstantial evidence that they're fresh Stanford graduates, possibly MBAs (always a bad sign), and this may be their first experience living around non-students. Hopefully they learn from the experience, or just rent a house.

I'm still looking at the rental and housing markets occasionally, just for fun, and it's still insane. Houses are still too expensive, rentals are impossible to find. By the time house prices come down, getting a loan will likely be a dodgy thing, requiring a full 20% down payment on what will likely still be a $400,000 house. We may be here a little while, which is all right because wow, this is a nice place. Granite countertops, wood floors, spare bedroom, two bathrooms. And mostly unpacked, even.

I bought a new case for my home server. I'd intended to get a small one, but then I saw this guy's writeup of it, and it sounded so amazing that I went out and bought one. And it's amazing.

It has a pair of 200mm fans--that's 20cm, or 8". The big fans have white LEDs that make for a soothing glow in a dark room, as well as being really quiet and cooling the case really well. The sides have latches: no need to unscrew anything. The hard drives and optical drive slide in, with no screws. The only time I picked up a screwdriver was attached the motherboard to the case.

All the cables run along the back side of the motherboard, getting them completely out of the way of both the fans and any work you want to do in there. There are USB ports in front of the case, and all the fans plug into a built-in fan controller.

The whole thing is a bit of an extravagance, but I figure I'll keep it for many years, and it's such a pleasure to have well-designed things in the house.

I've been working a lot. We're doing this 6-week push to increase our code quality and testing, and it's really an epic project, but also puts me a bit adrift, just when I'd started digging into the Transcoding System re-architecture which is the thing I really care about. I have a nominal project, but I've quickly found more interesting things to do.

I've realized that my bosses' expectations of what I should do are in fact very vague and noncommittal, and what's best for everyone is my new realization that no one has much stake in my doing anything in particular, and I'm perfectly capable of picking important things to work on and just going and doing whatever I feel like. I'm the only one of my kind in the company, so there's no model to follow, not even another person to compare me to. Also, it's been impossible to hire anyone else like me, so I'm not going to get fired. I'm feeling less stressed overall, though still I'm always casting about to get my hooks in something cool, like a torpedo looking for a target.

[EDIT: In addition to few people being able to do my job, nobody else wants it.]

Today I discovered that with all my years of designing complex interacting backend services, what really impresses people is a webpage they can look at to see what's going on. Awesome. I hate webpages.

Apparently Anna and I are getting married in 7 weeks! We've decided to start writing the ceremony. She's been a complete bad-ass about organizing the whole thing. It feels like there's a lot to do, which there sort of is, but it's all manageable. Should be a good time. And then we go to Portland and fall asleep for a week.

phew. hi.

Hi! I have a blog! I also have a billion other things, like work and Zen retreats, and holy crap I asked Anna to marry me and now I guess we should get married to avoid it being all awkward. My little brother the farmer was very nice and found a week they could come that didn't mean us getting married in the dead of winter, so now we just need 3 other entities to have the same day free seven months from now and we'll be good to go.

Our Zen teacher will do the honors. I asked her a couple years ago what she does for weddings, and she said it's up to the couple, as long as they say the Ten Precepts (to each other or the audience or both, I don't know). We have no idea what we're doing. In our different ways, neither of us has any idea what we might wear, and we need to talk to people who actually know things, about, um, yannow. Clothes, and stuff.

Speaking of Zen things, we just got back from our sangha's semi-annual retreat down in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near Boulder Creek. This was my first retreat since October 2009, and while I've been sitting, all that time, sitting all day (in 35-minute periods with various breaks) is a different thing. Mostly it requires acceptance, in the broad sense that we struggle to explain. Yes, your knees are going to hurt, your back might hurt, anything else might hurt. Sesshin isn't something we do because it's fun; we do it because it's helpful to our practice, whose ultimate purpose is to end our and everyone else's suffering. We spend a lot of our time refusing to accept the realities of life, fighting our minds, often in very subtle ways. Usually I adjust pretty quickly, but it took about a day of sitting before I finally gave up and accepted that my body hurt. Then, of course, it hurt a whole lot less.

It was good, and important, to slow down for a bit, after this month of going full-tilt at work. I wasn't enjoying it, but I could have used another 5 days (the traditional full length for sesshin): I feel like two days barely makes a dent in the tension I built up over my time in Chile.

Then again, someone once asked the teacher Blanche Hartman what happens when we do zazen meditation. She said, "You can't possibly know."

I did get a bit closer to seeing all that tension and defensiveness. We can't let anything go if we can't find it. So I'm finally unwinding, maybe. We'll see. I probably won't narrate the process, because really, who cares?

One other notable thing, which I'll have to mull over and probably write about, was to see again the dissonance between how I see myself (withdrawn, lazy, disconnected) and how others see me, at least in the sangha (kind, helpful, listening). At some point I have to give some weight to everyone else's view of me. Because that's not terrifying or anything.

Tomorrow: back to work.