home, improved.

We reduced our mortgage payment considerably, just in time for the house to need some more professional attention. Long-awaited foundation work has come due, exacerbated by the weight of the solar panels and the new attic storage space. Naturally, the floor joist running the length of the house–most definitely load-bearing–has no piers under it. Construction in 1938 had a certain YOLO vibe to it, although in fact that arrangement has been Mostly Kind Of Okay™ all this time.

All that unused space under the load-bearing center floor joist was practically an invitation to install the furnace and ductwork there. In defense of contractors past, they knew enough not to cut into the joist, instead installing the shower drain backwards to compensate. (Our first plumber gave us a steep discount, saying "Don't worry about it. I'll be back.") The furnace is about due for a replacement, and the ducting is old and probably contributing to my allergies, sooooo maybe it makes sense to tear it all out. California passed some mighty restrictions on gas appliances; can we even replace the furnace with another gas furnace? What then, electric? What poor sod gets to make that work with the fresh electrical stuff from the solar panel install?

This is what the computing world calls a "yak shave."

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(I'm not really sure who took the Yak Shaving idea from Ren & Stimpy and applied to computer programming, but now even American Express people use it.)

This is in addition to replacing the rotting fencing, adding gates to/from the neighbors' yards (they're lovely people, we like them), and finally creating a huge private space with GIANT GATES (and a human-size gate) across the driveway. It turns out that 20% of the property has been wasted all this time, and we barely know what do with it all. (Except to not build a small studio apartment: the permits were finally approved after 5 years, but jeez.)

The Fig Tree is untouched; we'd be happy to say goodbye to the Weird Apple Tree and the World's Worst Ornamental Pomegranate, but they're probably impossible to kill. For all I know, they share the same unholy root system as the Zombie Rose.

(Before our first summer here, we asked our professional plant guy friend to identify the trees. He said it was an Ornamental Pomegranate, that wouldn't produce much fruit. While he is great at his job, this is not remotely true of that tree, for which generations of opossums are grateful.)

Anna had the contractors move and level her tiny house trailer in the side yard, whereupon it emerged that the Thorny Lemon Tree over there had decided it wasn't done living, and had a respectable 2-foot-high revenant flourishing underneath the trailer, in the 18 inches of vertical space, closely surrounded on three sides by fences and structures from 7 to 15 feet tall. The fourth side gets maybe 30 minutes of dappled sunlight in the morning, peeking through the picket fence. The actually quite poor growing soil on our property appears to be like Pet Sematary for plants, because the Thorny Lemon, like its cousin the Zombie Rose, was actually dug up. Out of the ground. In 2013. Which is enough to kill most plants. But not ours.

And PG&E finally inspected the leased solar installation, so the house is 80-100% solar-powered on most days so far, because we live in a desert and also got the house-battery option. The phone app shows soothing animations of the power flowing one way and another, and tracks how much we use from each source. The lease arrangement provides a predictable price for electricity for the term...twenty years, maybe? With an option to renew. It may already be cheaper than PG&E, and it's sure to be so very soon. And more reliable, as PG&E escalates its "If you're just going to be angry when our lack of maintenance causes historic lethal wildfires, then we'll just turn off power to more and more people" strategy. (Last year their response to people who medically rely on electricity to live was, paraphrased, "Go fuck yourselves," and they're expected to steadily extend this policy into major metro areas.) 

It's Anna who really makes this sort of thing possible; I pay for stuff, occasionally lift heavy objects, and make sure the wifi works, and the rest is her doing. I mean, I'm exceptionally good at paying for stuff and making sure the wifi works, don't get me wrong. But her determination and project-management skills for this stuff are both waaaaaay better than mine. Not even in the same ballpark. Or playing the same sport.

stupid instrument.

I enjoy complaining about the violin, partly because it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but the truth is I'm pretty good at it, which is not so incredible, once you start grading on a curve. It's the same way a native English speaker like me with 3 years of studying French under their belt will be much more capable than the same person would be after 3 years of studying any form of Chinese.

(Unless you're Anna, whose natural aptitude with languages exceeds my natural and rarely-mentioned aptitude with weapons.)

Any teacher loves a student who wants to learn and will put the effort into it, and my teacher is no exception. It turned out we have a lot of tastes in common, particularly fiddle traditions, up to and including Scandinavian music, which is not for everyone––even I much prefer playing it to listening to most of it.

(Recall that the difference between a violin and a fiddle is that no one minds if you spill beer on a fiddle.)

And Baroque music, so I can play through a small Vivaldi concerto, and I was a bit off in the weeds being determined to play this Bach keyboard invention, so now I can play through it, too:

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He does love a ton of standard violin repertoire that I don't, and I'll end up learning some of it anyway because that's what one does. I expect it will, again, be much more fun to play than to listen to.

Even though my 5-string covers the viola range, I've been eyeing violas for some time. Physics means my violin's 14" air chamber cannot produce the same sort of tone or volume as that of a viola. Apparently violas aren't acoustically perfect either, because if they were, they'd be too long to play.

(I've seen websites where builders complain about this, citing their own frustrations in arguing that 5-strings are pointless, which seems pretty obviously untrue. In particular, they vent about how the low G on a violin barely sounds okay, and the low C on a viola of any size is even less okay. It's worth noting that building a violin is not exactly easier than playing one, though I'm sure it's a quick transition once you've been building cabinets for a decade.)

Maybe we can blame Anders Hall, of Nordic Fiddlers Bloc and SVER, who makes folk viola look awesome. Anyway, I bought a starter viola––probably smaller than his, but who knows. (Violin sizes are standardized, if nonsensically named according to fractions having no relationship to any of the instrument's dimensions. Violas are categorized by body length, in half-inch increments.)

It arrives tomorrow! So we'll see.

stretched thin.

Back when my people were younger, we would often(-ish) go out to all-night electronic music parties of various stripes. I mostly stuck to and helped put on Chill Parties, but went to no few Dance Parties, and even more Campout Parties, and especially Campout Chill Parties. They customarily ended around dawn, so we'd help with cleanup, go home, and shower before going out to breakfast, followed by a day of watching TV.

(Nickelodeon launched a new satellite channel at the time, and its initial programming was literally nothing but Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and 3-2-1 Contact, a glorious undemanding parade of amusing nostalgia, perfect for being full of pancakes after being awake for 24 hours.)

The human body, even in our 20s, is not actually meant to be out partying until dawn, sober or not, so spending the day staring at Sesame Street is what we call "cracked out." I don't know where the term came from, but that's where I've been at this week.

I don't think I've ever been on a job search with this many conversations before, but the context-switching between companies, remembering who I've spoken to, when, and what I told them, is wearing me down. It doesn't help that all but one of these companies has around 10-25 engineers, all reporting directly to one of those two founders who are white or Asian guys with PhDs. Generally folks are pretty forgiving, but even so, you don't want to get the names wrong. The whole process has out-run my historical way of managing the notes and meetings of a job search.

I've been mostly angling to lead and build a whole Engineering department, to get some of the responsibility I want, without grinding my way through a larger company. PhDs have generally never hired people-leaders, so it's an exercise in mutual education: this past week, two companies who I'm pretty sure had taken that role off the table decided to put it back on. (I mean, sure, I'll be the only manager, call me a Director and we'll pretend I'm not running the thing.) For one of them, this manifested by passing me over to an executive search recruiter they'd retained after first talking to me. I had a great laugh with them about the context-switch thing, since of course they're dealing with even more companies at once than I am.

It's a good problem to have, but my stamina is running down, and I think I need to accept an offer before the end of the month, and in the meantime I'm just going to not respond to email for a few days.