Schreiber

So this next week is going to be very interesting!

I mean, it was going to be interesting anyway. At work, our VP&Director, my immediate supervisor, and our...effectively CTO, even though that's not her title...are all going to be on vacation from my department, even as we all grapple with a Massive Proposal Deadline, a sudden spate of new projects from the NSF, the fact that we're moving to the other end of the building in a month, and the assorted fallout flow-down effects of all of this.

But that's just a small bit of what's gonna make it interesting for me.
Because, while I am officially in the office next week... I'm not actually gonna be in the office for more than about 60% of the time. And even when I am, my brain's not going to be.

Because next week is BellsCon! OK, technically that's "The Annual General Meeting of the North American Guild of Change Ringers", but let's face it, it's a whole bunch of people with the same somewhat obscure interest getting together for a long weekend to Do That Thing A Lot and hang out together.* ** So basically, a con.
(With a business meeting thrown in.)

( So: Scheduling! )

( Mostly amusing only if you know something about the history of Anglo-Catholicism )

Also, this.

Also, there were wild turkeys walking the Freedom Trail as we walked back down Salem Street yesterday. I'd seen three toms showing off to passers-by from the windows of my bus earlier, which was a little more explicable, but in the North End??

( Some background on bells and clappers: )
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So the first thing to note about The Time Wot The Clapper Fell Off The Bell is that I wasn’t actually there. I was at home with Peter, and only found out when sorcyress texted me that I was “missing an Exciting Day at bells today!”
The second thing to note is that it was still, pretty much, my fault.

( Read More )

Today featured bashing my leg on a lamppost base hard enough to draw blood, having the quarter peal I'd been psyching myself up for get cancelled after the fire alarm went off earlier in the afternoon,* and the discovery that TeaLuxe in Harvard Square is going out of business, probably because Harvard is on a short-sighted** quest to buy up all of Harvard Square and then systematically remove all local character in favor of chain-store wasteland.

However, practice went well, and I went out for tea with nineweaving, which was pretty excellent; and bought my brother lots of tea.

* We were doing an afternoon of quarter peals--just for fun/as a learning exercise. This would have been the first time I rang any serious length of Kent, though I've been pushing for it. Anyway, though, during QP #1 either the ringing stirred up enough dust to confuse the fire alarm system, or it simply went haywire. Our sexton did NOT want to risk setting the fire alarm off again if it was the dust, so the rest of the QPs got cancelled. We'll hopefully try again in January.

** And also evil, but I kindof EXPECT that from a large institution in this country

Oh, and I have a poetry reading today. And then a Guild meeting. right.

(First, before anyone asks: no, I didn't have the 'flu.)

As of yesterday morning, the sea had spilled over the tops of the wharves down on the Boston waterfront, over the sidewalks and the streets and probably the lobbies of the absurdly expensive condos in that neck of the woods. We'd been hit by a Nor'easter: that's a thing that happens.* (What I *am* going to blame on global warming was that it came down as rain.) But the Boston Globe had pictures and videos of all of the sea-washed wharves and sidewalks, which kinda ironic because my brother and I had been walking precisely there six days earlier.

This was the last weekend Dan and I were going to be able to hang out before he entered ten weeks of non-stop rehearsals for about three different plays and festivals. For a change, he came down to Boston, rather than me up Portland. I was a little conflicted, since him coming down meant I'd have to skip Saturday practice; but in fact, he was interested to see where I rang, and getting to see me actually ringing (and climb the tower to watch the bells as THEY were ringing) was an unexpected bonus. Like being able to make it to practice was for me.
Afterwards, we split one of those ginormous steak sandwiches from Dino's, made the nigh-obligatory trip to Mike's Pastry, and then, as I mentioned, wandered along the waterfront, catching up. We only got lost when we left it and tried to find a T station.
We bought beer, we made a meat pie, and then we hosted an evening of boardgames, featuring teenybuffalo, my friend E. from running club, and assorted bellringers and snacks and games. We slept late (by my standards) / got up early (by Dan's); then I went off to ringing, because we only had like four people signed up when I'd checked last, and he headed back to Portland for his first rehearsal...

Yesterday, I braved the wet and the rain falling horizontaly not only to go to work, but to do dinner with Teeny, since we both agreed that we don't cook enough, and especially don't cook enough with other friends. So that was pretty awesome, and now we also have lentil soup to last us for days, and also she helped me splice a bellrope that had broken the previous weekend, so she gets all the points.

And today I got up stupid early in favor of driving down to Hingham, a.k.a. the nearest tower that isn't Boston. I'd been down there once before, with a large contingent of fellow Boston ringers and various visitors from further away; but that had been an actual official event, so this time it was just me and M...who turns out to be involved in a bunch of my bellringing-related adventures, actually. So did an hour of practice with them, then hauled butt back to Boston for an hour of REGULAR practice, and finally some time spent being videotaped so that Old North can maybe have a video of ringing for the tourists that wasn't copied from VHS and doesn't suck...

So anyway, it's been a fun weekend so far, but a tiring one, and even more dominated by ringing than usual.

Postscript: Aww, man, I didn't even have time to talk about the apartment stuff! Uh, bug me to do that maybe tomorrow. I have to be up in like eight hours.


* My fellow traveler down to Hingham wondered, "I wonder if, when you buy a house in Hull, you just assume that you're going to have vast quantities of flooding damage every couple of years."

As P. and I approach the end of our stay in England, assorted thanks and apologies:

First (chronologically) to the staff of Virgin Atlantic, who checked us in when we showed up flustered and an hour later than we should have been. (G. had forgotten P's passport, and retrieving it took rather a lot of time. Good thing I built an hour of "something goes hideously wrong" time into the schedule.)

Second (though most importantly) to my Mom and her husband, who put up with a frequently hyper nine-y-o and his father (moody, broody, inclined to leave them with the kid in favour of doing tourist stuff) for nine days, AND totally drove us around and paid for tickets and bankrolled us all the way.

Third, to the waitress at the Lindesfarne Inn, near Berwick and the aforesaid Isle, for helping keep up with all of our orders, supplying me with cider, and lending me her pen to write postcards and things. I repaid the favour by inadvertently walking off with the pen.

Finally (well, I hope): to the change ringers of York, who not only enthusiastically welcomed a questionably competent ringer to Sunday ringing,* but then invited me back for practice.
At which point I promptly fumbled the sally and consequently broke the stay on the #4.
They did not have a spare stay.
And then they STILL were all understanding*** and supportive and mostly concerned about whether I'd injured myself (ans: not beyond mild rope burn), AND let me keep ringing, which was good 'cause that's traditionally the moment when learners totally freeze up and have to relearn like a zillion things before they recover their confidence, and then invited me out to the pub and bought me a pint. Ladies and Gents, if you're ever in Boston, I totally owe you Thai food.
And now I'm gonna go home and neurotically check every stay in the tower at CotA for signs of damage.

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Also, mad thanks (though I hope no apologies!) to tree_and_leaf and husband, who invited me to Wakefield and put me up, so that I actually got a chance to hang out in person with Tree for more than half an hour.

FULLER REPORT LATER. HOPEFULLY.

* I mean, at home I'm at least vaguely competent, but they're intimidatingly good. Y'know, perfect striking, the fourteen-year-old who's learning to ring two bells at one, the twelve-year-old who's learning Bristol...and the fact that several of them can ring a bell with no stay.

** Once again, then stay is the chunk of wood attached to the bell that prevents it from swinging past the point where the mouth is pointing up.

*** Admittedly, they tell me this happens a lot at St. Wilfrid's, and the #4 is traditionally (both there and elsewhere) one of the bells that gets abused by novice ringers the most.

Various work-related $#!7:

Fustest: So my boss, after I'd told him I was leaving at some point in the near future, asked me to write out a letter of resignation, because the higher-ups had been asking for one; and so I did, but didn't specify an end date.
Allegedly, since that was the case, they are simply going to PICK my end date, based on when we get my replacement adequately trained. So I could be out of a job as early as next Friday.

The fact that I find it plausible either that my supervisor is screwing me over OR that the upper management of MRE are being a bunch of callous, shooting-themselves-in-the-foot cheese-parers is one more reason why I need to get out of this job.

As D. at bellringing last night put it: "I mean, it's good that you're finally getting out of there! But money is good too."
(Everyone at practice expressed congratulations that I was finally leaving this job. I guess I may have been bitching about it a bit. I guess they thought the bitching was deserved.)

But yeah. Unemployed in the near future. And...


2. I thought I was being hired by the Census. They're not replying to my emails, though.


3. On the other hand, it's a three-day weekend. Or, well, 3+ days, since [University]'s closing at 2 tomorrow.* And nothing planned on Saturday, 'cause practice got cancelled due to practically every ringer in the area road-tripping to Quebec. Anybody want to do a thing?

(Friday afternoon is going to be catch up on chores and make a strawberry-rhubarb crumble, unless somebody talks me into doing something more exciting. Sunday, of course, is choir followed by more choir followed by ringing followed by more ringing followed by Fall Over. Followed by contradancing. Monday, who knows?


More Later.

PS: Everyone remind me that I need to check twiddle pins!

* 3a. Supervisor, in one of his many questionable moves, is actually giving several people the ENTIRE day off; I volunteered to be the one to come in so as to have some leverage for taking half a day off NEXT week, to meet a friend of sovay's at his (ridiculously well-funded research-based) place of employment, in the hopes that having some of the people there actually know my face will increase my odds of getting hired there at some point...

Amended: I forgot that, while I mentioned in passing that I was ringing a quarter peal* today, I hadn't indicated why this one was particularly noteworthy. The method was one called St. Clement's, which was new to a couple other people in the band; but the important thing from my end is that whereas in previous peals I was tenoring (i.e. ringing my bell last in every change), this time I was ringing the treble, so changing place every stroke, although that's still a much less complicated thing than everybody else was doing!
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Well, we kinda, supposedly got the quarter-peal. We had to restart once, with me hauling frantically on the rope of the #3 to get back into lead; and even after that, it was pretty rough. There were at least two occasions where I thought I ought to still be in thirds place but everyone else seemed to think I should be leading, so I led and then it turned out I was right the first time; and once or twice when the opposite occurred. (Don't tell the Central Council.) But supposedly, we made it through; and as always, when our conductor proclaimed "And that's all!" I was left thoroughly incredulous.

Most of our band immediately decamped to various other commitments, but Michael and I--the band's two weakest links--went out and had a beer and a late/second lunch. Now I am tipsy, but should really be going home to get $#17 done...

PS: Yup, still countertenoring in choir.

* If I haven't mentioned before, a quarter peal is 45+ minutes of continuous ringing, including at least 1250 changes (the ringing equivalent of measures in normal music), in which you repeat changes as few times as is possible.

This week at work, our copy center guy is taking a few days off as paternity leave...
Which means that my favorite coworker, who usually does the deliveries with me, is in the copy center...
Which means that I take over most of HER responsibilities, while still having most of mine...

And of course, this Would be the week when some random bureaucrat decides to play mind games with us, and then raises a giant stink when we (welnigh inevitably) deliver his package to the wrong building. Sigh.

It's that kind of week.

Oh well, bell practice tonight, then have a beer withe the associate rector; and quarter peal on Sunday!