August 2008

Yes, it’s true, we’re headed West. Much, much further West than we’d originally intended to go! Let’s backtrack a bit here, since I wrote about Brian flying to Austin just a couple of weeks ago. Although Brian’s interview went fabulously, the company wanted to hire him for a different job at a later date. The alternative job sounded cool, but they couldn’t provide any concrete info on the “later date” so we decided to move on.

I’d already done a phone interview for a Project Manager position with Design Commission, a small interactive agency in Seattle, about a week before Brian’s Austin trip. I enjoyed my interview and felt really positive about the job and the company, but we wanted to wait and see what would come out of the Austin thing. When that didn’t pan out, Brian and I decided that we were up for a change in plans and that I should pursue the job. Within a few days of making that decision we were on a plane to Seattle to meet the founders of Design Commission and spend a weekend with the West-Coast Woodruffs.

Needless to say, everything went great! We loved the Design Commission guys and they loved us (or at least liked us enough to offer me the job and ask Brian to do some contract/freelance for them). We had a great time with my family, and concluded that getting to hang out with them all the time would make up for Seattle’s damp, gray winters. Nasty outside? Just stay in, stuff your face, and chat with all your favorite characters! Seattle is also a very dog-friendly city (dogs are allowed on the bus!) with lots of parks, and I think Cooper will appreciate the cooler temps. Next step is finding a place to live and coordinating the move…

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I am blessed with several acquaintances whose misuse of the English language provides me with tragicomic relief on a near-daily basis. A few examples:

Unlinquish

Minimalize

“Great news! They’ll be chagrined to hear that we can handle their request!”

Absolve (Used in place of both resolve and abstain. Genius.)

I try very hard to give people the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes I am tested.

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More and more lately I find that I have the experience of remembering things that happened a long time ago, and then realizing that “a long time ago” means twenty years ago instead of ten. Sometimes I’m amazed at how clearly I remember those things that happened so long ago, and other times I’m shocked at all the things I’ve forgotten. Friends or family will say, “Remember when…” and I look at them blankly and say, “That happened?”

Many of my memories, or at least the ones I return to most often, are of the smallest things. Things like what the sun looked like streaming through the vertical blinds in the living room in the afternoons when I returned home from 6th grade–I can remember exactly the pattern it made on the floor and the back of the sofa. On the other hand, I can’t remember what I did on any of my birthdays until I was 14 or 15, save for trip to Farrell’s for my 5th birthday. That’s not to say they weren’t fun or amazing birthdays, I’m sure they were, but I just find it strange that I can’t remember them while I can clearly remember sitting on the steps outside the pavillion at my mother’s company picnic, eating barbeque and trying to be friends with her coworkers’ children. I’m sure my experience is not unique, but I wish I understood better what causes certain things to be preserved forever and other things to just fade away as if they’d never been real at all.

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Brian flew to Austin last night. He didn’t get to his hotel until almost midnight, and mentioned that it was still hot then. He said that it “smelled like syrup, and kind of felt like syrup, too.” He often has really unusual but very accurate ways of describing things. When someone says that Austin feels like syrup there is no confusion: it’s hot, sticky, thick, heavy. In a syrupy place, the air sits on you and makes you slow, so that all your movements feel very deliberate.

In the summer, the sun rises in Austin about 30 minutes later than it does in DC. This is of course due to Austin being so far south, and we had a discussion about the position of the earth vs. the position of the sun during different seasons and how that combined with a specific location’s distance from the equator affects day length. I’m not sure how I ever learned all that stuff but I certainly take it for granted. Do you ever stop and consider the vast amount of knowledge that you have internalized and try to figure out how you came to possess it? I often can’t remember when or how I learned specific things, it feels like I was born knowing them, which I know is not true. And then I think maybe I just feel that way because I am getting old, so old that the formal act of learning is a vague memory that I associate with a different phase of life.

Apparently, the interview went well, but we’ve learned to not count the proverbial chickens before they hatch, or even after they’ve hatched and run around all crazy-like. Brian’s been to Austin for interviews several times over the past few months, and every time it seems like whatever job he’s interviewed for is a done deal. There are verbal promises, positive feedback, and then the offers never come. Weeks later we find out that there’s a hiring freeze, or the company is being reorganized, or someone just doesn’t have their shit together, and that there will definitely not be an offer. Of course we’ve usually moved on to the next thing by then, but it still stings. Few things are worse than being led-on. You can go for a while on anticipation alone, but coming down from it is harder than up-front rejection. So, we’ll just cool our heels for a bit on this one, and keep our fingers crossed.

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