boston
Post Visit
Work and More
Home alone. Chhavi left for Tennessee Monday, and I’ve basically been alone since then. It’s been strangely nice, strangely empty. As I told her last night, I don’t really miss her during the day because I never really see her during the day. But at night, it’s a little different. I really don’t find I miss her, though, until it’s time to go to bed. I guess that’s just indicative of the lifestyle we’ve been living for several months now: we come home and then basically do our own things, alone, until it’s time for dinner, then again until it’s time for bed.
So the big DLI news this week: Tuesday we went out for lunch with Kali — Sweet Chili’s in Arligton — and as we were sitting down, Beth said something to me under her breath: “Did you know Val’s leaving?” I thought she was joking at first, but she had known well enough about Kali, so I took it as being probably true. Then Kali told us all. “Val’s leaving. Today is his last day.” So we went to Carberry’s and got a cake for him, then to Buck-a-Book and bought a card for him.
This means that the whole production-side mid/upper level management is now gone. Well, that’s not quite true since Natalie has her new position. Still, a whole level of the hierarchy has been taken out (i.e., vice president of production). Natalie will report straight to Layne now, as will Adam I suppose. I don’t honestly see that this will be much of a problem. If Val was incompetent as Peter always said, then it will actually be a good thing.
It’s interesting — six months after Rob quit and about three months after Peter quit, everyone they had problems with quit as well: Celina, Val, and Kali. Of course Rob would figure out someone else to have issues with. He seemed to latch onto hating Dale for the hell of it, so maybe someone else would get his dander up. And of course not everyone who annoyed him has left — Ron Smith (who, I admit, is fairly annoying) is still there. What the hell he’s doing, I’ve no idea.
How many people does that leave that were at DLI when I arrived? Bob, of course, and maybe a handful of others. I think Ellen Dixon was there before me, as were a few of the graphics folks and Kiki. Otherwise, I’m probably in the top ten as far as longevity goes.
Now for the big news. Yesterday I was talking to Natalie to see if there was anything she needed me to do, and she said, “No, but I wanted to talk to you.” Off we went to her cube, where she explained that Layne (!?) had asked her whether she would be willing to give me up to tech. Basically, the COO has noticed my work on the tech side of things and talked to my superior about getting me to change departments. Of course I said I was interested, and we then went over to meet with Kevin, the new CTO.
He’s a fairly mellow guy, I think, at least as far as his personality goes. I foresee him being a good guy to work with, though. I think he’ll expect a hell of a lot out of the people under him, but at the same time I think he’ll provide all the support we would need to get the job done.
We talked about the Big Dig that’s coming for the DLI site. Basically, we’re going to reconstruct the site while keeping the existing site going — hence the Big Dig metaphor. I’ve been thinking for a while that we could reduce the whole site down to ASP and SQL and have each page dynamically generated for each user. “That would entail creating a new linking tool,” I thought, “As well as completely re-doing the site. And that’s a huge expense that I don’t think DLI is interested in incurring.” Well, guess what we’re doing — something very similar. No ASP, though. Instead, it’ll all be XML with a Unix base and an Oracle DB. Three things I know nothing about. When Kevin explained the use of Unix and Oracle, I said, “There’s two things I know absolutely nothing about.” His response was quite encouraging: “So that’s two things you’ll have to learn.” Or something along those lines.
One of the things he mentioned was something else I’d never head of — digital dashboards. It turns out that we’re only using a small percentage of the Exchange server and Outlook’s capabilities. These two things can be used to provide massive amounts of information to in-house (and probably outside) employees, but we simply haven’t made the most of it. That’s one thing that Kevin wants us to do, and that makes me, in turn, very excited. I love the idea of being able to make stuff that directly impacts others’ lives and makes their work easier.
Speaking of that, one thing I haven’t written about but that I’m very happy about is the impact my silly macros (I must admit, I’m really sick of that word.) have had on others. Stephen Cebik told me that my macros have cut a process that used to take him upwards of five days down to a day and a half. That’s a major time savings. And of course part of me wants to say, “Hey, why don’t you tell Layne and Jay that. Maybe they’ll send a bit of those hundreds of dollars I’ve saved the company back my way.”
Back to my meeting with Kevin. He told me that I should think during the Christmas break about what kinds of things I’d like to do, then added with a laugh, “And then I’ll have you doing something entirely different.” I think that’s what I’ll do now — a list of things I’d love to do at DLI.
I’d like to be able to work with people a lot. That’s why this digital dashboard stuff seems so exciting to me. It would be like making macros in that I would be creating things that helped people in the here and now. So I think that would be a great thing to get started on — creating these dashboards, working with people to find out what then want/need in such a tool, teaching people how to use the tools (both the old and the new tools), and so on.
I think I could be most useful as something of a liaison between the editors and the software developers as it comes time to begin planning and coding the new tools necessitated by the site’s renovation. I know how editors work; I know how editors use the tools they already have; I know the problems editors have with the existing software. Who better to help plan the production-side tools?
I finally got a letter from someone in Poland — Halina sent me a letter with a Christmas gift — a tape called Śpiewają Gwiazdy Polskiej Estrady Najpięniejsze Kolędy, which I haven’t listened to. She told me about how things at school are going. Recently the liceum celebrated its fifth anniversary — I don’t really wish I could have been there for that, though. A bunch of speeches? No thanks. Of course there would have been some student recitals and singing, which was always nice. Anyway, it was nice to hear from her, though I wish she’d written sooner.
I found recently a new site dealing with the WCG and it’s spliters — including some I’d never heard of. It’s at: http://www.apollo.spaceports.com/~truth/index.html. Anyway, here’s something fascinating:
William F. Dankenbring now believes that the Israelites ignored Moses' instruction to stay in their houses all night and that the Passover was on the fifteenth day of the first month, rather than on the fourteenth as taught by Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA). John D. Keyser, one of William's associates for the past ten years, has gone even further, breaking away from Triumph Prophetic Ministries to start his own splinter group called Hope of Israel Ministries. Ignoring the Genesis account, John Keyser has now started to teach that the week has a pagan origin, and that the weekly Sabbath changes each month due to the new moon and can fall on any day of the week.
I just found the website, so I’m going to explore for a while now.
Party
Speech
Last night I went to hear Elie Wiesel’s third and final lecture in the 2000 BU lecture series, and as seems to be the tradition, he spoke about contemporary times. I arrived late (I waited for about 25 minutes for a B train — about five D trains, three or four E trains, and a couple of C trains went by in the meantime.) and had to sit in the back section. Two rows ahead of me and to my right sat a black couple — I would say “African American” in some stupid effort to be PC, but I don’t know that they were Americans. They could have been “African French” or even simply “African” — for what any of those labels are worth. Anyway, an interesting thing happened during the lecture, and it happened not once but twice. When Wiesel began talking about the troubles in the Middle East, he said essentially that these events showed the world what kind of man Arafat truly is, namely as someone who can’t be trusted. “When you see the generosity of Barak’s offered concessions . . . “ he began, and the black woman in front of me began shaking her head in disagreement, her brow wrinkled to show her disapproval. She sat slightly to the right of me and was watching Wiesel on the monitor to the left of me, so I could also see her eyes, which she rolled several times as if she couldn’t believe what Wiesel was saying, as if he were saying something as ridiculous as, “All the world’s troubles are due to Arafat.”
This reaction really didn’t shock me. “Perhaps she’s just a person with extreme leftist views, one of those who really feel that Israel as no right to exist as a state,” I thought. I didn’t really think any more of it for a few moments.
Wiesel continued by condemning the violence in the Middle Ease, and then violence in general. “Where words leave off, violence begins,” he said, continuing by essentially saying, “There is never an excuse for violence.” — surely, I would have thought everyone in the room would have agreed with that. Yet I glanced at the black woman and once again she was shaking her head, as if to say, “What a fucking idiot — of course there’s a time for violence. Sometimes that’s the only course left for someone to take.”
I was tempted — though I did not act on this temptation — to catch up to her and the individual she was with and ask them what they found so offensive in what Wiesel was saying, particularly about violence. Maybe they were Muslims who support the Intafada. Who knows. Who cares, in the end.
Monday I met Chhavi downtown to watch a film (You Can Count on Me — I give it a 7 or 7.5 out of 10, with its realism being its greatest strength.) and so I rode the Orange Line down to Back Bay and Mary accompanied me. For some reason she mentioned that she heard we were getting raises — everyone. She even said that Kali herself had said something about it. The figure she’d heard? A huge one percent pay increase. Wow. That’s a whole $350 a year. Shit — I don’t know what I’d do with that kind of money. Surely she must have heard wrong, for that amounts to less than $30 a month. Anyway, I mentioned to her that Chhavi had been encouraging me to ask for a raise, and then she said it — the bombshell — “Yeah, you should. I mean if Michael Lacoy asks for a raise every week, why shouldn’t you?” Now if what she said earlier was true, specifically, that the new editors are getting offered $40,000 to attract “more qualified” individuals, then he’s already making something like twelve percent more than I make. And he’s only been working there for a few weeks — less than three months, I think. That’s fairly ridiculous. If it’s true, of course, and I can’t assume it is.
I can “assume” (to continue with parallel grammatical structure) that I haven’t gotten a raise since I started working there, and that I’ve been working there for almost a year now. Marlon told me he got a $5,000 raise at one point, and that everyone in the tech team has gotten a raise. But the other side of production? I guess we’re just a cliché dime-a-dozen. Or perhaps $480,000 a dozen.
On to another topic — Edyta. I haven’t written to her since I left Poland, and that was almost six months ago. At first I purposely didn’t write to her because I didn’t know what to say. Now I want to write to her, but I’ve no idea what to say. What I need to say is, “Sorry. That shouldn’t have happened, and I’m afraid that the fact that it did has ruined our relationship.” I guess in the end, it’s just not that important to me. I hesitate to write to her because I don’t want all the work that would be required to try to get things back to normal between us.
Other news — I got a message from Kamil Sunday (though I didn’t actually read it or even know about it until I got to work Monday morning) and he told me that Jasiu has agreed to re-employ him. His plans are to finish out the school year, then look for a job in Kraków. Barring that, he wants to try to come to the States for a while. So it’s now conceivable that I could go back to Lipnica (provided Jasiu gives me a job) and neither Kamil nor Janusz would be there — just as Chhavi predicted. And of course Kinga would be off at university most of the time, leaving me fairly alone. Does that disturb me? A little, to be honest. But more than anything it makes me think, “I need to get cracking so that I can tell everyone of my intentions.”
A Mess of Nonsense
Parents’ Visit
In a couple of days my parents arrive. I haven’t seen them since last Christmas. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, in reality. By the time they get here it will have been ten months, but it feels only like half that. I guess despite the horror of it, this last year has gone by fairly quickly.
In the middle of my parents’ arrival Thursday and the last time I saw them lies my trip to Lipnica. Five months ago. It doesn’t see that long, either. I guess that’s what happens when you spend every day obsessing over something. I have to admit, though, it’s gotten a whole lot better. In fact, when I think of going back to Lipnica, I’m not filled with this sickening surity that I must go back or I’ll go insane. I guess saying it’s getting “better” is a relative thing because there’s still a large part of me that wants to go back, and another portion of me — God, how many parts have I divided myself into? — wants to cling desparately to that bit of desire to return, to encourage it to grow somehow.
Truth is, I’m not that terribly unhappy at work. The job is, indeed, somewhat boring when I’m stuck doing editing, but I’m doing that less and less these days. And working with people I like is a vast improvement over my job in Lipnica where I could barely stand the sight of the other teachers. And yet at the weekends, it hits me — I’m terribly lonely and I feel awfully empty when I don’t have anything to do. I guess the trick is keeping my mind busy.
Anyway, my parents are coming, but they’re not bringing the cats. I feel awful about that, but I don’t really know what we’re doing next year and I think it will be better if we just find the Puck and Lily a new home. The trouble, though, is that it is not I who will be doing it, but my parents. I feel like I’ve asked so much of them regarding those two. I guess it really is unfair to them in a lot of ways, but what can I do?
When they get here, hopefully we’ll have a chance to have dinner together just the three of us. Well, I guess we’ll be spending a lot of time together in the afternoons without Chhavi so that won’t be necessary. At any rate, I guess what I meant was that I’d like to have the chance to talk to them alone. I’d like to see what they think about all this returning-to-Poland/not-having-kids/lack-of-fulfillment/lack-of-happiness situation.
General Thoughts
Critical Conversation
General Entry
I was reading a little from Luci Shaw’s Life Path and if course I’m thinking, “I should be writing in my journal every single day. Every morning.” I write more in my journal these days about the fact that I never write than anything else. What all could I write about? My job — dealing with the nonsense that goes on there. My continuing frustration with Kali’s “I don’t get it” juxtaposed to her increasing “confidence.” There we go — I’ll write about that for a while.
Kali seems to be almost arrogant with her confidence at times. It’s very strange because on the one hand she complains about “not getting it” with certain things that I have written that I think are crystal clear, and then she seems to say that she can do anything she wants, that she’s the greatest asset our whole company has. I’ve just learned to deal with her on a case-by-case basis and realize that almost everything I give her will be declared completely incomprehensible at some point — one passage, one sentence, one silly word even.
I’m listening to BNL’s “When You Dream,” and it’s making me think about what it would be like to have a child. Originally I wrote “what it will be like,” then changed it to “will/would,” then dropped the definitive verb altogether and just stuck with the conditional. Second conditional in fact — used for things that aren’t the case and probably won’t be the case. Like saying, “If Bolek were a king,” I might have explained in class with last year’s IVB. So it’s almost the middle of September and I still haven’t talked to Chhavi. I still haven’t asked her a short (but not simple) question: Do you really think you’ll ever want to have a child?
And I guess I really need to ask myself beforehand: how much do I really want a child? Would I want one right now? No — certainly not. There’s no certainty in our life right now. We don’t know how long we’ll be living here or there or anywhere. And why would that stop me? Because it goes against everything I’ve always imagined my life would be like as a parent: having someplace that we stay for several years. A place to settle down, to put roots down — all those stupid cliches for which there are no other words, or for which I don’t want to search for replacements. So that’s the situation. I have this preconceived notion of how my life would be — probably an image I’ve had since I first took an interest in girls — once I fell in love and all that jazz. And yet nothing else has turned out as I would have thought when I was 15 or 16, so why should this be any different?
What are my alternatives? If C were to say she didn’t really think she would ever want children, and if — and that’s a huge “if” — I were to decide that because of this I should go my own way, what are my alternatives? Not many as I can tell.
I’ll finish this later today I hope.