So here's what happened. Again.

Last time I wrote a post, I was living in Rhode Island. Since then, I have relocated to the Seattle area, along with my hubby & kids. As you may recall, we moved to Providence, RI in May of 2011, which was not so very long ago.

Two cross-country moves in fourteen months? Yes.

We moved to Providence because my hubby, Sam, who is a video game engineer, accepted a job with former up-and-coming MMO developer 38 Studios. It was a great opportunity for him to work on a project that, while maybe not groundbreaking in the genre, would have taken existing MMO conventions to new heights of gameplay and aesthetics. And it was a great opportunity for both of us to meet some really amazing people who we are going to be friends with for the rest of our lives. If nothing else, moving to Providence was worth it just for that.

Fast-forward to May 15th, 2012...one day before Sam's one year anniversary of joining the company. 38 Studios failed to make payroll and a few days later it came to light that the company had also defaulted on a loan payment to the RIEDC. A lot of drama and heartbreak and political mudslinging ensued, which has been reported on extensively, so I am not going to rehash all the details. Gamasutra did a good job of covering the drama from the employees' perspective, and you can read about it for yourself here if you are curious.

On June 15th, Sam was in California finishing his second week of interviews with game studios up and down the West Coast and I was home in Providence trying to get our house ready to put on the market, trying to find a way to cope with leaving the friends I had made over the previous year, and doing a horrible job at both.

On July 15th we had brunch with our best friends, said good-bye and then boarded a one-way flight to Seattle. We're now camping out at Sam's parents' house until our stuff gets delivered to our new place in Kirkland next week. The following week Sam will start his new job at Valve, and the kids and I will start the long and exhausting process of unpacking, settling in and making friends. Again.

Going from the first inkling that something was wrong to having picked up and fully relocated ourselves to the complete opposite end of the country in just two months is a lot to deal with. I wish I could get excited about being here, and I'm sure I will in a few more weeks, but for now my head is still spinning and my heart is still aching. Our best friend couple from 38 Studios are moving to Warsaw in September, which will put them very close to the opposite side of the planet and the opposite end of the day from us. My other best friend from Providence has lived there all her life and has no reason to go anywhere else, since she and her husband aren't connected with 38 Studios at all. We have a number of other dear friends among the ex-38 crowd who are also staying in Rhode Island or moving to the Boston area. We're also leaving behind some of our favorite cousins in northern New Jersey, who we were really happy to have reconnected with over the last year. The silver lining, of course, is that we now have a whole bunch of people to go visit in that corner of the country, but that doesn't begin to make up for the fact that we won't get to see any of them more than once a year for the foreseeable future.

Don't get me wrong, Seattle has a lot going for it: my in-laws are here, which is wonderful for many reasons, and our proximity to them means we will see more of the siblings and cousins who come visit regularly. My brother and his wife live in the area, which means we will see a lot more of them and we will also see more of my dad, who will be able to come for more frequent and longer visits. My best friends from college (who introduced me to Sam, incidentally) live in north Idaho, so we will be able to see a lot more of them than we have for the last few years. I have another good friend from college who visits the area several times a year and a friend from high school who now lives & teaches here. There are a number of ex-38ers moving to the area, some of whom we are pretty good friends with. And we are that much closer to all the people we miss in California, whom we will get to see a little more frequently now.

I'll post an update about how awesome everything is here once the dust settles and we get unpacked and organized. Meanwhile, to my friends and loved ones in New England, California, and all the far-flung corners of the world: know that I am thinking of you and wishing you were all closer.

Bitches love sonnets

So apparently this is a thing now:

I don't really know why it's a thing, but it's sort of funny.

Anyway, the friend who first raised my consciousness to the notion that bitches, in fact, love sonnets is himself an avid writer of sonnets and he happened to text me a sonnetized version of "The Wheels On the Bus" today. It's every bit as hilariously brilliant as it sounds. He followed it with the words "tag, you're it."

WELL! I am certainly not one to let a challenge like that go unanswered.

So I put some thought into it, because honestly it's pretty hard to top "The Wheels On the Bus" in iambic pentameter...I thought about sonnets, and the bitches who love them, and after some serious cogitation I decided that if Sir Mix-a-lot had been a contemporary of Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, he might have written it this way:

I love my ladies statuesque, 'tis true,

And nor can my fraternity deny

That when a damsel wanders into view,

Her lovely orbs to thy visage drawn nigh,

Then how like tight-wound clockwork from its case

Burst forth the ard'rous longings in thy breast,

For thou didst note with joy clear on thy face

How tight against her skirt said orbs were press'd.

Compared to her all others are inferior.

We sing the praises of her grand posterior!

(See what I did there with the clockwork as imagery for getting "sprung?" Awwwww yeeeeeeeeah!)

Fan Fiction

The following is a Harry Potter fan fiction piece that my kids wrote together. Thing Two (a.k.a. Stella, age 4) dictated the text, Thing One (a.k.a. Mirah, age 8) wrote it down, and they both collaborated on the illustrations. I have no words for how awesome I think it is, but I'm their mom so of course I love it. Without further ado, for your amusement and edification, I present you with "Stella the Auror."

The End!

Almost...

There's also the teaser page that Thing One drew for the back cover:

Them's fightin' words...

Yup, it's a political post. I usually stay out of political discussions because in my experience they mostly boil down to Your Party vs. My Party backed up by talking points that may or may not be based on factual information or logically sound reasoning, and to me those are not worth losing friends over.

The problem with staying disengaged is that I miss out on the occasional valid point that I haven't heard before that makes it clear where those on the other side of the issue are coming from. And I want to know! I sincerely want to believe that my fellow American voters actually DO have really good reasons for their various viewpoints, and that they aren't just buying into propaganda. If I'm going to have heated disagreements with my friends on policy issues, I want us to be able to walk away respecting the validity of each other's positions, even if we still disagree about the specific goals of policy or the methods for achieving those goals.

So, at the risk of starting something that may degrade into the intellectual version of Rollerball, I'm going to state my case on a hot-button issue in the hopes of getting some insight from the other side. Because frankly, after years of listening to the back-and-forth, I still have no idea why the other side's position continues to be supported.

The issue? Marriage equality!

I support it. Of course. I want to live in a country whose legal system treats people equally. Totally equally, not 'separate-but-equal'-ly or some more equally than others. I do NOT want to live in a country where I may be subject to different treatment under the law than another person in my situation based solely on personal characteristics that I can't change. And, no, sexual orientation is not a choice. There's plenty of research out there to back me up on that. Google it.

So far, all the arguments I've heard for restricting marriage laws boil down to one of three things:

1) Same-sex couples can't have children, and the historical purpose of marriage is to provide for reproduction and raising of children.

Not only does this argument completely ignore the thousands of couples who are bravely raising children in spite of the current hostile political and social climate AND the thousands upon thousands more couples who would love more than anything to raise families together but aren't willing to do so in the current climate, but by that logic opposite-sex couples shouldn't be legally recognized as 'married' either if they don't intend to have children. Next?

2) Homosexuality goes against the Bible.

Well, maybe...so does eating shellfish, and as far as I know nobody's trying to criminalize that. It's true that our legal system takes inspiration from the Christian Bible and its predecessor the Torah...and also from a lot of other cultural and historical traditions. The laws of our religiously pluralistic country cannot and should not be defined by one religion's dogma. That bit in the Constitution about making 'no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof'? Yeah, that goes both ways. If Congress can't dictate religion to the people of the US, neither can religion dictate the law. What else ya got?

3) Homosexuality is unnatural/pathological/icky.

That's a matter of opinion, not fact. All the available scientific evidence suggests otherwise. The American Psychological Association defines sexual orientation as an aspect of personality, not as a matter of normal or abnormal psychology. Incidentally, at different times in our nation's history, the above has been said about all kinds of things people didn't like, including interracial marriage, women participating in the workforce and left-handedness. It wasn't a valid legal argument against any of those things either.

So, to all you marriage "traditionalists" out there: What gives? Do you guys have an actual LEGAL basis for wanting to exclude same-sex couples from your club? If so, I would love to hear it!

Never underestimate the healing power of bacon

My therapist suggested that I could counteract the first-winter-away-from-home blues by engaging my senses with more things that sound/look/smell/taste/feel good to me, like happy music, scented candles, etc., etc. The idea is that by kicking up the level of positively-associated sensory stimulation a notch, you can distract your brain from focusing on whatever it's depressed about which, even if it doesn't solve the underlying problem, will hopefully help you get through your day without bursting into tears every ten minutes.

So, to that end, I have been eating more bacon. A lot more. And it's totally working.

It's true what they say: bacon really does make everything better. Even homesickness and seasonal depression.

Who knew self-medicating could be so tasty?

Not a New Year's Resolution

I don't really go in for New Year's resolutions like some people do. I'd like to, and there have been years when I've sat down and tried to write out a list of things to work on for the year. But I find that once I start thinking about things I'd like to change or do differently, those things start snowballing in my mind until they quickly grow into a tall, steep, imposing mountain of Things That Could Be Improved that is cold and windy, especially up above the snow line, and I start feeling like maybe I'm better off staying warm and comfortable down here on the plains of The Way Things Currently Are.

So this year, no resolutions.

Instead, I'm going to try something new in 2012. I'm going to do a project. If it doesn't work out, no big deal, I'm not out anything except some time. If it does, I'll have learned a lot of new and interesting stuff that will serve me well in the future. By the way, I'm also not starting this right now because of the New Year...I just happened to think of it in January.

So here's my plan: during January through October of 2012 I'm aiming to pick one course a month from MIT's OpenCourseWare offerings and work through as much of each one as I can. I'm planning to pick a variety of topics, some familiar, some not, some useful, some just for fun. And I'm going to do it all for free, using the OpenCourseWare content, my local library, and the Internet.

If you're not familiar with OpenCourseWare, it's an amazing learning resource. Reading lists, discussion questions, assignments, lecture notes, and other content from MIT's classes are available free of charge for use by the general public. Because content is made available at the discretion of the professors and departments who offer the courses, some courses have more content available than others. Still, it's a great starting point for exploring topics you might be interested in. For example, say you want to learn the basics of computer programming...you can navigate to the Introduction to Computer Science & Programming class, track down and read the books/articles listed on the "Readings" page, watch the video lectures that are available for the course, and work through the assignments. If you get hung up on something, you may not have access to a real live professor, but you can post questions to the discussion forum for the class and get answers from other students who are working through the course.

Why am I doing this? Two reasons:

First, because there are a lot of really interesting things out there in the world, and I don't know enough about any of them. I'm starting with the Introduction to Political Thought class because, this being election year and all, I really want to have a better grounding in the basics of political science than I do. I'm also planning to do the aforementioned Intro to Computer Science class and probably a class in the basics of accounting and finance. I'm also looking seriously at the music, art history and urban planning offerings. My educational background is in linguistics and anthropology, and I may revisit those areas as well.

Second, I'm hoping to use this as a career development tool. I have a lot of skills, a WHOLE lot of interests, less professional experience than most people my age and no direction to speak of. I'm planning to use the OpenCourseWare classes to explore how and where I can apply the skills I already have, and to identify areas where I might need or want further training. It's not really an issue now, because for the near future (at least the next couple of years), I'm going to be homeschooling at least one of my children full time, but at some point I would like to go back to work. My family is in the extremely fortunate position of not needing two incomes to survive, but the current economic climate makes the security of a second income - even a part-time income - look very appealing. Even more importantly, I'd like to find a use for my skills that will benefit more people than just my immediate family. I'd like to have the satisfaction of doing something constructive to improve the world in some way. And I'd also like to have the satisfaction of getting paid at least the current market rate to do so.

I'm only planning to go through October because I'm FINALLY going to do NaNoWriMo this year come hell or high water and the only projects I plan for December involve making holiday crafts with the kids. And also because ten is such a nice round number.

Oh yeah, and I'm also going to blog more in 2012. But that's not a resolution either. It's just a prediction.

So here's what happened...

Last time I wrote a post, I was living in Southern California. Since then, I have relocated to Providence RI, along with my hubby & kids. That's pretty much what has been happening for the last eight months. Some other stuff probably happened too, but it pales in comparison.

Okay, you're saying to yourself, so that's a BIG move. Yes. Yes it is. It's huge. How did it happen, you ask?

Well, the short version is: The hubby got a job. (You can check out his blog for part 1, part 2 and part 3 of the long version.)

SO I MOVED. Yes, I did.

We flew out to Rhode Island in May, stayed at the Residence Inn for a month and then in a corporate apartment downtown for another month while we waited out the process of buying a house, then had our furniture delivered and settled in to our new home in Providence's lovely East side.

And here I am.

There are many things to love about New England, and Rhode Island in particular has, considering its size, more than its share of awesomeness to offer. For example, Providence is renowned for its food culture, and I've been delighted to find that it lives up to its reputation. Fresh, local and in-season is the standard here. Family farms are well supported and farmers' markets are a mainstream shopping option that are utilized by most people to some degree. Restaurants proudly display on their menus the names of the local farms or towns from which they source their ingredients. People here are more tuned in to where their food comes from and how it's produced than anywhere I've lived before.

And that's saying nothing of the rich history of the region, the support for the arts, the proximity to many of the most respected universities in the world, the spectacular scenery (including beaches!) or any of the other amazing things that make this such a great place.

On the other hand, I'm now spending my first winter in New England after living in California for eighteen years. And it totally sucks. I miss my friends. I miss my house (the one in the OC, which we still own & are renting out to one of those friends I miss so much). I miss being warm. And I miss SUNLIGHT!

Anyway, that's what happened.

I'm hoping things will look better when the days start getting longer and I thaw out a little. Meanwhile, I'll be stepping up my caffeine intake, dressing in layers and shopping for full-spectrum light bulbs.