the lost journals

[Kragen Sitaker]

The lost journals: things that should have been posted to
kragen-journal, but couldn't be

2001-06-09: Camping

I thought I'd still be at work now, but instead, I'm in the wilderness
of Mendocino County.

I had a lot of work to do this last week; I shuffled Slink off to Ben
for the week, borrowed Adam's guest bedroom (because Adam lives close
to the office), and put in something like a 70-hour week.  I didn't
get it all done --- I got about as much done as I'd expected --- but
the bit I'd postponed till the end turned out to be nonessential
anyway.

So there's a party an old friend of mine was throwing in Mendocino
County, a camping party.  I wanted to come, but told her I couldn't
--- I was going to be at work all weekend long.  But it turns out I
could come anyway.

I left my house in San Francisco around 18:30; other than a stop in San
Rafael to buy a sleeping bag and tent, the trip consisted mostly of
driving 80MPH through gorgeous mountain and coast landscapes.

The final leg of the trip --- five or ten miles of heavily washboarded
dirt road, average speed 12 MPH --- was the hardest.  I guess I needed
to get a front-end alignment job anyway.

Setting up a tent in the middle of the forest without even direct
moonlight is not the easiest thing; I eventually made occasional use
of my flashlights to finish the job.

So now I'm in my sleeping bag in my tent; it's a bit past 23:00, and
it seems that everyone else has gone to bed.  I haven't seen another
human being in hours.  I guess I should have left San Francisco a
couple of hours earlier.

But I was too sleepy.  

You see, last night, I went to the ballet with my friend Jill; then
she invited me to a hot-tub party at another hacker's house.  I dried
off and put my clothes back on a bit past midnight and went back to
work to get clothes I'd left there, but I got into a conversation
there, so I didn't end up leaving there until past 3:30.

I was ravenous, but very few restaurants are open at 4:30 AM, even in
San Francisco.  As the sky in the east turned from black to deep blue,
I gave up and settled for the Video Cafe --- a place near my house
with unbelievably bad sanitation and food and unbelievably slow
service, but the only place I could find.

I got to sleep around 5:30 and woke up around 13:00.  

So I have a little catching up on my sleep to do tonight.


In other news: Jamie and I broke up a few weeks ago; KnowNow had its
first layoff in several months; and my grandparents are very sick,
which makes me very sad.


2001-06-18: work crisis

The camping trip worked out fairly nicely.

I've been sleeping fairly late --- going to bed at midnight or later,
then waking up between 9:00 and 12:00.  This is partly because I've been
spending so much of my night time at parties.

This weekend, I spent much of Saturday hiking and watching A Midsummer
Night's Dream with a friend of mine, then much of Sunday at a party at
Romana Machado's house.  Met lots of interesting people.  Had lots of fun.
Played catch with a four-year-old.

This morning, our VP of engineering wanted to meet with me.  He was upset
that the stuff I'd been working on for three weeks still wasn't done
and also, apparently, that I doubted him.

So now I wish I'd spent the weekend at work.  There's so much that needs
doing, and needed doing this weekend, which I probably should have
been doing.  Today is our nominal release date.

I was thinking this morning about the two hours or so I'd spent last
night reading Slashdot and other web pages; I got home around 23:00, but
didn't get to sleep until around 2:00.  Those hours did not contribute
to making my life better, or anyone else's, either --- although I did
learn about Rob Levin's experience of unemployment, our president's
recent surprise at the size of our nuclear arsenal, etc.

Far too few of my waking hours are really spent productively.  Parties
are nice and all --- I've certainly met a lot of people --- but I'm not
really accomplishing the things I've wanted to accomplish outside of work.

I don't seem to be in immediate danger of running out of money to do
things like go to restaurants with, but I'm not saving money, either.
My current cash-flow projection says I'll have a little more than one
paycheck in the bank at the end of the month, and I'm still not sure
quite where all the money is going.

My car has a long list of things wrong: the brakes shudder, the
driver-side seatbelt is broken, the turn signal doesn't cancel,
screws are missing from the interior, the upholstery is dirty, the
exhaust system is leaky and noisy, the air conditioner is broken, the
driver-side automatic door lock no longer works, and the right rear
tire keeps leaking.  Fixing any of these things would improve my life.
(I'm getting the brakes and the exhaust fixed today.)

And there are a wide variety of other things I could do to improve
my life.  Sweep my bedroom floor regularly, file my papers at work,
throw out the junk in my bedroom, get some unripped jeans, exercise
regularly, get into paying bills before they're due, get my California
license and registration, getting my computer out to California and set
up --- so many things.

But I keep spending my time doing less-productive things like reading
interesting but useless web pages, chatting on ICB, going to parties,
and driving.  I've been driving to work (100 miles a day, $30+ per day
at 30+ cents per mile; the IRS's business driving rate is 34.5 cents per
mile, based on new-car depreciation, maintenance, fuel, oil, and fixed
costs), which is a huge waste of time as well as money.

Of the 168 hours in the last week, I think I spent 40 at work, 60 asleep,
9 at Bab5, 10 commuting by car, 9 at the barbecue on Sunday, 10 going
on the hike/play trip --- leaving perhaps 30 hours unaccounted for,
most of which I spend in the aforementioned activities of reading web
pages and chatting on icb.

2001-07-01
I called my friend Jill.

"Hello?"  Her voice sounded a little strange.

"Hi, Jill?"

"Hello?"  Actually, it didn't sound like Jill at all.

"Hi, is this Jill?  I must have the wrong number."

"No, but I kind of wish I was, from the sound of your voice."

Laughs.  "Sorry."  And we hung up.

Jamie told me once I could no more stop flirting than I could stop
breathing.  Over the past few weeks, two different women have thought I
was making passes at them.  I didn't think I was.

I've had a miserable weekend.  Something I've been putting off for
weeks I promised I'd have done Monday.  I intended to get it done
Friday, but it's Sunday afternoon, and I still haven't gotten it done.

[important events: I got fired from KnowNow between these two entries]

2001-07-28:
It's 16:32 on 2001-07-28.  I'm crossing the San Mateo Bridge after having a
bunch of hassles with National Car Rental.

I picked National because the reservation sales agent told me on the phone
that I wouldn't have to pay extra money for being under 25, as long as the
primary driver (Beatrice) was over 25.  This made National considerably
cheaper for our one-week trip than Enterprise, which charged an extra $10 
per day.  So I made a reservation with National.

We arrived at 14:06 at the car rental office, parking Beatrice's car
in the 20-minute rental-car pickup area.  My experience with car
rentals in the past has usually been pretty good, but I never made the
mistake of dealing with National before.

We were up at the counter talking to an agent by 14:23, which
concerned us a bit --- we didn't want the car we'd parked in the
twenty-minute zone to get towed.

But it took an unusually long time to check in and get the car; it
turns out National charges $25 per day to have a secondary driver
who's under 25.  They didn't change their mind about this even when I
explained that they had promised a lower rate to me when I made the
reservation.

So, in order to avoid being any later for our departure than we
already were, we agreed to allow them to cheat us out of the extra
$175.

I thought that making a reservation meant they would ensure a car was
available for you, but that doesn't seem to be what it means to
National.  They told us to go out into the garage and pick from the
full-size cars they had available.  Unfortunately, when we got there,
there were no full-size cars available.

The National employees in the garage were less than helpful in
explaining the situation to us, but eventually we figured it out: one
particular row of cars was the full-size section, and that section was
completely empty.

I went back out to sit in the car we'd driven there in to make sure it
didn't get towed.

We finally got a car around 15:20, a red Impala with 8000 miles on it,
and moved all of our luggage from Beatrice's car into the Impala.

Then we had to park Beatrice's car in the long-term parking lot, which
was fuller than we'd anticipated.


The last three weeks have been amazing.  I met Beatrice at a
fund-raising party for the Love Rangers, a Burning Man camp; the party
was on Saturday, 2001-07-07, from 7 PM to 7 AM, with a $7 donation
requested at the door.  We hit it off pretty much immediately,
spending about five or six hours talking to each other, giving each
other footrubs, snuggling, and kissing.

We went out for a long walk on the beach that Monday, sent lots of
email back and forth, and spent the night together on Wednesday ---
and every night since, with the exception of last Monday, as well as
all of our free time.

I am madly in love.  She is smart, idealistic, funny, joyous,
gorgeous, incredibly sexy, independent, assertive, and playful.  And
--- most amazing of all --- she thinks I'm wonderful.

We're on a one-week road trip now; we're driving down to meet her
family in Los Angeles this weekend, and then to spend some time with
my family in New Mexico --- and just to have fun driving through the
country together.  We also think it will help us get to know each
other a lot better; so far we've only been able to spend entire days
together on weekends.


2001-08-01
It's Wednesday, and we're still madly in love.

Saturday, we woke up at Beatrice's sister's house in Hollywood and
went out to brunch with her dad.  We headed over to his house to enjoy
his hot tub, and then headed back to the house to regroup for dinner.

We ...

Monday, we woke up at Beatrice's sister's house in Hollywood and went
to visit her father at work; I got a chance to meet her brother and
the rest of the crew her dad works with.  They were working on a movie
called "K-19".

In the afternoon, we drove east from LA to Arizona; we stopped just
after Blythe and went for a swim in the Colorado River.

We arrived in Phoenix fairly late that night, and dropped in for a
brief visit with my aunt Kathy.  My uncle is on a business trip, so we
didn't get a chance to see him, but it was really good to see Kathy
--- I hadn't seen her since late 1999.

Tuesday morning, Beatrice and I woke up in a tent at Oak Flat
campground, near Superior, Arizona --- about 30-50 miles east of
Phoenix.  When we awoke, there were three geldings outside our tent,
slowly grazing on the sparse local vegetation.  Beatrice walked
outside the tent and greeted them, petting their necks.

We put on our shoes and took a walk through the gorgeous desert plants
and big chunks of tuff, solidified volcanic ash.

The sun had come up over the mountains in the distance as we walked
through the desert, and so we returned to the tent to put on some
clothes --- we didn't want to get sunburned.

After breaking camp, we drove east along highway 60 for most of the
day, through Salt River Canyon, up and down breathtaking mountains,
across the Continental Divide, into dry grassland, across the Plains
of San Agustin, past the VLA radio telescope, through sunny weather
and heavy rain, and into the little town of Socorro, New Mexico, where
my parents and my cousin Ben went to college, where I lived for two
years, and where much of my family lives now.

Now, Beatrice works for a charity called Project Fit America, which
runs a physical fitness program for kids; it produces a curriculum,
some exercise equipment, and trains the P.E. teachers to run the
program.  The equipment is installed at some 350 schools around the
country.  PFA is her and her boss Stacey.

As we were driving around Socorro, we passed some playground
equipment, and suddenly Beatrice wanted me to pull over.  It was PFA
equipment!  I was finally getting a chance to get a look at the end
result of what Beatrice does for a living.  We stopped, did some of
the exercises, and took pictures.

We slept at my mother's house in Socorro Tuesday night after a big
family dinner out on the back patio.  My aunt Susan, her husband Eric,
their daughter Ariel, my mother, her boyfriend Dick, and my sister
Serafina were all there, in addition to me and Beatrice.

We'd planned to leave early Wednesday morning, but ended up leaving
early Wednesday afternoon instead.  We drove east toward my
grandparents' house in a little town called Portales.

I haven't seen my grandparents since December, when I drove through
New Mexico on the way from Ohio to Silicon Valley.  My grandmother is
pretty far gone at this point, having a hard time having coherent
conversations.

So that's a big part of why I want to visit them.  I don't know if
I'll get another chance to visit my grandmother before she dies --- in
some sense, she's already pretty dead --- and my grandfather will
surely appreciate the chance to see me.

It's a long detour --- adds another ten hours or so of driving to our
trip --- but it's pretty important.

We stopped in Fort Sumner, looked at the Billy the Kid museum, and ate
some Mexican food in a little restaurant with no other customers.
Beatrice bought some tchotchkes for the folks back home, including a
little packet of postcards to send from New Mexico.

We're listening to "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill", which I guess
won Lauryn Hill some awards a year or two ago; I think it's the only
hip-hop we've brought on this trip, despite the large number of CDs we
packed.  Of the songs on the album, I've only heard "That Thing" in
the past; I'm enjoying hearing the rest of the album.

We drove through thunderstorms earlier today, but now --- around 18:00
--- the sky is blue and the sun is shining.  There are clouds to the
west, and scattered around the rest of the sky; the grasslands around
us shine yellow, dotted with dark trees, and occasionally we see a
house.

The land has been the same for nearly four hours, since we came out of
the Manzano mountains south of Albuquerque.  It's flat, grassy, and
dry; the High Plains of New Mexico.  My mother grew up in Portales,
and this was the country she lived in until adulthood.

* * *

The visit with my grandparents went very well; my grandmother LaVelle
was a little confused (she couldn't remember I'd been married for four
years) but was still obviously herself, even if she wasn't able to do
much.

My aunt Sharon dropped in a little later, and Beatrice, Sharon, and I
went out to Pat's, a fast-food stand that has the status of a major
Portales institution.

The three of us talked about various little things; Sharon's trip to
Germany, my job, etc.

Then Beatrice and I went to visit Natividad Macaranas, my father's
father's widow, and her husband, Charlie Brown.  We sat in their
hammock, ate the grapes from their arbor, and chatted with them about
their recent cruise on the Delta Queen riverboat.

Now it's 23:00 and we're headed back toward Santa Rosa, where Susan's
father Charles lives.  We should arrive there around midnight.

So Beatrice has now been introduced to
. my mother Carolyn
. my sister Serafina
. my cousin Ben
. his mother Susan
. her husband Eric
. their daughter Ariel
. my grandmother LaVelle
. my grandfather John
. my stepgrandmother Natividad
. her husband Charlie
... ten members of my family, seven of whom she's met only in the last
day and a half.  Tomorrow she'll probably meet at least two or three more.