Near things

[jay]

Today a well-known SF author (Greg Benford) and another UC Irvine scientist were hanging around the Center for Mars Exploration offices at work... he listened in on a discussion that hopeforyou and I had regarding next year's human vs. robotic exploration research. Benford was apparently here to gather background on Gusev Crater on Mars, which we think is a likely paleolake.



While many friends were at WorldCon or Burning Man this weekend, I stayed home and was domestic. Sunday I painted a storage unit and maneuvered it into the kids' room... a near thing, it almost got stuck in the hallway (sheepish grin, I didn't measure the door height 1st). Afterward I went to the city pool with Pat and the kids, and tried out the new waterslide.

patgreene made a mouth-watering peach cobbler for me to take to a non-WorldCon, non-Burning Man party at kokoro43's house. (Now, *that*'s supportive... she rocks :-). There was a hot tub there, and only 8 of us... we all squeezed in ;-). With one person in the middle, on whom there would be much laying of hands, accompanied by singing whatever songs for which we knew the lyrics. I'm happy to give affection, but reluctant to receive it (feeling unworthy, or an imposition on others) but was eventually persuaded to try being in the center. It was... a bit overwhelming. But very good, feeling surrounded by warmth and love and affection, very inclusive. An interesting newcomer C also flirted a bit.. then again, she was affectionate with several of the guys there, so I don't think it meant anything in particular.

patgreene was grumpy because I was over an hour late getting home... she's on edge lately because she feels lonely and isolated, while I appear to be awash in friends and activities. And her pending major surgery is in one week... I'm bracing myself to carry the whole household along for the next few weeks.

Before retreating into semi-seclusion next week, this afternoon I took a late lunch and drove up to SF with hopeforyou to meet clairade, driving to an Italian restaurant (Giorgio's) where I enjoyed far-ranging conversation and vegetarian lasgna (no mushrooms) with my literally generic soft drink ("we serve generic here"). Then it was teatime back at Rose's place, and she showed us her latest collages.

Then back to work, picking up camera equipment before our remote field testing in Arizona later this week.

Comments

How generic is Generic?

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Would that be Generic ?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

patgreene was grumpy because I was over an hour late getting home... she's on edge lately because she feels lonely and isolated, while I appear to be awash in friends and activities.

*nod* That's how cute-poet-chick feels. Says she's jealous because I have a social group that satisfies me and she doesn't (even though my way of finding a social group isn't acceptable to her). *sigh*

[runeshower.livejournal.com]

Hmm; I count 9 people in that hot tub. Glad you decided to take your turn; isn't it amazing how the walls between the people seemed to drop?

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Well actually, it was over two and a half hours late.... and I was mainly grumpy because you hadn't called.

Re: How generic is Generic?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Generically speaking, yes.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

*sigh* indeed. Here, we've never reconnected since I left in mid-July... and Pat is nervous about next week's surgery.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

You're correct... I forgot to count myself. But the barriers between people seemed to come down, or thin, as the evening progressed. And thanks for being encouraging!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Maybe getting a cell phone would help...

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

*nod* If it's not too personal, what kinds of things do you do to reconnect when you've been gone?

[kokoro43.livejournal.com]

Well, I did announce the party as 2pm to dark-ish, but it seemed to have morphed on it's own to 4-11pm. Still, a good time seems to have been had by all!

Not bad for my first party (not the first one at my house, but the first one that I threw).

lateness and worrying

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I would be going nuts if Richard was 2 1/2 hours late home and I didn't know why he was late. It's not just the concern of "oh, he's gone to see another sweetie and he's late, they must be Up to No Good", it's the "oh, he's gone to see another sweetie and he's late - Something Must Have Happened on the way back". Seeing it as solely a mono/poly issue would be missing the broader picture.

I am the sort of person who worries about people being late if they're 10 minutes late, whereas he only starts to worry about someone being late if they're a couple of hours late. Also, my imagination is much wilder than his, so I'm much more inclined to think up Terrible Things That Must Have Happened. How late someone is before the other person starts worrying varies from person to person, and it also depends on things like the length of time that someone is gone for, and how accurate the ETA that they gave was. I know that if Richard is going to Maplin (an electronic parts shop) and says he'll be 15 minutes that he'll return an hour later looking sheepish and clutching a carrier bag far too big for the single resistor he was supposed to be buying. Whereas if he's going out to buy milk and says he'll be 15 minutes, I'll start worrying every minute that he's late.

Mobile phones help considerably. That wasn't the reason we got them initially, but that's what they've become. In a typical day when one of us is away from the other one, we'll talk 4-6 times a day, usually only for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. It helps that they're two-way - when he had a pager it was a nightmare because I would have no way of knowing he'd got the message until he found a payphone to call me. Now, if he's late and hasn't called (which is typical, because he hardly ever remembers), I can ring him to check that he's not actually dead in a ditch somewhere. This should be used with caution - a lot of people (usually men) get annoyed if their over-anxious spouses (usually women) ring them too many times to check where they are. But no one should get upset with a single call a sensible time after the ETA to check for non-deadness and get a new ETA. And if your partner is the worrying type, there's nothing worse than giving a new ETA and not sticking to it - or at least calling to say "sorry, got delayed again"!

Re: lateness and worrying

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I too am one of those people who easily imagines horrible things have happened to people who are late. Even when I *know* that in all likelihood, everything's okay. I hate the stress...

But in all honesty, I don't think that was what was going on, not completely. I think it was more a matter of expectations: he said he would be home by x, which I thought would give me time to talk to him and reconnect a bit, go over the kids' schedule for the next week, etc. before bed (I need more sleep than Brian does.) Since I did not communicate these expectations, he really had no way of knowing about them. (Yes, I know.... communication, communication, communication...) I think it was a combination of loneliness, disappointed expectations, uncertainty, and fear/stress that led me to be grumpy. Plus a vague feeling of being taken advantage of -- I was supportive of him going to this event (and still think it was a good thing he went), and he didn't call to check in when his plans for coming home changed.

Having said all that, I must say, I'm glad people liked the cobbler : > It did sound like a fun party, and I would have loved to have gone, but the next day was a school day. Also, David has a fair amount of trouble understanding appropriate social behavior around people anyway, so I'm a little wary of introducing new variables by taking him to someplace where clothing optional activities are occuring. And James disapproves of nakedness in general -- his own or anyone else's. (If the boy could take a shower with his clothes on, he probably would.) Kevin would have had no problem -- he's a clothing optional kid. (Mental image from earlier this year: when Nickelodeon played "Jimmy Neutron: When Pants Attack", Kevin stripped completely and ran around the house screaming that his pants were after him, before collapsing in a fit of hysterical giggling in the living room.)