24-Hour Turnaround

Yesterday's funk has passed...

1. I've got a bunch a houses to look at tomorrow.
2. Nothing to be done about this, but at least I'll get back to The HBG in a few weeks.
3. The pageantry is over, now the real battle begins.
4. "It's merely a flesh wound!"
5. Times of clouds and sun, high 71 degrees.

Plus the draft of the report is almost done, I've got good new music to listen to, and the office closes early today. I am, to quote Dan Wilson, feeling strangely fine.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Rough Day

1. That house we thought we were going to buy? Not so much. There are good reasons why, but it still means we're back to square one. I'm looking at more houses in the same neighborhood on Saturday.

2. I'm here; my wife and children are here, 682 miles away; given #1, it's likely to stay that way for a while longer.

3. Turns out Sarah Palin can give a great speech (even filled, as it was, with distortions and half- and un-truths) and energize the base, making McCain's gamble pay off. It would have been so much easier over the next two months without an articulate, intelligent candidate in that slot.

4. Five losses in a row and an injured ace (or two). They're still a lock to make the playoffs and odds-on favorites to win the division, but after a season that was remarkably free of bumps in the road, this is a big one.

5. Two straight days without seeing the sun, with no end in sight.

And The Wheel Goes Round

Most of my regular readers already know this story, but I want to make sure I write it down for posterity. As I think I mentioned a few months ago, my tenure at Cutters Edge has come to an end. For a variety of reasons (not all of which I agreed with), the decision was made to close down the office I moved to Harrisburg to open three years ago. My dad offered me a different job within the company but it wasn't a job I was interested in, and I decided this would be a good time to get out of the fire rescue equipment field and back into something I had a better feel for, and got more enjoyment from.

I decided to try to get back into web project management, something I had done plenty of in the 90s before the .com bubble burst and sent me to Cutters Edge in the first place. I spent much of March & April looking for web producer jobs in the area without much success. I did get very close -- it was down to me & one other candidate -- at a company right here in Harrisburg which I would really have enjoyed working at. They regularly place on the "best places to work in Pennsylvania" survey and in the time I spent interviewing I could see why. It was a tight-knit group who seemed to work really hard and get along really well. I really enjoyed the vibe at the office and I was pretty crushed when I didn't get that job.

Once they published their press release showing who they had hired, I went and applied for that guy's old job, at another production company, this time in Lebanon. I went for multiple interviews there, including a half-day spent "shadowing" the PM staff, and once again was one of two finalists. Once again, I didn't get the job. Very demoralizing, especially since those were pretty much the only two leads I had (though in retrospect I think I wouldn't have been too happy at that second company -- the president seemed a bit hard to get along with). In each case, it took them about two months to come to a decision, which meant weeks of waiting and multiple interviews before I was told I wasn't wanted.

After I got turned down for that second job things looked pretty bleak. There just aren't a whole lot of web jobs in central PA for a guy who isn't a programmer, and I was starting to expand my search to project management jobs in industries that didn't really interest me all that much. I was certainly feeling the pressure to provide for my family, something that I hadn't had to deal with the last time I was on the job market.

In early June I re-connected with an old friend on Facebook. This is a guy I met on The Well back when I was living in Chicago -- we quickly became real-life friends as well but once I moved to the Bay Area and he quit The Well we drifted apart. The day I added him as a friend, he sent me a message telling me that his company was hiring, and was I by any chance looking for a job? Now, I have no market research experience but my buddy seemed to think that I would be good in the position, and when he sent over the job description, I had to agree. They were looking for people with good writing skills, strong analytical skills, and knowledge of, and interest in, a wide range of topics.

I spoke to my buddy on the phone a few times and he passed my resume and writing samples on to the VP in charge of hiring. All the while, he regaled me with stories of how tight-knit the office is, and what an awesome time he had working with a tremendous client list (including companies like MTV, MySpace, adidas, the NBA, Sony BMG, ESPN, Disney, Nokia, etc. etc. etc.).

I spoke to the VP a few times and things went well enough that the company flew me to Chicago for a half-day interview. I met with the VP, the president, and a few of the other research directors and managers, and everything went very well. I felt like not only would I be able to do a good job, but that I would enjoy working for the company.

A week later, they made me an offer, I accepted it, and in two weeks I start as a Research Director! I actually already have my first client and have my first business trip all planned for my second day, when I fly to Denver, then Sacramento, then Salt Lake City to do a series of ethnographic (in-home) research studies.

Throughout the process I pushed to allow them to let me stay in Harrisburg, but ultimately they wouldn't go for that, which means that we're moving to Chicago! (This is what is known in the business as "burying your lede.") That's a dream for me, to move back to my home city, but I know it's going to be tough for Daryl and will be a pretty big adjustment for Zosia as well (no big deal for Vivi, I'd say). So, in between business trips and learning not only a new job and company, but a whole new career, we have to sell this house, pack everything up, buy a house in Chicago, and move. All in the next 6-8 weeks.

It's daunting, and at times terrifying, but the end result is going to be really positive. After the multiple rejections it is really nice to be wanted by a company, and specifically to be appreciated not just for my skillset but for what I enjoy doing. The sorts of things this company does are the sorts of things I already did in my spare time -- the possibility of getting paid to talk about new products, product positioning, branding, etc., is almost too good to be true.

This is a job with a future, I think. I didn't have a future at Cutters Edge -- at least not one that was all that attractive. Now I have something to look forward to that could be rewarding not only professionally, but personally as well. All I have to do is get through the next few weeks of The Present to get to that future.

Hi, Neighbor

Today would have been Fred Rogers' 80th birthday, and to celebrate him it has been designated "Sweater Day." By whom, I'm not sure, but I'm wearing my favorite V-neck in his honor.

Last summer the City of Pittsburgh announced plans to erect a statue of Rogers, to be

completed in time for today's remembrance. I'm not sure if it got finished in time or not, but either way this is a perfect day to reflect on what he stood for. For a lot of GenXers, Rogers is one of the few memories from our childhood we look back on with no trace of irony. Maybe it's hard to believe in this cynical era but Rogers really was what he seemed to be -- a genuinely nice man who spent his life helping children and who exhorted other to do the same, to understand and love them for who they are, because nothing was more important in their development.

The Rogers philosophy that was repeated like a mantra throughout his lifetime explained that who we are and who we become as adults is a direct result of those who have taken a genuine interest in us, those who have encouraged, inspired and, above all, listened to us as children. -- Joann Cantrell

As a parent, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I raise my kids, and how I can teach them the values that I think are important -- fairness, compassion, respect of others, a desire to make the world better. I think all that starts with teaching them that they are important, and special, and making sure they are confident in who they are so they can eventually go out and pass that confidence on to others.

So, today, take a minute to think about the people who made you who you are today, and think about who looks to you for guidance, and how you can make them the best people they can be.

Have a wonderful day.

Wonderful Christmastime

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas. We did -- this was the first year that Zosia really got the idea of Christmas, and the last few weeks were full of anticipation and "is it Christmas yet" and "it's so hard to wait! I'm so impatient." When it finally was Christmas, I think she was so relieved it was finally here that she forgot to be moody and as a result spent the entire day (except for the briefest of meltdowns at teeth-brushing time) in a remarkably good mood.

As befits the first granddaughter of eight grandparents, she got a ton of stuff, as did her sister. Whatever your feelings about rampant consumerism (I admit to being both fascinated and a little squicked-out by it) there is no denying how great it is to see one's kid in a state of frantic excitement, running from room to room and toy to toy, eagerly monopolizing her sister's presents as well as her own (big hits: Viewmaster, tiny pony with comb-able hair, bongo drums), all the while with a huge smile on her face. It did a papa proud.

We manged to get the girls to sit together in their matching Christmas dresses just long enough to snap a couple of pictures. Here's one of them:

In their Christmas dresses
Originally uploaded by Ruzich/Johnson

We finished our day with dinner out at a Chinese restaurant -- we thought about a movie but didn't want to press our luck -- and evening fell with Daryl wearing her moisturizing gloves & booties and paging through the Complete Sandman collection while I rocked my way through Guitar Hero III for the Wii. We collapsed into bed exhausted but fully suffused with the Christmas spirit, ready to move on to New Year's, 2008, and everything it has in store for our little family.

Hey Midtowners, Be Careful Out There

Over the last few weeks there have apparently been a series of muggings in Midtown, and specifically in my part of Midtown. Last week a guy was help up at gunpoint a few blocks north of us, and in one that hits close to home in a few different ways, on Sunday a woman and her infant were mugged at knifepoint two blocks away. They were unharmed, thanks to a quick response from neighbors, who heard her screams (no Kitty Genovese redux in the HBG), and the cops were on-scene within minutes, but the assailant got away.

Scary stuff. Neighborhood infomaven Ryan Hickey, who sent out the email letting us know about these attacks, has this to say:

"We all need to look out for each other, so please talk to your neighbors, exchange phone numbers, call each other if you need an escort to your car, and please call the police immediately should you see any loitering or suspicious behavior of any kind.

We can't let our fear of being a nuisance to our neighbors deter us from trying to improve our neighborhoods and watch out for each other."

Amen, and let me add, since he didn't, TURN ON YOUR OUTSIDE LIGHTS. It's really something to be walking up Penn Street, where everyone has their front lights on, and to cross Clinton, where it suddenly gets real dark. Light acts as a deterrent to criminal activity, plain and simple.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving, and enjoy time with friends and family, taking time to remember all the things you're thankaful for.

Restaurant Review: Fish On, Lewes DE

Did you miss us? We got back on Saturday night from out wonderful week in Lewes, spent hanging out at the beach, walking into town to get ice cream, and doing all the fun things that families do on vacation. Thanks to our brand new super-cheap video camera, I'll have a bunch of videos to post soon, but while I get all that together here's a review of the dinner we had at Fish On:

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We ate in on our vacation for almost every meal, but we did go out twice, once for brunch and once for dinner. Both times, I had GRITS, which might be my new favorite food.

The dinner was fabulous. It was at a restaurant called Fish On! in Lewes,Delaware. As we usually do, we went over as soon as they opened, the better to avoid inflicting our children on other diners. The restaurant was very kid friendly (as it should be in a vacation town) -- there were probably five or six other families there and we were very pleasantly surprised with the kids' menu, which included salmon, tuna, and crab cakes along with the typical chicken fingers & whatnot. Zo had the crab cake, which came with both french fries and green beans, and afforded Daryl & I the chance to try the crab cake (tasty!) without having to order it ourselves, freeing us up
to try other things.

We started out our dinner with cocktails, like actual adults -- Daryl had a Dark & Stormy, and I had a Martini, extra-dry, up, with olives. It came with three olives, immediately putting me in a good mood. We had checked out the menu online beforehand and were pretty sure what we were going to get, but the specials included a cream of crab soup with jalapenos, so I got that instead of the Delaware crab soup, which Daryl got. Both soups were excellent -- they included nice juicy pieces of crab and mine had just the slightest jalapeno kick at the back of the throat.

For starters, Daryl ordered chilled peel & eat shrimp with cocktail sauce. A basic starter, very nicely done. The shrimp were cooked perfectly and the cocktail sauce contained lots of fresh horseradish. I thought about ordering the pan-roasted mussels with tomato compote, chorizo & jalapeno, but I was on a crab kick so I went with the hot crab dip with jack cheese, served with homemade kettle chips. Best. Bar food. Ever.

Our main courses continued in the same vein as our first chices -- Daryl stayed with a red-sauce meal by ordering the Lewes seafood stew, which was a tomato broth chock-full of shrimp, mussels, tuna, halibut, and other various fishes and shellfishes. It wasn't as good as Phil's cioppino, but what is? It was a very nicely balanced fish stew, and they certainly didn't skimp on the seafood (though I was surprised that the soup didn't include any crab).

I ordered the item which had caught my eye when we were browsing menus to decided where to eat: grilled shrimp & chorizo over spicy jack grits. Yum. The grits were nice and creamy (making my dinner a cream-based trifecta), with enough jalapeno to make you notice, without overpowering the other flavors. There were only 5 or 6 small slices of chorizo, but that was enough to add an excellent accent to the meal, and the shrimp were grilled to perfection, juicy and flavorful.

Overall, an excellent meal. Next time you're on the Delaware coast, it's certainly worth a trip to the Villages at Five Points to eat at Fish On.

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Listening to: Spoon - Don't You Evah via FoxyTunes

Weather Geekery

We start a week-long vacation tomorrow (going to the shore! woo!) and in advance of the trip I've been obsessively checking the weather report. After all, when you're planning to spend an entire week at the beach, you want it to be warm and sunny. Especially when ou have a three-year-old, because if it's raining we're going to doing an awful lot of coloring, DVD watching, and off-the-walls-bouncing.

So I've been hitting Accuweather.com daily and checking out the forecast for Lewes, DE. It's been fascinating (to me, anyway) to see how the forecast high has changed for next week as the days go by. For example, on Tuesday the forecast high for Friday the 17th was 77 degrees. On Wednesday, that jumped to 94, but by Thursday that had been reduced to 78, and today they're saying 79. Obviously, the closer you get to the actual day in question the more accurate the forecast is going to be, and expecting a forecast to be accurate 10 days out is a fool's errand.

Weather Forecast | Weather Maps | Weather Radar

Still, they offer the forecast, so I look at it. And, me being me, I also enter all the data on a little chart and will keep track of the actual high when we're there so I can see just how accurate (or inaccurate) the forecast was. I bet you all can't wait to see that, but you're going to have to, since I won't be posting anything over the next week. See you at the beach!

Nothing To Get Hung About

Looking for something to do this weekend? What if I told you there were places you could go which would let you do the sort of backbreaking labor that falls into the "illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans don't want to do" category? Is that something you might be interested in?

Last Saturday the famiy loaded into the minivan and headed to Loysville, where Spiral Path Farm was holding its annual pick-your-own-strawberries weekend. We lurrve Spiral Path; they're an organic farm that has a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program -- you pay an annual fee and every week from May to October they deliver baskets of freshly picked organic to drop-off sites throughout the area. It's great to eat tomatoes, lettuce, peas, etc. that were picked the day before, and in this age of increased awareness about farming techniques and food miles I love knowing that my food was grown less than an hour away.

(By the way, apropos of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Spiral Path hipped us to Jujo Acres, who deliver organic and free-range beef and other meats. It's all good.)

So anyway we drove out to Loysville, ready to pick our allotted two gallons of strawberries. It was a beautful day, sunny, with a light breeze, and when we arrived the fields were already full of other city dwellers:



We quickly got to work; I took charge of Zosia while Daryl got back in touch with her Polish peasant roots, picking berries with Genevieve sleeping (and occasionally screaming) in the sling:



After an hour or so, we had our berries and were ready to head home. After some hardcore hulling and culling, we had the loot, ready for consumption in pies, ice cream, or as-is:



One of the main reasons we wanted to do this was to start introducing Zosia to the idea of where food comes from. It's an easy thing to not think about; you go to the market or grocery store or restaurant and get your food, and it's easy to forget what went in to getting it to that point. I don't want my kids to think that food comes from "the store," and we're lucky enough to live in a place where the actual production locations of so many foods are so close by.

Plus we wanted to get out in the fresh air, and give Zo something fun to do. I think she enjoyed it, as you can see from this shot:



Want to go strawberry picking yourself this weekend? Learn everything you need to know, including locations and how to do it, at PickYourOwn.org.

Enjoy!

Paradise By The Dashboard Light

When we were living out in the California mountains, one of the things we liked to do on occasion was drive down the hill to the drive-in movie theater in Santee. It was always a fun time, with families enjoying an evening out on the cheap. They showed relatively new movies, and you always got a double feature, which meant, for example, that you could follow up SWAT (a perfect drive-in movie) with The Grind, one of the worst movies ever to grace the silver screen. We usually picked up Mexican food on our way in and enjoyed a nice evening, with the baby (usually) sleeping in the back seat. It was a lot of fun.


Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

We never made it to the drive-in last summer; I think that we figured our girl was at the wrong age for it -- too old to just sleep in the back seat, but too young to sit still and watch the movie. Now, though, with the kid pushing three, I think we'll be heading out to see what central PA has to offer in terms of drive-ins.

My research (which consisted of visiting Drive-Ins.com) turned up four screens nearby:

* Haar's Drive-in, US-15, Dillsburg, 432-3011. Tickets are $7 for adults, $2 for children 3-7. This weekend they're showing Spider-Man 3 (woo!) and Are We Done Yet? (currently rating an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately they have a link to this fruitbat news site on their site, which is enough to make me not want to patronize them.

* York Drive-In Theatre, 334 Carlisle Ave., York, 792-5223. Tickets are $8/$6. As of this morning, the website and phone message are still touting last week's movies (Meet The Robinsons & Wild Hogs).

* Sky-Vu Drive-In, Hwy. 25, Gratz, 365-3816. Tickets prices aren't shown on their website and there was no message when I called. This weekend they're showing Spider-Man 3 and Perfect Stranger.

* Cumberland Drive-In, 715 Centerville Rd, Newville, 776-5212. The website still shows them as "closed for the season" but the phone message is updated. Tickets are $6/$3. This weekend they're showing Spider-Man 3 (big surprise) and Premonition.

See you at the show!

I Heartily Concur: Steven Johnson

Author Steven Johnson took David Brooks to task a few weeks ago for Brook's beyond-ridiculous anti-hipster-parent screed in the New York Times. Johnson isn't the only one -- as you might imagine, the blogosphere, which is full of hipster parents, was full of hipster parents with something to say about Brooks' embarrassingly tone-deaf piece -- but he was the only one I read to make this point:

"Brooks' obsession with the surfaces of hipster parenting ends up blinding him to the real trend here, which is central to almost all the examples he cites: young parents choosing to raise their children in the city, not the suburbs. That is a decision with real consequences, not an empty gesture. It has material effects on children and parents -- and the cities they live in. It's a decision with political and environmental implications, and also one with some surprisingly old-time Americana values. (Brooklyn parents can be cloyingly sentimental about the small town friendliness of their neighborhoods.) It has almost nothing to do with non-conformism, and everything to do with the kind of community -- diverse, sidewalk-based, public, culturally-rich -- we want to raise our children in. It's striking that Brooks doesn't even find that trend worth mentioning in the piece -- much less taking it seriously."

My wife and I made the exact choice he's talking about, choosing to raise our child/ren in Harrisburg, a city that has all the things Johnson mentions and more. My hipster cred can't touch that of, say, Neal Pollack, but personally I couldn't care less what David Brooks, or just about anyone else, thinks about the way I'm raising my family. Like Pollack, what I care about is the my kids end up being thinking, creative individuals, not indie automaton clones of me.

Christmas With The Family

We're back from our long weekend in the Chicago suburbs, a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas visit to the old homestead. Unfortunately all three of us got sick to differing degrees, and we're still dealing with that days later.

Zosia spiked a 102-degree fever the night before our flight. Joy. Luckily that fever came down before we left, so we were still able to go. The drive down to Washington National was uneventful, though the GPS in the car routed us through the surface streets of DC. Luckily we had left an extra hour early (fear of lack of parking), so we got to the airport in plenty of time. It may be far away, but National turns out to be a nice airport -- small, easy to navigate, and very little traffic even on the Friday before Christmas.

The flight was uneventful -- it took off about a half-hour late, but thankfully we had no connections so that wasn't a big deal. Zosia was kept occupied thanks to the Rip Roar portable video recorder I picked up last week. I haven't even begun to explore what it can do -- apparently it can be set up to automatically record shows off the TV, but I have Tivos for that. I just dumped a couple of episodes of Blue's Clues and Backyardigans onto it and that's all she needed.

We stayed at my mom's house, and my brother and his girlfriend came as well. We basically sat around playing the bowling game on Graham's Wii, talking about his new record label, and trying to think up ways to keep Zo occupied that didn't involve going out into the Midwestern winter too much. We walked to the playground one day, and drove around in search of an apparently non-existent Gymboree another day, but she spent too much time cooped up and by the end of the trip she started losing it pretty regularly. I can't say I blame her, being stuck in an unfamiliar house without much to do, and still not feeling 100%. If it hadn't been for the heroics of Grandpa Jim, who can apparently read the same book 15 times without growing bored, I don't know what we would have done.

All in all it was a good trip, if fraught. For a lot of the time I felt like Zo was one move away from a tantrum, and since her tantrums had recently begun to include the occasional hit, kick, or headbutt, I spent a lot of time on edge and I know D-Jo did too. Of course, it didn't help that she hadn't shaken the cold/bronchitis she picked up just before we left, either. We both got it, but because she's pregnant her immune system can't fight it off as well, plus she can't take the good drugs that would allow her a full night's sleep. So she spent a lot of time sleeping and trying to get well, to little avail.

By the time we flew home, Zo was pretty much a wreck. Now I recognize that we've been extremely lucky, and my definition of "a wreck" is very similar to other parents' definition of "a normal day," but still it's no fun to have to shepherd a squirming, unhappy, about-to-lose-her-shit kid through an airport and on to a plane. Incredibly, she stayed tantrum-free during the flight, even when she had to pee before the Fasten Seat Belts sign turned off (and thanks to the flight attendant who let us take her to the bathroom a few minutes early). More judicious application of the portable TV assuaged her, though she was not happy when, upon descent, we had to turn it off. She stewed over that until we landed and celebrated hitting the jetway with a full-fledged tantrum.

But, she was asleep within five minutes of us hitting the road, slept the rest of the two-hour drive, and slept through the night. After a couple of days back at the YMCA she was her normal wonderful self again.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like D-Jo is -- her cold seems to have morphed into a sinus infection, with all of the head-throbbing, tooth-aching joy that comes with that. Her face hurts, and believe me it's killing me, too.

So here it is, New Year's Day. Zo is down for a nap (After a minor freakout that included her screaming at the top of her lungs for me to Rub! Her! Back!), Daryl's upstairs eating a sandwich and watching Law & Order, and I'm posting before I head downstairs to do some more cleaning up and maybe watch the end of the Penn State game.

And I couldn't be happier, or more looking forward to a fantastic 2007. Here's to another great year!