The stretch of vitality

It’s “O Dark Thirty” here in Santa Fe as my parents’ friend often says harking back to his West Point days.  In a moment I’ll put the rest of my stuff into the green machine and head up to Boulder, Colorado.  I’ve certainly enjoyed the stay here.  The house was perfect.  I don’t think the town is a good match for me long term.  I’m still adjusting to non-NYC realities. In Santa Fe, in 6 months I would have eaten at every restaurant in town.  I guess it’s hard to concretize the fact that NYC is around 114 times bigger.

Anyway, I had a funny moment yesterday as I was packing up the car.  An older gentleman across the street hollered out “What part of New Jersey are you from?”.  After a brief exchange, it turns out we both went to Cranford High School and grew up in the small town of Cranford, NJ.  He was class of 19457 or thereabouts and I’m 1997.

So the good news is that barring any credit check failures I’ve found a new tenant for my Hoboken apartment, which means I can move out fully at the end of this month and be done with the lease.  That will simplify things a lot.  And this was all done remotely over craigslist with some cooperation from my current subtenant, so that’s a big relief.  It also means I don’t have to flyback again at the end of February just to move out.

Anyway, logistics indicate I finish packing up and hit the road ASAP, so happy holidays, folks!

Last Saturday night I checked out the local Santa Fe night life music scene at the Santa Fe Brewing Company. It’s way on the outskirts of town just off highway 25. The headliner was Johnette Napolitano, formerly the bassist and vocalist of Concrete Blonde. She has quite a powerful voice and really good guitar. It was a good show, and free, or at least free due to incompetence of the ticket collector guy. It was more good exposure to the Santa Fe demographic. It seems to be mostly 40s-ish new age guys with long stringy hair and beards and mid-30s lesbians.

Sunday I visited the New Mexico Museum of Art and looked at the Egypt exhibit, some nice Georgia O’Keefe oils, and some cool modernist paintings from the late 20s and 30s. I particularly like two by Raymond Johnson. I ate dinner at a sports bar and came home to watch The Motorcycle Diaries, but when I saw John Cusack in the preview for The Ice Harvest, I remembered that his new movie Grace is Gone was playing at the Lensic theater in town in just a few minutes. So I rushed down there and saw it. This was another really touching and sad movie, and the cast of just Cusack and the two young actresses playing his young daughters did a great job. However, I’m over quota for movie-induced tears, so I’ll have to switch back to lighter fare.

The past few weekshave been rough at work. We’re in the end game for the next major release and also responding to problems (including a big one I caused) in the current release. It’s been a lot of context switching and “A.D.D. management” (management admits this openly). We’re finally in code freeze now so hopefully continuity will start to return soon. There’s at least three major projects coming up in the short term that currently I’m slated to lead, although in reality I will only be able to do one of them, so I’m curious as to which one it will end up being.

Yesterday I finally got back to the rock climbing club (fingers mostly healed from the last trip) and had a nice bouldering session. Then I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Pranzo that was really good. When the check came and it was $11.68 I almost stopped the waitress to tell her something was missing, but that was just what it cost for a salad and a half past entree. Nice!

Today has been good so far. I did some errands and a lot of good Christmas shopping downtown. The folk art they have here is really pretty amazing. I stopped in a sports bar, approached the hostess and said “I have a question”, to which she immediately replied “No, we’re not showing the fight tonight”. I thought that was pretty funny. I guess a lot of folks had asked her already. Anyway she said tonight’s UFC (mixed martial arts) event would be showing at “the strip joints and the casinos, and maybe the South Side Cafe”. I found this all pretty amusing. UFC will be fully mainstreamed soon though, mark my words!

Either tonight or tomorrow I’ll use the fireplace for the first time!

When I returned to Santa Fe there was a dusting of snow on the ground and it stayed around most of the week as the temperatures were consistently low.  Finally Thursday and Friday it warmed back up into the forties.  This week was bad as far as work goes.  We completed primary coding on this release back in July and with the exception of a six-week stint on the next release, it’s been pretty much nothing but bug fixing since then and it’s really starting to wear on me.

In other news, I think I’ve secured a great home to rent in Boulder, Colorado next month.  There is a mind boggling series of logistics to get everything to fall into place, but hopefully all will work out.  According to Plan A (I have A-E or so), I’ll be back “home” in Hoboken Dec 17-31.  If all goes according to plan we’ll have a new tenant to take over by then and I can fully move out.

Tonight I went to see the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly that is playing here as part of the Santa Fe Film Festival.  Wow.  I’ve never cried so consistently throughout a movie.  It was very touching a powerful.  Definitely recommended.