Settling
So, it's been three weeks at Wizards thus far, and much has happened. I'm still not convinced I'll keep up this blog, but I can scrounge up a little effort yet. We've got a house lined up, but it doesn't close for another month - we're living in a crappy hotel in the meantime. It's nice having some pre-existing contacts already in the Seattle area. Enough Turbine refugees and various industry contacts are around that it's not really all that jarring. The problems at the new job are strange and refreshing. It's not so much that the grass is greener, it's just that I really haven't had a chance to get used to eating it. It's sort of chewy.
I knew things would be just fine in the new job when I showed up and two people were playing LOTRO at work.
Today I was talked into buying a shockingly expensive (by my standards) sport coat. Don't get me wrong, it looks great on me. I just don't think of myself as the sort of person that should or would need to own such a thing. I rely on others for cues as to how the world is supposed to work. I pay attention to the broad systems, not the details. And everyone seemed to think it was perfectly natural that I own an expensive sport coat. Who am I to argue, at the end of the day?
Today was also the day that I got my most expensive haircut, to date. Fifty bucks for a haircut. That's just not right. We went to a mall in Bellevue, and the first place I checked couldn't get me in for a few hours. So I wandered into a frightening salon sort of place. First thing they do, they tell me to change into a robe, and they give me a bar of soap. Like one of those little mini-soap in hotels. Even stranger than that, because it turns out not to be soap at all, but chocolate. I discover this hours later, and it's even more alarming then. Why are they giving me chocolate? I want a haircut. Soap vaguely fits with the theme of personal hygiene. Chocolate? That's just damned random. Tasty, but random.
So they push me into a changing room. There are these tiny little robes there, and I think to myself, I didn't see anyone out there running around without pants. But I didn't really see any customer-types. Maybe the people out there didn't have pants. Maybe this is a no-pants sort of place. If I had known up-front that this was a $50 haircut, the no-pants nature of it may have seemed more intuitive. I err on the side of pants, and I am rewarded for my discretion by not being arrested.
See, I don't like being out of my element. There's a distinct difference between going on an adventure and being thrust into an alien culture by accident. I had no business being in Salonistan. I had no visa, and there was no embassy I could flee to. Just a random detour on the road between me and shorter hair. I bluffed my way through it (naturally) but left feeling that I had merely survived, not that I had learned.
The new house will require exposure to the IKEA virus. Incubation is alarmingly short, and believe you me, it's fatal. We took a trip through IKEA as an information-gathering mission. It was both frightening and beautiful. The Swedish lack only the malign will to dominate the earth. Of course, if they did assemble a global hegemony of reasonable prices and efficient use of space, there would probably still be a could of fiddly little countries left over at the end that nobody would know what to do with.
I knew things would be just fine in the new job when I showed up and two people were playing LOTRO at work.
Today I was talked into buying a shockingly expensive (by my standards) sport coat. Don't get me wrong, it looks great on me. I just don't think of myself as the sort of person that should or would need to own such a thing. I rely on others for cues as to how the world is supposed to work. I pay attention to the broad systems, not the details. And everyone seemed to think it was perfectly natural that I own an expensive sport coat. Who am I to argue, at the end of the day?
Today was also the day that I got my most expensive haircut, to date. Fifty bucks for a haircut. That's just not right. We went to a mall in Bellevue, and the first place I checked couldn't get me in for a few hours. So I wandered into a frightening salon sort of place. First thing they do, they tell me to change into a robe, and they give me a bar of soap. Like one of those little mini-soap in hotels. Even stranger than that, because it turns out not to be soap at all, but chocolate. I discover this hours later, and it's even more alarming then. Why are they giving me chocolate? I want a haircut. Soap vaguely fits with the theme of personal hygiene. Chocolate? That's just damned random. Tasty, but random.
So they push me into a changing room. There are these tiny little robes there, and I think to myself, I didn't see anyone out there running around without pants. But I didn't really see any customer-types. Maybe the people out there didn't have pants. Maybe this is a no-pants sort of place. If I had known up-front that this was a $50 haircut, the no-pants nature of it may have seemed more intuitive. I err on the side of pants, and I am rewarded for my discretion by not being arrested.
See, I don't like being out of my element. There's a distinct difference between going on an adventure and being thrust into an alien culture by accident. I had no business being in Salonistan. I had no visa, and there was no embassy I could flee to. Just a random detour on the road between me and shorter hair. I bluffed my way through it (naturally) but left feeling that I had merely survived, not that I had learned.
The new house will require exposure to the IKEA virus. Incubation is alarmingly short, and believe you me, it's fatal. We took a trip through IKEA as an information-gathering mission. It was both frightening and beautiful. The Swedish lack only the malign will to dominate the earth. Of course, if they did assemble a global hegemony of reasonable prices and efficient use of space, there would probably still be a could of fiddly little countries left over at the end that nobody would know what to do with.