Life

My little brother and my one-month old nephew.

iTunes: “My Dream” by ATB from the album Movin’ Melodies (1999, 7:05).

So I’ve got new eyeglasses on the way. With any luck, they should be here in a little less than two weeks, and I’ll have them in time for my vacation. They look similar to this pair — rimless, fairly small and rectangular, with very thin silver bows, and they come with a set of clip-on shades that match the shape of the lenses exactly. Prairie assures me that they look incredibly good and nearly disappear from my face, not nearly as dominating as my current pair.

Most interesting about the eye exam is that my new pair will actually be a slightly weaker prescription than my current pair — one diopter less (whatever that is) — as my eyesight is actually slightly improving as I age. I had no idea this could happen, so it was a very pleasant surprise. Apparently, my eyes are learning to relax, gradually increasing my near-vision depth of field. According to the optometrist, while I’ll always need glasses for distance vision, I’ll never need reading glasses, and may eventually be more comfortable reading or working on a computer either without glasses, or with bifocals that have little to no adjustment in the lower, near-vision area of the lens. Pretty cool, I’d say.

So now it’s just the waiting game as the glasses are made. Since I’ve got my vacation in two weeks, the clinic is seeing if they can put a rush on the order to ensure that they arrive before I have to leave. It may not happen, but if it does, I’ll be in good shape.

Oh, and should any Seattle-area people be in the need for new glasses, I’d certainly recommend the clinic I went to (Jackson Vision Clinic, 225 12th Ave. South Suite 103, Seattle, WA, 98144, 206.322.6915). I picked them simply because they were just over in the International District within fairly easy walking distance of my apartment, they were open on Saturdays, and they took the insurance I get through work. They were quite nice to work with, though — Dr. Hoang and his staff were quite friendly. While the clinic was pretty slow on Saturday, when I went in a couple weeks ago to make my appointment, they were quite busy, and I had the rather amusing experience of being the only Caucasian and (I believe) only native English speaker in a room full of Vietnamese people. Not an entirely normal thing in my general day-to-day activities, but rather fun, actually — there were a couple families in getting glasses for their kids that day, and kids are kids and fun to watch, no matter what language they speak.

Anyway, a good clinic, good people, and I’ve got some good glasses coming my way. Pics, of course, will be posted as soon as I get the glasses in.

iTunes: “Get A Good Thing” by Jesus Jones from the album Perverse (1993, 3:23).

Today is the 37th anniversary of the marriage of John Hanscom and Roberta Ward — also known quite fondly by me as Mom and Dad (though not respectively…I have an odd family, but not that odd).

Happy anniversary, and much love and congratulations to you both.

iTunes: “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by Brown, James from the album 40th Anniversary Collection (1965, 2:48).

Things that are going to be happening in the near future:

• Saturday: get my eyes checked and order new glasses, which should arrive 7-10 days after that. My first new pair of glasses in quite a few years. Hooray for work-provided insurance.
• Saturday: Rent at the Paramount. I don’t really know that much about Rent, but Prairie assures me that it’s wonderful, so we’re going.
• Next month: vacation time! I’ll be in Anchorage from late in the evening Sept. 10th to mid-day sometime (if I’m remembering correctly) Sept. 18th. Birthday celebration for dad on the 15th, genealogical ramblings with mom, and hanging out with as many Anchorage-based friends as possible during the week I’m there. Really looking forward to this, as while I’ve had a few weekend trips from time to time, this will be my first decent vacation (week long, paid, etc.) in quite a few years.
• When it comes out: install MT3.1 onto my webserver to upgrade Kirsten and Dad’s weblogs (and hopefully provide a bit more spam protection) without having to try to migrate them to an entirely new system (and, quite possibly, prepare to move Eclecticism back onto my own server again).

Things I need to get around to doing:

• I’ve been meaning to write something about The Prydain Chronicles for a few weeks now. I really do intend to actually do so. Really.
• Another design (or six, who knows) for the site’s stylesheet switcher would be good, if I ever come up with ideas worth pursing rather than just discarding after they rattle around in my head for a few days.

Things that are distracting me from doing the things in the previous list:

• Making sure all my photos are imported into iPhoto and sorted/dated/labeled correctly, so I can archive my current photo library to CD before updating iPhoto to the newest version (as there have been some reports of issues with the most recent update).
• Watching Buffy and Angel as fast as NetFlix can send me the DVDs. I’m up to Season Five of Buffy, and Season Two of Angel, and am really enjoying both. Much of the fun is that I’ve never seen these before, so it’s all entirely new to me — so things like Dawn suddenly appearing out of nowhere throw me for a loop (and I was quite happy to get some answers to that little plot twist during last night’s Buffy session).
• Procrastination. Hey, it happens.

So I’ve finally given in and gotten myself a gmail address, thanks to Kirsten. I have no idea how much I might or might not use it — I already have e-mail addresses [\@speakeasy.net]{.citation cites=”speakeasy.net”}, [\@myrealbox.com]{.citation cites=”myrealbox.com”}, and [\@mac.com]{.citation cites=”mac.com”}, plus a literally infinite number of addresses available [\@michaelhanscom.com]{.citation cites=”michaelhanscom.com”} (my mailserver is set up to drop anything sent to michaelhanscom.com into my inbox, so if you’re ever bored and feel like sending me something, feel free to put whatever you want before the @ sign and it’ll reach me) — but I finally figured it was worth jumping on the bandwagon.

So, if you feel like it, you can drop me a line at michael [dot] hanscom [at] gmail [dot] com in addition to any other e-mail address you might already have for me. No need to update your address books, though, I’m not losing any of the already existing addresses anytime soon (except possibly the [\@myrealbox.com]{.citation cites=”myrealbox.com”} addy, as I rarely use it for anything other than a couple of mailing lists anymore).

iTunes: “Lollipop (Candyman) (Razor N Go Lick It)” by Aqua from the album Aqua Mania Remix (1997, 12:20).

Today became a bit more adventuresome than I expected it to be, thanks to a slight change of schedule, and a few transportation-related goofs on my part.

Today was my first day of training at my new position. Thanks to some various scheduling conflicts that had to be worked out, I ended up being scheduled to work today, next Tuesday, and next Thursday at the new spot from 1pm-5pm, then bus out to my current store to close it down at 9pm, while working my normal 1pm-9pm shift at the current store on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The next two weeks after that I’ll be solely at my current store, covering for our other primary production operator while he’s on vacation. The week after that is my vacation in Anchorage, and then, once I’m back from vacation, I’ll actually start my new 8am-5pm schedule at the new spot.

Since the new spot is only a few blocks away from my apartment, I didn’t bother to grab my bus pass when I walked out the door to head off in the morning. Once my day finished at 5pm, though, I realized that that had been rather stupid of me — as I was supposed to be at my current store at 6pm, it would have been best if I could have just gone straight to the bus stop. Instead, I had to head back up the hill to the apartment, grab my bus pass, then head back down to catch the bus out to Georgetown.

By the time I’d made it back down to the bus stop, I’d missed my usual route, the 174. Not a terribly big deal, as the 135 came along shortly thereafter, and it’s my “backup bus” if I miss the 174 for any reason. Both of them head right down 4th Avenue out of downtown, and drop me off just a few blocks away from the store.

So, I hop on the 135, and settle in for the ride. Quickly, though, I realize that there’s one aspect of this plan that I hadn’t thought of before today: that of having to get from downtown Seattle to the Georgetown neighborhood right at the peak of rush hour. No quick trip this one, the few blocks through the downtown core was positively glacial. Still, I wasn’t terribly worried — it just meant that I’d be getting to work a bit closer to the 6pm mark than I had initially figured I would.

All seemed fine and dandy until rather than continuing on its normal route down 4th Avenue, the bus suddenly took a turn to the right and got onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct that runs beside the waterfront. Um…what’s going on here? I wasn’t too sure just where things were going to go from here, but I didn’t get too worried yet. I figured that it was possible that the bus took a jaunt along the Viaduct to avoid the worst of the downtown rush hour traffic, and hoped that it would hop back onto its normal route when it reached the end of the Viaduct.

No such luck, though, as soon we were merrily motoring our way across the West Seattle Bridge, with all hope of getting to Georgetown anywhere even remotely close to when I was supposed to be there rapidly receding into the distance.

Well, crud. As we approached the end of the bridge, I worked my way to the front of the bus, and asked the driver what the fastest way back across the bridge would be. He told me to get off at the next stop and take the next 135 back across the bridge, and I hopped off the bus to take stock of my situation.

Things weren’t looking too good: it was just slightly after 6pm, and rather than walking in the door of the store, I was standing at a bus stop in the shadow of the West Seattle Bridge off-ramps, and the next 135 back across the bridge wasn’t due to show up for another twenty minutes. Even worse, though, was that even once I did get on another bus to head back, it would most likely just take me back downtown, at which point I’d just have to wait for yet another bus — this time, one heading to where I actually wanted to go — and by then, I didn’t think that I’d be making it to work until 7:30pm at the earliest. Not promising at all.

Thankfully, though, here my luck finally started to turn around. There was a little diner just across the street, so since I had some time before the next bus arrived, I headed over to see if they had a public phone available. They did, and I called in to work to let them know that while I was trying to get there, I wasn’t terribly sure when I’d actually be able to get there. When I called, I was expecting my manager to be the only one left at the store, so he’d have to wait for me to show up, rather than leave the store unattended — as it turned out, though, a large job had kept one of the other employees there later than usual. My boss turned the store over to them, hopped in his car to come pick me up, and twenty minutes later I was finally at work — and only half an hour late.

The worst part about the whole thing? I just figured out what went wrong with taking my “backup bus”. It’s the 136 or the 137 that I’m supposed to take if I miss the 174, not the 135. Argh.

Chalk one up for stupidity. Oh, well.

Next Tuesday, though, my bus pass comes with me when I leave in the morning, and I stick to the routines that I know will get me where I need to go, when I need to be there. I’ve had enough adventuring for now!

iTunes: “Who Am I? (Animatrix Edit)” by Peace Orchestra from the album Animatrix: The Album (2003, 5:58).

(Note: while this did happen to me tonight, this rant isn’t particularly aimed at any one person, as I’ve had it happen to me off and on from many different people over the years. Don’t take it personally — but if it sounds like I could be talking to you, than it might be worth taking to heart.)

Oh, screw off.

Look, it’s bad enough when people do this to me at home, but for god’s sake, if for any reason you find it necessary to call me at work, would you please just tell me your damn name? I don’t know if you think it’s cute, or are just severely overestimating my ability to identify your particular voice based solely upon the words “hello” and “it’s me” (often also having to compensate for the distortion of miniscule cell phone microphones), but this little game is really not appreciated.

Working in a public business, I could have any number of people calling me at any given point, from customers to co-workers to people far higher up on the corporate totem pole than I am, and having to stand there and rack my brain, desperately trying to pinpoint who I’m talking to (while trying not to look like a complete and total idiot to the customers waiting for my attention in the store) does nothing aside from annoy me.

Names, people. Simple courtesy. This shouldn’t be an issue.