RIP

James Rigney died yesterday.   Most people knew him as Robert Jordan.   I always assumed that he picked the pseudonym from The Sun Also Rises.    The Nielsen Haydens write it up here; if you want straight from the source, go to TarValon (the RJ clearinghouse, presumably, in this post-Usenet post-rasfwr-j age) or his own blog.

I first encountered him my sophomore year in high school, when I quietly noted what my sister's boyfriend (now husband) was reading; they were home from college for spring break or something, and I was very impressionable.   I have very clear memories of lugging around  The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and the other really good first five, through the last two years of high school.   In college, I discovered the Usenet group devoted to him, and that became a big part of my life for a while.   I met a bunch of people from that group IRL, and still am friends with some of them, long after our active interest in RJ as an author, or Usenet as a medium, had petered out.

As that group grows up (and old) it's amazing to see what the folks who were on that scene are doing with their lives now.  For some reason, while RJ was demonstrably not counted among the more literary of the sf set, he reached a lot of people, and had a pretty amazing talent for worldbuilding and character.   He certainly got to snobby ol' me, that's for sure.

If you haven't read him, and don't have cognitive blinders toward sf, I strongly recommend his work.   RIP.

Fine

I haven't written for a while and people are getting angry.

My girlfriend (Cricket) has moved to Chicago to start a master's degree and we're being long-distance lovebirds. Fortunately Southwest flies between BWI/DCA and Midway for around $120. The holidays should be a nightmare so I'm postponing dealing with it.

As I have almost no friends in DC beyond some coworkers and a couple transplants from California who I really should spend more time with, I'm planning to coopt Cricket's social life and insert myself into it. They're mostly cool people, but I might have to work to find some other scene to explore. I live in Adams Morgan but work in Gaithersburg so when my coworkers are like "lets go have a drink in Bethesda! It's like the city but closer!" I die a little.

I hate that I forgot the three things I saw in the Express this morning that looked cool to do this weekend.

I hate that my building's gym is so small; I was using an elliptical machine today because my rugbied knees can't take the impact of too much jogging and it basically sits right behind the only treadmill. So one other person (girl) comes into use the treadmill and basically has to run with the only other person in the room ten feet behind her. A smidge awkward. She left after a while. Her aborted post-run situp/crunch technique looked violent and unhealthy. I studiously kept my eyes on my heart rate monitor the whole time. I would have watched television but she picked some shitty program. I should have put on football.

I hate that I think of cool blog posts every hour or so but don't have the mental wherewithal to get them down.

I hate that Penitent hasn't posted in a while.

I hate that my bike lock's key doesn't open my bike lock anymore.

I hate that I have to coopt Kotsko's Tuesday Hatred to get a post banged out.

I hate that I have to go to sleep at a decent hour.

Music

Awesome albums I've picked up recently that I really have missed out by not having from the very day they were released:

Modest Mouse, Lonesome Crowded West.   Inspired by hearing a song in the car with my old roommate while on vacation, and upon asking who it was, was told.   Apparently they used to not suck.   Really, really not suck.   Wow.

REM, Lifes Rich Pageant.   Randomly heard "Begin the Begin" on the radio, realized it was REM, and that it was very good, and immediately bought the album.    The only old REM I have is Eponymous.  I should get more.  This isn't the first time I wish I went to college in the early 80s. 

Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer, Jalopy Go Far.    I already had half this album in the form of tracks on mixtapes from F.   It was high time I made a commitment.   Great, great happy girl guitar pop.

Neutral Milk Hotel,   In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.   This album's holy writ in indie circles.   I don't know if it's the second coming I expected, but it's really good.   Like the skinny lady from Happiness said about the other lady whose name I forget in The Anniversary Party, "she's so fucking serene."   NMH appear to be quite fucking serene, but I could use a little serenity in my life. 

Doh

A reader e-mailed me chastising me for my pompous statements the other day re: the worship of Mammon.   I do apologize.   What remains true is that I really would like a job that is at least tangentially science-related.   This means: not quant finance, not regular finance/i-banking, not software development, and not standard management consulting (I say standard because some companies, like Booz Allen, are quite intimately involved with science funding.)

Non-academic jobs that would be acceptable, should I go that path, include applied-science startups, where several awesome people I know from grad school have gone, national laboratory positions, FFRDCs, the vanishingly few industrial research houses, and, surprisingly, even patent-law advising,  although that's a stretch. 

This plan all sounds well and good, but I'm shitty at prediction.   I'll post again in two years when I'm working at a hedge fund.

Wretched

Is there anything more pathetic than waiting in line on the dirty
streets of Adams Morgan to get a chance to eat at Pasta Mia? For
those not in the know, it's DC's own Soup Nazi, in the form of a
mediocre pasta joint that makes people wait in line for its nightly
"sittings."

What-ev-ah. You'll catch me in that line when hell freezes over.

Sweet

Cricket returned to DC last night after being away on business.   Combined with my business travel and a tacked-on week's vacation, I hadn't seen her in three weeks.   It's good to have company again.    

I'm manically working to prepare for more business travel, but article like this one are just sapping my energy.    I suppose it's typical at this point in my career to have doubts about what I want to do with my life.   I really don't mind, except when I hang out with the one or two people my age I know who have an order of magnitude on me in disposable income, or those who are smarter than me and who I admire but do things I consider useless.   It also makes me sad when I learn of people from college who were smart and intellectually curious, iconoclastic even, but have largely decided to serve Mammon.    For that matter, I know people in the scholarly pursuits who have become provincial and hidebound.   If I have a career goal right now, I suppose it is to be able to (honestly) think of myself as a scholar but not live like a churchmouse.     I'm almost dead set on refusing to take a pay cut from my current job, which since I have a pretty good gig, will limit my possibilities somewhat.

I miss Los Angeles.   Seeing the mountains behind my old San Gabriel Valley home was a sight I'd been so used to that it took being away for six months to really appreciate.   Other institutions I miss: the Rancho, up on Lake Avenue, where it's quiet and divey, and the barflies are artsy, dumb, or both.    The Colorado, down on Colorado, which is a meaner and squarer dive, and one marinated in memories.    And, of course, Amigo's, where I learned last week that the margaritas classico are the way to go, which would have saved me gallons of tarwater gasoline margitas regularito that I've pumped into my body over the years had I been told right away.   

DC is a much better town for me, though, the evidence being that I have a steady girlfriend of many months, which is something I never found in Los Angeles.    To all my friends complaining about the single life in LA: move here.   Move here now.   

I'm taking Cricket to see Once tonight.  I'm a sucker for sappy indie stuff like this.   I'm also a sucker for movies like Waitress .    She'll probably be annoyed at me for both, but then again, the last two movies we saw together were the ghastly and intolerable Volver and For Your Consideration.   

And, as a final note, I bought my first bottle of whiskey in DC a couple weeks ago, at the place next to the carpet joint and shitty cheesesteak house near Woodley Park Metro.   I've avoided the water of life so far, as it's a drain on my already empty pocketbook, but I've found that nothing helps me transition from working a twelve-hour day to blissful slumber better than a wee dram and some celebrity gossip.     For this first bottle I selected the solid Irish bestseller, Powers.    Heartily recommended.

Prejudice

I was eavesdropping at my grad alma mater's coffeehouse this afternoon, in particular on two graduate students in biochem talking about PCR and Western blots and who'd published what when, etcetera:

"I really hate chemical engineering.   All those fucking numbers and shit."

Not doing much for my stereotypes...