The big thing of the last couple weeks was a highly productive work trip down to HQ, in Mountain View, California. I had a few reservations about going, since this was gonna be the same exact trip I’d attempted two months ago during which my back went completely insane.

The flight down on Monday morning was pretty uneventful, with some but not much discomfort. Met a fellow LDS Googler flying down for a completely different reason, small world.

First thing I thought when I arrived was, it’s way too sunny down here. Stockholm syndrome from Washington weather perhaps?

Another thing I thought was, good criminey this company is massive. You really don’t get a good feel for Google’s size from Kirkland’s modest satellite office.

And I had only seen a small corner of Google’s operations in the Mountain View area.

While the primary purpose of my visit was to meet with one person, it turns out that every other team I was currently supporting was based in the same small cluster of buildings, so I quickly filled up my calendar with appointments. The two buildings I primarily met people in were about eight minutes apart by bike – the primary short-distance mode of travel at Google HQ. And I was extremely gratified to find that I could ride these bikes without any fuss at all – the first time I’d gotten behind handlebars in about three months!

So I flew in Monday morning, arrived on campus that afternoon, not much time to do more than meet-and-greet, get assigned a temporary desk, learn where meals are taken, etc. The next two days were a flurry of meetings – some arranged in different buildings back-to-back – meet in one building at 1pm, bike to another building at 2, bike back to the first building at 3, etc.

Other days were more relaxed. While my regular meetings were taken in a relatively remote corner of campus, I did take Thursday morning and walk around main main campus. Partly because I planned to do it anyways, but also because I’d spotted a poster advertising an earthquake simulator, part of some emergency preparedness outfit advertising their wares.

I’ve had several people ask if I’d ever been on “the slide,” which Google’s known to have in one of their offices. I always had to say no, I’d never stumbled across it. Until now.

That light fixture in the background deserves its own photo segment.

Friday was a good day. A team I support manages a hardware lab, so I got to go tour that. No pics unfortunately.

That afternoon I had possibly the best meeting of the whole trip – a ton of work I thought needed doing turned out to be unnecessary, all taken off my plate.

Took one last night tour through main campus.

Saturday morning I flew back. Had a few good omens – my favorite Enya track came up on Pandora right off, and I hit not a single red light on the way to the airport. Overall it was an immensely successful trip, so, huzzah to that.

That afternoon while I was just chilling, the missionaries knocked on my door. I hadn’t seen this pair before, and invited them in. Odd, they usually let me know before they come, since they only drop by when they have an agenda.

“Sorry, you said your name was, Jeff?” At that the wheels started turning. Wait, you should already know my name, since you’re here to get me to invite friends to stuff, right? Unless…

“Are you two… tracting?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Well, then, this is awkward.”

I had to explain to them that I was not in fact a golden investigator, inviting missionaries in without a second thought, rearin’ to receive the Gospel. I offered to have them by for as long as they wanted, but they had doors to knock, and off they went.

That evening was a halloween party at a friend’s house. I’d had grand ambitions to do myself up as a psycho axe-murderer, but had precisely no time to do any of the necessary prep, so I adopted a more attainable guise.

That night, and early the next morning, I spent prepping for an Elders Quorum lesson on the godhead. Lots of neat stuff in History of the Church volumes, old sermons by Joseph Smith on the subject. Lemme tell you, they really don’t write general conference addresses like they used to.

Ended up preparing way too much material – just so many money quotes and mic-drop moments. Oh well, next time I have to teach on that subject I can use the rest of it.

And, there will be a next time. The week prior I kind of got my marching orders as far as Church service is concerned. Got a calling to teach Elder’s Quorum once a month, and our home teaching assignments got revamped on top of that – went from three people in one home to seven people in seven homes. Boy howdy.

This last week’s theme is, Get More Sleep. Been getting off work at hours ranging from 8pm to 1am. And when I do get off work “early,” there’s other things that get in the way of a good night’s rest. On Monday I was just nodding off at 12:30am when a friend I’d been texting let me know that her roommate hadn’t picked her up at the airport like she’d arranged, and I was the only one she knew that was still awake, and would there be any way I might be able to pick her up.

I enjoyed a final few minutes of bed rest, while it took me what felt like forever to type out the words “You got it,” part of my sleep-addled brain trying to present some reason why I couldn’t make it. She lived in north Seattle, so it was 2:30am by the time I managed to nod off.

On Wednesday I’d signed up to do a dinner night with some friends. I had a frozen lasagna, but I’d need to get off work at 3:30 to get that prepped in time, and I didn’t have anything else to go with it. Ended up cheating a bit and having the group over to my office. Did a fun tour afterwards.

Friday was a fun day. To celebrate a few promotions on the team, our manager had us all go out to a nearby brewery. He made sure to bring Fresca and other non-alcoholic drinks as well.

That night I had friends over for games, cake, and a movie.

This morning I went out to look at places. Found a rather expensive condo that has some nice features, but the decor is wacky, looks like a Russian mob boss lived there.

The weather’s been getting cold, and there was some weird fog this morning. All burned off now of course, but it took till like noon for it all to go away. It was so thick I could see it rolling down the street from a hundred feet away.

Last week’s adventure in the woods got me wondering a bit if some portion of my day-to-day discomfort was psychosomatic in nature. A few rides in my car this week swiftly dispelled that notion. “Nope, yeah I definitely hurt down there, not just in my head.” But I have been taking the opportunity to indulge in my introverted side. “Oh, sorry, would love to go to your thing, but I just can’t manage to get myself anywhere gee golly I wish I could.” Kinda reminds me of that proverb with the two wolves. Gonna have to start getting off my lazy backside and getting out there sooner or later.

And I have been doing that. On Friday last week we went to a corn maze! Haven’t done that in years. We arrived a couple hours before sundown, took a while to get everyone together, had a bit of dinner, then set off through the field. They provided us maps, and at first I thought that’d be cheating, but then I considered my condition and thought the best thing would be to get through as soon as possible. So I played navigator for our group of three intrepid explorers. (Random thought, why don’t they call it a maize maze?)

I asked a couple times if the other two were cool with my swift navigation, as we were making very good time and weren’t really taking in the whole ‘lost in a field’ experience. But they assured me they wanted to get through just as fast as I did. So we exited in ~30 minutes, about an hour faster than the last group.

During and after the corn maze, our group engaged in musical shenanigans, because what else is a group of sober Mormon singles gonna do for fun (besides host hallway dinners or pizza-eating competitions). The opening salvo came as we were in the hay-bale wagon carting us over to the maze’s entrance, where we decided to bust out a round of Happy Birthday for one of our number, when we all knew full well it wasn’t her birthday. Very embarrassing for her, very entertaining for us and those nearby who were clued in as to what we were up to.

After a few of us made it out of the maze, we were standing around with nothing better to do, so we started singing Christmas carols. Yes, we went there. No, we apparently had no respect for tradition. The surrounding conversations ground to a halt at our flaunting of the law and order of holiday cheer.

Finally we settled into a groove of singing Disney classics—even got a maze attendant in on the action for a while. This served the double purpose of keeping us entertained, and guiding in those of our group still out in the field.

Afterwards, a subset of us went to a friend’s place to play games; ended up doing half a round of Betrayal at House on the Hill. A bit disappointed we had to end right as the Haunt began, as it was the first game ever for most of them.

The other activity that’s been taking my time is [town]house hunting. Not exactly the most fun thing I could think to do with my time, but neither is paying exorbitant amounts of rent each month, so I’ll stomach it. Still in the early stages, but I got referred to a great agent, so we’ve been going out and seeing a few places.

I was on the phone with Mom chatting about a place, just lazing about outside on a table, when a security guard walked by and laughed at me. I laughed back, because the situation was really funny. To explain why, I need to rewind to a couple days prior, when I decided that I had enough dirty laundry to justify hauling it in and doing it in one go in the laundry room at the office. Dropped it off in the laundry room, where I saw the machine already in use. Figured I’d dart back after a while and pop it in.

I got home that night and went to toss my clothes into the hamper, when I realized I’d completely forgotten about laundry that entire day. Oops. Luckily I still had things to wear.

The next day I got the first load started, then set a timer to come back and cycle the load. The timer went off in a meeting, had to silence it.

I was lying on a couch at 8:30pm working late, when I realized I’d done it again, completely forgot about laundry. Darted down and cycled the load, chilled on the couch in between cycles, ended up leaving around 11pm. While I was there a security guard saw me as she was making the rounds.

The next morning the same guard walked by while I was again lying on the couch; jokingly asked if I’d been there all night, hardy har.

So fast forwarding, that same guard came across me lying on a table outside chatting with Mom, and it was just a really funny situation, the third time she’d caught my lying around in random places. Anyways.

Had a couple close calls with some companies I had to resolve over the phone this week. I noticed a few weeks ago that my Comcast bill had gradually increased until it was double what I was used to paying. Thus far they’d been properly keeping out of the picture, ferrying bits back and forth. Now it was time to learn first-hand why everyone despises them.

Normally in my area, Comcast sells 150mbps for $50-odd per month. The “Blast 250” promo bumps that up to 250mpbs for the first two years, no extra charge. I asked if they’d notify me at the end of that time period and they said no, my bill would just start reflecting the full price of the speed I was getting. So I set a calendar reminder for two years in the future, to remind me to cancel. I suspected my price increase had something to do with this.

“Yes, I see your bill has gone up because the ‘Blast 250’ promo only lasts one year and now–”

“Nope, two years. I was told two years.”

“Ah, ok, no worries, let me go and get another year on that promo for you.”

…

“Ok, you’re all set, I’ve reduced your monthly bill down to $50.”

“Great. Now I’m gonna need you to correct my last two bills.”

“Of course, let me transfer you to our finance department.”

Given how easy that was, I wonder if a) they know they’re short-changing me and just hope I’ll eat the cost, or b) they’re pushovers and I’ll be able to pull a similar stunt in a year’s time. Who knows.

The other issue I resolved with a phone call had to do with my old-and-broken phone I sent in for replacement. Instead of leaving me without a phone for [time-to-ship-phone-to-warehouse-and-back], they just send the new phone right away, and require me to return my old phone in 14 days or they charge me up to $1000.

When I dropped the phone off at Fedex there was a line, and I’d parked in a spot belonging to a neighboring restaurant with loud warning labels to that effect. I opted to drop my package off without waiting for a receipt.

So when I got the “First Warning” email saying that they were still waiting for my device and I’d soon be subject to the $1000 fee, I kicked myself. I inspected the shipping label they emailed to me, looking for a number I could enter on the Fedex tracking site. It came up as having been delivered last week.

“Hey, so, what gives?”

“Ah, yes I see it has been delivered, I’m not sure why our systems weren’t updated. Don’t worry about the fee, no danger there.”

Whew.

Speaking of deliveries, on Friday I got an email saying I had a package in the mail room. That was unexpected, I hadn’t ordered anything recently. In true Jeff fashion I forgot all about it until I’d already left work.

So when I got in Monday morning I was grinning from ear to ear as I read the Telestrations cards Mom sent. Very good drawings! And only in the last couple days has my tongue started getting back to normal after ingesting way too many Warheads at once. Warmed my heart nonetheless.

Last night I went to a friend’s place, ostensibly to introduce her roommates to Firefly – she was already a huge fan. Turns out most of her roommates are already fans, so we just had a grand old time watching the pilot episode. Jokingly planned to get together for a table reading of the 15th [unfilmed] episode.

I usually make a point of turning the heat on in my room but leaving the door open, to prevent it getting too hot. This has the desired effect, but probably has the undesired side effect of leaving the heating element active 100% of the time. Last night I experimented with closing the door most of the way.

Woke up this morning at I-don’t-know-when-o’clock, gasping for breath. Stumbled out of my room, deeply inhaled the mercifully-cool air, then promptly collapsed in the hallway, too tired to do anything but lie down somewhere with air I could actually breathe.

Eventually shambled back into my room, which had cooled considerably since I left the door open. Turned the heat off and clambered back into bed. Not long after that, my alarm started going off. I only set it on days when I have to be up in time to get to my physical therapy appointments at 8am.

I got showered and dressed, ready to head out, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t gotten any reminder text message the day before. I wondered if perhaps I’d reached the end of my my six weeks’ worth of PT appointments. I called in and confirmed that no, I did not have any further appointments.

I suppose I could reschedule for some, and I might do that if I don’t keep improving, but lately I’ve felt that heading back is basically a formality, not much to do except the exercises they already tell me to do at home. So for now I think I’ll just strike out on my own. Weird feeling, closing that era off.

A la “The Tales of Ba Sing Se,” this post will recount some of the random goings-on over the last week.

 

The Tale of the Stolen Space

I arrived back at my apartment Tuesday evening to find some interloping car in my spot. Never in all my 50-odd weeks of living here had that happened before. For a hot second I just stayed in my car, puzzling it out, like I did when, near the end of the semester, someone took my “unassigned” seat in high school psychology and I had to go get a drink of water to compose myself before heading in and taking a different seat.

I parked in a guest spot and decided to have a bit of fun with whoever-it-was. I have some left-over name tags I used as my Halloween costume last year, the kind that say “Hello, my name is” with room to write in whatever. Last year I went as “Bob”.

Anywho, I left a note reading, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You took my spot. Prepare to feel bad about it.” I had to iterate a couple times on that last clause, cause I didn’t want it to come across like a threat. But it all worked out, the car was gone the next day.

 

The Tale of the Upstairs Infant

I’ve always felt a tinge of guilt about my upstairs and downstairs neighbors. I’ve had some loud parties at my place, and I never got around to delivering goody bags to say sorry. But I got it dished back to me occasionally; the upstairs neighbors periodically performed what I can only describe as something akin to a Muslim call to prayer, and it always went on for some time.

They moved out though, and in their place came a family that didn’t seem to cause too much noise. That all changed a few weeks ago, when I started hearing faint, intermittent infant wailing. It was never very loud, took me a while to pinpoint the source. I take it as penance for my past parties.

There is an upside, though. As I type this, I can hear the mom having fun and playing silly games with her child, and that’s always heartwarming.

 

The Tale of the Irish and the Italian

On Friday I went to a friend’s house to watch the 2015 movie “Brooklyn”, set in ’50s America, featuring the love story between Irish and Italian immigrants. Thumbs up, would recommend.

 

The Tale of the Starship Discovery

On the more modern end of the scale, I’ve seen the first three episodes of the new Star Trek: Discovery TV show. Hot dang is it good. Go watch it. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller: “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking it up.” $6/month, or roughly $1.50 per episode. Gotta admit that First Officer Saru is one of my favorite characters, with Captain Lorca not far behind.

 

The Tale of the Ghost in the Machine

I had a friend over and was using Chromecast on my phone to project media to my TV. Individual apps can be “casted”, which results in the TV displaying a unique UI, controllable from the original app. When the TV requests content, it typically streams it itself; i.e., when casting from the YouTube app, the video data is not flowing through the phone and back to the TV; the TV is actually fetching the data straight from YouTube.

In addition to media playback, Chromecast on Android also supports screen mirroring. In this case, video data does travel from the phone to the TV.

So there we were, having a grand old time, when all of a sudden my Chromecast sessions started dying soon after activating Chromecast screen mirroring. Ah technology, the bane and lifeblood of my existence. I then noticed that the reason my Chromecast sessions were dying was because my wifi was being disconnected. Out of curiosity I decided to trigger it again and pay attention to the lights on my router, see what they did when things went sideways.

Lo and behold, the problem wasn’t with my phone at all. It turns out that my phone was disconnecting from wifi because there was no wifi; the router was busy rebooting. It did this consistently, within four or five seconds of beginning to screen-mirror over Chromecast.

At that point I just gave up. I explained to my friend that this was as if, whenever you turn on the second faucet in the master bedroom, the water meter explodes. My only hope now is that it decides to fix itself as mysteriously as it decided to break itself.

 

The Tale of the Haunted Mansion

Speaking of haunted stuff…

Saturday’s afternoon session was spent at a friend’s house.

Between that session and Priesthood session, I and three friends played a rousing round of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I convey a dramatization of the round in a Facebook post. Needless to say, the game will definitely be going to the Cabin.

 

The Tale of the Balding Tires

The game had to pause, as the house got haunted right when I had to head off to a friend’s house for Priesthood Session. It was raining hard, and I took a two-lane freeway on-ramp too fast. I began to drift from the right lane into the left – fortunately there weren’t any other vehicles in my immediate vicinity. My vehicle was becoming stable, when I noticed that my steering wheel was turned far too much to the right; if I suddenly regained traction, I’d head right into the opposite guard rail. I began to correct, and immediately my tires started gripping the road again. A minor fishtail as the control loop stabilized and I was back on my way.

I just barely hit the mileage number on that little sticker they leave in the upper corner of the windshield, so I’ll have a professional confirm that I do indeed desperately need to replace my tires before I go and do that. In the meantime, no more pretending I’m in Fast & Furious.

 

The Tale of the Highway Husky

On my way to work today I passed up the opportunity to hop into a faster lane on the freeway, just so I could get overtaken by a car with a husky peeking its head out the back window. Hi Puppy!!

 

The Tale of the Missing Headset

As I mentioned last week, my phone now works with a VR headset. It was supposed to arrive Thursday last week, but ended up getting delivered to my office Friday at 5:30pm, so I wasn’t able to retrieve it until 3:30pm today once receiving processed it. It is definitely a fun little doodad; I’ve loved swiping through old “photospheres” I took on vacation. Can’t wait to play “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” when I’m up there next.

 

The Tale of the Jelly Donut

“Jelly donut” is the not-so-technical term for the shock-absorbing ring separating individual vertebrae, so this tale is simply a progress report. Physical therapy’s going well enough. I can feel improvements strength-wise, but flexibility hasn’t really improved, and my backside still feels like it’s bruised up after sitting down for too long or driving for more than six or seven minutes.

I had a follow-up visit with the spine specialist who originally referred me to physical therapy. One of my objectives was to obtain an MRI. The specialist demurred, noting that given my improvement, even if it does show a disc herniation—the leading theory of what went wrong—the recommended treatment plan would not change. Not until I demonstrate a plateau in improvement anyways. He had me schedule another followup four weeks out, and if I haven’t had dramatic improvement in that time, then he’d go for an MRI and consider more invasive options, like a cortisone injection. Fooey.

 

The Tale of the Walk in the Park

The last session of General Conference was shown at my bishop’s place. I arrived late, and had to park around the corner due to high turnout. Afterwards, I walked back to my car, and decided to just keep walking. It was a gorgeous day out and I wanted to see how far I could go.

Wandered through a nice residential area. Passed a park with a tennis court in it, where I spied a lone man practicing some form of martial arts – could be shaolin, but honestly it looked like it could be wushu, a form of martial arts practiced only for exhibitionary purposes, with no focus on practical applications like self defense.

I also passed a house with an ambulance out front. No one was around and the ambulance wasn’t making any noise. There was a laptop screen facing the passenger-side door, and I could see an event log, with timestamps placing them not five minutes prior. The messages told the tale of a son calling in that his father had passed, the paramedics arriving, and calling a police unit to the scene.

I wasn’t sure that the log messages on the screen corresponded with the ambulance’s current stop. I figured I’d wander back the way I came, and if I passed the house and it had a cop out front, I’d be confident what happened.

Eventually found my way to a park where a couple of kids were playing in those inflatable battle bubbles. A path led off into some woods. It wound around the edge of a vast gully. I followed it for a time, until I came across a smaller path that forked off and led me down into the heart of the gully.

I felt like I was an anthropologist, exploring the ruins of a past civilization, brushing off the cobwebs of old – figurative and literal as it turned out, as spiderwebs abounded. Ended up grabbing a branch and brandishing it around like a torch. And yes, eventually the branch stopped being a torch and started being a lightsaber.

It had been some time since I’d been well and truly lost. I had absolutely no idea what direction I’d come in from. I was considering backtracking, when I stumbled across the find of the century. (Not really, but, y’know.)

Brought me right back to the forts we’d build in the creek. But this, this was the real deal.

I pressed on, looking for more evidence of civilization. And I found it:

Didn’t evoke quite the same sense of childhood sentimentality, but it was still cool.

At this time it was about an hour until I was due back at my apartment to greet friends. Still felt no closer to finding an exit. At some point I’d have to text the group and admit that I was lost in the woods. But I pressed on and scaled a hill, leading back to the trail I’d abandoned earlier.

I managed to find my way back without resorting to GPS, a goal I’d set for myself before setting off on my adventure in the first place. And sure enough, I passed by the house again, and saw that a police cruiser had taken the place of the ambulance. Some family members were standing around the front yard, looking somber. I was glad I knew enough not to cheerily call out “howdy,” but I kind of wish I had less inhibitions against potentially awkward social encounters, or I could’ve really made things surreal for them. “Hi, Sam? Yes, I just wanted to say I’m sorry your father passed, I’m sure he was a good man, I’m glad he got to pass in his own home, surrounded by family. No you don’t know me. Oh I just had a feeling that your name was Sam and that your dad passed away today. Cheerio!” Maybe if I were in Tim’s family I would’ve given it a shot or three.