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There are very few pictures taken of me compared to the pictures I have of those I with which I spend time. I’m largely fine with this as it lets everyone else do their thing while I do mine. In the above, I gave Janine my camera to take pictures of Mike and I being hugged by John Roderick. She took this picture while I was waiting in line.

Me Right Now

I like it.

Janine’s shorter than I am, so every picture she takes has a slightly different perspective that is sometimes revealing. Here, my beard looks a bit fuller and it’s entirely due to the angle. Also, it shows me with neither a smirk nor a forced smile. I still have four pens in my pocket although not a notebook nor phone and there’s a strap around my shoulder because I’m pretty well always carrying something. I look happy because I was. Finally, it’s who I am, right now.

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Mike met me at my house around 5:00, we picked up Whit around 5:30 and we were on our way to New York City to see Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick at the City Winery for their “One Christmas as a Time” show.  Jon Coulton lives on the internet and is an engineer turned professional musician and John Roderick is a guitarist in the The Long Winters who has lived more than almost any six people I know. I was excited to see them, but first, we had to make it to NYC.

We had left ourselves two and a half hours to make what is normally a 75 to 90 minute trip, but with the glory of traffic, that doubled. Approaching the Holland Tunnel, we traded positions repeatedly with a jet black Smart Car blasting die Deutsch Techno-Musik. This was the real cost of entering New York City.

Here they are.
One Christmas at a Time Headliners

We walked in a little late to the two having witty banter after a bit they started playing. I was surprised at the quality of the sound. John Roderick came to me through the Roderick on the Line podcast where he mostly tells stories. I had forgotten that he was a skilled musician.
The first few pieces were simply well done off-beat Christmas tunes that involved changing instruments and at one point a comb.
Set List and Comb

I was taking pictures this whole time when a women looked at me with my camera and said “follow me”. I did and she positioned me in front of a pillar saying “you take photos here. They will be great. You will love me”. Later, I was taking photos there and she looked me up and down saying “you like my spot. I tell you.”

Midway through the main set, John Hodgman was introduced as a special guest which proved to be delightful. He did but one song and made ribald comments as is his wont then left again.
Secret Guest

There was a second musical guest who barely registered to me played a somewhat sad song on an accordion. After her sub-set, John and Jon returned where Roderick announced “our audience largely consists of athiests and non-observant Jews. We have a lot of songs for the first group, but none for the non-observant Jews.” They then performed a song where John Roderick read the Wikipedia article for Hanukkah while Jon Coulton played bits and loops from a sampler. It was a dozen ways amazing.
Wikipedia Hanukkah

The show wrapped up and all six players played. Took their bowsCurtain Call

After the show, I took some pictures of the performers, did a free-form scat duet with Whit, got to lend John Hodgman my Sharpie and learned that Supertrain may be coming to Philadelphia. I asked John Roderick if he still sold hugs for five dollars. He said yes, and in exchange for a 10 spot, I think I gave Mike a unique Christmas gift.
Shaking

Tonight was pretty bad ass.

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Tonight was the first corporate holiday party that I’ve attended. The firm had rented out the Franklin Institute and seeded the place with food stations. I don’t drink and was trying to keep to keto. The people manning the chicken salad station and the roast beef carving station quickly became friends.

The museum was open to us, and I had a bonded with a coworker when we found out the flight simulator would indeed go upside down. Upon egress, we found out the sim cockpit wasn’t nearly as sound-proof as one would want and expect and our expletives were heard throughout the hall. There as quite a line for the simulator later, and I’d like to think my clarion call of “OH FUCK” was partly to blame.

Most of the actuaries drank lightly, some other departments moreso and a coworker challenged me to a dance competition. I giggled politely and then looked him in the eye saying “you, me, Lindy Hop, floor, now.” He reeled back in wide-eyed terror. Mind you, I have no idea how one does the Lindy Hop but I was gambling on him being in the same boat. He bowed to my dance non-skills and I became dance champion for an evening with skills so renowned I would never have to demonstrate them.

The party was fun and the food was presentable.  There were a few hundred people present and although our firm occupies 20 floors of a high-rise, the event seemed small.  I ran into a lot of Temple University alumni and even a woman who had helped me contact the Actuaries Club of Philadelphia.  She was a transplant from another career track only a few years ago and I noticed she had the professional title of “FAS” which takes most people five to 10 years.  I asked her about this:

Me: How did you do that?
Her: I put my head down and studied my ass off for three years.
Me: Did you have a social life?
Her: No, not really.  But now I look back on my paychecks and laugh at how small they are.
Me: Would you do it again if you had to?
Her: Best decision I ever made.

With that, I formulated a plan to pass three actuarial exams this year.  My odds of passing all three are about 20%, my odds of passing two are closer to 50%, and my odds of passing one are probably around 90%.

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My CBR (cognitive background radiation, the thing you think about when you’re not thinking about something else) for the last three years or so has been women or some aspect of dating. With the advent of a job with an exam schedule and a few other things that has died and a certain creativity has popped back into my life. I’m singing more, I jot down more things on napkins and notepads, and I’ve been cooking more.

This evening at a Scout meeting, the other participants were talking about an event and how to improve it when I felt something at the back of my head. Initially, I scratched at it and found that there was nothing physically stuck to my head that shouldn’t have been there. It felt like it was getting larger and I was having trouble making out what other people were saying I was so distracted by this thing. After a bit of reflection, I realized what it was: an idea.

Good ideas are almost material to me. They feel like actual things in my brain. Photography related stuff tends to be in the center top, artier stuff behind my eyes, and more complicated systems-level stuff feels like it’s going to pop out of the back of my skull. This was a tickling of how to make a Scouting Alternate Reality Game. This is what an idea felt like, and I had forgotten.

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Bonnie Averbach was not my instructor at Temple University so much as she was the Patron Saint of Actuarial Science. People from Dubai have stopped people who have Temple University on their business card to ask if the presenter knew Bonnie. She was retiring this evening, and some coworkers and I took the subway there. On the subway, a man immediately began preaching. He was well dressed, well bathed, and well spoken, but not well versed.

Him: God sacrificed his only son for us.
Me: How can infinity sacrifice?
Him: God sacrificed his only son for us and…
Me: Answer the question. How can something that has power over all things sacrifice. Sacrifice implies loss which implies an unfulfilled desire. Infinity can not have such an experience.
*He continues speaking*
A bunch of people on the train strangely nodded when I talked. This has never happened before.
Him: God will sweep away all suffering.
Me: Why hasn’t it happened yet? How can you have omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence in a world with suffering?
Again, some people on the train nodded and an older Chicano nodded his head and said in a loud voice “it’s a tautology, man” to which a Sassy Black Woman went “mhmm”.

We got off the train at Cecil B. Moore and one of my coworkers was visibly shaken by the exchange.

Me: Are you made uncomfortable when I engage in the public square?
Him: Yes. Very much so.
Me: Ok, I won’t do it.
Him: Oh, you can, just know that if shit goes down, in no way do I have your back.

Well, I’m glad I know where I stand.

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Me: I have a workplace etiquette question.
Coworker: What’s that?
Me: I need to buy some brandy to make brandied cherries. I’m wondering if it’d be acceptable to have a brown paper bag in work.
Coworker: Will it be open?
Me: No.
Coworker: Then yes, it’s fine. It’s around a holiday in a place dominated by people with business degrees. Terry, you’re a bit of an odd duck, you’d probably blend in more if you did.

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I woke up at 4 am, edited some photos until about 6am, ran a half marathon while talking to someone in a Google Hangout, dropped my car off to be repaired, ran home, took a nap, and started preparing some chicken and cheese for Mike who came over for dinner. These are my Sundays.

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Joe mentioned to me that he was going to make mead and I replied with “I want that to be my first alcohol”. He said that no one has gotten first drunk on mead before, and I said not since the 12th century. I’m going to start consuming alcohol but I want some arbitrary rules to make it mine.

From SuburbanAdventureRehost

Some of the ones I’m considering:

1) only drink something where I’ve shaken the hand of its maker. If I ever become wine snob, Southern Hemisphere wines could prove tough.
2) for each actuarial exam I get to drink one more type of distilled or fermented drink until I unlock them all as an FCAS.
3) only drink things of a particular color, preferably something odd.
4) only drink things whose proof value is below my age. Right now, I can drink most strong beers but not many fortified wines.
5) only drink things whose percent alcohol is below the maximum distance in miles I can run in a single go. If I want to ever slam Everclear, I need to start prepping for some ultra marathons.

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As a thank you gift to Pat and Clara, I wanted to make peanut butter cupcakes. I asked Google and found a recipe which looked straightforward and began gathering ingredients. At the same time, I took a melatonin tablet about 45 minutes before I thought everything would be done and set to work mixing. Melatonin and I, apparently, have a curious relationship. It skews my sense of time and concept of numbers and I wound up putting twice as much peanut butter in the cupcake mix. “What’s wrong with more peanut butter?” you may ask, well, a few things.
Peanut butter brings extra sugar to the mix, this acts as binding agent. It’s not particularly moist so brings little steam leavening. Finally, it’s quite fatty and having doubled the amount of the single largest ingredient kind of skewed the results. Instead of making a peanut butter cupcake, I wound up with a peanut fritter. The extra fat wound up almost frying the cupcakes as they cooked and the results were quite… dense. I gave one to my dad who requested a knife and fork.

Secondly, I wanted a way to ship these while keeping their frosting in place so, again, I asked Google which recommended I bake a few in mason jars. Once baked and cooled, the cupcakes could be iced and sealed so that they shipped properly. Genius.

From 2012 Odds and Ends

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I’ve just reached a level of competency at work where my coworkers can make the move of expecting things from me. Today, I was asked to do some loss triangles but the requester had some questions and so my boss and my boss’s boss sat in my cube and watched me do it. So, two people who combined probably make eight times as much as me watched me decide if I wanted to use Match + Index or Vlookup to spit out a value. I think I would have been more comfortable had I been asked to do burlesque in Love Park.

I overcame this tension and had a six cheese lunch at DiBruno’s. I’ve concluded that cheddars and Stiltons seem to be my things. I guess dairy is the one case where I’ve embraced the British.