Where things stand from where I sit

Note to self: when re-launching the blog, make sure you have time to re-launch the blog.

What can I say? The wedding-singing business has been pretty active lately. Y'know: spring, and all.

On that note: for reasons that I suspect we'll get into via a series of Lost-like flashbacks, I've been about ready to quit the biz. Today, I received a personal thank-you letter from the Chief Wedding Singer (Her Reigning Crooner) herself, for a massive recent connubial event that was slightly more logistically demanding than the moon landing. I know the letter was drafted by some flunky on a lateral level to myself and signed by autopen and that, HR-- er, CWS, was probably never even aware of its existence. But, still: warm tinglies, and pretty much right when I needed them.

Next crisis: real estate. A long, long time ago, on a blog much like this, I publicly pondered a property. I didn't buy it; I should have; someone else did; I haven't seen anything remotely as appealing; and I desperately need this process to be over. Comparing apples to oranges is pretty much my least favorite decision-making activity. I can create a Toeplitz matrix of price, square feet, distance to metro, need to change trains, good urbanness, bad urbanness, good suburbia, bad suburbia, gentrification tell-tales and p of noisy neighbors and contemplate it to the exclusion of any other profit-making or life-enhancing activity. Seriously: I have eigenvalues for stacked vs. full-size washer-dryers. K is spending much time and ingenuity trying to convince me that the real estate problem does not harbor a unique solution, but to no avail. My brain has two settings: indifferent, and obsessed.

At the moment, I've made the momentous decision to essentially give up on DC proper, which puts me back where I started a couple of months ago. (And the reason? After much variable-crunching and cognitive kilowattage, it came down to this: DC is icky.) I'm seriously contemplating two properties, both of which are flawed and somewhat unlovely, but neither of which is likely to depreciate. How flawed? Well, DC residents, you tell me: (1) it is worth it to live within house-shaking distance of the 2 AM CSX train through Alexandria for affordable access to Old Town? And, (2) is it crazy to contemplate putting a master bedroom in a half-assed and uninsulated (and, probably, unfinishable) garage conversion just to get 1300 square feet in Ballston?

I find these questions depressing. And hugely time-consuming. But we'll be back soon.

ps MS IE users: does the blog look sort of like a colonial hornbook to you? I think we might have a bit of a kerning problem.

Looking for something?

Here's the thing: we're back, but our archives aren't.

I am, if I understand the new workplace guidelines correctly, free to be snarky, punchy, and, even, if only occasionally, mordant...as long as the topics are completely, utterly, and 100 percent content-free.

I was, don't get me wrong, initially bummed about this dilemma. On the one hand, the anti-authoritarian 12-year-old within me -- which is, actually, most of me -- bristles both at the constraint and the injustice. On the other hand, paycheck. Even if I tend to regard my job as rather peculiarly dead-end, I still don't necessarily want to get, as it were, cul-de-sacked.

And then I thought: hey, waitaminnit. Content-free? I could do that. In fact, I usually do that.

And so, here we are. For now. I mean, we'll see how it goes.

If you're still trying to get into a certain other blog: there's nothing behind the curtain. The password-protect is a temporary measure, while I figure out how to safely export and preserve those entries, and after that it'll come down entirely. That blog is no longer being updated, with or without content.

This one is a work in progress. Is it aesthetically displeasing? I think it is, a bit, and will keep tinkering (anyone know how to get underlining out of a blogroll widget? Ug-leee, and not the simple fix you'd think Ed update: oo, I think I got it ). Feel free to make other layout suggestions.

More reader input requested: I'm still going to need to talk about my job, though I'll need my best Eastern European techniques to do so (and please don't get me started on the irony). Thus, I'll need a stand-in career that I can actually discuss, in order to talk about what ol' Napoleon and Snowball are up to, if you catch my drift. Ease of metaphor is the primary criterion. Potential for humor is a close second. Contenders?