1. Found out that my riding buddy, Dave, had a wreck and injured his spinal cord (he is recovering very well, and is back to riding the trails)
2. Got engaged
3. Had my wisdom teeth removed
4. Celebrated Sarah’s graduation from grad school
5. Took a trip to North Carolina and Virginia, to explore some job possibilities for Sarah.  While there, I was hit by a car (which then “ran”). I had some scrapes and a broken/dislocated finger, which still hurts sometimes (it happened in June). Then our car broke down. We did manage to see some beautiful sights while we were there, but the trip was pretty much a complete bust. Sarah did not get either job. Actually, we thought she was getting the one in Virginia, and just as we thought they were going to make an offer, they told us they had a hiring freeze, and could not fill the position.
6. Got married
7. Moved to Pennsylvania, since Sarah found a job here. I kept my job, and have been working from home.
8. Found out I’m getting laid off from my job. December 31 (tomorrow) will be my last day.
9. Took steps to form my own company providing Web development and other services. This is the first I’ve mentioned it on the blog, I’ll say more later.

So, I decided to ride anyway. I figured if I was going to be late to work, I might as well hit the ground running once I got there, so I went to Starbucks. I was going to go through the “ride through,” but there were a bunch of cars backed up there, so I leaned my bicycle against the front window and went inside. There was only one person in line. I got my iced coffee and a scone (splurging calorically) and left.

I rode over to my usual route and kept going. I turned onto the path that runs through IU’s campus, which I have been taking lately since 7th Street is under construction, and I saw EMS people and firefighters everywhere, with police cars and ambulances along the path. It looked like they were gathered around someone on the ground. I turned around and left to find and alternate route to my alternate route.

As I rode up Jordan Ave., the car behind me seemed interested in passing me. However, I had just had a truck turn a little in front of me while I was in the bike lane, and we were approaching an intersection. I took the lane. After I rode through the intersection, I was going to turn left into the library’s parking lot. As I approached the turn, the guy passed me on the left (i.e. in the wrong lane), cut me off, and then turned left himself! He could have just waited for me to turn left and turned after me. I followed him into the parking lot and resisted the temptation to ride up to his car and give him a piece of my mind.

The rest of my trip was uneventful, but I ended up getting to work about 30 minutes late.

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And my last job, which was also my first long-term programming one, was a work from home thing that never felt like the real deal. So in some ways, the job I have now feels like my first “real” job — doing the kind of work I want, on a salaried basis, with benefits and everything — but you know what? It’s just not that great. I do enjoy the work that I do, for the most part, but sometimes, it’s mind-numbingly boring. This is true of most jobs, and I understand that. I was also hoping to be more part of a team in this job, which really isn’t the case.

I’m stressed over the large amounts of debt I’ve managed to accrue, which at this point I’ve whittled down to only student loans — but I’m still looking at paying them off at something like $200/month for the next 10 years. And that’s for just over two years of college; I didn’t even finish. And I still hope to go back to school sometime in the nearish future, but that would be at in-state IU tuition rates — a hell of a lot cheaper than Northwestern.

I just feel incredibly stifled; I lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle for a few years, including when I worked from home. All of that has changed since I moved back to my hometown this summer, got back into outdoor recreation, and got this “real” job. But now I realize how great the flexibility of working from home was, and that I didn’t take advantage of it nearly as much as I should have. These days, if I’m lucky, I can fit in one of the many things I want to do.

All of this is leading me to question all kinds of things. Do I really want to be a programmer? What would I do instead? Should I have bothered going to Northwestern in the first place? (That just seems like a real waste of money at this point.) Am I really as smart as I always thought I was? What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? Will I ever amount to a hill of beans?

I’d really like some answers.

Then there’s stress related to missing my grandparents; this holiday season is particularly hard because it’s the first one without either one of them, and the first one after I moved back to my hometown. I wish I’d moved back sooner, or they’d held on a little longer. I really could’ve used a year or two of seeing them weekly or more often. I’m also not good at dealing with grief; I deal with it for a while, set it aside in my mind, and wait for it to come up again (it always does). I doubt it’s the best way, but it’s the only thing I know how to do. Of course, there are other stresses, too, some other family-related stress and work stress.

Not only that, my main coping mechanism — riding my bike — has become damn near impossible lately due to the weather. I need to get out and do some road rides, because the trails aren’t in good shape right now, and I miss that outlet. I miss the exercise and the complete focus on what I’m doing. I miss the way the rest of the world seems to slip away, out of mind, leaving me feeling peaceful — even if only for a couple of hours. I miss the feeling of freedom I feel when the bike moves naturally beneath me and I float over the terrain and obstacles and around turns.

Last weekend, I cheated and smoked a cigarette. It tasted absolutely disgusting — but in all honesty, it felt great. I was extremely upset, and it was the only thing that could calm me down. I’m not making excuses, just being honest. I still shouldn’t have smoked that cigarette, and I wish that I hadn’t, but damn, it felt good.

Of course, the flipside of that is that not smoking has gotten harder since then. I crave cigarettes more often, and think about giving up, even though I won’t let myself do that. I can’t. The biggest reason not to give up is that I’d have to go through this all over again, and I just don’t know if I could do that.

I had a nightmare last night. I dreamt that I was at a summer camp, or something similar. There was a natural disaster, I don’t remember what, maybe a fire or a tornado. Most people got out safely. I was trying to help this girl in a wheelchair get to safety, but I couldn’t carry her. I felt like I should have been able to, she wasn’t terribly big, but I guess I was just too weak. Later on, they found her body, clutching a pair of origami cranes like I used to make as a kid. I’d make them as two cranes, joined together at the wing — hers was just like this. At the funeral, one of the other people there said “They found her with this,” and I explained, “I gave it to her. I wanted her to feel comfort as she took her last breath.” I placed it in her coffin, and it was over.

The day started out great; Dave and I went for a ride at Brown County, meeting there at 9:00 am. It was still below freezing outside at that time, and as we started riding, the trails were pretty frozen. They thawed some during the ride, and as that happened, things started to get muddy. The parking lot connector was pretty muddy, but the North Tower and Aynes loops were in pretty good shape. The connector between the two was really muddy.

The weird thing was that although it was below freezing when we started riding, and probably close to 50 degrees by the time we finished about 2 hours later.  I wore my shorts and long-sleeved jersey, with my Wal-Mart jogging suit on over those things, and my full-fingered gloves. I ended up taking the jacket off at the top of the Aynes loop. I was about as comfortable as you can expect, given that the temperature varied by some 20 degrees over the course of the ride. We ran into a few other riders, all of whom seemed to be in a great mood due to the great weather, and of course, Thanksgiving.

After my ride, I called Sarah to let her know I was on my way home. I asked what she was up to, and she said “We’re trying to get the XBox working,” or something like that. I didn’t expect anyone else to be there, so I asked what she meant. She said that Avery (my nephew) was there — my mom had taken Becky (my sister) to the hospital. At first, I wasn’t surprised, as it’s not unusual for Becky to go to the hospital. I called back a few minutes later to make sure Becky was at least physically OK, and it seemed like she was, although Sarah wasn’t told much.

I’m not going to go into detail about what happened, but let me say this. My sister is doing OK, to whatever extent that’s possible. She’s not sick, and she doesn’t have any very major injuries.

But Becky is not truly OK, physically or mentally, and I’m betting that most people know someone who is like this. Someone for whom things never seem to go right — something is always going wrong in their lives, or their friends’ lives, that touches them either directly or because they care too damn much. Someone who gets sick or injured often and who, it seems, is always trying to overcome something. That’s Becky. It really goes beyond that in her case, but let’s let that be.
Anyway, the end result of all of this is that we still ended up doing our Thanksgiving dinner, just a couple of hours later than planned. I actually thought I didn’t want to do our usual Thanksgiving celebration once all this stuff happened, but I’m glad we did — it was far more normal than I expected it could be, given what had happened, and also the fact that it was our first Thanksgiving with both of my grandparents gone.

Mom’s turkey turned out incredibly juicy and great, and her gravy-making skills are constantly improving, even though she will never be able to compete with Grandma’s gravy. We also had broccoli, corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin muffins (which Avery helped make). There was also pumpkin pie, but we didn’t eat any immediately after dinner. I really stuffed my face — I was starving, in part because I’m always hungry, in part because dinner was later, and in part because I had ridden 10 miles earlier in the day. And dinner was that much better because of it!
Despite everything, all in all, it was a good day.