As I wrote a week ago, I noticed some roaches as we moved into KurtWerks West, v2.0. I thought they were a fluke. Not so much… I smashed one that was on the hallway wall and washed another down the drain in my shower. Kelly was up all night one night after one casually (or brazenly) sauntered across the ledge of her keyboard drawer whilst she was typing.
Clearly, this wasn't going to work. After I wrote a polite but firm email message to the apartment management and Kelly wrote a similar message to the manager and followed it up with a personal visit to the management office, a pest control service came out Friday morning. The upshot was that we (mostly Kelly, actually, because I'm at work most of the time) had to unpack the pantry and the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms so the exterminator could do an inspection and set out food and poison.
He used two types of agents, one that interferes with their gestation and one that kills them outright, but only after they've had a chance to take the food back to their posse. It seems to be working. Whereas before we we seeing live roaches, the few we are seeing now are dead. That's the only kind of roach I'm interested in seeing.
Have I mentioned that moving is the work of Satan?
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:41 2009-03-29 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
KurtWerks West, Volume 2 (Fremont)
Or, KurtWerks, the Fremont Edition.
Kelly and I moved from San Jose to Fremont yesterday. We wanted to find a place that was less expensive, larger (if possible), and quieter. San Jose's Japantown neighborhood is pretty, but our apartment there was terribly noisy. Between the street traffic, the twenty-somethings coming home hammered from the bar at 2:00 a.m., and sirens, we couldn't take it anymore. After about six weeks of apartment shopping, we found a three bedroom apartment in Fremont (on Fremont Boulevard, no less) that is much quieter (except for the children) had more space (particularly a room we could dedicate to office), and that was less expensive. Welcome to Pathfinder Village. The name sounds like a retirement home, psychiatric hospital, or treatment center. It isn't quite as nice as our old place (older, mostly) but for over $400 less per month, I can deal with it.
I'll post pictures of the move and the apartment this evening.
So far, the only downside has been the 4 roaches we saw coming up out of the disposal. I believe they were a fluke. There must have been food or something equally yummy (to cockroaches) left in the disposal because after running water down the drain and running the disposal, I haven't seen any more. If this continues, though, there's going to be trouble. I can tolerate a lot of things, but not roaches.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 09:59 2009-03-22 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Acceptance (Sobriety)
I met with my sponsor Friday afternoon. Toward the end of the meeting he asked me if I had accepted my alcoholism. I thought about it for a minute and answered, “No, I'm not at peace with it.” He replied, “I didn't ask if you were at peace with it. I asked if you had accepted it.” I realized at that moment that I had assumed that accepting something meant being at peace with it and that, consequently, I didn't have a good definition of “accept”. So, I looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster, to accept something means to:
- To receive willingly (accept a gift)
- To endure without protest or reaction (accept poor living conditions)
- To regard as proper, normal, or inevitable (the idea is widely accepted)
- To recognize as true: believe (refused to accept the explanation)
- To make a favorable response to (accept an offer)
- To receive favorably something offered – usually used with of (a heart more disposed to accept of his — Jane Austen)
With these definitions in mind, I can say, “Yes, I have accepted my alcoholism” and, “No, I have not accepted my alcoholism.” ;-)
I do not receive it willingly—I did not and do not want to be an alcoholic. I have no recollection of deciding as a child that I wanted to be a lying, cheating, stealing drunkard. I do endure it without protest or reaction—it's a fact that I am alcoholic, although I do not care for that fact. I certainly do not regard it as proper or normal, but I do think it was inevitable once I took the first drink, especially considering my family history. I do recognize as true and believe that I am an alcoholic—I don't have to look at my life in any great depth to realize this.
Nor have I heretofore made a favorable response to being an alcoholic. I am glad to be alcoholic in the sense that I know what my problem is and what to do about it. There are a lot of people with all manner of problems, including alcoholism, who haven't the first hint that they have them, much less what to do about them. I haven't, finally, received favorably that I'm an alcoholic although, again, at least I know what my problem is and have a solution.
What do I take away from this? That I have work to do and prayers to say toward the goal of fully accepting I am an alcoholic.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 13:14 2009-03-08 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Moving (San Jose)
Kelly and I are moving to Fremont. We found a larger, 3-bedroom apartment for $400 less per month. The third bedroom will become a dedicated office, an arrangement we've missed having. We don't necessarily need the additional square footage, so that's a pure bonus. The significantly lower rent almost makes up for the 5% across-the-board salary cut NVIDIA handed out in mid-February. The new location is generally quieter than our current apartment in Japantown. In particular, we won't have the constant street noise. Finally, Fremont is more centrally located, so when Kelly finally finds a job, whether in Oakland, the city, the East Bay, the South Bay, or the peninsula, her commute will be easier than it would be if we were still in San Jose (which is South Bay for all you non-Norteños).
On the downside, I lose my sweet 15-minute surface street commute. It's a small price to pay, though, when we compare that to the benefits. Moving day is Saturday, March 21st.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 12:01 2009-03-08 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Resetting the Date (Sobriety)
You might have noticed that I reset the sobriety counter. While I won't go in the details of what happened here — I drank, duh — I will note how I came to do so and what I've learned. The condensed version is that I was feeling good after over six months of sobriety and slacked off the nearly daily attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I got the predictable (to other alcoholics, at least) results.
If one accepts the proposition that alcoholism is a chronic disease, then the notion of a relapse makes sense. People with chronic diseases have relapses. Where alcoholics are concerned, Dr. William Silkworth, AA's early medical supporter, explained relapses more eloquently than I will undertake to attempt here.
Honestly, I resisted the idea that I need to attend meetings daily. I want a “normal” life. Whatever I thought that was, I was pretty sure that it did not include near-daily attendance at AA meetings. What I learned on February 19th is that I need to do so. Regardless of what “normal” is and means, I'm not it, particularly when it comes to alcohol. To paraphrase the beginning of Chapter 3 in the Big Book, I don't like to think I am bodily and mentally different from other people:
No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30).
The fact is, where alcohol is concerned, I am bodily and mentally different from normal drinkers. So, “normal” for me includes attending meetings. It took having to reset my sobriety date to get that. But I get it now in a way I didn't before.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 23:11 2009-03-03 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)