First year retrospective

Greetings, loyal readers. I know that just because I haven't blogged in a few months, it doesn't mean that you've all had to find other blogs to satisfy your hunger for a glimpse into the goo in my brain (or at least the part of the goo that is concerned with the day to day mundane thoughts). I imagine you all checking back every day, just hungrily awaiting a new post. And this is why I couldn't leave you for another day to be disappointed yet again to find nothing new here. So I finally caved after much badgering (okay, threatening) from Rachel and decided to write something. Also it seems we now have some stiff competition from Dovid's blog. I can't have him hogging all the "family blogger" respect next time we all get together. Save some for me!

So I figured now is as good a time as any to post some thoughts, as our one year anniversary of moving to Seattle has recently come and gone. There are a few formats that have gone through my mind to present a retrospective of the past year. But which would be worthy to present timeless truths, wisdom for the ages, and some semi-vulgar words that I can now get away with since having a child who makes stinky poops (that's one)? Should I compose a sonnet? Write a song? While I have no doubt that my wonderful education at the Yeshiva and that other Yeshiva would well-equip me for such an endeavor I think that a "the good the bad and the ugly" format, or maybe a Lettermanesque top ten list would be more apropos. Also the word "butt" (two. Too vulgar? How about tushie?) probably wouldn't work as well in a sonnet. "Shall I compare thee to a summer tushie? Thou art more lovely and more temperate" - see? True though it may be, it doesn't quite work. Or maybe my "great" "education" wasn't as good as I thought. Can you do better? Maybe our next blog contest should be who can most artfully place the word "tushie" into a famous sonnet. But I digress.

So without further ado, here is some stuff that has happened this past year, in no particular order. Some of it old, some new. Nothing borrowed or rented, we own.

First and most importantly, of course, was the arrival of our darling little monster of a child. Everyone says he is advancing very quickly and of course we always try our hardest not to brag too much to the other parents. "Um excuse me, but your blob of a child is getting in the way of our genius child who is trying to solve his first partial differential equation. Oh look, the blob rolled over. I'm sure he's just a few weeks away from sticking his foot into his mouth." Etc.

To help him think while pondering the big questions he faces every day (where's my food? where's my food? Is that my food? Let me taste... mmm, this tastes almost as good as that fuzz ball from earlier) he sticks just about everything he can find into his mouth with little to no regard for whether the object is actually "food" or food-like. If he really likes it he slobbers all over it and everything in its general vicinity. If he doesn't like it so much he slobbers all over it and everything in its general vicinity. If he really hates it he slobbe... well I think you get the idea.

One thing is for sure - this kid is a Polsky. He hates it when other people are eating and don't share. He likes pretty much everything we've given him so far, with the exception of parsnip and scotch (haven't tried bourbon yet, though he loves gin. Does that run in either family?).

On to work-related news. We moved offices about 1-2 months ago, which makes 2 office moves and one reorg that I've been through in my first year at Microsoft. I hear this is about average. When I first started I was sharing an office, but that was only for a few weeks until the last of the summer interns left. I had my own until my first move, when I shared with a Chinese guy who's in my group. Moved again, then shared with a Chinese girl (one of very few female developers I've seen) for about a month. She moved out recently when this year's crop of summer interns left. So now I'm back to my own office, and I'm planning on moving my couch back in soon! I had to give it up to someone else while I was sharing because there wasn't room. The actual work I'm doing at work is going well, though with Halo 3 coming out on Xbox 360 tomorrow I can't imagine there'll be much "work" going on over the next several days. They are keeping me quite busy but I enjoy it. Our company meeting was a couple weeks ago. You can read last year's account of it. It wasn't too exciting this time but I did get a nice fleece picnic blanket. It will really come in handy for all the picnicing we do. Also picking flowers and following magical rainbows. I would have preferred something I might actually use someday like, oh I don't know, a shawl.

Let's see, other things of interest...

The kollel holds a golf tournament a couple times a year, so I played in that a couple months ago. Someone who was supposed to play dropped out at the last minute and we only had 2, but then 2 random guys showed up who wanted to play the course and didn't know there was a tournament going on. Well needless to say the kollel gladly took their cash despite the fact that they were clearly gentiles. They're very open minded at this kollel (Their motto: come one! come all! even gentiles! bring cash!). They ended up getting paired with us, which was fine by me because they were a heck of a lot better than the Jews on our team. The format was scramble and we actually finished 2 under par, tying for third. The tie-breaker was some sham of a trivia question game at the dinner they had that night. Our question was about salmon. The winning team actually got a question about, duh, golf. They couldn't do a tie-breaker hole because by the time all the scorecards were in we were long gone. Oh well, I still got a free sleeve of golf balls out of the deal. Well, calculated another way the sleeve of golf balls actually cost $80, but I prefer the first way. And it was still surprisingly a net plus, as I did not lose a single ball all day!

So I think that's all the really interesting stuff that's been going on here lately. Maybe if you post supportive comments I won't wait so long to post again. Get that positive reinforcement going. Yes I realize that it takes someone with a lot of gall to say that after so many months of narry a word blogged. Too bad, it's my blog.
Everyone have a great Yom Tov!

Ari

P.S. Take that Dovid!

P.P.S. Tushie!