Sadie has acquired an impressive number of names, first and/or middle:
Sadie
Rose
Zephram
Veruca
Rory
Just
Shayro

Obviously there’s here given name, Sadie Rose, and I didn’t even include in the list our sometimes reversing it to Rosie Sade. There’s her own poor enunciation of iy we won’t let her forget, Shayro. And indeed, she thinks of herself not as Sadie, but as Sadie Rose, almost as one word.

Zephram Rose is the alternate name we dubbed her with ages ago. We joked about her inventing FTL (faster than light) drive. In the Star Trek universe, the guy who invented warp drive for humans was Zephram. What the heck, it could also be a girl’s name, right? Kind of like Leslie. Or, for that matter, Rory. The only Rory I ever knew was male.

Veruca is my name for teasing her when she is being a brat, from the spoiled girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She hates being called that, seeming to know what the point is, even lacking the context.

Rory is what Valerie calls her. We have no idea why! Or where it came from. It’s so persistent, though, it verges on becoming a true alternate name in the family, and everyone knows who Valerie means when she refers to Rory. Despite being fully aware her name is Sadie. Too much watching of Gilmore Girls in utero or as an infant? It’s weird. So now I sometimes call Sadie things like Veruca Rory or Zephram Rory or Sadie Rory or Rory Veruca or Rory Shayro or whatnot. Or the entire string of them. Which makes her say “Just Sadie Rose!” So I joke that her name is Just.

Mostly, though, the whole Rory thing is a kick. Valerie is so matter of fact and unswerving about it. Maybe she had a sister that name in a past life, or expected to be born into a family with that name in it, or had a dream.

Deb had suggested recently that it was time sooner rather than later for Sadie to go to her first movie in a theater, which I’d been thinking of, but in terms of later this year or sometime next year. Sadie heard us talking about it and latched on, so just as well I’d realized Up might be a good one for the purpose.

Ended up going yesterday, to the theater in the mall in Kingston. It was the close one with non-3D version. Didn’t want to have to deal with that, given the circumstances, not to mention the added cost. Luckily she didn’t get excited about not going to Wareham, where I’d driven through the parking lot Sunday on the way home from their first trip to the beach - it’s a week of firsts, apparently - to show her where I planned to take her. They only had 3D. Kingston had the benefit of being near Walmart and having the food court right there.

Anyway, she was more than ready. And I felt bad, seeing kids much younger - and well behaved! - at the 12:45 showing. We got M&M’s, which took most of the movie to eat. During some of the “dull” parts she’d grab more of them. She sat still, was quiet, was entranced, like she’d always gone to movies.

What a great one! I loved it. Cried and cried. Would have anyway, but it was worse because I was emotional about it being an experience for Sadie, and then the fact she seemed so happy.

The short beforehand was exceptional, too, and I loved how that tied in with a scene in the feature. Even having read a description in a review couldn’t prepare me for the silent sequence showing their entire adult relationship.

Anyway, highly recommended.

Afterward, we had pizza at the food court and went shopping, which was also cool. Usually it’s either just me, or it’s everyone, Sadie seldom gets to do stuff like that alone.

To my niece Melissa, who is 20 today. Time flies!

To my father, who is [holy crap!] today.

Life may be like a box of chocolates, but Flow is like a good cup of coffee.

Great post about a concept I’ve talked about before, which is central to some of the types of work I do, and not at all necessary to others. At the old business, it was a mix, where I could be anywhere doing anything and answer quick questions that might come up, put out proverbial fires, but frequently not need a flow state at all. That’s the drive-by stuff, the small stuff.

I’m perhaps more needy of it than some, and may even have a harder time achieving the state than some. It’s how I write the best, or at least the most painlessly productively. It’s how I do certain things that are oddly at both the especially creative and especially analytical ends of the theoretical spectrum that calls those distinctive.

I always need it more for the equivalent of loading a program into my head and wrapping my mind around it. Or more accurately, when there is more to load, or material that is less fresh.

I may as well have been a programmer. If I could scrape by for a while and have a lot of uninterrupted time, (re)learning to be one is high on my list of possibilities.

I was expecting to come out “artistic,” and probably could have had I selected different competing answers. There were as many as three of four answers to some of the questions that would all have been equally or near equally valid options for me. In itself an oddity, no doubt.

You Think Concretely

Your brain works best when you are able to see or visualize what you’re thinking about. You have an both an eye for detail and for the big picture. You study things carefully. You are in tune with all of your senses, and you think better with a clean workspace. You are open to all sorts of input. You are a free thinker who lives in the now.

His wife, who used to look up to him as a glamorous writer, begins to view him as an “unreliable employee.”

From Patriarch to Patsy

Via Dr. Helen, via her hubby.

Balancing Marriage and Business

Slide into bed with an entrepreneur, and you wind up cuddling with his business. At a certain point, the entrepreneur’s spouse has to answer the question: Are you in or are you out? It is a question that surfaces in many forms over time. Are you in? In for as long as it takes this business to succeed? In for what is potentially a lifetime of financial risk? Or are you out? Out of patience, out of tolerance, out of your mind with stress and the bitterness of dreams deferred? The entrepreneur usually doesn’t pose the question overtly. Yet the spouse does answer it, by giving or withholding support, encouragement, warmth, and reassurance — the manifestations of love.

My single biggest “what if” involves having had a job rather than a business. Or having set out to close the business five years ago, or dump it on my partners, taking a “real job” instead, be it here or by being the one to relocate. In any event, it really is tough, not like simply having a job, even a relatively demanding one.

On another note, perhaps I couldn’t help being in business or flirting with the idea frequently, since tendency toward self-employment is genetic.