Goodbye Texas

Thank you/holiday gifts I'm making for my team

This week is my last here in Dallas. I can't believe almost an entire year has gone by. Like always, it feels surreal to be packing my things, zipping up my documents, and saying goodbye.

I suddenly have a heightened awareness of the finality of everything I'm doing, even the most banal and routine things, such as "This is the last time I'll eat this delicious pizza from Cane Rosso" and "This is my last Wednesday night at this Residence Inn" and "This is the last time I'll hit the curb in this huge-ass rental car...hopefully."

At just a bit over 11 months, this will wrap up my longest project in my three-and-a-half years here at ThoughtWorks. Usually at around the six-month mark within any project - no matter how engaging - I find myself wondering about other assignments or roles and starting to feel the itch to roll off and try something else. This time I think that because I switched roles about six months in from BA to scrum master, the shake up was almost big enough that it seemed like a new project despite the fact that I was working with the exact same team, supporting the same technology, and sitting all of three feet away from my old desk.

I've learned so much here over the course of my assignment. Since our team supports no less than ten different applications - all of which are quite dissimilar - I've had to find a good balance of broad versus deep domain knowledge. We've delivered some pretty awesome software too, like a service for crew members to access their own security line, updates to be compliant with the latest FAA regulations, and a huge Websphere to Tomcat application overhaul (whose improved performance led one customer to exclaim, "Mikey likie!")

I've also learned that the airline industry is incredibly insane. Just getting crew on board safely and in a cost-effective way is complex enough to make my head spin sometimes. I've always thought flying was pretty neat. But now, having seen truly how much work goes into every little aspect of a flight, I view every takeoff and arrival as nothing short of a small miracle.

Beyond its intricate domain, this project was also unique in that I developed some pretty meaningful relationships with my team mates. I felt like I thrived within client's culture and was able to partake in many of the interesting and meaningful events on site. I feel grateful for having been on a team that has welcomed me and treated me as one of their own.

This team was also quite unique in that there was a strong female presence on it - a setup I'd never been lucky enough to have before. In our 11-person group, 7 of us are women. Women who hold full-time technical roles, who are mothers and wives, who juggle Cub Scouts meetings for their sons and volleyball games for their daughters, who make arts and crafts, who bring in baked goods for the team to enjoy, who volunteer their time to those less fortunate, who trade jokes and stories, who write beautiful code, who walk their dogs, who compare Candy Crush scores, who stay up all night caring after a sick toddler, who break the rules (when it makes sense), and whose yes-I-can-do-it-all-and-still-find-time-to-treat-myself-to-a-manicure confidence was truly fun and inspiring to be around. I'm going to miss being around these strong female role models.

Despite being reluctant to leave a wonderful team and an awesome client, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited for what's next. I don't want to jinx anything but so far things are looking - dare I say it? - awesome for my next assignment. As in going international awesome! But ThoughtWorks can have a tendency of being a place where no assignment is truly final until the last minute (and even then it can be iffy) so I'm trying not to get myself too excited yet :)  I keep having to remind myself that there are 12 full days of vacation to enjoy with loved ones before it's time to fret about work again.

So Dallas, for the second time, I bid you adieu after an extended stay here. So long, and thanks for all the breakfast tacos.

Thanksgiving

I spent my Thanksgiving in Maryland this year. It was a peaceful four days filled with family, friends, and food - the three things I am always most thankful for this time of year.

Thanksgiving day began with a turkey trot 5k in Frederick, Maryland. This was my first ever race in Maryland! I loved the home-baked cookies, pretty fall scenery, and small-town feel of this one. It was uplifting to see thousands of people, young and old, gather together to run a 5k...at 8 in the morning...in 20 degree weather.

We clocked in at around 24:30; not my best time ever but not too shabby either. I was really impressed by the variety of runners, from the little kids who ran alongside their parents to the four young men who finished in just over 15 minutes to the 79 year old man BAMF was just doing his thing on this sunny morning. Thanks to Mom and Dad for getting up so early and cheering us on in the cold - you guys were real troopers. And thanks to the owners of a dog named Berkeley for letting me and the boy pet their devastatingly adorable 13-week old half lab half golden retriever puppy. Getting to eat cookies, run a 5k, and pet a puppy made for a pretty kickass morning.

With all this exercise nonsense out of the way, we focused on the real task of the day - cooking! I was responsible for making the stuffing, salad, cranberry-applesauce, and gravy.

Thanksgiving was extra special this year because we spent it with my aunt from China, my cousin, my cousin's cousin, and my grandparents on my dad's side. In total there were 10 people. And it felt like there was enough food to feed maybe 20 more.

What's Thanksgiving like in the Fan family? Fairly normal, I think. We make most of the traditional food, like turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes. Some Chinese dishes always end up on the table too - this year we had Asian versions of salad, meatballs and ribs. (And Tsingtao beer, of course.) What was more interesting than the cuisine were the languages, if you ask me. We had my grandparents and aunt who only speak Chinese and the boy who only speaks English and everyone else fluent in both languages, so there was always a lot of side translating going on. But some of the stories told around the dinner table - in particular, one my aunt told in which she re-enacted me as a youth tugging a toy away from another kid - needed no translation :)

After dinner we relaxed with a few rounds of Carcassonne before hitting the hay. The next morning, the boy, my sister and my mom met up with my best friend and her sister to watch Catching Fire. We had all patiently waited to watch this film with each other so it was a treat to finally walk into the theater together to see what Katniss was up to. Skip the next paragraph if you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to read any spoilers.

I thoroughly enjoyed Catching Fire. Just like with the last Hunger Games, it felt like forever until Katniss actually entered the arena, and that by then much of the out-of-games plot was so ripe and thick that I was left feeling "no wait, I'm not ready for her to leave yet and start killing children, stay in District 12/on the train!" I hadn't read the book prior to seeing this installment so I was completely clueless as to the motives of the other victors. I think they did a good job building tension and suspicion around the others - especially Finnick Odair, who kept me guessing until the very end. Complaints as follows: the marriage and baby thing was kinda weird and had no follow-up, Peeta bread and Katniss only knew each other's favorite colors before she sorta maybe fell in love with him (???), and the end was hella confusing (though perhaps it was meant to be.) Highlights include the stellar cinematography, Liam Hemsworth's cheekbones, and J-Law's badass performance. I, along the rest of the internet, proclaim my undying love for her.

We didn't do much shopping on Black Friday, just a quick trip to Nordstrom Rack before saying goodbye to friends and heading home for dinner, where big a treat was in store for us...

The proximity to fresh seafood is one of the strongest pros of living on the east coast. Once the lobsters were steamed and ready for consumption, chatter died down and sleeves were rolled up round the table as we each confronted the crustacean deliciousness on our plates.

The rest of break was pretty low-key; we met up with more friends, watched the Michigan-Ohio State game (and subsequently died a little on the inside), shopped, and spent some quality time relaxing and hanging out with the fam. I also ran every day, which assuaged my guilt from all that eating out and home-cooked goodness.

And of course, no post about Maryland is ever complete without a picture or two of Mochi, the feline love of my life.

I can't wait to go back home in a few weeks for Christmas!

Aquatic Adventures

The Shedd Aquarium is one of those places that I like to visit approximately once every eighteen months. Any more frequent and the cacophony of the touristy, toddler-laden crowd puts an irksome damper on the experience; any less and I start to wonder about the new exhibits or if a baby beluga whale has been born.

This time I went with the boy and some friends from work. We all bought Groupons that included full access to the aquarium and all its exhibits, a live aquatic show, and a "4-D" movie. The latter was a roughly 15-minute 3-D film with some physical elements like water being sprayed and the chair rumbling at opportune times. Then there came a scene where something would pop out on screen and our chairs would poke us in the back! A thoroughly unsettling experience indeed.

On this trip I also brought my trusty T3i along in hopes of getting some fun shots. I realized rather quickly that taking pictures in an aquarium can be fairly tricky. Lighting is often pretty low, glass can be smudged with fingerprints and your subjects are usually wriggling to and fro. An excellent opportunity to practice shutter speeds and exposure. Luckily among the many blurry and underexposed duds I took, I managed to find a few decent or otherwise fun shots to share.

Beluga whales: nature's Apple product

These elusive guys were digging a hole by scooping rocks in their mouths and depositing them elsewhere.

Blue freckled stingray

Grandpa fish

Obligatory Nemo picture

Sacs of baby sharks (wriggling inside)! This was all sorts of fascinating.

A trip to the Shedd is always a pleasant reminder of how extremely diverse our waters are. This particular visit has inspired me to return on another quiet morning and practice taking some more pictures. Look for that post to come out in oh, say about 18 months or so...

Homestead Farms

On a cloudy October day, I frolicked on a farm with friends and family!

On second thought, perhaps "waddled" may be a more accurate description, given the enormous amount of Indian food we'd consumed prior to venturing outside. (Waddup, Minerva lunch buffet at the intersection of 355 and Shady Grove!)

Anyway, with bellies full of naan and ambitions set on picking apples, we went forth onto the farm, starting at the pre-picked pumpkin patch.

J defied Y's orders to pose with a pumpkin. REBEL!

My sister had to pose with the wartiest pumpkin of them all.

I dub thee "veneral disease pumpkin"

Family pumpkin portrait!

We then moved on to the farm animals.

This fellow had bad teeth.

Really bad teeth.

Goats are the weirdest.

After the animals, we started our trek towards the apples... or the pumpkins... we weren't sure.

Where are we going.

Nobody knows.

She'd rather be studying for the SATs

Finally, after some and retrospecting about what we were doing with our lives, we steered ourselves back on track and found the apple orchard. Galas and braeburns and pink ladies, oh my! 

Some silliness ensued along the way.

Juggling with braeburns. Also woefully unaware of being snuck up on.

When bears attack. Clomp clomp clomp.

Someone said something funny.

Y after taking this picture: "You look like you are having diarrhea" THANKS

Her hands overfloweth

Putting those years of orthodontic work to good use.

We made away with about 23 lbs of hand picked apples. I've been eating them nonstop ever since. At this rate, I will never see a doctor again.