When we last left our intrepid heroine she was preparing to go to OryCon, glad that work was about to relax its intensity, and celebrating her one-year anniversary with Jim. Whatever has she been up to since? Read on and all shall be revealed.

Workwise things were calm just long enough to lull me into a false sense of serenity before they again exploded into frantic coding. We went into general availability on 16 November as planned, spent a week staring dazedly at one another, and then went en masse to a truly hellish two-day offsite training thing. After that everyone went off to Thanksgiving, returning to discover that we'd promised certain people certain features by a certain insane date and that we were back to the saltmines. I spent the last week coding frantically, and most of this week bug-fixing frantically. In my spare moments I've been learning how to be a release engineer, since Omi is busy being a product manager and hasn't time to do both. Exciting. Wearing. I wish work wasn't always feast or famine.

Things with Jim continue to be shockingly wonderful. We had a fabulous time at OryCon, hung out lots with Emily and Scott (who approved of Jim, and vice-versa), saw Bujold, listened to Echo's Children and Heather Alexander, and generally enjoyed ourselves. I don't think it'll be any challenge to get him to come with me again next year.

Then Thanksgiving, which we spent in Sedona, Arizona, with his family. This included Kevin (the younger of Jim's two older brothers), Pam (Kevin's wife of a little more than a year), Gabrielle (Kevin & Pam's five-month-old daughter), and Jim's parents. I was a nervous wreck for several days beforehand, but the entire visit went really well. Kevin is very quiet, but Pam and I found a lot to talk about, and nobody minded me spending a lot of time adoring the baby. Kevin, in fact, had a camcorder, so there is video footage of me carrying Gabrielle around to quiet her when she was crying and generally making a fool of myself. Frightening.

As to Jim's parents... his dad fit some mental image I was carrying around of Standard Midwestern Father, so I got along with him quite well. There was a bit of potential conflict when homosexuality came up, but being anti-queer sort of fits my SMF picture too, so while I was dismayed I wasn't shocked or anything. I wisely held my tongue, on the theory that if I continue interacting with these people I'll have plenty of time to gently point out that I'm gay and thus don't appreciate being insulted.

Jim's mom is not a Standard Midwestern Mother. She actually reminds me of Chrisber in some weird ways, being small and neat and well-dressed and immensely snide. She and Jim get along really well, which is entertaining to watch. They have very similar senses of humor. I was overwhelmed by her at first, but by the end of the visit I felt fairly comfortable with her. I was glad to get home, though; it's wearing to be visiting people, even nice people.

Further updates on my life will have to wait until tomorrow; I'm tired and ready to go home.