Thursday, May 31
I am not fully compliant. Oh, well.
Erica is arriving June 17th. That leaves two weeks to 1) clean up all the papers we scattered in the title search. 2) change sheets and clean up the guest room. 3) get all the camp registration taken care of (I've done part of that). 4) get some sort of window coverings on the family room and office windows. 5) do all the fun stuff we want to do. 6) plan vacations.
If we had more than two hours a night to do this, and if any of these hours were during regular business hours (for camp and shopping), it wouldn't be so hard. But that' s not the case. Also, once Erica arrives, I'll have to leave work early to pick her up from camp. In normal circumstances this would be okay, but we're all doing 60 hour work weeks, so I'm not sure how we'll handle that. She might have to come back to work with me - which would be fine. Nobody would mind, and we could probably put her to work!
Wednesday, May 30
For those wondering, Bo was Ed's Bonneville. Named not only for Bonneville, but Bohemian (his Pennsylvania plates began with BFH, which we decided was Bohemian Fat Hippy). And his new car is Lars. (His belts are generally named for their colors.)
I was completely overbooked at work today, trying to be on two floors at once for much of the day. Yikes. We have to make sure we don't have any Williams wording on our applications or websites by Friday, which is more difficult than it sounds. We have applications that generate Word documents and Acrobat documents, all with embedded logos and text that will be unlawful in a day. We just found out about that last week. And no, we haven't received the new logo yet. We also have a bunch of other June 1st deadlines, not all of which I can remember right now.
Tuesday, May 29
The whole weekend was spent on the car thing. Saturday shopping, Sunday looking high and low for the title to the trade-in (we finally determined that Ed had received a non-negotiable title without keeping his Pennsylvania title), and Monday picking up the car. Well, actually we did go for a motorcycle ride Monday as well. But mostly it was the car.
Then we grilled some sausages that have made us sick, I think sick, definitely experiencing some odd symptoms. I need to find the package and look at the ingredients.
Saturday, May 26
We went car shopping again, and Ed actually bought a car. I guess he decided that his 9-year old family sedan with a duct taped mirror that needs a jump start every other day wasn't good enough for him. It's a Volvo S60 2.4T in platinum green (looks more like blue-gray in real life, with a green cast). We figured he needs all the airbags he can get. We are going to have so much more room in the garage!
Thursday, May 24
Ed's site should be back up by tomorrow -- the T1 line to it was cancelled. It shares an office with a bunch of suddenly prominent sites, so his is probably the least missed. I'll probably move it over to batterman.org at some point, since that's where he posts his pictures anyway.
Work is so busy! I haven't been able to go to karate or out to lunch in awhile. I think it will be that way through the summer. We do the Canada split June 1st (for applications), our network separation July 21st, and after that it's systems merger. I think that last part will be the hardest, but since it's less defined there is less planning for it, so it's lower profile. And most users just assume that everything will go perfectly smoothly, so they are asking for new business applications at the usual rate. A most welcome long weekend looms.
Wednesday, May 23
Tonight I walked down to the grocery store to pick up a few things. It was dark, so when I thought I saw a tall bird in front of me on the sidewalk, I figured it must have really been a branch. But then it moved, and eventually flew away. I looked it up in our bird book, and it seems to have been a yellow-crowned night heron. It's not uncommon in this area, but this was on a city street for crying out loud!
John sold the house next door yesterday to a couple I met this weekend. They are older than us, and seemed very nice. I may have convinced them to buy it since I spoke up for John's workmanship. And he promises that now that it's sold, he will be over there all the time finishing it, so he can finally do all the little things he promised to do for us. So I won't have lied!
Tuesday, May 22
We skipped the last Looking at Art, because Ed didn't want to drive way out into the suburbs in rush hour traffic. I didn't object too much. Besides, I'm all caught up in web scandal.
Work is very busy, what with separation(s), mergers, etc. I don't usually have to keep an actual to-do list, but for now I need to. Hopefully things will settle down in August. No wait, that's when the merger projects begin! Maybe November?
Monday, May 21
Last night we went to dinner at the home of Rick's cousin (and Ed's step-cousin) Brian Chandler. Brian lives pretty close to us, but we've procrastinated on getting together with him. We had a nice dinner. Brian's kids are 12, 14 and 16, and they have a pool, so Erica would probably like going over there.
Brian's brother is Kyle Chandler, the actor. He's been in a couple of TV series that I've seen, Homefront and Early Edition (he was the star of that one), but this season he was in a sitcom that everyone in his family hates - What About Joan. I haven't met Kyle yet, but I have a couple of friends who have crushes on him.
Sunday, May 20
Ed and Rick went to an Astro's game. I stayed home to test part of the network at work. They powered the whole thing down last night to test emergency procedures because of some construction that's going on next door. My two servers came back okay, but the remote access had problems.
I also started putting soaker houses in all the flower and vegetable gardens. It's in the 90's today, so it's time to get ready for summer. I spent about half an hour outside winding the hoses around things, and almost threw up from the heat. I also dripped about a pint of sweat. Ugh. Tomorrow night, though, we're supposed to have a record low. Go figure.
Saturday, May 19
I hope Rick is having fun here. Rather than showing him the sights of Houston, we took him to get Ed's car washed, then dragged him along car shopping, then had him help us do yardwork. He's watching TV now.
We'll try to do better tomorrow.
Thursday, May 17
Nico slandered Aidan, too! I'm waiting for Aidan's rebuttal.
We are cleaning yet again, this time for Ed's stepbrother Ricky, who arrives tomorrow. Rick had a valve replacement about four years ago in Houston, and is back for a maintenance checkup. You may remember that the character of Ricky was introduced in April, in Episode 5 of the Orlando Series.
Wednesday, May 16
Looking at Art summary:
Part 1: Moody Gallery, artist Dee Wolff, show Button Box
Memories: Sail Away
This was very good. The artist was well known to other group members,
who all said this work was very different from her usual (of which she
had an example). Her story (which she told herself) was that when her
mother died, and she and her siblings were sorting through the belongings,
she came across a tin button box that brought back a lot of memories.
As a very small child, she would pull down the tin from her mother's sewing
machine and open it, then create pictures out of the colored buttons.
As she pointed out, most of her art uses colored dots in some way - something
she hadn't thought about before the box brought back the memory of the
buttons. Anyway, since the box was so meaningful, she wanted to paint
it. Then she painted it again. Then she began a huge body of work based
on the box, over time adding themes. The box had a painting Columbus'
ships on it. The drawings were all pen and ink. They were very intricate
and included ladders, fish, baskets, mummies, and of course ships. I liked
them a lot.
Part 2: Two corporate collections in downtown Houston.
Again, very good. The talk was by the manager of the art collections.
The building was right next door to Ed's. The first office was Vitol,
a petroleum trading company. They had fantastic offices, all light curly
maple and the kind of glass I like (semi-opaque with vertical ridges...hard
to describe). Very modern: even their "whiteboard" in the conference
room was really green tinted thick glass. The art was very good. I would
love to work there. The second office was Jackson Walker LLP, a law office.
Again, good art, just not such a great space. It was very interesting
hearing the process and the reasons behind a good corporate art collection.
The manager (managing includes consulting, choosing, buying, maintaining,
etc.) also organizes art appreciation events for the collection, partially
because so many people are uneducated about modern art.
Tuesday, May 15
My birthday cooperated by offering up perfect weather yet again. It never rains on my birthday.
And not only was it my birthday, but the one-year anniversary of closing on our house. Also, Friday was my one-year anniversary of starting my current job.
Anyway, I went to Looking at Art tonight, but I'll write about that tomorrow since I'm pretty tired. I thought about stopping for a nice birthday dinner afterward (Ed is in San Francisco), but decided to go to the grocery store instead. Good thing, since I noticed (before I had gotten any food) that I had left my wallet in my karate bag at work. Which unfortunately means that I won't be able to park in the parking garage tomorrow, or in fact even gain entry to my floor, as both cards are in my wallet. Oh, well. I had enough change in the bottom of my purse for some lovely cream cheese.
After LOA, I spoke with Nico (and Kevin and Aidan, but for a much shorter time). I opened his and Aidan's gift while he was on the phone. It was totally awesome soap with a moving eyeball inside! He told me it was best if you chipped out the eyeball, but I think I'll leave it intact for now. I also received some gel that soothes tired legs. Nico thought he needed some of that, since his legs get VERY tired when he sits on the toilet for a long time. Also, Mother's Day was very boring for him, since he had to work all day and Mom and Aidan were lazy. Mom said "Nico, you do all the work". I pointed out that Mom usually does all the work, and he agreed that she needed a break. He also told me that one of his friends has a yard 75 meters wide, which his parents paid several hundred dollars for (I'm not sure about those units of measurement). As usual, 30 minutes of entertaining conversation.
Sunday, May 13
Ed is weird. I will offer background research and corroborating evidence to support this. Let me relate the last conversation we had before he left for San Francisco yesterday:
Ed (packing, speaking in an Irish brogue as he often does): Ah, so the only belt I'll be needin' is 'Blackie'.
Me: You name your belts?
Ed (looking at me like I've sprouted a second head): Aye.
I bring this up as proof that he is weird. Does this partially explain his posting news of a proposal on his website last week? Probably. Here's the real story: we went to dinner, he said we it's about time we got around to getting married, I said yes, it is, and nothing more was mentioned until I started getting e-mails referring to said post. I questioned him on it, and it turns out he's put a lot more thought into this than I have, including invitation lists, location, etc. So that explains that, and also why I didn't call everybody with the news, I hope. Don't worry, there are no real plans, and I'll let you know when there are.
(Ed is weird.)
Saturday, May 12
I met a cat today. I went out to sit on the backsteps in my bathrobe, and she was in my lap purring and rolling around ecstaticly within minutes. She helped me garden, and waited patiently while I went in to get coffee. I didn't invite her in for breakfast, though.
Friday, May 11
It's Greg Thompson's birthday!
We had a little entertainment at work today as a hamburger place directly below us burned down. I don't think anybody was hurt, but we got the whole firetruck show.
We are meeting Bob and Linda for dinner, and so have to clean up the house since they will probably stay over (they live about 35 miles away). Gotta run!
Thursday, May 10
The first day back to work after vacation is never fun, but today wasn't too bad. I got our new org chart today - I now have four people reporting to me.
A bunch of us went to the hospital at lunchtime to visit our friend Dawit who had surgery last week for Krohn's disease. He had been getting much worse, but was afraid of surgery. Finally it was an emergency situation. His doctors told him that it was the worst infection they had seen - and he is in one of the top hospitals in the country. He looks good, though, despite the 45 pounds he has lost.
And finally, tonight, the Penguins won game 7 of the playoffs in overtime, against the Evil Buffalo Bills. Some of you know that I had a bet going with an Evil Buffalo Bill fan. I've won. I had no doubt, as the Pens never choke.
Wednesday, May 9
First of all, Happy Birthday Aidan!!!!! You look like a monkey, and smell like one, too.
We're back from Puerto Rico - had a great time, I took 65 pictures, some of which I'll post here as soon as I get the New Orleans ones up. I'm way behind!
Thursday, May 3
We are leaving for Puerto Rico tomorrow. I had stopped the mail last week for New Orleans; we came back to an overstuffed mailbox (including some mail for people on other streets). On Tuesday, the mail stopped coming. I know I didn't mess the dates up, because I put April dates, not May. Anyway, I went to the mail station Wednesday to get the mail, and ask them to stop it for this trip. First of all, they said they couldn't get me the mail because they were inspecting the route. Secondly, they said they weren't supposed to stop the mail again for somebody when the last stop order was still on record - that's what post office boxes are for. This is a free service they offer, you know. I said it was a service that didn't even work, so forget it. Anyway, still no mail, and I'm not sure if it will come while we're in Puerto Rico or not - John will check it just in case.
We'll be back Wednesday, by the way. And this is where we're staying.
Wednesday, May 2
Hey, I found a story about Dad on the Internet! (well, he's not mentioned by name, but that's him in the second paragraph).
Looking at Art Report: the gallery was the Inman,
the artist was Dario
Robleto. He makes things out of records, record lint (?), etc. I actually
didn't like his work, but loved his ideas. To me, a work of art should
be interesting without an explanation of what record was melted down to
make it. On the other hand, he had amusing titles and descriptions. Shoulda
been a writer.
The collector whose home we visited last night was local artist Pam Johnson.
Her house was great - modern, shaped like a nautilus, great kitchen.
