The Time Sink

Okay; let's hack away at another week and see how we manage... This morning, Shelley turns in the family's Science Fair project. ...and that's some water we're glad to see under the bridge!

Yesterday we managed to make it up to snow country for the afternoon. The weather was warm, the skies were clear and the snow was cold. Warm weather, cold snow? Yeah, I never made it into snow gear; my black jeans and black T-shirt kept me plenty warm: whenever I felt cold, I just moved into the sun for a few minutes <g>. (Yeah, I'll miss ol' Waylon...)

The kids had a blast; we took one of Daniel's friends along and the three boys played together most of the time while Shelley and I hung out and watched the show (we were beat from the sleep deprivation clinic we were running last week). ...and we've almost figured out how many changes of clothing to take along to keep everyone dry for the day.

The camera went along also; I have one pic up over on the blog; I'll add in a few more later in the week. I managed an action shot or two, some stock footage for the blog and a few others that may be worth a look. Let's see how the week goes.

...and I'll close with a quote for a friend:

Yeah, a late one for a Tuesday. Pity, I usually don't get behind on the week until Wednesday... But events transpired and conspired yesterday to leave me staring at the screen last night. I was pretty much done with my day and people and homework and things in general...

...and the staring was a clue to just do what I rarely do: just head on off to bed. ...without replying to email. ...without adding a comment or two in someone's comments section. ...without stirring something up with one of the late nighters. ...without reading the usual late night rounds.

Yeah, this does sound like something that belongs over on the blog; but since I didn't put anything up over there either, the folks who drop by here rather than there get a mood piece for a change.

The good news is that the homework was dealt with and the event ended up rather amicably for a change. ...and the checkbook is updated and the spreadsheet is lined out for the next month or so. The tax stuff isn't finished, but I just wasn't up for that. I also wasn't up for working on any of the machines. ...and that was another clue.

So off to bed I went... The problem with going to bed at a reasonable hour is that I wake up at a most unreasonable hour. What worked this morning was Shelley getting up to go teach: I was awake before her for a change. That worked out well since I took a nap as soon as she headed to the shower <g>.

First, an apology to anyone who fell down the rabbit hole from Sue Susan's comments page. I left out the suffix for the blog; you really want to be over here. Sorry for the confusion and thank you for your patience...

On to business... It's another DMV day! Oh, yeah. The good news this time is that I'm transferring vehicles out. ...and it looks like the title information is correct. Oh, double yeah. ...cause I need that one out of the way: the tech chief and I connected on the layout for the new rigs; that means it's time for the drawings for the power delivery system for the newer printers and the pen-based computers. Hokay, it will be a Visio day in a bit.

Survival day... Last night I finished the tax prep. ...after an unexpected delay: Daniel and I had finished with his homework and I was gathering up the last of the forms to sort through, when he said, "hey Dad, I just found JunkYard Wars!" Shoot. Maybe it's a re-run...

Nope, one we hadn't seen. Okay, he'd been cool about the homework; the extra half hour that it would take to finish the show would be cool. Oops... They're building cannons! Timesink!

...and that's why I got to bed way late last night. But the taxes are dropped off; the bills are paid; and the partridge is fed.

Well, that work week is done. ...and with a stake through its cold, cold heart. Sheesh. If ever I've had a week where the superset 'unplanned' intersected with the subset 'planned' and imploded it into what appears to the casual eye to be a pile of waste strewn across the top of my desk...

...and Friday afternoon, I looked at it once again; declared 1500 Friday PST to be roughly equivalent to 0900 Monday EST; and headed out the door for some sunshine and some asphalt under my blades. Sunshine I had in abundance, but the air temp had lost at least ten degrees from Thursday. ...and the wind was from the southeast. Someone somewhere was catching some sort of weather...

I didn't much care; I headed out and tacked on some extra mileage just for the heck of it. ...and came back home and packed the meat world in for the night.

As a side note to life, I'll be very, very happy when Tuesday has come and gone. It's election time here in the Golden State, land of Gary Condit, receipient of Enron's end run and now home of political attack ads on the telephone...

Shelley was kind enough to take my mother to a medical appointment this morning. ...and I had an extra kid for a few hours starting about 0830 so he didn't have to be dragged along while his mother went to the office for an hour or two. That meant I was more reponsive to the phone than I usually am (to clarify: I usually don't even answer the blasted thing; it's rarely for me and I don't much care anyway).

Today, I've been fielding calls from all sorts of unscrupulous characters. ...well, not really: I caught on to the stupidity after the second one and I've been hanging up as soon as I've heard the first phrase. ...or in the case of the ones with the predictive dialers, as soon as I hear that dead air pause.

Back on track? Dunno'... Yesterday was supposed to be a 'get things done' day and that just didn't work out. I was up later than planned Saturday night with a kid problem and ended up crashing in the middle of the afternoon. That sure didn't help me get things sorted out in the computer room as I'd had scheduled.

...but later on I did manage to get some stock photos uploaded to one of my sites; I'm exploring some design styles with a friend and that will give us both something to work with. ...and I got started on another web project for use later in the month.

My hardware rebuilds are suffering... I've found when we're doing the heavy homework evenings, it's difficult to get untracked enough to work on hardware. Working on web projects seems to work out much better...