The Time Sink

I almost ended up without a post here this morning! That would be a first. ...but I got caught up with a new tool for generating and maintaining journal pages and totally lost track of time.

I may be tackling a web site redo for a friend and a very generous party offered me a sandbox to play in. I'd already set up some graphics and was going to concentrate there for a while. ...and I was going to concentrate on working with the css files as that dovetails with some of my own work. ...but the chance to work in a new medium is just too good to pass up.

Oh, heck; that's just too short a post for a Monday. ...and besides, some people may have enough free time to check out this computer controlled cat door. Yepper, kids; the kitty can come and go as she pleases, but only if she's not bringing living toys into the house.

My poor plants are so confused. I mean, the ones that didn't get shredded by the windstorm Sunday night spent last night shivering from the cold. No joke: I bladed Sunday in 91F heat; yesterday when I hit the streets it was 61F at the same hour. Good grief, next they'll be calling for rain!

Monday was cool at work; I actually managed to hack out a fair amount of stuff. I had the outside run scheduled in for today; but I think I'll try continuing the roll I started yesterday...

...and last night was a cool night on the geek side of things. I managed to figure out what I'd hosed in Konqueror that was creating some accessability issues with some websites. ...and dinked around a bit more with a content management system. ...and played a bit with site design for both one of my sites and that of a friend. ...and I got so wound up in it all that I actually packed it in early for a change.

Poor Brad. This weather thing got to him yesterday morning. Here he gets this really cool Hawai'ian shirt for his birthday when it's hotter than heck outside and he can be sooo cool. ...and he runs headlong into weather that's threatening to maybe even freeze one night this week.

Since Shelley was substitute teaching, I had the morning duty. ...and I noticed Brad's getup included a nice logo T-shirt and his Hawai'ian shirt. ...with sweat pants. Okay, he wants to wear it, so I just went with the flow. But I did mention it was a tad cold outside and he might want to reconsider... Nope, he was going as is, but he'd take a jacket.

That lasted until we were headed to the car. ...and he started pulling a sweatshirt on. "Umm, no way Brad. Dad doesn't often talk about clothes, but this is one of those times..." I mean, the layering effect of the loose/unbuttoned shirt and the sweat top just wasn't going to cut it. I helped him take off the "Cool Shirt" and carefully placed it in his backpack with instructions to change over once he got to class. All I could do was hope he could pull it off (I mean like, get real: this is advice from a guy who wears black jeans and a white logo shirt most days).

Interesting... I go to correct math homework last night and find an absolutely huge error rate. ...and a remarkable consistency. So instead of tackling things head on, I spent a few minutes with a protractor and a piece of graph paper. ...and lined out a circle and some basic angles. ...and started the evening with a five minute lesson on basic geometry.

Very interesting... When I gave him his homework back, he'd look at a problem and say, "Hey, that's wrong!", and fix it himself. I also gave a quick lesson in protractor use and how to use simple logic to prevent errors. ...and off we went through the tougher parts.

Now, I know communications and learning are both two-way streets; but I have to ask why none of this apparently happened during the day yesterday...

The end of the work week. Yeehaaaa! I am so ready to be done with the abnormal that I call a routine. Sheesh. ...and no homework for at least a night. ...and a weekend list a mile long, compounded by the painting crew scheduled for Monday. Good Grief.

Much better... WT? I'm speaking in this case of the first nap of the season in the chaise lounge. Yeah. I finished disassembling and cleaning and reassembling the filter system for the pool this afternoon. ...and I was feeling rather loggy and like I was building toward a grade one headache.

Hmmm... We have the technology to handle this: one lounge, one radio to provide some decent background, and two pool waterfalls to mask any noise beyond the radio and my breathing. Yep, out like a light. I woke up twice; but both times, I solved that problem by changing positions slightly. It was just a tab too cold, but that was mostly due to the breeze blowing through the area I set up in <g>.

No, I wasn't in the pool; the temperature there dropped at least six degrees when that cool spell moved in earlier this week. ...and it was borderline before. Besides, you could get sunburned that way!

...and we're almost ready for the painters! Almost. ...and there seems to be a problem with the two young zombies who eek out an existence here: the power cord for the TV won't quite reach the wall outlet with the TV pulled out far enough to facilitate painting <g>. Right now, I'm holding the TV hostage whilst they perform whatever menial duties their mother assigns as their portion of the cleanup detail...

I did leave a path though, as it seems the soccer federation people will be coming over Tuesday evening to show Shelley how to run the equipment tracking software. ...and her CDROM is broken (literally; a short, brutish story). So tonight's adventures include bringing her system out to the kitchen (which is piled high with 'living room stuff') and replacing the CD prior to loading the program (yeah: uphill, in the snow, against the wind, both ways).