journaling: enabled

Well, another Christmas vacation is gone.  That’s not to say we’re done with Christmas, mind you, since it does last a bit longer in church and there’s the matter of other parts of the family to visit.  This coming weekend will be a trip to Iowa.  Warren isn’t himself today so hopefully he’s not coming down with something.  Traveling with sick baby = bad idea.  Two weeks later we’re heading down to DeForest for Christmas at the in-laws. Santa was pretty good to me this year.  I got some mini candy bars, a light for my hat brim and a KTIS CD among other items.  Family got me some shirts, a set of ornaments, a DVD and a photography book.

This week should be pretty quiet at work.  I have some work to do to prepare for some changes we’re making next week and I have a conference call with some people to talk about getting some assistance with a software migration I’ve been having difficulty with.  There are a lot of people on vacation so I ought to be able to get a lot done.  Thursday I’m hoping to be able to hang out with a friend or two for a while and catch up, since we haven’t seen each other in several months.

Laura and Warren did really well with Santa today in Hudson.  There wasn’t much wait and Laura sat with him happily … quite an accomplishment for a 2-1/2 yr old I think.  She did get upset when it was time to leave though.  Good to know she likes the guy in the big red suit.

Laura and Warren w/Santa

Tomorrow is church of course.  We really should be better at attending regularly than we are.  I think that’s a good goal for the new year.

I think this week went fast.  Not really sure … it was a bit of a blur and chaos.  Work has been crazy busy with juggling things.  I’m still involved in 2 major projects, though they haven’t demanded much of my time this week.  I’ve been occupied with my 3 smaller projects trying to get 1 or 2 knocked off while battling software problems on a 4th, unrelated, email system.  I suspect the vendor screwed something up with a software update and isn’t owning up to the problem.  Unfortunately it means I get to deal with the effects of that and try to keep things running for our customers.

Wednesday was rather nuts.  It started off with the chaos of dealing with the fact that somebody in Madison took it upon himself to declare all the UW campuses closed due to weather.  Not all of them listened mind you, but we did.  Oh… did I mention he did this about an hour before classes were due to start?  On the last full week of classes before finals?  Without regard to whether we really *needed* to close?  Yeah … pissed a lot of people off.  Communication breakdowns on our end meant some people showed up anyway and some people got 5 to 8 notifications that we were closed.  Lovely.  Follow that up with the discovery that some enterprising spammer had been using our website to relay spam for the previous 5 days and an incident with the aforementioned email system.  Oh… and I was supposed to be a pallbearer in my great aunt’s funeral that day too.  I didn’t go due to the weather.  Our dance theatre preview night was also canceled/postponed due to weather.

Yesterday Warren had his 4-month well-baby appointment.  He’s doing very well … a healthy 17-pound baby boy.  He got pokes so he was of course unhappy about that, but he still handles them much better than Laura did at his age.  She got a poke for H1N1, as did Liz.  No pokes for me, since I got my H1N1 last week.  Still need to schedule my seasonal though.  Yesterday afternoon was devoted to one of the small work projects and we made great progress on that.  Today I spent most of my day working on a different project and fighting little flareups with the problem child email server as well as file services issues.  Overall wasn’t a horrid day but I’m glad it’s done.

This weekend we’ll hopefully get the kids to see the man in the big red suit.  I’m kinda curious how Laura is going to react, since she’s mentioned Santa a few times in the past few weeks and seemed enthusiastic about him.  Warren I’m sure won’t care too much.   I think we’re going to try and call it an early night and maybe get more sleep tonight than the past two.

Do you remember it?  That’s from the Smurfs!  I’ve had a smurfy day I think.  Of course, it could also have been a smurfy day, I’m not honestly sure which.  My skin isn’t blue after all.  I’m thankful for that, because my wife’s skin isn’t blue either (though she is wearing a smurfy-blue t-shirt).  Some of the lights on our Christmas tree are though.  We got our tree cut, hauled home and put up over the weekend.  Decorations went up last night … and some of those are blue too!  Wow.  That’s a lot of blue.

Work has been going reasonably well.  I had a lovely total of 5 meetings today.  Ick.  I currently have 4 scheduled for tomorrow.  None on Wednesday, but that’s because I’m going to a funeral.  :(  My great aunt went home to the Lord last week after battling health issues for years, most recently cancer.  Wednesday night I have a Dance Theatre preview to go to so I have an idea what sort of craziness I’m in store for come March.  Thursday .. more meetings, though I will be going with on a Dr. appointment for Warren and Laura in the morning as well and I’m currently thinking I may skip a meeting Thursday afternoon.  Friday, I might actually get some work done too!

Last Friday Liz and I actually had a night out!  We went to see Bryan Adams at the State Theatre for “a very special acoustic performance.”  It was excellent.  He was hilarious.  The audience was great… many women professing their love for him.  He likes them that way apparently … his women … “drunk and horny”.  Many laughs were had.  Really wouldn’t mind seeing him again, ideally with his band (not that his guitar playing was anything to scoff at).

I really need to get into my Christmas shopping.  I haven’t done any to speak of (any at all?) yet.  Funny how that happens.  I know I’m a guy, but it’s not because I’m procrastinating…. life is getting in the way at times.

Well, apparently the cat has decided that a portable computer is not the appropriate lap warmer and I need to pay attention to her instead.  ttfn.