Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Tuesday

Another Tuesday.  Today wasn't so bad though. I got some work done, although at one point in the day I was in full on 'leave me alone' mode.  I eventually got through it though.

Gas is 3.49 a gallon now.  It's going to be really expensive this summer, and we've got at least two driving trips planned, and two plane trips.  I'm going to have to start saving now.  Or take out a loan.

Watched another episode of Person of Interest, played on the computer a little bit, and that was the extent of my day.  Maybe this weekend we'll be able to go out to eat and see a movie.  There's a couple I'd like to go to before they leave the theaters.  Hopefully we can make it!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Back to Work!

Because it's Monday, of course.  Today was actually a relatively good day.  A lot of meetings, but I also got a few things done, and that's always a good thing.

It was a pretty long day, though.  Had some dinner, watched last night's CSI Miami, and now I'm trying to decide between playing a game, and just going to bed.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Sunday

Tried to take it easy today.  Monitored the production deployment this morning, played on the computer till about lunchtime, then watched tv almost all afternoon.  Catching up on the show: Person of Interest.  So far, it's kept our attention :)

Played on the computer after dinner.  So basically, kept off my feet almost all day.  Hopefully tomorrow won't be too painful when I have to walk on that knee again.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Overdone

Over did it at MoA today.  Wasn't feeling too bad at the start of the day, but my knee was in flames by the end.  Picked up a couple new DVDs, but couldn't find one that came out this week. Nobody seemed to have it.  Got the next book in this series I'm reading.

After the mall, we hit walmart for a couple things, had dinner at Arby's and came home to watch Wed's CSI.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a quiet day, and I can rest my knee some.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Restful?

...well, maybe.  We got our new mattress today, and put it on the bed.  We'll see if it gives us the advertised restful nights' sleep.  See the pictures below :)

Not much for an exciting day, other than slipping on the sidewalk at work today and re-wrenching my knee.  Just can't win.


January 27, 2012

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Celestial Bodies

Saw the moon, Venus, and some stars when I left work today.  It was that dark, and the skies were finally clear.

Another long day, obviously.  Meetings, that engagement item I mentioned yesterday (at least I got a free lunch), and some actual work. 

Came home and had home made chicken picatta.  Watched the Finder that taped earlier, and then pretty much called it a night.  Supposed to snow tonight/tomorrow.  I hope not a lot.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

One of those days

You know those days where everything goes smoothly, and just clicks into place; where you accomplish everything on your 'to-do' list, and more?

Today wasn't one of those days.

I got pulled in a zillion different directions at work, had to deal with..well..not sure what the nice way to say 'people who just aren't stepping up' is, but those kind of people, and didn't get much of my own tasks down.

On the way home from work, I had to deal with people cutting me off constantly, signalling sometimes, other times not.  Granted the Insight is a small-ish car, but not invisible.

Then when I got home, my stomach started to act up, so my dinner consisted of a little bit of sushi and a swig of pepto.

So, I had one of those "other" days.  Tomorrow should be interesting.  Full of meetings, one of which is an 'engagement' survey, where management reviews a survey we completed last year, tells us that things are going to change, then promptly forgets everything until next year.  Forgive me for being a bit jaded, but having been at the same company for nearly 25 years, I've seen this pattern before, and I haven't seen any real desire to change it.  I no longer hope that 'maybe it'll be different this year'.  I leave that to the new guys.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Tuesday

Yeah, Tuesday again.  I vote we outlaw Tuesdays.

Busy day at work, got home after dark, had some BLTs for dinner (minus the L), watched a couple of shows, and went to bed.

Not the most exciting day of the week, by a long shot :)

Monday, January 23, 2012

Snow and sundry

We got enough snow overnight and into the day for me to break out the snowblower.  There's a drawback to blowing snow when the wind is blowing 10-20 miles per hour...you end up literally looking like Frosty.  I was covered in blowback.   But, I got it done, with less pain than Friday.

I still hurt, but I'm mobile.  Functional, so I'm not complaining.  Unlike my oldest harddrive.  Got a warning from windows that it might fail.  There's not much on that hard drive, and I should eventually take it out, but I've been lazy.  I'm copying everything off of it to the network drive I bought at Christmas, so I'll have a copy handy of whatever's on it.  I need a week to dig through and delete, but I'm a digital packrat.  Guess that's better than a physical packrat, right?

We had chili for dinner tonight, and she made enough that we're going to be having chili for the rest of the week.  I have no idea why she does that.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Quiet Day

Played on the computer some, helped organize the living room some, including putting away all those cds I had scanned.  Weather is supposed to be freezing rain turning to snow - that's going to be fun going to work tomorrow.

My knee is getting better.  I can walk without hurting, although I still lurch like...Quasimodo.  or Igor.

Hopefully the snow tonight/tomorrow will be light enough I won't have to attempt to shovel and hurt myself again.  Cross your fingers!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Better

It doesn't hurt to walk at the moment, so that's a good thing.  I spent the day dosed up, although we did do a little shopping.  I got a few more comics to fix the missing ones from my collection, and we did some grocery shopping.  Never used an electric cart before.  The thing only had two speeds - stop and go-really-fast.  If we go anywhere tomorrow, I'll just use a cane :)

Watched some t.v., and going to play a little bit on the computer before bed.  These are the kinds of weekends I like - nothing scheduled, nothing pressing, do what we want when we want.

Wish I had more of them :)

Friday, January 20, 2012

Owie

Twisted my knee shoveling tonight.  Hurts to walk, hurts to sit.  Hopefully it won't hurt to lie down.

Took a painkiller, maybe that'll help some too.  Not feeling very verbose tonight, so that's all for now.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Brrrrr

It was -11 when I went to work today.  I think it made it up to 2.  It's 0 right now, as I right this.

Work today was another mess of meetings, but I managed to squeeze a couple of accomplishments in today (for someone else's project, go figure).  At least I feel like I got *something* done.

Another milestone today, as well.  20 years ago on this date, my wife and I had our first date.  Hard to imagine (also hard to remember back that far).  I know we went to see "Hook" in the theater, got there late, and had to sit in like row 3.  At the Continental in Denver, which back then had a mega ultra screen, before staduim seating was popular.   That was an accomplishment in and of itself :)

Today, we had dinner and watched Fringe on the DVR.  Interesting how time changes what's 'exciting'...although we'll probably go out to the movies this weekend, if it doesn't snow, and if it warms up to the double digits.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Tuesday

When you can't think of creative blog titles, go with the basics :)

Was sunny today, but cold.  When I went to lunch, it was 14.  It snowed a little last night, but not enough to even cover the sidewalk.

Work was..work.  I was pretty busy, with a full day of meetings, but I actually got a little bit of work done as well.  Still some frustrating things going on, out of what used to be my control, and still haven't figured out how to deal with that.

So far so good on the DVR.  Watched last week's Bones, which isn't on this week, so I guess that could have waited :)

Got my Labor Day vacation time approved, too - hoping to take a trip, if we can save up enough money!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Best Laid Plans

I had planned on just playing on the computer today...but someone had other ideas.  We ended up going to a casino this afternoon.  We cashed in our change jug (just under $300!), and used some of that money to gamble with. We ended up leaving with $100 more than we started out with, so now I have running money for the week.

The DVR behaved today (knock on wood), so maybe something got dislodged when we were cleaning the other day, and my fiddling with it reseated it.  We'll see.

Played with the Yard Cam a bit, working on the focus.  I think since it's pointed through a double paned dirty window, the focus is probably as good as it gets.

Tomorrow is back to work day.  Meetings all day.  It may be a long day.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Sunny Sunday

The sunshine helped my mood a little bit :)

I got the YardCam installed and working (after about a good hour of cursing the router, the modem, the firewall, the camera....)  It's slow as a dog because it's wireless, but at least we can watch the birds in the backyard :)

DVR is still acting up.  The power to the external hard drive (the one with all our programs on it) just drops.  That causes us to reboot the DVR, and lose whatever might have been recording at the time.  I hope it's just something simple I'm overlooking, but I could be very crabby if it keeps up.

Off tomorrow.  Going to do laundry and play on the computer, and watch some of our shows.  The more we can get off there, the better I'll feel.  Time to consider an upgrade, maybe, but not till after we get all the shows off.

Technology: with me, it's a love/hate relationship.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Saturday

Got to sleep in today. Amazing how much an extra 4 hours of sleep can do for your disposition.

Of course, I wiped that out by going to the Mall.  Too many people get on my nerves very quickly, making me most crabby.

Snowed enough today to shovel, so I did that after we got home, and then our DVR is acting flaky, had to reboot it twice, and now it's running a hard drive check (been running for about 3 hours - it's a big hard drive).  Hopefully it doesn't crash.  We have a lot of shows left to watch.

We watched Mission Impossible 1 tonight, since we couldn't watch our shows.  We'll probably watch 2 and 3, and then go see 4 at the theater this coming weekend.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Better, a Little

Today was a little better. I got to do a task that was all mine, and that helped with the grounding and centering.  Three day weekend now, so that might help a little too.

Ordered pizza for dinner tonight.  We haven't had it in a while, so thought it would be a treat.  Delivery took over an hour.  Since I paid with a credit card, and put the tip on the card, I couldn't reduce the tip to show my dissastisfaction.  I guess I just won't go back.

Plus it was cold today.  It's 10 as I type this.  It got to a whopping 14.  Welcome to winter.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Another Long Day

Work felt like a whirlwind, with me being tossed every which way.  Hopefully, either it'll calm down, or I'll find something to tether to.

Tee cleaned/organized/rearranged the mud room today, so now I have a place to set up the yard cam.  I'll hook it up this weekend, when I can actually see an image  (hard to tell if it's working, in the dark!).

Took a break from Sanctuary tonight, and watched CSI Miami instead.

It'll probably be another early night for me, till I can feel not quite so winded.  It's amazing that the 'recharge' I got from the vacation is rapidly being drained.  I need to win the PowerBall :)

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Tuesday

Tuesday is always the worst day of the week for me.  Today kind of dragged on and on.  I did manage to get my work emails down below 100.  I haven't been that low in...forever.  Kinda sad when your accomplishment is reading/filing/deleting emails, huh?

We had some frozen Terryaki Chicken from Trader Joe's for dinner.  It was ok. Probably won't get it again.  Watched some TV (slowly catching up on Sanctuary!), and then I played on the computer for a little bit.

Supposed to snow tomorrow, and then get to about 15 on Thursday.  From 52 to 15 in just 2 days.  Weird weather.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Back to Work

First day back. Only two people asked how my vacation was, so I guess I would have lost that bet.  Slightly under 2000 emails to read.  A lot were 'out of office' from the earlier holidays, so that made filtering a bit easy.  Left the office for the day with just under 600 left to act on (all read, though).

And *grumble* at people who schedule meetings at the start of my shift on my first day back.  If I hadn't gone in early, I wouldn't have known I had a meeting (actually, I ended up having 5, only two of which were scheduled prior to vacation).

And *shakefist* at the mouse in our house.  I need to find a better mousetrap and get rid of that little sucker before he/she/it brings more in.  I guess I'm stopping by Home Depot tomorrow after work, and see if they have mouse sized cattle prods or something. :(

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Lazy Days and Sundays

Didn't do much today. Played on the computer, watched some TV, had some dinner, and now..off to bed.  Tomorrow's going to be an interesting day...and I'm sure I'll hear "how was your vacation" at least 5 times.

I should hand out cards with random responses on them :)

Saturday, January 7, 2012

A show and dinner

Went to see Sherlock Holmes 2 tonight.  Man, that's a long movie.  2 and a half hours.  It was a pretty fun flick, and since we saw it at the matinee, it didn't cost an arm and a leg.  The snacks did, but I've pretty well come to expect that.

After the moview we went to Five Guys (a burger joint) for dinner.  Well, we tried anyway.  Parking was a pain, because they share with Olive Garden, but when we did get a spot, it was so busy, there was no place to sit.  There were people eating while in line.  We decided to ditch that idea and ended up at Smashburger instead.  Still got the burgers anyway.

After the movie we started catching up on Sanctuary that we have saved on the DVR.  Only 9 more episodes to go till we're caught up :)

Tomorrow we don't have anything big planned for my last day of vacation.  Laundry, and mentally preparing for going back to work.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Friday

Hard to believe, but the vacation's almost over.  I 'lost' a few days with our trip to Indiana, so I didn't get as much done as I wanted to.  As didn't help that I had to re-rip all those cds.  Well, I guess I'll be spending a lot more time indoors this winter, getting more stuff done :)

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Done...for now

I've ripped as many cds as I'm going to for a while - there's still a whole rackfull in the living room to go, but I've got more productive things to do with my time :)

Like work on the 2009 events dvd.  I've gotten Spring done, and I'm going to be working on Fall (and the State Fair).  Summer's going to be the toughest.  I have so much footage and images to edit together into something watchable.  Maybe over the next few three day weekends.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Lazy Day

Slept in today. Didn't rip any cds.  Played my game on the computer for a little bit, ran to the bank and deposited Christmas checks (thanks Mom & Dad), picked up a few more comics to replace my destroyed ones, watched a couple of Star Trek episodes on Blu-ray...

..just the type of vacation I need :)

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Frustration

These webcams are frustrating.  I can see them inside the network, but not externally.  I have static ips I should be able to assign to them, but I can't see where to do that in the modem/router.  I may have to bite the bullet and..you know...ask for help :)

The ripping saga continues.  I won't finish before I go back to work, I'm sure!

Monday, January 2, 2012

What day is it?

You know your vacation is going well when you can't remember what day of the week it is, because you haven't had to stick to a schedule for over a week.  It helped that there were a couple of holidays in there too :)

It was cold here today, the ice/snow that came yesterday didn't melt much, so we stayed indoors, working on taking down the decorations, and I worked on my little study, cleaning, organizing, throwing away, and yes, ripping cds.  I'm up to 626 albums, and I figure I'm about halfway done-ish.  Gonna take me all week.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

2012: Here We Are

It's amazing how many cds we own here at the dylking household.  When the hard drive crashes that holds all your music, and you have to re-rip them, you find out how many you have!  All I've done for the past couple days now is rip cds.  I've gotten through the travel cases; now I have to start on the cds in the storage cases, and then the cds that are in the cd racks up against the wall.  I'm glad the new NAS I got was easy to set up - I'd rather not be messing with that too!

So, this week my plan during vacation is to continue ripping, diagnose and fix my webcam problem, continue cleaning up the study.  Oh, yeah, and shovel tomorrow.  Bleh. :)