Raincharm’s Weblog

I opened the front door and MMMM, something smelled good. Meatloaf.
A little comfort food is always good. Carl makes a great meatloaf.
It is made from ground turkey.
I have heard others talk of turkey loaf, but it’s still meat isn’t it?
I certainly wouldn’t want to call if fowlloaf.

Now it sounds like it will be popcorn for desert.

Such is life on a working day in the RH household.
My life is still very much being dictated by others, although I am going to stage a walkout and go where I can’t be found or stage a shutout and close my door and block it with extra chairs.
Carl’s life is very much dictated by the whims of very short people with extreme and unpredictable mood swings.
I am not sure if Ashlan’s life is dictated or whether she is being a dictator – it is hard to tell and she is not (telling).
From what I can figure Rey’s life is dictated by his chosen form of work slavery internship and the whims of the weather gods. Rey says it was raining so hard at the ballpark yesterday that you could not see the scoreboard. [He also did not get to share in the meatloaf.]

I am in pause right now. (No – not meno, well yes, but that’s not what I meant.) I am in the period of time between the first half of a Board meeting and the second half of the Board meeting.

I have done some work work, and am pausing to take a break before going back to get just one more letter drafted at least. As long as I am here, I might as well accomplish something (or try to anyway).

I was going to take a 5-mile walk with some workmates, assuming 1st half ended early enough. It did, but in the meantime they had decided to go SHOPPING instead. Can you imagine? Shopping instead of walking (with me). I can’t, but then I hate to shop.

After a week of general bitc grumpiness, I have generally been better behaved today. It is that short period of time when you have more or less completed one task and not submersed yourself in the next. Pick off a few shorter gigs to get a good vibe going before hitting the hard stuff, which was put on hold for far too long for other’s projects.

Time to hit the PLAY button again.

Today started with a 3-day Crew meeting. Getting to meet a few of the people we will be working with in September. One juicy tidbit – last year the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk raised $100,000,000 dollars for research. They say they have a bit lower expectations this year since money for donations is a bit tighter.

So following that it was time for a walk. Shorter today because we had to drop off and pick up a car for a little service, and they have short Saturday hours. We decided to walk down by the UW Stadium where graduation was being held to check out the festivities. We realized that we probably knew some kids walking the line today – it is Rey’s graduating class if they did the 4-year thing.  So this is in honor of all those graduating that we have not been able to cheer on through the ceremony – including Rey.

CONGRATULATIONS – Job well done!

Rey's Diploma

 This is the first time Rey has had a chance to see this as well.

closer

Not working on work for a change this evening.
But the lack of real exercise has made itself evident.
I looked at my feet and both ankles were pretty swollen.
Ashlan says that it is from sitting too much.

She also informed me they are called Cankles – when the calf and ankle become one.

Since I was not working on work, and the DTV switch is tomorrow, I thought it time to try and connect the 1978 black and white to the latest technology. Using a pigtail kind of thing I was able to get all of the connections successfully made. So we should have all working TVs – right? Wrong! Because the old TV had a built-in antenna, and I had to pirate one from one of the other TVs to see if it would work.

Now we don’t really need 3 TVs, but they each serve their purpose. And now that they are all tethered to boxes, they are not really mobile. The black and white is the back-up alarm clock, and morning traffic reporter. Pretty good for a TV that hashad no remote or anything more than an off and on switch. We connected it to one of those timers to turn lights on and off while on vacation – and voila. The small color is used for a lot of sports viewing, visible from the kitchen and dining/work table. The “large” (by our modest standards) TV is in the living room. Movies and lying on the couch for viewing. The large TV is currently antennaless. Could still be used for DVDs.

Guess I’ll have to go shopping and try to walk out of my cankles.

Ashlan may be trying out treadmills soon. Actually, I made that up. She has been to a spinning class and is now trying some other work0ut thing tonight. I don’t know what she gets paid to work, but the benefits of working in a health club certainly seem to be good.

I was really referring to my treadmill at work of late. Finally got the paperwork finished late last night, ready to merge. Learned a few new things about merging into Word from Excel (which I have done many times in the past). Either I had not had the stars aligned with the same type of data, or upgrades have tweaked things here and there. But – I got one merged ready to print, and the other with just a minor kink to figure, which I correctly surmised I would see more clearly in the morning. [I don’t like to print remotely, at night, when the building should be empty. We have found that paper and heat coming out of a printer can simulate a bad guy snooping around in a building, and the police don’t find it nearly as funny as the person that was getting the work done.

So – I printed probably 7 inches of paper, some double sided, some not. Color, black and white, letterhead and plain. I had printers coming and going. Then collate – give to others to finish collating… OK – in good hands …into a separate meeting. Out of the meeting. Ask good hands if it went well.

Well – it was apparently collating well until the low-bid contractor upon which the mailing numbers were based called to say they wanted to rescind their bid – error in some computation. A little to late to STOP THE PRESSES. Wind out of sails, pin to a balloon, brain with locked up brakes.

But, at least the letters were not in the mail. [For those that don’t know what the heck I am talking about – the letters were inviting property owners to help pay for a new sewer, based on the cost of the installation. Without some community interest, we may not put in the sewer, and the future price will certainly be more …. ]

So – new price, reprint about a third of the paper, but then have to pull apart, staple, re-collate, restuff ………………………………. and get it out in the mail. I hope the collating was perfect. Nothing like giving one person another persons numbers to look like a fool.

Now onto more mundane issues like safety incidents, new developments, recalcitrant Cities that think they are better than other developers, oh – and go home and have that drink I really wanted last night.

As in – I still have a lot of work that is due today.
But, as I tried to get myself oriented to work  after work, the body rebelled and became still.
Really still, like asleep still.

And when I woke up I realized I have a separate piece due today as well.
Carpooler? Now would be a good time to show up.

I dislike the minutes when I don’t think I have the time to VPN, but am already thinking about work.

Complaining again! Sorry. Sign of the workload, or more likely the workload I am not getting to because of the workload at hand.

Seems to be a recurring theme. Maybe I ought to make it a category.

Ashlan started new work today, seemed to go OK, although I did not get home until after 9 PM and so didn’t have a lot of time to catch up.

9 PM was due to a last minute (from my perspective) redirect on how a project should go forth. This is of course after having met with multiple outside people, individually explaining how the project would go forth, based on prior policies. So now, all must be able to get a letter that describes, without confusing – the new and better course, which many of them will be please with – if they actually pay attention. Any have it done by Thursday. And this is not really MY project, but it is certainly within my purview, and so MY project languishes, still, again. So we do it – because we always do it – which is why we are asked to do it.

Now the change in policy is not a bad one, and it is not a change in policy, it is just trying to make this project (a good one) go. But I started the morning in a less than favorable mood when my purview’s meeting was blown off by others that feel their work is more important, usually (seems like always). I don’t know the particulars, maybe it was, but if feels like a pattern. For those that work, and do what they can to make their workplace a better place to work by participating outside of their immediate arena – Thank You. You are what make places tick like well maintained machinery.

Off to said work. Maybe I’ll get to talk to family tonight. And what they hear won’t be complaining.

UPDATE So – while I was powering down last night, Carl did share with me the meaning of the many Lego folks on the card table. Angela (4) had taken many of the Lego women, put hair on all of them, put them walking together and called them the Black Penguins. They are walking for Breast Cancer. Carl talks with the kids about what we do, and I guess they are listening. So – if I walk again, perhaps I won’t be the Raindrops, Pink Flamingos, Flaming Pink Crew or Kindred Spirit – I’ll be a Black Penguin. Pooh- what team are you?

Frequently after a soccer game I am too tired to accomplish much.
But with Ashlan’s assistance we have successfully reconnected the 2nd of 3 tv’s in the house to digital converter boxes.

1 to go. The 1978 model black and white. It needs an external antenna to complete the task, and I do not have one yet. I will probably steal an antenna from one of the other TVs to try it out first.

Of course I wait for the last minute. And the picture is better through the DTV box, but there is one station (FOX) that it does not pick up well, and with DTV it is an all or nothing proposition. FOX in general can be done without, but in a sport centric family it does have alot of sports.

Rey should be in the midst of, “Just another 15 hour day,” as he described it to me yesterday. Starting set-up at around 9 AM, hosting a party of 900, finish by closing the bar at midnight (as a worker, not a partaker).

Rey

We plan to call him at 6:52, working or not.

On the left coast we are honoring the event by walking 10 miles to the Mariners game (done), watching the Mariners win (done), watching the Penguins vs RedWings (soon), and then watching the Seattle Sounders vs Chivas (Soccer – a little later). I am pretty sure Rey would approve.

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

Groucho Marx

Apparently 2 months is long enough work time to make it worthwhile to hire and train someone for a paying job. Especially if the someone has both customer service and child care experience, dabbling in studies in the active health arenas, and the job is with a Health Club. Woo-Hoo!