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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Never a Dull Moment

Mason sleeping on my robeMason is cruising right along, development-wise… and slobbering like he’s cutting teeth already. He’s also started fighting sleep through the day — if he can manage, he’ll get by on 20-minute catnaps through the day and he can get pretty cranky when he can’t keep going. He stayed awake when I took him out in the stroller with Snippet this afternoon… and we got about half the walk done. I had to carry him for the last stretch; he didn’t conk out and snooze this time. Sometimes I can prop him up on a couple pillows and get a little keyboarding done, but that only lasts 10 minutes tops. [EDIT: That's my robe he's sleeping on. Snippet had his laundry in the crib.]

So… remember The Boy’s little incident back in February? They’d continued to put off his court date, and he managed to miss the one he was supposed to attend on Monday. The court doesn’t have much of a sense of humor concerning those things, and they came by the manor looking for him Tuesday afternoon then yanked him off the factory floor that evening. The real killer was, if he had bothered to remember and show up, there’s a pretty good chance they would have dropped the charges and he would have been shut of the whole sordid mess. Now, he’s sitting in the clink in Historic Forsyth County until his (rather expensive) lawyer that Mrs. Fetched found for him can get him out. I just hope he’ll have a job to return to, so he can pay the lawyer.

Working at home yesterday (and today), Mrs. Fetched and I had to run to the chiro-cracker late in the morning. I jumped in the car; she said “When did you spill gasoline on yourself?”

“I didn’t,” I said, smelling my shirt. “I haven’t handled gas since Friday.”

Coming out of the chiro-cracker, we smelled gas again and I opened the trunk. It did smell quite a bit. “You must have spilled some gas when you were helping that woman get her car started Friday night.” (She ran out of gas in the turn lane, ahead of me… better to carry her a few hundred yards than let her risk her life trying to cross GA400 in the dark.) I guess that was possible, so we zipped over to Zaxby’s. The lawyer called her just as we were getting out, and I walked over to the building to get out of the parking lot… and saw gas dripping underneath the car. Fortunately, I had the mechanic’s number in my phone, so I called and made sure we could bring the car in after lunch. As it turns out, we didn’t make it… ran out of gas less than two miles short of the turn into his shop. Mrs. Fetched called the tow service and we got it over there. Turned out a rat chewed the fuel line — just more proof that reality is stranger than fiction at FAR Manor. I hope that little so&so poisoned itself! This was familiar territory… the shower fix that turned into a water leak last month was the product of a rat chewing the water line. The plumber left us the affected piece as a souvenir (which Mrs. Fetched tossed before I had a chance to get a picture) and a note saying we did a really nice job on the shower.

So Snippet has been here since Tuesday. She and DoubleRed have been getting on each others’ nerves, until finally DoubleRed started growling at Snippet this afternoon while I was trying to work. Snippet said, “I’m leaving now,” and walked out of the room; DoubleRed slammed her door open and stormed into the kitchen. I yelled at them both to cool it, and they kept it down until they were finally able to work out their differences. At least I assume they did; they’ve been fairly cordial and even slightly chummy since then. At least DoubleRed has gone somewhere for the evening… maybe if they don’t see each other much they can keep up the happy babble.

Work also picked a fine week to go ka-boom, and taught me that not all schedule slips are a positive “development” for me. A major project that was supposed to be done by the end of the month is now sliding out to the end of December… but with a major re-think about the feature set. So out with half the stuff I’ve done with it to date, in with whatever is going to go in (I’m supposed to get a high-level list Real Soon Now). This is turning into one of those things that suck all the oxygen out of the other projects — both hardware and software — going on; my boss is telling his boss that pretty much everything else I’m doing has to be pushed out. Vacations are being canceled, and I was planning to burn the 7 days I’m not officially allowed to carry over at Thanksgiving and Christmas. That too has been worked out… with any luck, I’ll take two weeks at the end of January and spend it in Florida. Sitting on the beach, 500+ miles from FAR Manor and the office, sounds like just the thing.

8 comments:

  1. Good thing you're not here today - it was 63 and windy and drizzly until mid-afternoon! The windows are closed and we have blankets on our beds - it's cold for us thin-blooded Floridians. Back to 80s this weekend, tho. We'll try to soak up some sun for you. And I'll see you in January!

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  2. Never a dull moment is right. I hope that the boy is out soon.

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  3. Hey all!

    Beth, it's supposed to get into the 70s this weekend. Perfect weather for cutting firewood, huh? But I rode the motorcycle into work this morning, it's still warm enough that I don't need the electric gloves. Very very mild November here so far, I'm still getting tomatoes out of my garden!

    Boran, I'm hoping he'll get out today. If he marries Snippet, she won't have to testify… and I know they've talked about it anyway. mumble I just wish he'd shown up and gotten things taken care of.

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  4. Hi FAR, Beth & Boran!

    FAR, thank you for sharing your adventures. It really helps me to see someone else going through events that are so similar to ours.

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  5. Hey KB! I was just thinking about you, glad to see you pop up. You might want to cruise over to E4T, I just knocked down a few cobwebs over there. ;-)

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  6. Wow FAR -- That was GREAT!!!! I think that was just the thing to shake the cobwebs off my typing fingers!

    xxoo
    Thanks!!

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  7. Hiya FAR,

    It seems I've missed a good bit since I haven't been on the computer in awhile. FAR you need a good vacation, and I don't mean a couple weeks in Florida. I'm talking about on the other side of the world on an island where you can sit in your beach chair and have drinks bought to you. ;)

    I hope things come out alright for The Boy and that things start quietening down at FAR Manor.

    Take care

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  8. Hey KB… good to hear you're about to get rolling again!

    FM!!! Yeah, I think you missed the whole new grandson thing… as for the vacation, I agree with you, but I'll settle for what I can get. If that involves a beach chair and a cooler from which I can pull my own drinks, that'll do nicely.

    The Boy might be getting sprung tomorrow, we'll see what happens.

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