Still Dim, Still Life

Life goes on, even (or especially?) when not blogging. The work that followed me home for the weekend pretty much rolled over and gave up after a few hours. That didn’t leave me a lot of free time anyway; there was wood to split & stack and chicken houses that demanded attention. But the work stuff went OK; I had some late stuff come in this morning, one sticky comment (from my boss) was deemed OK to let slide for the beta phase. I spent much of the work day today updating screen shots and verifying CLI commands; the later is not difficult but rather tedious. Things change, even when they’re not called out in the spec, so it has to be done.

On the way into work this morning, I was thinking about The Boy and his focus on things. With a little reflection, I realized his wasn’t a laser focus — more like an electron gun in a CRT. Very sharp focus, but easily deflected. Girlfriends have not been good for him… three summers ago, he had a job, a car, and good prospects. He hooked up with M.A.E.… and a year later, the job was history, the car was trashed by a criminal who thought to use it as a getaway car & put diesel in it, and he’d dropped out of school. In some ways, he hasn’t recovered from that. Interesting that when I got home, he was at the manor (and Snippet, of course). He’s going to try to get back that job he had before, and helped out a little bit (hoping for cigarette money). Mrs. Fetched told me that on the way to do some of that work, she asked him, “Are you happy with your life, the way things are going?” He didn’t answer. I hope he reflects on it. She thinks he’s not terribly thrilled with his apartment life; he told me he and EJ (and Snippet, of course) are going to try getting their own place. What he really needs to do is put her aside & redirect his focus — but being a guy, he’ll let his nuts do the thinking until he’s 30 or so.

Some consultant invited me to join his group on LinkedIn a while back. It’s a social networking site geared toward professionals, if you haven’t heard of it. On a whim, I typed in my old college roomie’s name, and there he was (waving at CS if he’s reading). We hooked up on IM today, traded pix of our kids, and commiserated about being almost 50.

The first of several “stimulus packages” is going to arrive soon: the annual work bonus. Mrs. Fetched and I have made a list of stuff we want to get taken care of, including taking care of the cars and motorcycles. I think we’ll have a fair amount left over after the essentials are taken care of, which will take care of the Spring Break vacation in Florida. Daughter Dearest’s chorus is singing at Dizzy World, and recording part of a movie soundtrack. They’re going to spend a lot of time backstage, and Mrs. Fetched is going to be there to video things. Meanwhile, we have a condo set up near Mom’s place (with Mom’s help) and I’ll have a couple of days to air it out before they finish up their “work” in Orlando and join me. But before that, Beth is coming this way for a day or so, then continuing a dizzying travel schedule that ends up in a new home in Colorado. I’ll have to make cinnamon rolls.

Speaking of rolls, a woman at our church runs a no-kill animal shelter. I don’t know how this connects, but she gets large packages of freebies from the grocery store and brings it for everyone to pick out on Sundays. I usually grab pastries or doughnuts and take them to work; plenty of engineers are happy to dispatch the goodies. What doesn’t get eaten in the meetings gets taken to a certain filing cabinet in the office, where it has a (ahem) shelf life of about two hours. I kept the coffee cake and English muffins for ourselves, though.

And speaking of bread… seeing that wheat has gone up like 40% in the last year, and is set to double in the next year, I figured this would be a good time to stock up on flour. We went to BJs, and found 20lb packs for $6.57 — about 2/3 what you’d pay at the grocery store. I bought two packs, which will last us a little while, and tossed in a 3-liter bottle of Berio olive oil. Meanwhile, the girlies wound up getting a bunch of other stuff. Daughter Dearest found Stephanie Meyer’s second book (Eclipse, hardcover for $10) and has already read it (and the first one) twice. I guess she’ll get the next one when she gets paid.

I’m hoping things will ease up a little later this week, and maybe I can get a FAR Future episode up. One more month to vacation!