Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Random Notes

There was frost on the ground this morning. First morning my hands were chilly on the morning dog walk (and if I had put them in the pockets of my leather jacket, which I got out for the first time this morning, I would have found some gloves). Yet somehow this morning, unlike Monday and Tuesday, I decided to man up and *not* wear a turtleneck. I've just changed into my jammies and warm fuzzy robe and slippers, and I feel much better now. (A little warm actually, but that's 50 for you.)

I got to work this morning to discover that I will be mapping requirements and doing rework on the document for at least the next week. I can't say it came as much of a surprise.

I may or may not have already mentioned that I am turning 50 next week. Major birthdays are a lot more annoying than minor birthdays. As a general rule one must decide what one wants for one's birthday, where one wants to go out to eat, etc., but on a major birthday you can't just get an ordinary gift or go to an ordinary dinner. I keep trying to reframe this: gee, what would I love to get but would normally never think of buying; where would I love to go but normally wouldn't. I should be viewing this as an opportunity. But mostly I have other stuff I want to be spending my October weekends on. It know it would be better for everyone, including me, if I would quit grumbling and appreciate the moment.

I have moved the "crafting" chair over to the table the laptop is on. I haven't done any crafting in quite some time now, although theoretically Christmas is coming and I have big plans. I'm not sure the furniture rearrangement is a good omen.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Back

Sheesh--I've been gone so long Blogger made me sign in. I was so excited this morning when I went to work: today was the deadline for peer review comments on a document I have been helping to write for the last couple months. I have been writing, getting comments, rewriting, formatting, fighting with a new document tool (Open Office), and generally hating life since the beginning of May.

Twitterer @badbanana had a tweet one day that made me laugh out loud: "I had to hunker down and do some serious writing today. Which is why I made a working flute out of a carrot." That has described my days pretty accurately. I considered buying some handcuffs to chain myself to my desk with. (Sorry, with which to chain myself to my desk.)

A week ago I worked over the weekend (and into Monday, because that's how these things wind up) to finish the last section and try to fix as many cross-references as possible. Then it got packaged up and sent out for the formal review, which was scheduled to end today. (Fortunately, or unfortunately, most of the reviewers are also authors, which means that commenting is going to be somewhat superficial. Although a lot of my comments weren't altogether superficial.)

My boss says he's going to do all the rework, which I really don't believe, and my other boss says he's got someone else creating the huge table at the end mapping all the requirements to sections of the document, which I don't think is attainable for one person in our time frame, but at least for this moment I am technically done with this document. (Until May when we have to update it again for our next release.)

I am now free to resume my life as an engineer. I feel sort of like someone getting out of the hospital after a long illness. Except of course we have a ridiculous deadline coming up just before Christmas, so there is no time to waste "getting back into it." Instead of feeling like celebrating at the end of the day, I was sort of numb. (OK, I had just finished spending over a week reviewing 300 pages of tech-speak, so that is probably understandable.)

Anyway--coming home at night after wrangling words all day did not leave me in much of a mood to get on the computer and write blog entries. This morning I had that feeling you get in the spring when the birds come back and start singing again (even if fall and 50-degree high temperatures did descend on Minnesota this week, and the s-word appeared in the forecast for northern Minnesota for the first time). So here's hoping I'll be making more frequent appearances.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

A Spouse in the House

I'm assuming that every married person occasionally daydreams about what it would be like to be not married, and have all your time "to yourself" so to speak. Somehow you imagine you'd spend lots more time doing various things you feel you're not doing enough of normally.

I've had a chance to try that out this week (my husband is on a business trip), and, unsurprisingly I guess, it turns out that left to my own devices, I spend a lot of time surfing the internet and staying up way, way too late playing Spider Solitaire on the computer and doing crossword puzzles. (I say unsurprising because I already spend too much time doing these things. Now I'm just free to spend more time without any of that peer-pressure sort of guilt that occurs naturally because there's another person in the house who knows what you're doing.)

Last week my head was filled with ideas of all the things I could do during this time when I would be on my own. I could do whatever I want! I could spend hours on my own pet projects without worrying that I was neglecting our relationship! I have a list, of course, of things I wrote down that I would like to do (or that I ought to do). Too bad Spider Solitaire is not on the list, or I'd have something I could check off.

He had to get up ridiculously early on Tuesday to make it to a 7:30am flight, so I got up early, and got to work before 8:30. The plan was to get up early, now that my internal clock was all realigned (I did wake up at 5:45 the next morning, but didn't get up for another half hour), come home earlier, and try to "get some things done" in the evenings. I'm always searching for that singular event that will shake up the inexorable slouch toward later and later every day, and was pleased to have found one. I made it to work before 9:00 the second day, but I started logging in from home to do a little work each evening (so I could leave the office earlier!), and pretty soon I was up until 11:30 each night like usual and getting up late since I'd worked the night before.

Last night, a mere 60 hours from that early Tuesday wakeup, I turned the light out at 2am.

So, repentant now, I'm resolving to do better next week. So far today has been a washout--I finally decided maybe I'd go out and try to wash bugs off the front of the camper and it started raining. I'm sure there are other things on my list that don't require going outside, but hey, that was what I was all geared up for. Now I think, being Saturday and all, that the dogs and I will live large and go get some fast food drive thru for dinner, and I can rack my brain to try and remember what movies I've always wanted to see that he doesn't want to watch.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Tweet of the Day

Well, yesterday, actually. And it was from @badbanana (who else):
Obama is going to address the nation's schoolchildren? One good fart joke and the Democrats control Congress for 60 years.