Viva Carnival!

Last night was the Highlands Elementary Carnival, the annual festive event with moonwalks, games, food, and gift basket raffles. Of course, Bella isn't a student there yet (and won't be for another year), but we've gone the past 3 years just to support the school she WILL be attending.

This year Bella was VERY interested in the bouncy moonwalk-style events - there was a maze that ends with a climbing wall and slide, and she completely OWNED it, going through it 3 times in a row, then once more at the end of the night. Pamela's favorites are the cakewalks, and we were pretty lucky in those - we got two boxes of cereal (Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter, and Fruit Loops), and two muffins. We came up empty in the "Junk Food" one, and the students were completely mental for the idea of getting bad-for-you food, and were way too cranked up. It was scary.

At the end of the night, we were picked to win one of the gift baskets: A big box of science from Lakeshore Learning - crystal growing kits, mechanical puzzles, electricity experiments, skeleton and eyeball models, and a MICROSCOPE!!! Super cool, and bella thought so too. Isaac spent the evening in a baby backpack on my shoulders, laughing crazily and looking around.

After getting home too late and getting the keyed up kids to bed, I thought it might be fun to watch the new Christoper Guest movie - For Your Consideration. In a word: Meh. No laugh out loud moments AT ALL? Pamela went so far as to say "they shouldn't have even RELEASED that movie". We just didn't know what the point was - it reminded me of some of the very obvious jokes in LA Story that some people thought were "biting" and I thought were "duh". Or maybe hollywood is just such a broad target and has been so well covered that it couldn't help but seem tired.

It was certainly no Guffman, or even a Best in Show... It made us a little sad, so I hope that they really go for something different next time.

Tonight's another Scotch night with the boys: Now we're doing VERTICAL tasting - that means that while we had previously been exploring the different tastes between regions and distilleries, tonight we are trying out different vintages from the same distillery. So a 12 year versus an 18 year. And no jokes people - we don't ever taste enough of this stuff to wind up Horizontal... we're classy. Oh, and the movie will be Batman Begins - the super dark origin story starring Christian Bale and directed by Christopher Nolan (who were also star and director of The Prestige from 3 weeks ago!)

Finally, I'm getting excited about the new gig possibility... and have taken more steps to help my current client find someone "like me" for the maintenance work. I think I helped them get a key concept in why my skillset is unique, and maybe they'll be able to post the job a little better. Up to now, they've been getting techies who can't speak to humans, and project managers who came up through the business, not technical, who don't know the details of how software WORKS.

My suggestion is to look for Data Warehousing people - we always needed to work with end users ("I want to see top salesmen ranked") and techies ("That data is in three databases, you'll never get it together"), and synthesize it all ("I extracted key data from those three databases, built a new database, and here are your reports, sir").

That skillset is surprisingly hard to find, actually, and I reflect on how lucky I've been to be able to work with as many great DW people as I have. It's like we have superpowers.

We're off to the Mall of the Americas for some walking around blowing off steam fun. Later!