Sunday, February 17, 2008

Deep in the fear...

Pamela definitely got hit with something: She was unwakeable through the night (and Isaac and Bella were VERY wakeable - two resettles for each, which is unheard of... and also very sleepymaking for me). When Isaac awoke, the best thing I could describe is that his head is FILLED with mucus and it's coming out wherever it finds a path: his EYES were gummy, his nose, his mouth... luckily not his ears. Bella was a bit grumpy, but we made a trip to Chipotle to get protein into her to help the mood, and she got a couple of hours of play in with Jenny too.

As the day progressed, Pamela grew more and more horizontal, until by the end of it, we were all in the basement watching episodes of the most frustrating season of Storm Chasers ever: I mean, for 3 episodes, they have absolutely NO luck running into a tornado, and they're all sniping at eachother about it. But there are some cool tornado pictures, so that makes it all ok. But in all it felt a bit like a limbo day. I was taking Airborne, drinking Emergen-C, and doing Netty Pots (nasal irrigation) all day to make sure I don't get this ick!!!

Come bedtime, Bella was crazily ramped up and took some soothing to relax... and then she puked (not sure what that's about - food disagreement? She insisted "It didn't come up from my stomach! It only came out my mouth!!!"). And the commotion woke Isaac up again... and it was a 3 alarm fire drill for a while up there. But in the end everyone's back asleep, I'm blogging just before bed as usual, but this time I'm hoping that blogging AFTER feeding Isaac I won't be called away mid-paragraph as before.

Our Yellow Alert protocol is working pretty well for the little man: His chest sounds clear for now. If the night goes well, we'll revert to the GREEN protocol (corticosteroids for a while to reduce his general inflammation). This whole asthma thing is bringing up memories of being an asthmaboy... though I don't recall it coming on THIS early for me - I think it was around 1st grade when I started with the puffers... but other people would know more than I.

A busy week ahead as we prepare at work for the big trade show that is one of the two "hail mary" plays we make: This is a huge networking and recruiting event in Orlando, and I'm going out Friday to Thursday. My days are scheduled from 8-8 daily. Ah the glamorous life.

I'm still finding my "legs" with this gig: I've been given even more clients, now on the EAST COAST (New York, Boston, Philly), but lest you think this is a lot of territory to cover, remember this:
- I'm not selling a product, I'm selling services.
- The people who need these services know exactly what they're looking for
- Once I'm known to them, it's really a case of when they need something, I've got to find it for them.
- But we're working a bench of 4 people right now, so we're all scrambling to find the requested people for our ESTABLISHED clients...

So until the recruiting really takes off AND a few people roll off of their existing gigs, there's very little advantage to having 15 clients calling me up asking for people, when in fact we don't have them. Fortunately, my base is more than enough to get through a ramp period, so this constraint is not hurting me just yet. I'm helping with the interviewing of new candidates, which is actually quite fun... I've got pretty good at "telling" when a person will work out. We'll see.

In the meantime, I was interviewed for the (large, new owner) corporate newsletter, and got headshots done for my byline... and I did some pro-bono work for an Arizona public data initiative, giving them some relatively bad news about the ease with which they will be able to do something they thought would be a "no brainer". Oh well! I did give them the steps they'd need to take to make it right, however.

Finally, in the geek world I must say I'm happy I hedged my bets and got both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, considering that HD-DVD appears to be the loser in the Hi Def wars... and this got resolved a LOT faster than anyone was expecting - this was supposed to be an epic slog for another 2 years! I have a dozen HD-DVD disks, and they'll still keep on working. No problem! I'm mad at HD-DVD anyway - they totally blew off my rebate submission and never sent my 5 free disks months ago. The blu-ray guys were RIGHT on it, and sent it out fast. At that time I knew they were ones to watch. No regrets on the HD disks I do have - The Bourne Trilogy is incredible.

Allright - off to bed... on MY terms this time!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. This bug is awful. Hit me on Friday. Saturday was total he--, but Sunday was at least ambulatory. Dot's down with strep - in addition to our big wk her first granddaughter was born late Wednesday. So all manner of sympathy and good thoughts to you - as you manage the many parts of your lives well - we know.
You did not start early with asthma - we had you on shots with the allergy clinic for 3 years. So when you finally did come down with it in around 2nd - or 3rd - grade we felt you'd been through all that pain for nothing. That's a tough judgment to shake - so I advise not even going there as a dad.
May all be well.