Christmas Eve was wonderful - my sister Carrie hosted us at her house with the in-town relatives. The food and company were great, and the kids were well spoiled with gifts. Papa decided it was time for some noise in the house, and gave Isaac a REAL Timbale and Cowbell set. My little Tito Puente is all set to go. Bella got a whole lot of art materials - somebody let the cat out of the bag that the girl's an artist.
Before heading to Carrie's, we had a quiet day in the house. We ate, watched movies, including Christmas Story: I had thought that the language in it was tame except for the one "bad word" Ralphie uttered... but boy it was full of "SOB, Smart Ass, Stupid, Idiot" and the like. I'm just getting too old... I'm grumpy about cuss words these days because I just don't want to hear my little ones saying them. ANYWAY the movie was funny and then we exchanged family presents: We gave the kids "night goggles" - sunglasses with brilliant blue LED lights on them. When we left Carrie's the kids both had their lights on, and they looked like a cross between Star Wars Jawas, and the Hartnoll brothers of Orbital (a techno band of the 90s where the guys had pen lights attached to their glasses to see the knobs they were twiddling). They kept them on for the ride home and the interior of the car was flush with blue light, and I kept thinking I was getting pulled over.
We left just in time... I wound up with a somewhat severe asthma attack (first one of consequence for years, really) - not sure if it was the tree, the dog, or the rich food (or all of them), but I was gasping for air by the end of the evening, but playing it cool so as not to ruin the time for the rest of the gang. Of course the puffer I had put in my coat pocket was dead as a doornail. So when we got home I hightailed it up to Isaac's room and grabbed his penguin shaped nebulizer and used some of his old meds. 15 minutes later, my lungs were clear, but my heart was pounding - boy that albuterol is intense when delivered in that manner.
The kids were asleep by 8:30, and I was out by 10... Pamela headed out to an evening service with her friend Carla - this time at a Lutheran church, which she was visiting more out of anthropological interest than anything.
It was another magical Christmas Morning - Santa had come in the night and had carefully arranged the kid's presents in the living room. The gifts were amazing: Bella got a retro Snoopy's Sno Cone machine, and Isaac got a REAL 1970's era Evel Knievel motorcycle set. The revving jet engine sound of that bike filled the house over and over again. Daddy was lucky enough to get a couple of Lego sets, and I got a lot of help building the Empire Strikes Back AT-AT walker. Well, once I built the mini-figures, the kids were off playing with them, while I did the hard work of building the large grey machine thing.
A couple of cute things:
1) Isaac: Instead of "I've changed my mind" has been saying "I cross-ted my mind".
2) Isaac has been singing "Release Goldilock" to the tune of "Feliz Navidad". Not sure why. UPDATE: Last night i misremembered it as "Rapunzel" - it's Goldilock. Still don't know why.
3) Bella has been grilling us on where we hide the presents in the house: Which presents I ask? The ones we give them, like the night goggles (I was concerned about a possible lapse in Santa Faith, but no worries). She has it down to one closet, or "someone else's house". Neither are correct, but I'll never tell. Then we were laughing about TERRIBLE places to hide presents. Like on her pillow. Or lined up on the toilet seat ("You'd see them, and if you DIDN't see them, they'd fall into the toilet water!!!"
The madness continues tomorrow with Bella's birth family coming over for stew and presents... it'll be a blast!
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Choo Choo!
We woke up good and early today for our regular Saturday routine: We carpooled out to Synchro, dropped Pamela and Bella off, while Isaac and I went to the new semester of Circus School: Today, the kids got measured for their outfits for the big performance in the spring. Of course all these 3-4 year olds could ask was CAN WE WEAR THEM NOW? WHEN? WHEN??? The teachers got them back on track, and they were working as one big group going through a circuit of exercises: Climb up and roll down a hill of mats, then a trapeze swing and dismount, then springing over a barrier, then a balance beam, then a quick bit of juggling (throwing scarves), and at the end, they lined up for a bow. They did this quite a few times, and us parents gave them applause with each bow. They're teaching not just the skills of the circus, but the SHOW too.
We picked up Bella and Pamela afterwards and headed to Keys Cafe downtown St Paul. I went there quite a bit in 2005-2006 when I was doing work for Gillette Children's hospital, which was within walking distance (their new IT location is a bit farther away, alas). I reveled in the caramel roll... oh it's good there. And even better, the kids didn't think it was something they'd want to try, so I got it all.
After lunch, we headed out to the MN Transportation Museum to climb on the big trains. Bella liked the "business car", with sleeping quarters, a big office, several bathrooms, a kitchen, and a salon. The detail was amazing - they knew how to live back then. I didn't see a heater in there, though... brrrrr..... They were having trouble with snow on the tracks, so we missed a ride on the train, but will do a return visit. Also, we rode on a 1954 vintage bus to and from the parking lot. Pretty dang cool.
Then it was back home, and I went off to the Malt Shop - a hangout from when I was a kid. As I was my high school senior class president, I'm organizing the 25th reunion, and had put out an APB on facebook that I would be there from 2-4pm if anyone wanted to give me ideas for the reunion. One guy did show up, and we had a good chat... but the rest were no-shows.
A final errand: As noted before, my Macbook Air had developed a problem: The hinge holding the screen was getting looser and looser, and at a certain point, it cracked and the lid would fall open and closed. Since that update, the ribbon that connects the screen to the brains got loose, so my screen was showing only red and pink hues. It was very hard to use the computer.
Well, they ordered the part, and it came in in 5 days, not 2 weeks. They called me and I dropped it off Friday afternoon, and it was ready to pick up at noon Saturday. They promised 3 weeks, and the whole thing was done in one.
This is simply amazing: Think of any other consumer product: It breaks, you ship it off to the manufacturer for repairs. An Apple breaks, you bring it in and they fix it right there. It sort of blows my mind, and it's just one more reason I love that company. And it makes me doubly happy that I didn't panic and buy another computer. this one is now JUST FINE.
With all that running around, it's nice to be sitting on my couch in front of the fire, with Pamela right across the room. We keep smiling at each other. Yep, it's pretty nice.
We picked up Bella and Pamela afterwards and headed to Keys Cafe downtown St Paul. I went there quite a bit in 2005-2006 when I was doing work for Gillette Children's hospital, which was within walking distance (their new IT location is a bit farther away, alas). I reveled in the caramel roll... oh it's good there. And even better, the kids didn't think it was something they'd want to try, so I got it all.
After lunch, we headed out to the MN Transportation Museum to climb on the big trains. Bella liked the "business car", with sleeping quarters, a big office, several bathrooms, a kitchen, and a salon. The detail was amazing - they knew how to live back then. I didn't see a heater in there, though... brrrrr..... They were having trouble with snow on the tracks, so we missed a ride on the train, but will do a return visit. Also, we rode on a 1954 vintage bus to and from the parking lot. Pretty dang cool.
Then it was back home, and I went off to the Malt Shop - a hangout from when I was a kid. As I was my high school senior class president, I'm organizing the 25th reunion, and had put out an APB on facebook that I would be there from 2-4pm if anyone wanted to give me ideas for the reunion. One guy did show up, and we had a good chat... but the rest were no-shows.
A final errand: As noted before, my Macbook Air had developed a problem: The hinge holding the screen was getting looser and looser, and at a certain point, it cracked and the lid would fall open and closed. Since that update, the ribbon that connects the screen to the brains got loose, so my screen was showing only red and pink hues. It was very hard to use the computer.
Well, they ordered the part, and it came in in 5 days, not 2 weeks. They called me and I dropped it off Friday afternoon, and it was ready to pick up at noon Saturday. They promised 3 weeks, and the whole thing was done in one.
This is simply amazing: Think of any other consumer product: It breaks, you ship it off to the manufacturer for repairs. An Apple breaks, you bring it in and they fix it right there. It sort of blows my mind, and it's just one more reason I love that company. And it makes me doubly happy that I didn't panic and buy another computer. this one is now JUST FINE.
With all that running around, it's nice to be sitting on my couch in front of the fire, with Pamela right across the room. We keep smiling at each other. Yep, it's pretty nice.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Terrible Terrible Jokes about Jenga
What do you call a game with stacked wooden blocks that also analyzes your dreams?
- Karl Junga
What do you call a game with stacked wooden blocks that was a 70s pop psychologist who wrote "Fear of Flying"
- Erica Jonga
What do you call a game with stacked wooden blocks that is also the leader of a brutal dictatorship
- Kim Jenga-il
At this point, Pamela said "I'm done with these now". So that's all I have.
- Karl Junga
What do you call a game with stacked wooden blocks that was a 70s pop psychologist who wrote "Fear of Flying"
- Erica Jonga
What do you call a game with stacked wooden blocks that is also the leader of a brutal dictatorship
- Kim Jenga-il
At this point, Pamela said "I'm done with these now". So that's all I have.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Buried!
You may have heard, we got some snow recently. It collapsed the Metrodome, which was pretty amazing. Actually I'm surprised it never fell before, really. What I love is the parade of "I KNEW it would happen eventually" people - forgetting it had stayed up without much incident for 20 years. That's not a bad roof.
We live in Edina, which means that even in the middle of the storm, we were getting plowed out. On Saturday night, we went out to a big birthday party for a friend, and it was Edina-to-Edina travel, which meant we didn't hit an unplowed stretch. The next day, going to visit my dad to help decorate their Christmas tree, we got hung up by impassable roads thrice and had to back out and find other routes.
It is days like these that I'm happy we invested in Mister Marshmallow, the 4wd Hybrid. We left Clive the Jaguar in the driveway for the first 2 days, but by Monday the roads were clear enough for him to be fishtailing down the road without hitting any snowbanks.
It's amazing to realize that we've hit a month since I started working at the new client (3 weeks technically, but I got wrapped into some meetings while transitioning out of Cleveland). The marker was that my first day in, they were doing a 90-day pre-live assessment, and today I delivered the 60-day pre-live assessment. And the things I know now versus then... whew. To be sitting at the table explaining exactly what the issue is with the Blood and Marrow Transplant Workflows, and what our next steps are... it's pretty cool. In this time, I feel like I've been able to really help the project along - not with any sort of magic, but just in listening, understanding, carrying concerns forward, and helping think of solutions.
Though sometimes I do get a little frustrated. One of my pet peeves is technical people who hide behind jargon. I had a person today who was quite obviously not telling the whole story, and kept dropping little technical terms as to why we would need to make some serious changes to our project or PATIENT SAFETY WAS AT RISK. I was watching the clinical people at the table getting hopeless - they were thinking that OBVIOUSLY what this guy was saying was true, it was technically explainable. I finally unloaded on the guy, letting him know I DO know the tech, and I knew exactly what the problem REALLY was, and that he had 2 ways he could fix it, and that it's not acceptable to put my project at risk like this. He made a look like a fish gasping for water.
It's good to have geek mojo. So we're still on target for our golive in 60 days, and it's going to be tight, no question. But I'm still happy. Almost unreasonably so. People keep waiting for me to crack. They don't know that I've been to Cleveland. Speaking of there, the cut cord remains cut, and they haven't brought me in for anything, which is wonderful. I do still get notes from people I brought in there wondering if I'm in a better place and if I can help them. We shall see.
Speaking of geek (and fish, actually), my poor Macbook Air has a cracked hinge, so the screen flops limply around. Apple said it's a free fix, but it'll be 2-3 weeks. They wanted to hold onto it, but I can't live without a laptop, and while it would have been a wonderfully acceptable excuse for getting that cute tiny 11" Air, I just couldn't do it. What is this... responsibility? It feels weird.
We live in Edina, which means that even in the middle of the storm, we were getting plowed out. On Saturday night, we went out to a big birthday party for a friend, and it was Edina-to-Edina travel, which meant we didn't hit an unplowed stretch. The next day, going to visit my dad to help decorate their Christmas tree, we got hung up by impassable roads thrice and had to back out and find other routes.
It is days like these that I'm happy we invested in Mister Marshmallow, the 4wd Hybrid. We left Clive the Jaguar in the driveway for the first 2 days, but by Monday the roads were clear enough for him to be fishtailing down the road without hitting any snowbanks.
It's amazing to realize that we've hit a month since I started working at the new client (3 weeks technically, but I got wrapped into some meetings while transitioning out of Cleveland). The marker was that my first day in, they were doing a 90-day pre-live assessment, and today I delivered the 60-day pre-live assessment. And the things I know now versus then... whew. To be sitting at the table explaining exactly what the issue is with the Blood and Marrow Transplant Workflows, and what our next steps are... it's pretty cool. In this time, I feel like I've been able to really help the project along - not with any sort of magic, but just in listening, understanding, carrying concerns forward, and helping think of solutions.
Though sometimes I do get a little frustrated. One of my pet peeves is technical people who hide behind jargon. I had a person today who was quite obviously not telling the whole story, and kept dropping little technical terms as to why we would need to make some serious changes to our project or PATIENT SAFETY WAS AT RISK. I was watching the clinical people at the table getting hopeless - they were thinking that OBVIOUSLY what this guy was saying was true, it was technically explainable. I finally unloaded on the guy, letting him know I DO know the tech, and I knew exactly what the problem REALLY was, and that he had 2 ways he could fix it, and that it's not acceptable to put my project at risk like this. He made a look like a fish gasping for water.
It's good to have geek mojo. So we're still on target for our golive in 60 days, and it's going to be tight, no question. But I'm still happy. Almost unreasonably so. People keep waiting for me to crack. They don't know that I've been to Cleveland. Speaking of there, the cut cord remains cut, and they haven't brought me in for anything, which is wonderful. I do still get notes from people I brought in there wondering if I'm in a better place and if I can help them. We shall see.
Speaking of geek (and fish, actually), my poor Macbook Air has a cracked hinge, so the screen flops limply around. Apple said it's a free fix, but it'll be 2-3 weeks. They wanted to hold onto it, but I can't live without a laptop, and while it would have been a wonderfully acceptable excuse for getting that cute tiny 11" Air, I just couldn't do it. What is this... responsibility? It feels weird.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Not LESS busy...
Hooo eeeee. The past 2 weeks have been a semi-blur. There WAS an airplane trip... I did a one-day in-n-out to Maryland for a possible assessment, which there's no way I'll be able to do in the next 3 months given the insane workload I have right now on the MAIN gig, plus we're trying to wrap up our assessment for Allentown too. BUT I haven't been to a hotel for 2 weeks, and that feels good.
Bella and I took a quick break from Harry Potter to finish up the Spiderwick Chronicles: That was a fun series, but there were some strange daddy things going on - having the big ogre pretend to be the kids' father was a bit alarming to Bella.... but we made it through. We're back on Potter. I note, as a bedtime reader, that JK Rowling has extended each chapter by 4-5 pages from books 1, 2, and 3. You can see she's writing to keep up with her evolving readership, but as a dad who is contending with "just one chapter???" I am worried... and will be prepping my voice with tea with lemon.
Isaac pretty much hasn't stopped jumping up and down since I came home 2 weeks ago. Literally, he's like a superball, bouncing on every surface. He's also in a very "chatterbox" phase, where he is gabbing nonstop, and if you try to let it just wash over you, he will stop and repeat what he is saying and repeat it again and DADDY ARE YOU LISTENING repeat it again until I grunt an acknowledgement. He's on fire right now, and he's getting up at 5:30-6 in the AM, so Mom and Dad are getting the show first thing.
Zinsser has finally accepted me back into the house: I think I was a "beloved visitor" for the past year, but now I'm a regular pack member. He's spending more time on my lap now.
And Pamela seems pretty happy to have me around. We've been cooking dinners together, watching Glee, and just hanging out. The house is a bit of a wreck because I think we're both still feeling like we're in mid-exhale. We'll get it together. Plus, we're in the seasonal changeover: We're moving from Turkeys to Christmas for the decorating theme. This decompression is also probably why I've been slow to blog... I'll get back on the stick.
It's been fun working locally - driving in to work has been wonderful, grabbing lunch up in Northeast... there's a lot to love. Great little restaurants like oBento-ya and Uncle Franky's... plus Surdyk's and the Bulldog...
One key thing I'm working out is that the project is definitely behind, and the people are definitely burned out, but I don't think there'll be a problem hitting our date - we can make it. The real problem is what will happen the day after we go live - there's not really a good model in place for support, and they saw that in spades after their first mini-golive 2 months ago. The teams aren't burned out from the work to deliver this new hospital, they're hung over from a support nightmare. That helps me know where to focus my energies - unfortunately, the support model isn't one I have full control over, so I'll just need to be a strong advocate for our team.
Well, no rest for the wicked. Time to get the kiddos ready: Isaac to Swimming, Bella to Church. We have our one and only "friends" Xmas party tonight - a traditional party with people Pamela worked with back when we were first together, so these are people who bring up back to the heady days of the apartment on Harriet and the duplex on Aldrich! History is a good thing.
Bella and I took a quick break from Harry Potter to finish up the Spiderwick Chronicles: That was a fun series, but there were some strange daddy things going on - having the big ogre pretend to be the kids' father was a bit alarming to Bella.... but we made it through. We're back on Potter. I note, as a bedtime reader, that JK Rowling has extended each chapter by 4-5 pages from books 1, 2, and 3. You can see she's writing to keep up with her evolving readership, but as a dad who is contending with "just one chapter???" I am worried... and will be prepping my voice with tea with lemon.
Isaac pretty much hasn't stopped jumping up and down since I came home 2 weeks ago. Literally, he's like a superball, bouncing on every surface. He's also in a very "chatterbox" phase, where he is gabbing nonstop, and if you try to let it just wash over you, he will stop and repeat what he is saying and repeat it again and DADDY ARE YOU LISTENING repeat it again until I grunt an acknowledgement. He's on fire right now, and he's getting up at 5:30-6 in the AM, so Mom and Dad are getting the show first thing.
Zinsser has finally accepted me back into the house: I think I was a "beloved visitor" for the past year, but now I'm a regular pack member. He's spending more time on my lap now.
And Pamela seems pretty happy to have me around. We've been cooking dinners together, watching Glee, and just hanging out. The house is a bit of a wreck because I think we're both still feeling like we're in mid-exhale. We'll get it together. Plus, we're in the seasonal changeover: We're moving from Turkeys to Christmas for the decorating theme. This decompression is also probably why I've been slow to blog... I'll get back on the stick.
It's been fun working locally - driving in to work has been wonderful, grabbing lunch up in Northeast... there's a lot to love. Great little restaurants like oBento-ya and Uncle Franky's... plus Surdyk's and the Bulldog...
One key thing I'm working out is that the project is definitely behind, and the people are definitely burned out, but I don't think there'll be a problem hitting our date - we can make it. The real problem is what will happen the day after we go live - there's not really a good model in place for support, and they saw that in spades after their first mini-golive 2 months ago. The teams aren't burned out from the work to deliver this new hospital, they're hung over from a support nightmare. That helps me know where to focus my energies - unfortunately, the support model isn't one I have full control over, so I'll just need to be a strong advocate for our team.
Well, no rest for the wicked. Time to get the kiddos ready: Isaac to Swimming, Bella to Church. We have our one and only "friends" Xmas party tonight - a traditional party with people Pamela worked with back when we were first together, so these are people who bring up back to the heady days of the apartment on Harriet and the duplex on Aldrich! History is a good thing.
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