Two good days

After the rain-fest at Epcot on Monday, we were in the mood for a little break, so Tuesday was a "no park day" - we had a big breakfast at the buffet in the hotel, and wandered over to the sister resort - Kidani. Both Jambo and Kidani share a view of the wild animal plain, but they seem to have different "regulars" - Kidani had some great Vultures sunning themselves, along with a couple of ostriches.

Jambo is a grand hotel, but Kidani is more suites-driven, with a smaller lobby, fewer rooms, and a cozy atmosphere. But they have a different pool area, and that's where we spent over 4 hours - a pool with a pretty fun waterslide and a "splash park" - zero depth with lots of fountains and misters. Jenny came to join us for a couple of hours too. The kids swam and swam, and got a little crispy in the sun.

The weather held nicely for us - it would have been a good park day, but we needed the rest.

We hopped into the car for dinner at the Wilderness Lodge, the Whispering Canyon restaurant. There was very little whispering going on, but lots of fun. Loud boisterous waiters, hobby horse races, and if you needed some ketchup, well, you needed to holler our for it, and chances were you'd wind up with a dozen bottles for your effort. The food was FANTASTIC as well - some of the best we have had on the trip.

A wander around the grounds of the Wilderness Lodge was good - it's a beautiful property, but all told, it does the north woods feel a bit TOO well - we thought we probably wouldn't want to go there for vacation since, well, we get that sort of think up at Ruttgers, so why do it here?

Today was an EARLY day - Up by 6, at the Magic Kingdom by 8, and on the Dumbo Ride by 8:10. In rapid succession we hit all of the Fantasyland greats - Peter Pan, Dumbo, Merry Go Round, Small World... No wait on any of it It was my first trip to Small World since, well, since it cost an A-Ticket to ride. And I loved it - it's WAY more charming than I remember it - and I'm sure they've updated it with certain PC tweaks, but it still feels like a wonderful call back to when you could point at a mountain and a doll in Lederhosen and say "That's SWITZERLAND!!!" The world doesn't feel quite as identifiable any more does it? Maybe it never really was, but I loved remembering those touchpoints.

On a whim we hit the Haunted Mansion - Isaac loved it, Bella hated it, even though we tried to prep her that it was "All Scooby Doo style ghosts - nothing real". Isaac was a real thrill seeker in general - he insisted on the Race Cars (he also insisted on steering, which led to many many jarring "bumps" as the car corrected itself on to the guide rail). AND he insisted on the Ripsaw Roller Coaster, which he laughed manaicallly during - he wanted to go on it again and again.

We pretty much hit everything we wanted to hit with no waits (again, thank you Tour Guide Mike), and laughed as we saw the Dumbo Ride with 50 minute waits by the end of our day. We're planning on revisiting the Magic Kingdom on Friday and hitting TomorrowLand with everything we got.

We left by 2, had some chill time at the hotel, and then started back to the Magic Kingdom for dinner, just in time for a short squll to pass through, throwing lightning around and forcing us down to 20 mph on the highway while sheets of water poured across our windshield ("A nice way to get the car clean" said Isaac). The rain cleared up just as we pulled up the The Contemporary Resort.

The Contemporary is the hotel that has the Monorail going right through it, which I thought was AWESOME. But inside, it really doesn't do modern much more than your average Courtyard by Marriott... it was just sort of blah. I wish it had a retro-sixties futurism happening, but it was more just, retro 80's Hyatt Regency sort of feel, which was not terribly awesome.

We did have a buffet dinner, and we had all of the characters drop by - Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Pluto, and Goofy. Isaac was out of his mind jumping around and hugging them all... but he did ask "why don't they talk?". Then Isaac and Bella did a 5 minute spontaneous dance which I will call the "cupcake sugar rush dance" - but it got quite the audience.

As we left, Pamela was beckoned to the table next to ours - they wanted to know if Joe and I were by any chance TV stars, because they could SWEAR they'd seen us somewhere before. I think that we just live a little big, maybe we give off that "comfortable in the spotlight" vibe. Because I'm pretty sure nobody saw that TV Pilot we made back in the late 1990s ("Papa and the Jimmy").

Tomorrow will be a lighter day - if the weather holds, we may revisit Epcot to see what we missed and spend a little more time in the international areas. But no big plans. At the very least, we're sleeping in for a while.

Almost unbelievable

On Thursday, our new system went live. On Friday, we hopped on an airplane to head down tot sunny Florida for a week at Disney World. First, about the work: I'm in shock, but things seem to be going well - there were some issues in areas that we had already known might cause us some trouble... and the fact that there were no OTHER major issues meant we were able to focus our resources on those trouble spots. I've been checking my work email no more than once a day, just to see if something huge has emerged, but no, it seems to be going ok. SO I'm just fine with being here.

The flight down was good - on time and relatively smooth... but the last 10 minutes had us hitting some pretty major bumps... and poor Isaac wound up puking all over the place as we taxi'ed to the gate. Of course I wasn't quick enough with a bag, and it wound up EVERYWHERE. Fortunately the door opened shortly and people were able to flee. The flight attendants were very pleasant - apparently Isaac wasn't the only kid to have lost his cookies on the flight, either.

The downside is that Isaac has been announcing that "i think I'm going to frow up" at every opportunity. It figures - he didn't really see why he puked before, so it's a potential for every minute now.

So Friday we checked in to the Animal Kingdom Lodge, an African-themed hotel with a gorgeous atrium and wild animals wandering around right outside our windows. There are 4 giraffes, a pair of zebras, and many ox-goat-bull style animals. Some with absurdly large horns. The room isn't big, but the view is great. Nothing like having morning coffee watching a giraffe nibble on some leaves 100 feet away.

On Saturday we did the Animal Kingdom park. Here's where Pamela's obsessive planning came into play - We did all the rides we wanted to do, with no waiting at all. She got us hooked up with Tour Guide Mike, which is a "Disney Insider" website. She set up an itinerary that was based on going "contrary" to the typical flow of guests at the park, and strategic collection of "fast passes" which let you jump to the front of the line (but need to be planned out). For most of the day, we were like Salmon spawning, flying against the crowds. We started with a character breakfast at Tusker House, where our not-very-African bacon and waffles were complimented with visits from Donald, Daisy, Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy, all in safari gear. The kids were thrilled.

We passed out early after that day, but not before running into Rick and Kari, parents of Bailey and Ty, who were at the tail end of their weeklong trip. We retired to the pool for drinks while the kids swam (mostly with Rick) - Bella discovered the water slide at the end of the pool and went down it thirty times. She counted.

Sunday was a chillaxing by the pool day - the kids were tired, we were tired, and we spent many hours at the pool, Randy, JeMae, and Jenny came by after THEIR day at Animal Kingdom, and there was another swim-fest into the evening. We had dinner at the big buffet in the hotel, which has African-themed foods (which to my tastes means "sort of BBQ, but with a great red harissa sauce you can put on everything"). The food was great.

Monday was our day for Epcot, and it was a RAINY RAINY DAY. It started drizzling, but by the time we finished our first ride on "Soarin'" (the imax flying ride), the lightning was flashing and there was a half inch of standing water everywhere. We stuck to plan and got to do the indoor rides we wanted to do, but by 11:30, we were getting hungry - we ducked into the british pub in the "international" part of Epcot and had a leisurely pub lunch... while the rain thundered down. "A Beautiful British Summer's Day" as Papa said a few times. More than a few times.

Since we were in the international area (which has exhibits from Canada, Great Britain, Morocco, Germany, Italy, USA, China, Japan, France, and I'm sure I'm forgetting one), we decided to fill out a "passport" for Bella - where you go to each country, find the "kidcot" station and get a stamp and talk to a native speaker.

It was actually very fun, though by the end of it we were thoroughly soaked. Highlights included Japan, which had an amazing gift shop, and Great Britain, where we ran into Tigger AND Mary Poppins! Mary was very nice to Bella, and Isaac did some jumping with Tigger.

Soaked to the bone we made our way back to the hotel, and we're taking another day off Tuesday - we all need the break. I wound up carrying Isaac for most of yesterday and my shoulders and arms are all a-twitch from exhaustion. I'm sitting in the grand lobby using my phone's connection, since Disney has taken the admirably retro approach of not only NOT having any Wifi, but also charging $10/day for a cabled connection.

It is forcing me to think twice about checking emails... so I'm really only checking in once a day with work, and am offline a lot.

And I needed some serious offline time. I'm very happy to be relaxing.

NEXT UP: We're doing the Magic Kingdom on Wednesday, and we hope the weather agrees with us!

In case you're wondering

The golive went very well. The 36 hours of conversion pre-live were successful, and as of this writing, we've been up and fully live for over 18 hours, with no major incidents to speak of (knock wood). I leave on my vacation knowing I brought them right up to a good golive. Now it's just watching and fixing, which the team can definitely do.

And I'm going to Disneyworld!

Countdown!

1) Yesterday Isaac was dancing around the kitchen, with Spiderman in one hand and Electro in the other (small plastic dolls), singing "Chicka Wow Wow!.. That's what my baby say,.... Chicka Wow wow... That's what my baby say". I have no comment.

2) I'm terribly thrilled about a product for the iPad: The Fairlight CMI. Back in the 1980s, the Fairlight was between $30-60,000. It was big and white and had a video screen with green text and you used a LIGHT PEN to program it. Duran Duran had one, as did Thomas Dolby, and so many others. I have written about my Fairlight Lust many times in the past.

Well, the co-inventor of the Fairlight, Peter Vogel, went and made a version of it for the iphone and ipad. It has the same sounds, it works in a lot of the same ways, and you program it in the same way. It is in every way that matters, a full on Fairlight. And it runs in an iPad. What's even more fun is that when you load sounds or select programs, it plays the sounds of the clicky keyboard and clunky disk drive. It's a bit gimmicky, but perfect for me. So I've been playing with it a bit, loading up the breathy ahhh sound and playing "Ghost in You" by Psych Furs, and "Shout" by Tears for Fears.

3) We're going live this week... and I really do think we're ready. My team is at the hospital now preparing for chart conversions that start at midnight. To kill time before gotime, I've declared a Haiku competition.

4) I had a good work weekend for my Maryland stuff too - I heard back that they were very happy with the info I delivered. That made me happy. I do like doing good work.

5) Friday is when we take off for vacation and I am INCREDiBLY READY for this.

Sail the Skies

Another Dream, transcribed for your consideration and enjoyment:

Started in a communal loft space where me and my friends are all staying - we're wrapping up a visit to Tokyo, and preparing to head to the airport. I'm setting my facebook status, and linger for a moment on my Facebook picture: It's a small animation that I recognize as a student movie I had done in college - short movies of my friends eyeballs, shot in grainy black and white. As I'm reviewing the movie, I try to remember which eyeballs were for which friends. The last one before it loops is of a guy with pretty bugged out eyes, shifty, and I remember "I don't recall his name, but boy was he a jerk".

Facebook status updated, it's time to head to the airport. I'm running late so I commandeer one of those airport carts. For some reason, the airport has been done up using a fake beach theme, with big plastic palm trees, and huge dunes of sand, making "islands" on the blue concourse carpeting.

Naturally, I swerve the golf cart into one of the beaches and get stuck on the sand, so I jump out and hightail it for the gate.

The airline I'm using has a "nautical theme" - "Sail the Skies". The upshot of this is that instead of having a regular jetway to the airplane, the airplane is sitting out on a blue painted circle on the tarmac (the "sea"), and they ferry me out to the plane on a "boat launch" (which is basically a rowboat on the end of a forklift). I'm sitting on the prow of the boat, as I'm ferried out to the airplane, and clamber out into the open airplane door (without a stairway). The stewardess has a sailor outfit on.

I settle into my seat and look at my flight itinerary: Looks like this isn't a direct flight, but a one-stop. Hmmm... This flight goes direct to DALLAS Texas, at which point they're transferring me to a BUS to drive to Minneapolis. I have two options - either one of those tall shuttles they use for rental car transfers, or a long Ford Econoline van.

As I'm reviewing the options, I'm disappointed: It's 20 hours in a van, and EITHER option is not that big of a vehicle. "Oh man, that's a long time, and I don't want to have to talk to the driver that whole time"

And that's when I woke up.

That's odd

I'm back in Maryland - a 24 hour trip to meet with the project sponsors and give a status update. Given all of the things happening in JimmyVille these days, I was perhaps a bit ill-prepared for this meeting, so I pulled some late nights across the week, worked on the plane, drove the hour from Baltimore to Frederick, got in after midnight, and worked in the room until the wee hours, got up early to finish, and met with them at 10am.

Fortunately, I actually pulled it together, and we had a very good 4 hours of meetings.

I hopped back in the car for the hour drive back to the airport, got through security with PLENTY of time to spare, found a seat, and actually fell asleep in the chair for 45min. Flat out, snoring, drooling (i assume from the dry corners of my mouth). I woke up, found I still had all my stuff and celebrated with a Potbelly sandwich. I'll be actually BOARDING in another hour - it was better to get here early and beat the traffic.

Now I'm squatting behind an unused gate agent desk, since the Thurgood Marshall Airport has about 7 power outlets spread across 14 gates, and all of us power vampires are hovering around waiting for someone to finish charging... I'm here for another 5 min to top it all up, and then I'm giving up the spot to one of the three guys who are watching me type this.

Looking forward to the weekend, I am. LOOKING FORWARD.

Another Evening

1) Bella and I finished Harry Potter 4 - The Goblet of Fire. This is the "pivot" book where things start getting pretty dark in the series, and I was a little worried about whether Bella would track it all... but heck, she was right there with me, and I loved revisiting it. I must confess that the full three chapters before the last one were very full of "monologuing" - first Voldemort, then Moody/Crouch, then Dumbledore - everybody was giving these very story-heavy speeches that explained all the strange happenings in the book in detail. On one hand, I sort of resent the spoonfeed method, but on the other hand, Rowling was really trying to make sure everyone (kids kids kids) understood all of the things that were happening. And Bella got it.

2) Isaac and I had our Tuesday MAN DATE, since Pamela and Bella were at Synchro. We went to Edinborough Park again, and he was WORKING me hard - we had a game of tag around the gym that had us running top speed for 6 laps, before we both collapsed. After a while of this, I told Isaac to "go find some kids and just PLAY will you?" I turned to my iPhone for a minute and when I looked up I saw Isaac standing with ANOTHER DAD, playimng bounce-catch with a basketball.

Basically since his dad crapped out, he found another dad and just started playing. The other dad had his eye on his own kid (WHO WAS PLAYING WITH OTHER KIDS), and indulging Isaac pretty well, but I had to get up and get engaged again - don't want to look TOO much like a deadbeat.

3) Tonight Isaac said he was sad that there were no real superheroes "In This World". In This World is his way of saying the real world vs pretend, but what I love about the turn of phrase is that it really doesn't deprecate the other world: It's equivalent, just not this one. Scooby Doo lives, but not in this world.

Anyway, I asked if he wanted to be a superhero, and he said no, not really. He just wished there WERE real superheroes, and he'd want to have their costumes to dress up in. He doesn't like that he can dress as spiderman and batman, but that they're not in THIS world. He thinks it would be much better to dress as a "REAL" superhero.

4) Ok, I'm over my snit about the Washburn Reunion. The popular people and I are now reconciled, and I'm helping plan this with them. Actually the committee is three people, a popular girl, a burnout who got expelled, and me, the arty nerd. It's like some sort of unholy trinity, and it's actually an excellent metaphor for how the walls and the labels disappear as the years go on. I'm very happy about it now.

And that's it!

Not the Midas Touch

For some reason, as has been documented many times in this journal, I have something of a black thumb when it comes to technology. You’ve seen me writing about laptops with dead batteries and cracked hinges, about hard drive crashes and fried motherboards, about smashed screens on Kindles, about home phones that lose their battery charge in a matter of minutes.

There’s just something about me and my own personal electromagnetic field that is somehow perilous to tech. It’s not ALL bad: I have become VERY good at making sure everything is backed up. And it does keep me on an aggressive upgrade path as well. And it’s not EVERYTHING: I have pretty good cellphone mojo, and my home TV/DVD/Cable/Internet setup seems pretty solid (knock on wood).

But in this past week, I’ve had two more outages: My Macbook Air has been one of the more troubled units – first it was a dead battery. Then it was a broken screen hinge, then I had to have it tuned up because the screen hinge fix came loose, and now it’s in the shop for another dead battery AND the screen hinge has come loose yet again, AND it has a roaring fan. And they took it from me just before some business travel.

I sat and thought: How will I make it through a week or more without my laptop? I have no spare. The work laptop from my current client is locked down very tightly and I can’t use it for anything not on their network (I don’t even take it home anymore – there’s no point). I needed something.

So I’m typing this on a new Macbook Air – the smaller 11” one. I admit to having lust in my heart for this thing since I first saw it months ago. Looking back on my history, I’ve had several very small laptops, and I’ve always loved them – my little Sonys of the early 2000s come to mind. I love having a tiny computer. Pamela, on the other hand, does not love my little computers. She is not as in denial as I am about our age and the eyesight, and she wants big keys and big letters on that screen. We agree to disagree in this realm.

But I sort of resent that my hand was forced on it. The resentment isn’t too bad, because dang it this is an AMAZING laptop. And when the old one comes back from the shop, I’ll work out what to do with it – maybe Pamela will want it, maybe we’ll sell it.

FAR more galling is the fact that my THIRD Kindle has died: Kindle 1 was the small one, and it got a cracked screen. Kindle 2 was the larger DX, which died due to a design flaw – the hooks that hold the cover on can get bent if you open it wrong, prying the case of the kindle apart… which happened. So they sent me another Kindle and another case, and within a month, the case started cracking the side AGAIN, so I took it out and have been using it bareback.

And the other night I took it out of my briefcase (in a pocket without anything else in it), to find the screen completely fritzed out – it looks like a pressure crack, but might “just” be a bad motherboard. Whatever it is, it is dead.

I must now give Amazon some amazing credit here: I called to ask about it, and they said “well, you’re just out of warranty, and it doesn’t sound like you were abusing the unit, so I’m just going to send you another one.” That was at 6pm Friday. At 8:30am Saturday, there was a new Kindle on my porch. WOW.

So now I can get back to work on Infinite Jest. What a crazy book.

Working Stiff

We are at a few weeks from golive at the Minneapolis client, and that means one thing. We are at a few weeks from our trip to Disney! My team keeps forgetting that I’m there to take them right up to the edge, but not across the finish line, and it’s a little odd to keep reminding them… but on the other hand, it’s forcing me to be smart about allocating responsibilities across the team: If I was going to be here, there are any number of tasks that I would have been tempted to say “I’ll just take that”, when in fact it would make better sense to farm it out.

So I’m trying to look at this as a positive. I mean, for me it IS a positive – I’ll be spending days in the sun with my family having fun instead of sitting 12-14 hours a day in a hospital basement manning a command center. So yeah, positive. And I WILL be in that command center the day I get back… but by then, the sheer naked panic should have subsided and we should be in crisis management mode.

I was afraid that my holding to this schedule would somehow impact my standing with the client, but oh look in my inbox, they just asked me to stay on to the end of the year. So they must not be TOO disappointed with me.

With the big golive behind us, and with me having a safe home base for the next 7 months, it’ll allow me to spend more time on building out other parts of the business. Specifically, we are starting to grow the data analytics line, which is MINE. I have one analyst already, and am looking for a second. We have one gig underway, a second one being negotiated, and clients 3 and 4 are identified and ready to go this summer.

This is the sort of thing I was hoping to be able to do with this company – to have the time to organically build out a practice area, while not being on the hook for DOING all the work myself. My boss/mentor Dan says it’s building a “long tail” – anyone can do work, but to grow you need to be able to find it, start it, and hand it off to someone you trust. It’s tough for a control freak like myself to trust that someone else can do work as good as I can… so I’m definitely keeping a close eye on the deliverables, but so far so good.

Business is on my mind because I’m flying home now from a leadership meeting in Philly. We spent 2 days talking about our staff, our growth, our strategic plans… and I was just happy to HAVE one. At the last leadership meeting, I was stymied because I had been trapped in Cleveland with a full time job and not really able to focus on growing my own work. Now I do have a big project, but I’m not on the road, and I have flexibility to take time out in the day to make things happen. Plus, it’s WAY easier to take a day trip out to Maryland or Philly from a home base, instead of tryng to work out flights from Cleveland.

I still love my company – whenever we get together for a few days, I leave liking us just as much as I did when I walked in. We have strong personalities, but we’re all competent in our own ways. There’s a good base of respect across the organization, and while we do go down the rabbit hole on minutae sometimes, it’s always a fun journey. And we’re doing GREAT – we have had 35% growth over the past 3 years, and are on track for that this year – we’ll be over $12m this year if we just work the business we’ve already sold. We could hit $16m easily this year, and over $20m next year. It’s not a bad place to be.

We do need to be smart, however: There’s a lot of business out there, and we’re not getting it at the expense of anyone ELSE: So while the growth is great, it’s not only because we’re good – we need to recognize it’s a great market. It’s that sort of humility and drive to keep ourselves tied to our core values and integrity that further cements my love for the company.

That and the fantastic dinners we have when we get together…

And now something a little different:

One of my co-workers is Gregg, who brought me into the company. He is an abrasive east-coaster who has a penchant for strange turns of phrase. From this trip we had two gems:

“Let me throw something else into the wrinkle”. This is like one he had last year “we’re all going to have to put our hands in the fire here”. The classic mixed metaphor.

“I’m superstitious – I’m the kind of guy who carries around a lucky rabbit head in his pocket”. This one had us completely unable to work for about 20 minutes as we tried to stop laughing.

To the Rescue

As I was (am?) the senior class president of Washburn High 1986, I have a responsibility to organize the reunions. Well, I didn't do it for the 10, nor the 15, nor the 20, but I decided to really try to organize the 25. I got a facebook page together, I invited people, I organized meet-ups... and only one guy showed up to any of it. So imagine my surprise to get a facebook notification that "we're throwing the 25th" from a few people in the class, asking if I wanted to help out.

At this point, with everything else going on in my life, I'm EXTREMELY comfortable shuttering my own effort and backing the competing party. Same weekend, and let's face it, it's the popular gang organizing it... so it will succeed.

I did run my Senior President campaign on only one platform: Everyone could be in the Senior Movie, and I would do really fun Morning Announcements. And I did both - with a camcorder at a school assembly... and at least I think I did good announcements. I was probably a legend in my own mind on that. So it's no surprise that the "real" leaders of my class would be organizing this sort of thing... I was just a goofball who stole the crown. From my former best friend, actually. But that's another story.

Sigh - I really pity people who say High School was the best years of their life. Moving on:

Bella competed this weekend in Regionals for Synchro, and her team actually won the GOLD MEDAL!!! This is in spite of the fact that during their performance routine, one member decided to get creative and do her own routine separate. It's called SYNCHRONIZED swimming, people. Apparently our girls got enough on the technicals to pull ahead, so good for them! It's been a hard season so far with so much snow and missed practices. But they did it!

That had Bella up VERY late Friday and Saturday nights, and she took her time going down tonight too. She'll be a tired girl for school I imagine. All this Synchro had me and Isaac hanging out a lot. It was very fun.

Ok, it's a short update - my eyes are blearing, so it's off to bed.

Man Date

Isaac and I just got back from a boy's night on the town: We went up to the Chatterbox Pub up the street and had dinner and played "Tee Vee Games" (as Isaac calls it). Isaac has been talking about going there again for weeks, and loves playing Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo, and a game of Candyland too. Mostly Mario. He likes to play Mario, and asks me to play "Moe-WEE-gi" (Luigi). Of course my Mario chops were honed to a fine edge from my year at La Maison Francaise, where my Super Nintendo not only dropped several students' GPAs, but also gave the Native Speaker Jean Michel the idea to go back to France and start Guillemot, which became UbiSoft, which basically was a hugely successful video game company.

Anyway, Isaac and I had a great evening out. He had a hamburger, I had a jerk chicken pizza, and we spent almost 2 hours just having fun.

Other things:
Bella woke up in a TERRIBLE mood yesterday: Pamela and I had tidied up the house and had inadvertently destroyed a space station she had built (a blanket on the floor surrounded by dining room chairs). She saw this first thing and was in tears. She stormed off to the basement. After a few minutes I went down to check on her, and she wasn't talking, but I could see she was drawing something, and wanted me to leave her alone. This was good - we've been working on having her have creative outlets for her feelings.

5 minutes later, she came upstairs with a thundercloud, with raindrops, cut out of construction paper, held over her head with pipecleaners. I almost died, it was so adorable. She got a big hug, and everything was ok. We talked about other things she could have over her head (lightning for anger, sun for happy). But I was very proud of her for recognizing her mood, and doing something to lighten it. And did I mention it was completely adorable?

As Friday was kind of nice, we let Zinsser out the back door (full yard access, not just his poopoo palace). Pamela saw him chomping on something, and shortly thereafter he seemed to be choking - coughing up phlegm. Got us all worried, and by 10pm Friday night we were sufficiently worried to take him to the emergency vet. We got x-rays, and found that there was no pinecone his trachea... but still the coughing and gagging continued. Monday we took him to the daytime vet, and he has Kennel Cough. Turns out a cough sounds a lot like a puke for a dog. Poor Zinsser is now on Antibiotics, and he really needs to rest. He tries to play, and runs around for a minute, then falls down coughing. It breaks our hearts.

So we're giving Zinsser lots of cuddles.

Isaac is in the bath now, and I'm hoping it chills him out a little - he was excited to the point of speaking in tongues when he found out I was taking him to the Chatterbox. I even asked if he'd prefer to go to Edinborough Park, and he said "another day, tonight Chatterbox!!!". So with the 'Box out of the way and a lot of Mario played, I'm hoping he'll fall off to sleep nice and easy.

So what else?

I haven't posted so much recently - here's the short version: Work is hard and the project is some degree of doomed, but we're trying, and people are really doing a good job. There are no villains in this story, nobody being obstinate or stupid that I can rail against, just a lot to do and not QUITE enough time to do it without people working a lot harder than I would like them to have to.

There have been a lot of Jimmy Johns lunches (hey, they deliver), and I'm growing a little weary of it... but all told, it's a project, and I get to sleep in my bed every night, so that is worth a LOT to me right now.

I am kicking off another project next week - one that I'll be managing remotely with a "boots on the ground" resource I hired... It is going to require both a lot of trust and a lot of oversight to make sure this goes well, because if it DOES go well, it's my new business line, and I can sell it to a dozen more clients. I had mixed results outsourcing my work for a different project late last year in Allentown - the person did a good job, but didn't really LAND it in the end, so I wound up parachuting in and making it all better. Of course, at the same time I was leaving Cleveland and starting Mpls, so my attention wasn't as focused as it could have been. I learned, and will manage this next one better.

My car is in the shop again - this time for a simple "check engine" light and a burned out headlamp... and they've had it for 2 days and counting, without a call about when I might get it back. But I'm not complaining. Why? Because the loaner they gave me is a $90,000 2011 Jaguar XJ Supercharged. IT IS AWESOME. I'm driving the HECK out of it, and having a lot of fun. I got the phone all bluetoothed in, and the music is flowing... it's a lot of fun. It's a little odd to be driving something that is worth over 7 times the bluebook value of the car that's in the shop. And if they think they're going to tempt me into upgrading this way... well they're right. I am tempted. It would be a lie to say otherwise. BUT temptation can be resisted. Especially when you look at $90,000 as the potential cost of 2 years of a good college.

I make good money these days, but not THAT good, people.

Let's see... Pamela is a busy busy bee: Since Christmas, we've had two big "events" she's been planning - the ECFE Gala we went to 3 weeks ago, and the ECFE winter party she's planning for this weekend. As a result of both, there has been paperwork and party supplies strewn around the house pretty much nonstop for weeks. I am patiently waiting for this to be over.

The house is a mess, partly because of the party fuss, but also because we had a cascade failure of appliances: The Microwave which would take 5 min to boil water started billowing black smoke one day. The dishwasher (both drawers) decided to stop washing and coat the dishes with black oily substance, and the oven burned some scones while leaving the middles raw. Yes, this rogues gallery of appliances joins the Fridge in being officially "dead to me", And you know what happened to the fridge. IT GOT REPLACED.

(And yes, we have tried to fix the dishwasher - they've been fixed 4 times in the 7 years we've had them. It is time to try something else. The rest are all over 10 years old, and frankly we want a change).

The big truck is coming Friday to put in our new Bosch appliances - fine German appliances that will not disappoint us.

And what else? I'm taking my Japanese studies seriously now - I'm sort of turning a corner where I actually am reading those hiragana characters with some degree of fluency, and even a few Kanji. Still a work in progress. But if I can identify "mens room" and "Coffee Shop" with any degree of fluency, my next trip to Japan will be a good one.

That's enough for the night. Good night!

A valuable service

I have been ruminating on the perils of time travel. One of my favorite little stories is here. It's basically a wikipedia chat history outlining newbie time travelers continually trying to kill Hitler, and the weary veterans who go back and preserve the timeline. If it was a book, I would have bought copies for everyone I knew.

I've been toying with a time travel story myself, and one of the little nuggets I've come back to is a strange piece of advice I had got from an economics teacher back in junior high school. I don't remember much from his lessons, but once he did explain how compound interest works - how at a decent interest rate your money will double every 7 years at 10% interest. So his advice to us was (REALLY) if you ever got a time machine, you should go back about 70 years, drop a thousand in a bank, and come back to find you'd doubled ten times ($1000->$2000->$4000->$8000->$16000->$32000->$64000->$128000->$256000->$512000->ONE MILLION DOLLARS) To turn a grand into a cool million just sitting in a vault somewhere... wow.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't daydreamed that scenario quite a few times. Take a grand, step into the time machine, come back, and withdraw a Million. Of course to a 12 year old, the concept of $1000 is pretty high too. But now I'm a man, and as time has gone by, I've come up with several... issues... with this get rich quick scheme. (And hey, let's not rain on the dream: Time travel is the EASY part.)

Ten percent interest was pretty normal in the early 1980s. Nowadays, you try to find a bank that gives more than 3% on interest. At that rate, your 70 year investment of $1000 is only worth about $8000. Hardly enough to buy your unstable isotopes for the time journey. You need to go to the stock market for an over time performance of higher than 5%. And that takes some active management. Definitely not set-and-forget. There's talk about going back and buying 1000 shares of GE or Xerox at IPO and letting is grow and split... but you just know that some time in there, someone would be wondering "who the heck owns 12% of this company? Let's do a proxy, and do a shares exchange for new stock, and if those old missing shares don't turn up, they're worthless..." It's just too risky. I'll at least assume that you would do your homework and pick a bank that you know won't go out of business before you'd withdraw your money.

Plus, really, how do you get that first thousand? Go back to 1930 with a handful of 2010 minted $20 bills? Ha. So you need to buy 1929 issue bills, which in good condition go for about $100 per. So you're paying $5000 for that first $1000. Ok, but we're talking a Million, so maybe that's not so bad. Still, if the interest rate is down to 3%, You're paying $5000 for $8000. Not the best deal.

Gold is always an option, of course. The problem there is that an ounce of gold in 1930 is worth $20. Today an ounce of gold is worth over $1000. So your $1000 in gold to deposit in 1930 will cost you $50,000 in gold to bring back. Again, if you can get your 10%, no worries... but at 5% you're losing money, bro.

Now I know what you're thinking now: You'll just withdraw that $50,000 from the bank - the same bank that you went back and deposited that gold into those years ago. SORRY - that one is going to be a causality paradox... This is the equivalent of you going back in time to give yourself the plans to build a time machine in the first place: The money has to have come from someplace outside of the causal loop, just like you actually need to invent the time machine in the first place. And don't even THINK of funding your time machine development with the funds you've grown by using the time machine. Do not mess with causality. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that once you cross a causal line, the whole timeline you just set up winks out of existence, and you're right back at the moment before the time machine entered your life.

I guess my point in all of this is that even WITH a time machine, it's going to be pretty hard to follow my economics teacher's advice.

I think a potentially good business idea would be to open a time traveler's bank: We'd accept payment in commodities, things that have a somewhat constant value over time, but are perhaps less inflated than gold... or heck we'd take gold too, because who is to say they haven't figured out a way to make cheaply it in the future... though at that point you need to wonder what a time traveler would want with a compound interest bank account when gold can be made at will. In the interest of timeline preservation, we'd need to make sure that none of our deposits are alloys or isotopes that are impossible to create in our current timeframe, and no technology trades of course (unless they want to bring next year's iPad... I'd violate causality for one of those).

Anyway, we would provide a certain level of stewardship for the assets - we'd manage a conservative stock portfolio for a 7% return. We'd also be prepared to cash out based on a certain code word and document combination, with no troublesome need to pretend to be your own great great grandson.

Naturally, we would make targeted investments based on our client's requests, and we may just make some minor piggyback investments of our own (not big enough to create attention) so we could take advantage of the information we have...

The only problem is that if the time traveler does violate causality by dipping into those funds before the time they had left to come back and deposit them (and I could see that happening a lot with the human resistance, trying to stock up BEFORE the robots take over), then the whole time loop would collapse. For all I know I've already had dozens of clients, and each one tripped up causality and I've reset to 2011 each time.

It's possible.

And so....

My project got delayed, which was simultaneously a bit of a bummer and a bit of a relief. I can say without doubt that from the point I had entered the project 2 months ago, we had really turned that ship around and rebuilt confidence in my team. I did what I was brought in to do: Keep everyone from quitting, and get us somehow across the finish line. I got us there.

But there are other teams than mine, and not all of them were QUITE as ready to go. Notably the hospital billing team, who were having a hard time proving that they were 100% sure whether all of the charges were ready to go to the right buckets. They weren't helped at all by a database tool they had built to track their testing progress that seemed to actually EAT their results on a regular basis. Every single status report included some variant on "well, this isn't QUITE right because the database..." This tool was supposed to help them, but became their downfall.

I'm not sure exactly WHEN we will go live: Option 1 is a mere 3 week delay, which again is fine for MY team, but may not be enough to solve the other issues. Option 2 is to go live the day I take the family to Disneyworld. I already told them: If that's the date you pick, I will be happy to get you right up to golive, then swoop in during week two with a fresh set of eyes. There is no version of that story in which I cancel our trip to Disney, FYI.

So it's all very exciting. I was at a gala this weekend and ran into a physician who was grateful for the delay: He is transferring to another hospital and this delay means he doesn't need to touch this new system before he's safely at a new site.

It's just work...

Disguise

Driving tonight:

Isaac: Dad, I wish I had a disguise of you.

Me: A what?
Isaac: A disguise... OF YOU.

Me: So you could look like me?

Isaac: Yes. A full suit. For a four year old, like me.

Me: And what would you do, while you were disguised as me?

Isaac: (Long pause....) DANCE.

An odd day of work

Today I ran into one of my direct reports in the hall and was asking him some questions about his status... and he said "you know what's strange? I actually had a dream about you last night". Really? Not a bad one I hope!

"Well, you were trying to kill me". WHAT?

"I was in a hospital bed with my arm being prepped for surgery. You walked in with your green checked coat and a container of nitrous oxide. You were trying to force the gas down my throat, and it was because I hadn't finished my build for the project. I woke up and my arm was asleep which I suppose explains the arm surgery thing..."

I was speechless... then assured him that I had no plans to kill him, and that I was actually really happy with his team's progress.

Another Dream

I was called in to help investigate a prison break: It's England, and there was a special prison built for WW2 War Criminals. Being civilized, they decided to let them live out normal lives in isolation, so it's a walled village surrounded by another town. Inside the village there are houses and streets and shops. Very drab and gray, but a typical village.

The criminals are all old German men, and one has escaped. As I'm walking through the facility, I see that the way of keeping them contained was by having elaborite rules for everything. For instance, the roads are covered with white arrows, numbers, and line markers, and there are various signs around pertaining to each of the road markings. On one corner is a nine-sided stop sign with the number 7 in the middle.

Next to it is an engraved stone tablet outlining the meaning of the different stop sign codes. The 9 sided sign is a 'multi stop', and the number indicates what you're expected to do there. In this case, a 7 Stop means you are expected to slow and veer left.

It occurs to me that there aren't really any GATES in this prison, and someone could likely walk or drive right out, if it were allowed, but the rules and signs make it impossible for you to actually GET out by following the signs.

Clearly what has happened is that one of the prisoners has decided to break the rules.

And I woke up.

Tough Guy

Isaac is in a pretty defiant place right now, and he's been harumphing a lot, shoving, and talking back. I also think I saw him shake down a kid for lunch money, and I've noticed a few unaccounted for miles on my car and cigarette butts in the ashtray. Today at swim lessons, he was ignoring the teacher a few times and got time outs sitting on the edge of the pool. I told him this was NOT a good thing, and he said "I LIKE it on the side of the pool. I WANT to be there".

Later, when Pamela told him he needed better "listening ears" because he had got into trouble at the pool, he crossed his arms and demanded to know "WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT?"

That said, he's still pretty cute, and there is still nice stuff happening.

I have a new daughter, by the way: We have been working on relaxation exercises for bed and also a little Melatonin. It makes bedtime a lot less stressful, and it comes around to the next day with her being in a much better mood in general. She told us "Every morning I sit down next to Jenny on the bus and say 'today's going to be a good day', and you know what? Every day IS a good day!". The wonders of a good night of rest and a dad home in the house.

After last weekend's cousin invasion, we're still sort of recovering and we are feeling things SLOWLY come back under our control. There is still a big bin of unmatched socks which I am so scared of that I purchased two new packages of socks at Target today just so I could defer the pile.

Work is work. On Friday I ran out for some takeout asian food, and ran into my Dad at the shop, so I had them dump the food out of the carton and onto a plate and joined him for lunch. It was an impromptu moment and I was so happy to have been able to grab it. This would not have happened in Cleveland.

Being home has many perks, not least evening cuddles with Pamela watching shows (which I understand people DO these days - watch shows). We're almost caught up to realtime on Glee, which is a wildly inconsistent mess, but a lot of fun nonetheless. I'm not the biggest fan of Rachel, but would watch a show with Brittney any day. She's just such a delightfully loopy character... and man she can dance.

And that's the update.

The strangest thing of the year

In the past year, I have picked up a skill: Letting people go who work for me. I have had to fire people from projects in Cleveland and now my Minneapolis gig too. I've had people quit. And I've had to learn that it's not a failure on my part when someone is not right for the job and needs to go.

In Cleveland, I had to fire 3 people from the team who were simply not performing. It was very hard for me, given my desire to see the best in everyone. But when a person takes an emergency leave because his wife has taken ill, and then shows pictures in the office of the fishing vacation he took from that weekend, then there is a problem.

I knew coming into this gig in Minneapolis that there were problems. Within 3 weeks I had taken two leads and "helped them" demote themselves: This was good - they were FTEs who were promoted past their comfort levels and were going home crying every day from stress. I helped them find roles on the team that were more to their speed and brought in leaders.

On another team, I had a very bad contractor lead, and I had to can him straight out: I worked with him for 4 weeks, coaching him, but he never rose the the challenge, and when he left me holding the bag during a crisis, I decided "I'm doing his dang job already, I might as well stop paying for two of us to do it". So he's gone.

I had one consultant who couldn't take the pace of the project and requested to be removed, so she's out next week. Another saw her pull that off, and has asked the same of her company. One is good, one not so much, so it's hard, but it's not personal. These people were run hard and beaten down before I got in there. The fact I've only had 2 go so far is actually pretty good.

Then i had some new contractors start: Nice enough people, but after 2 weeks, we can tell they don't know what they need to know, so they're out too.

I'm like Eric the Red. And we're 45 days from golive. But I am still happy. And I have learned this skill. It's not one I knew I needed, but I'm happy to have it.

YOU'RE FIRED!

Happy New Year!

In this new year, I am looking forward to watching Bella and Isaac grow, with me home with them every night. I will read Harry Potter 4 to Bella, and probably number 5 too. I'm looking forward to being a good partner to Pamela, and having lots of evenings out together to re-kindle our friendship. I'm looking forward to a fun family vacation at Disney this spring, paid for in full in advance by the spoils of my days in Cleveland.

I'm looking forward to being a better friend to those who I haven't had a lot of time to see in my year(s) on the road. This includes seeing more movies with the neighborhood guys, having more whiskey tastings with the Avengers, more lunches with my former work buddies, and more dinners all around.

I'm looking forward to a successful rollout on my current project, and more work beyond that. I'm looking forward to new sales and revenue with my company, who I still love even though they sent me to Cleveland... because they also got me OUT of Cleveland.

I'm looking forward to getting back into language learning, and possibly visiting Japan later this year. I'm looking forward to using my new iMac in the production of music, and finally getting that album of retro-80's songs put together with Caesar and Paul.

I'm looking forward to buying an iPad2 when it comes out. It's just going to happen, ok?

Looking back, 2010 was not an easy year. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, and we need to do some back surgery this year. But I think we're going to come through this just fine. I'm looking forward to 2011. I really am.

(And of course, I'm looking forward to more blog updates too!)

Merry Merry!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yep - it was a year almost exactly.

From a blog posting on 11/23/09:

"I got the big gig: I'll be headed to Cleveland to help plan out a 5 year, $100m project, and if they like what we bring to the planning, we're in for the doing. The work is very strategic and high profile, and they're not expecting to see much of me - I'm budgeted for 5 visits from now through February... I have a coworker who will be my eyes and ears on the ground. And that means I'll be around a fair amount more in the next few months...."

Interesting how that turned out, eh?

A Happy Birthday

Monday was my birthday - turned 43, and where does the time go? I feel like 42 was sucked out of me and left on the shores on Lake Erie... but there were good things in the year. It'll just take me a little time to think of them.

So how did I celebrate my birthday?

I got up early, had some peanut butter toast and 3 shots of expresso... hit the road and pulled up to the new client. I worked a full day, had a lot of meetings, got connected to my new teams... Had a quick lunch at Uncle Franky's northeast burger and dog shop. I was out the door at 5:30, and stopped on the way home at the King and I thai restaurant.

The family was waiting, and we all enjoyed some Pad Thai, Cream Cheese rolls, Mock Duck eggrolls, and whatever #34 is (chicken in spicy roasted pepper and cashew sauce). It was great. I read the kids stories lay with them to get to sleep, and turned in early.

It was a perfect day for me. I was in town, I had family time, I was with the new client... I know there's a TON of work needed for this project, but it't not impossible, and just being here was great.

Here's looking for a fun 43!

And the NEW.

While I have spent a couple of days at the new client, today was really my "landing day" - I'll be fully committed to them from here on out. And it was a GOOD day - I achieved everything I set out to do, and honestly, while it feels like a huge project, I feel really good about being able to help them get across the finish line.

This is an Epic project, and a lot of them were onsite this week to help with building the system... So I got to meet some of them.

One asked, somewhat shyly, if I was "the guy who blogged about Epic?". I confessed I was, and she lit up - "I KNEW it! We heard a new guy was coming in from Cleveland, and we all thought it was probably you!". It was quite the brush with celebrity... ;->

I can already tell that the team is just dynamite. I'm going to enjoy this gig... REALLY!

And not just because it's 5 minutes from Uncle Franky's.

The Change

This was it - the week it all changed. It was my last week in Cleveland.

Looking back, it was a bit of a ride: I started in December, and it was supposed to be 3 months, 50% onsite. By January, it had accelerated to every week onsite, and by February, I was in an interim Director role. I was supposed to be done by March, then May, then September... And each time, there looked like some glimmer of hope that I could go, and each time there was some circumstance that kept me in place.

I've complained in the past - but I'm done with that. It was work, and yes, there was severe and deep dysfunction in the client, but looking back, I don't know if it was WORSE than any other. The issue was that the core WORK I was doing was stressful at a time when me and the family were ready for me to come home. And the work itself after the start became a lot of people management. A LOT.

Last Friday I spent an hour on the phone with two of my team members, listening to their sides of a dispute, and recommending "communication strategies" to keep them both on the team and not killing eachother. It was a big team - almost 40 reported directly to me, over 70 on the whole team. 30 were contractors I was responsible for managing, so I also did a lot of travel approvals, room and car rate negotiations, explanation of the per diem policy... and the obligatory "being nice to their salespeople" thing. Actually that was pretty easy, having been on the other side. More than one told me I was the best client to work with they'd had in years, because I knew their life. If this was a local gig, I probably could have stuck with it, but add to this it was travel... it was too much.

Anyway, we set this week as my last week: The client was in fact no closer than they ever had been to replacing me... we were getting ready for another Lucy Football Pull, and another round of "gosh, what will we do - just 3 more months". Well, Bella and Isaac and Pamela let me know they had enough. It was really time to recognize that there IS no good time... and they needed me more. I agreed.

Happily I didn't have to leave my consulting company to make this work: We swapped me out for another person in the firm... someone who will do a great job taking them to the next stage. She's also a lot tougher than I am, and will probably leave a different impression with the team.

On Monday I had a going away party. My bosses gave me tearful hugs. Actual tearful hugs, and hugs without the back patting. It was a little odd, but hey. And I had co-workers toasting me, getting drunker and drunker and standing and making declarations like "JIM YOU ARE A GOOD MAN. A GOOD SOUL, AND WE ARE HONORED TO HAVE WORKED FOR YOU". It was like an irish wake... with me still out of the pine box. Fortunately the pub was just a couple of blocks from my hotel, so I was able to celebrate AND walk home.

The week was a whirlwind of activity. In the middle of the week, I actually had a big presentation for my client in Allentown too, a preliminary findings review that had me up to 1am drawing data flow pictures. And I tried to hit all of my favorite restaurants: Breakfasts at LA Pete's, Dunkin, the Hotel Lobby, and Starbucks. Lunches at Aladdin's, the Winking Lizard, and Heidi's deli. Dinners at Romano's (a good fill in for Geraci's), Lola, and Hoggy's. I missed a final visit to Taza (lebanese), and Mike's Cozmic Subs... but it was a good round-up.

The flight home was on time and uneventful. I had a good conversation with a woman who is also consulting in Cleveland, and knows some of the people I'll be working with in Minneapolis. She gave me some good info.

As the flight came in, for the first time, we approached from the north EAST, and circled around to South West, and back in to the airport. So it was a long orbit around downtown, which stayed just in view out my window on the left side of the plane. A lingering sight to say "welcome home".

I got home in time to read another chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban to Bella (the chapter with the Knight Bus - we were laughing a lot at my attempt to do the cockney voice of the bus conductor). And it was good to be home.

Falling Apart

Since Thursday morning when the gig was finally and truly "got", Pamela and I have been threatening to have a "celebration" - let's open some champagne! Let's kick up our heels!

Hasn't really worked out that way yet: Thursday the kids were good and wound up and I didn't emerge from Bella's room until almost 10, and Pamela was already in bed. Friday, Pamela fell asleep on the couch while I was teaching Bella double-deck solitaire before 8pm. About 4 sips were taken from the bottle of bubbly we did open.

Today, the exhaustion perhaps was explained, as she was laid low mid-afternoon by a stomach flu.

Still, if we're going to be doing nothing, it's a great day to do it: Huge heavy snow fell across the area, and the trees and power lines were ill prepared. We lost a gorgeous tree across the street, and there were fallen branches everywhere, plus the odd live wire.

The Jaguar proved it's complete ineptness in snow yet again, and I went through my annual "I'm SELLING THIS THING and buying a 4x4" rant (I love the car 350 days of the year, but those other 15 I hate it a whole lot). But I did need to use the car, as Pamela took Bella to Synchro swimming in the AM, and I finally took Isaac to the doctor to see about his rampant mucus (like 10 days of runny nose and phlegmy cough). The doctor assured me it wasn't pneumonia - likely just some bacteria who are having a long party in his sinuses and need to get spanked with some antibiotics. So Isaac is on the meds, and conked out.

Bella and Jenny are having a sleepover tonight: Bella is right now sewing together a bear from felt that she designed and cut out, and is now stuffing and stitching. And sewing buttons on for eyes, which are huge, mismatched, and mental. She's wonderful.

I think it's about time for me to ship those girls up off to bed now...

Things to report...

Sorry for going quiet on the blog these past weeks - there have been things afoot that I have been afraid to announce prematurely or jinx, but I'm ready now.

Part One: I made the decision that I needed to get off the road no matter what, and started the process with Cleveland. I didn't have anything else lined up, but we set an end-date, which is next Friday, Nov 19. Of course Cleveland was shocked and unhappy, but I feel that my reason is really unassailable: Traveling has been too hard on my family (and on me), and it's not what I want to do. If I was leaving to go to another traveling gig, I think they would be right to be peeved. But I'm getting OFF the airplane thing.

So in that light, Cleveland has shown some good colors, and everyone has been wonderfully supportive. I'm still feeling a bit conflicted - like somehow I'm supposed to have been able to "tough this out", but it was just too hard. On everyone.

Part Two: Having made that decision, I finally decided to find a local gig: I did this back in May when I thought I was leaving the first time, and had several good gigs lined up, and had to back away from them. So until I really knew I was leaving, I didn't want to get anyone started.

Fortunately, it was only a few days into looking that I found something: A big health system in the Twin Cities is going Epic, and they FIRED a key project manager, and the team is somewhat dispirited, and there's an immoveable deadline. I would point you to the blog postings surrounding summer 2006 for a similar engagement in North Minneapolis, and how I was able to deliver on that.

So I did a phone screen 2 weeks ago, went in for an in-person interview on Monday, got the job and was asked to start Wednesday (I'm working from Mpls this week). On Tuesday they called and said there was one more person I needed to interview, so could I come in on Thursday instead? SURE. I interviewed Thursday, and got an email asking me to come in at 1pm for the rest of the day.

And so I am officially "on the job". And happily, it's a clinically-focused project, instead of Revenue Cycle, so I actually will have more fun with it. At the same time, I'm wrapping up Cleveland this next week (my final trip out!), so I have two jobs - always a good time... And I start my birthday week fresh with just the one job, and no airplanes needed.

Two other advantages to this gig: When I've needed to do little one-day trips to New Orleans or Allentown, it has always been tough arranging travel to Cleveland, then to these places (and always via Detroit), then back. My one-shots will be a lot easier from this Delta Hub. Plus the place I'm starting uses the ROWE (Results Oriented Work Environment) philosophy, which means "we don't care where you are as long as the work is getting done". So conference calls won't be a problem.

And I don't think that planning around a 1 night trip every 2-3 weeks to one of my little strategic gigs is inconsistent with "getting off the road" - the ROAD I'm trying to get off is the one where I'm away 3 nights and 4 days from my family every dang week.

With the decision made and the safe landing spot found, I must say that my stress level is just plummeting. And I'm having a lot more fun with the kids - I can step outside myself and see that for months, my Fri-Sat-Sun time with them was tinged with a sadness of trying to "fit this in" before heading away again. This week, the fun has been less "pressured" - like "we're just hanging out like we always do, and always will". It's a subtle difference, but it feels wonderful.

I'll make it through this week in Cleveland. Things are getting better. They ARE better.

Bella's Art Show

A spontaneous thing this week at School:

Bella and her classmates were all doing art, and Bella issued a challenge that they should all do pictures of monsters/aliens. So everyone did, except for some kids who wanted to do other things, so Bella said "ok, it's just anything you want to do, but it's a grand contest". Everyone nominated Bella to be the judge, so the kids all gave Bella their art work, and she brought it home for judging.

She was worried about ranking them first to last, but said not to worry, her piece would take last place because it wouldn't be fair otherwise. But then she got the idea that instead of ranking them, she'd find something that each picture was "best" of - most colorful, craziest eyes, most hearts, longest tongue, and she'd do the awards that way.

She spent a lot of time coming up with the awards, and brought her first batch of judged works back to school.

But instead of making a big deal out the contest, she just put the results into the kid's take home shelves, for them to find at the end of the day.

And of course, everyone is giving her more and more artwork for the contest, and Bella loves being asked her opinion.

There are a few things I love:
1) Bella organized this.
2) Bella decided to accentuate the positive and look for the good in everything
3) Bella didn't want to use this for any glory - she just popped them into the boxes. She doesn't even know what people's reactions are.

This whole thing just has made me so happy and proud of my girl.

My Dream Job

I had the following dream last night. Analysis is welcome, but not required.

I have been called by one of my partners (Dan C) in my company to meet him at a large house in New Hampshire for a consulting gig. Dan and I sit down with a man, who is very concerned: His daughter is at college and he's afraid she may get herself into trouble - she needs role model and cautionary tale wrapped into one.

So my assignment is to dress up as a teenage girl, enroll in this college, and befriend his daughter. But I will also be pregnant, so that I can be a warning to her about the dangers of fast living in college. It's a 3 month gig, and when can I start?

I look to Dan and say "really, me? I don't look very good as a girl" (which is something in real life Pamela has told me more than a few times). Dan raises his eyebrows and says "look at our company - who else do we have?"

And so I start to work out the logistics - if I'm living in a girl's dorm, how will I secretly shave? When will I put on my pregnancy pillow? How will I get up to speed on the music these kids like these days? Will this work?

Fortunately I woke up before this scheme got out of the planning stages.

Back to last week...

I'm sitting at the pool while Bella gets going with Synchronized Swimming, and am thinking about where I was just one week ago...

Where we left off was a great week, leading into the weekend:
We got up early and started the 13 block walk from Canal street to the funky arts area on Frenchman Street. We met the whole gang and set out on a guided tour of New Orleans neighborhoods on cruiser bikes (single speed, fat tires, comfy seats). We visited the artsy neighborhoods, the upper ninth ward, Treme,, and skirted through part of the French Quarter too: We talked about the history and culture of the area, learned some things about Katrina, architecture, and more... In 3 hours we only rode about 8 miles total, but we snaked through areas that were beautiful and rich in culture, but off of the beaten path. We all agreed this was maybe one of the best tours we'd ever been on.

If you're ever down there, these guys are worth every penny: The Confederacy of Cruisers

Pamela and I sort of forgot that the bike tour was taking place OUTSIDE, so we didn't properly apply sunscreen. We were good and red by the end. We all set out to find lunch, and were stymied time after time to find a table for our group of nine... So after 45 min of trying, we agreed to split up and catch as catch can.

Of course within 15 minutes, we were all at the same restaurant, sitting at two tops and the counter, mere feet from one another. It was pretty amusing.

In the evening, we piled into a cab (literally - it was 10 of us in one minivan cab, sitting on laps), and headed to the Garden District. After a little walkaround, we had dinner. An aperitif on the menu I couldn't pass up: BACON INFUSED BOURBON. It was actually pretty delicious, but you don't want to think too hard about how it was done.

To close the evening, we went back up to Frenchman St to the Spotted Cat (or the "Potted Cactus" as I malaproped) jazz club, where the brass band was veering between T-Bone Burnett style "brother where art thou" country jazz numbers and wild Klezmer songs, with the crowd breaking into impromptu hora dancing.

It was a raucous end of a fun week, and it was the "perfect" New Orleans music experience to end the night on (much better than the burlesque from the night before). We stayed FAR FAR away from Bourbon Street on our walk home, to keep the good feeling going.

Sunday we slept in and had a nice late breakfast at the Stanley restaurant off of Jackson Square, then met up with Papa who had driven for two straight days to attend a conference down there plus do some pro-bono gold leaf work for a church. We wandered through some royal street antique stores, and parted ways for us to head to the airport.

We got home, with Isaac asleep and Bella waiting up for us. I got to cuddle her to sleep, and it recharged my batteries.

At least until I got up at 4am to head back to the airport for my week in hell. But that's another update.

One of those amazing weeks

We had our company retreat in New Orleans this week, and it was incredible. Mon and Tues, I worked remote for Cleveland, and flew to NO in the afternoon... and we had our first great dinner together - the 9 principals of the company. The hotel was a funky french quarter place - not very luxurious, but functional. My room faced Decateur so I had a fair amount of traffic noise coming in the window, plus some late afternoon jazz wafting in ruining my naps.

Wednesday was an all day retreat for the Principals, where we went over all sorts of operational and strategic STUFF. In the evening, the rest of the company showed up (26 more consultants!), and we had a fine dinner at Mr B's - we had a private room that we filled with laughter and increasingly loud conversations. At the end, half of the crowd went out the door to the left (back to the hotel) and half went to the right... toward Bourbon Street.

Oh, Bourbon Street, you scalawag. It is drunk disneyland, and just depressing, but if you get a few into you, it becomes sort of fun. We finished the night at Pat O'Brien's dueling piano room, and a hurricane was purchased and no surprises a headache followed on Thursday AM. Not TOO bad, but boy, those sweet drinks are just a bad idea. BAD BAD BAD idea.

Thursday we started the formal "retreat" for all of the associates - going over the company goals and getting into some educational sessions. We had a great keynote speaker - the CIO of the Cayman Islands Health System. The guy is a visionary who has been in a lot of leading practice places (including building one of the first successful healthcare data warehouses), and he shared his time generously.

Thursday night was another dinner out at Maximo's Italian Grill on Decateur (1 block from our hotel). We were hanging out on the gallery overlooking the street, and had a nice long dinner... but I needed to duck out early, because I had a very important visitor... GOOGY!!!

Pamela flew in Thursday evening, and so I raced to the hotel to see her. It was nice to have her here.

Friday AM, we woke up early and schlepped our stuff down the street (ok, 10 blocks) to the JW Marriott, stopping briefly for some chicory coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde. The JW was accommodating, letting us check in at 8am (!!!) and upgrading our room... which I was paying for with points anyway - FREE ROOM! Then I was back to the meeting, while Pamela had a nap, then some spa appointments, then some antiquing.

The session on Friday was again wonderful: We had a panel of 3 CIOs for whom we do work come and talk about their challenges and how people like us are ideally helpful. It was one hour of structured Q&A, and then they hung out for another hour for chatting - and that was just amazing access for us to have. BTW - Not by plan, but they were Cerner and Siemens site CIOs, not Epic...

Friday night the consultants were on their own, and leadership went to dinner at Bayona... but and afterwards went to a formal hotel ballroom on Bourbon Street where some very average Jazz was being served up... we were sort of checking our watches, but the owner of our company seemed happy there, so we were willing to give a little time... and then things took an unexpected turn: The show turned into a burlesque - dancers on boxes throughout the room, with the band playing blues stomps while the ladies slowly did striptease... the end result was a g-string and pasties, so it was strictly PG13, but it was just funny, because the ladies were totally hamming it up and bringing a lot of character. It was a situation where we were all at first confused, then annoyed (we don't as a rule like going to strip clubs) and then amused.

Saturday was another day, but I need to post later - it's time for breakfast.

Walking in Philly

Last night, out with some buddies in Philly, I passed an "Edible Arrangements" store and was stopped dead in my tracks by the poster in the window:

NASCAR FRUIT ARRANGEMENTS

Now don't be scared to click that link: Edible Arrangements just does fruit - they're not some sort of erotic edible clothing company or anything. But do be scared of the link because somehow they are selling fruit arrangements with a NASCAR theme.

I don't have language to tell you about how strange that is. Also, I'm not really the biggest Nascar guy, but I'm pretty sure that when you're trying to feature cars with different drivers, they're not all the same black and white checkered car with a number sticker on the door: The whole thing with Nascar is the bright unique colors of the cars. I know this because I have watched the movie CARS 86 times.

Oh god, I just pulled the number 86 out of my head, and yes, it's the car number for "bad guy" car Chick Hicks from the movie. The movie CARS.

I am ready for bed now.

801!!!

Somehow my last post passed by without my realizing it was number 800. That's quite a bit of Blog, people.

I'm in Philly right now waiting to get on the plane home: I was out here revisiting with the team I did work for last year in the Cardiac Center: It turns out that they are looking for some help getting my recommendations from last year moving: There were some management changes, a few other projects were delayed, and the bottom line is that things are ALMOST exactly where they were when I left. But I think we can get them back on track.

I had 4 hours of meetings, and will be preparing some statements of work (with the plan being I manage and direct the work remotely with some controllable hands on site). But I just felt ENERGIZED and excited - talking about clinical projects again... and imaging technology, it fired off all my geek neurons and I've been giddy all day.

I'm also a little giddy because I can't wait to get home and cuddle the family AND watch On the Road with Austin and Santino, which is my "happy place" show. I really want to be Austin when I grow up. Also on the media, Fringe continues to not-disappoint - it just keeps being amazing. If you're not watching it, I got nothing to say to you. Just watch it.

So in sort of an anti-Jimmy thing: You'll recall that I got "caught" saying NICE things about a company, and mild embarrassment ensued, but it was all nice (though I haven't heard back on any possible "next steps"... Epic....). Anyway, I got an email from a friend who wanted to know what he should do: A contractor on HIS project has left a series of frankly immature comments on his Facebook page about the project and the client. It's not even "abstracted" the way I do with my posts.

I don't have any good advice, but I need to share the awesome quote from my friend: "(D)on't live your life out loud and then wonder what went wrong when somebody pays attention to it." Good words in this public age. From now on, I'm going to even substitute the CITY NAME in my updates.

Well, can't wait to head back to AKRON.

The I in Interim

Ok. A Cleveland Post. FINE.

My position is interim - a full time employee is the budgeted resource, but they've had trouble finding someone qualified. You need to want to live in Cleveland, and right now the skillset they want is VERY in demand across the country - a person who is not already living here with the right skills can really have their pick of cities to move to if they want to be an FTE. Or if they want to consult, it's even better.

So when you have a resource who actually lives in town, and has the right skills, AND wants to work for you, you move on them. And so it was that I was sitting in an interview this morning with this candidate, who is a bright, dynamic, and very very qualified person. My thought is, ask some questions, but definitely also SELL the position a bit.

I didn't get much of a chance to because the two other people in the interview (my boss, and a peer) dominated the discussion, even preventing the candidate from answering questions at times. And at two separate points, the two actually sidetracked into several minutes of arguments about technical details, while I watched in dismay. My attempts to redirect were brushed off, and I gave the candidate the old "raised eyebrows" meaning "I tried".

At least the candidate got a full show of what to expect from the environment. I left the interview both happy that a good candidate was found, and worried that she'd never come back again.

I am hopeful, however. Because there's so much I want to do in the world, and I really want them to find their permanent person - they need it so much!

Whirlwind

Somehow it's Tuesday and I'm back in Cleveland, comme d'habitude. It was such a busy weekend I can scarcely recall it all, but there was Circus School, the Children's Museum, a celebration of a friend's Doctorate (with a bit of good whisky), a neighborhood BBQ (with the kids running around late again), a few hours at a laundromat washing I believe everything we own, mowing, raking, and two celebrations for Bella's B-Day. Plus Bella got to go see the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

It was a crazy 48 hours. I fear more detail is beyond my scope right now... but I will offer some images:

1) Bella got a whoopee cushion for her Birthday and she basically thought it was the funniest thing she had ever encountered ever. She was making EVERYTHING fart, and I was game too - until she slipped it under me with the flap tucked under, and I POPPED it. It made her laugh even harder, but I was about to cry. We got her another one.

1a) The cushion I broke was the old school flat one, but we replaced it with a "self inflating" one. Now, I'm not sure these new fangled whoopee cushions are capable of the same level of juicy flatus and the old school, but we'll see. I think the quality of the toot can be offset by the rapid reset and ability to generate MORE toots per minute.

2) Bella got Yahtzee for her B-Day. We rocked a game, and it was awesome. I love that game.

3) She also got the BOOK for Bartholomew Cubbins, and I read it a couple of times. I'm still trying to work out if there's a good message in this book... yes, there's the basic "stuff happens" premise about how bad things can happen for no reason. There's also an endorsement of the unreasonable behavior of the king - he's never called out for being wrong about the hats, and in the end he is rewarded for his persistent unreasonableness with a beautiful treasure. And I guess the lesson for Bartholomew is if you just quietly submit to power, eventually there's a reward for you.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

4) In spite of it all, we did take some breaks. Some naps were taken, hugs were given and received. Love was all around.

Ready for home!

Bella turns EIGHT tomorrow, and I'm catching an early flight home to meet her at the bus and have Taco Night... and maybe just maybe start Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It has been a busy busy week: I was at the office for 12 hours - 7:30 to 7:30, and I was neither the first person there, nor the last to leave. People are just killing themselves on this project, and there's 9 months to go before our first golive. That said, I'm still hoping to be in a "reduced role" by Thanksgiving.

I also had a kickoff meeting for the work in Allentown today: A bit of a rough start to the call: I thought it was an executive steering committee and I'd field a few questions. It wound up being a clinical work team and they were right out the gate with tough questions, and my "high level presentation" was useless. This was SUPPOSED to be for coordination for the actual project start in 3 weeks. Sigh. Add to this, my project sponsor was on PTO today, so I had no backup in the room. By the end, it was all smiles, however. At least I think they were smiling - I was on the phone.

For lunch, I made Mother Earth cry: I got a peanut butter sandwich from the deli downstairs. The bread was wrapped in cellophane. The peanut butter and jelly were in small plastic containers. There was a plastic knife for spreading, and the whole thing was in a plastic clamshell container. Seriously, a ghost pelican swooped down on me.

Actually - if you remember my story about my pet Turkey Vulture outside my window... there a new visitor: A blue jay likes to drop by and peck on the window until I notice, then cock his head and fly away. He's done it for a few days now. I think he's trying to tell me something.

By 3pm, the PBJ was not holding the hunger back, and strangely, a coworker started sending a series of emails talking about wanting/needing a Whopper. After 30 minutes of these strange messages (including google maps of the closest BK), he burst in and declared he needed a Whopper RIGHT NOW and did I want him to bring me one? Swept up in the madness, I shouted YES YES YES I want a Whopper!!!

20 minutes later I halfheartedly choked down a Whopper. Damn, those are terrible sandwiches.

Final note for the night: Rick and Kari, parents of Bailey and Ty are empty nesting in the most wonderful way: They now have a new iMac and TWO iPads. They're emailing me from coffee shops and talking about App Store apps. The kids going to college has, in their words "turned their brains and wallets to mush". I think they should just keep on having fun. I just think "wow, that's me and Pamela in 14 years!"

And it's off to bed - early morning tomorrow - want to get a lot done at "the office" before heading home to see the family I love.

So much...

There are some weekends where I feel like I'm cramming a whole week of parenting into two days, and boy is that getting old. I love this time, and I love every second I'm spending with the family, but I leave on Monday AM just SPENT. So what did we do this weekend?

Friday night, Pamela and I got to go out and have a date for her Birthday. We had fish and chips at The Cooper, then passed a romantic hour meandering through Costco. It was actually sort of dreamy... lingering in the office supplies comparing bulk packages of sharpies, without wondering where Isaac had run off to. Grandma had the kids, and by the time we came home, there was a good leaf pile raked on the lawn, and the kids were red cheeked and happy. And pelting us with handfuls of leaves, giggling...

On Saturday AM, I went with Isaac to Circus Juventas classes: this is a full hour class for 16 kids between 3-4 years old. It's structured 15 minutes of warmup, then 3 "stations" rotating for 10-12 minutes each, then 5 minute cooldown. The stations vary by week: This week, it was a balance beam obstacle course, a tumbling trampoline, and the trapeze. Last week it was silk loops (swinging), the german wheel, and a somersault run. First week it was a balance ball, iron hoops (hanging, sitting inside), and basic juggling. Isaac is a very happy boy at these classes, and they do a great job with the kids, keeping a 1:4 student ratio at the stations.

Isaac's favorite thing so far? The silks, actually - he hung in a cocoon for a while and he loved it.

After school, we spent some time walking around the neighborhood, and then Bella and I sat down to to enjoy the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. We finished the book last week, and I promised we'd watch the movie... and we loved it. But where last time, Bella suggested we just watch the movies, this time, she acknowledged that without having read the book, that movie would have been WAY too scary for her. As it was, I got some good cuddles during the Basilisk scenes. Isaac was having NONE of it: He is a movie sissy and doesn't like many surprises in his media. He kept hollering from the top of the stairs "IS THE MOVIE STILL ON? WHEN WILL IT BE OVER???" Bella and I agreed to start Book 3 next week... and no we won't be watching "The Prisoner of Azkaban" until we're done with the book, which will probably be sometime in January.

After the movie, we had dinner at our new favorite - Pizza Luce in Hopkins. Then the whole neighborhood came together for a bonfire and desserts. The kids were running around with flashlights in the dark and whooping it up in the cool evening, and we all came home smelling of wood smoke. Of course our neighbor Ryan tried some new food experiments on us - we gladly overstuffed ourselves with his BBQ Empenadas. The whole evening was wonderful.

Today Pamela and Bella were off to church, and Isaac and I went to his swim lesson. After a short afternoon home, we were BACK to the Foss Swim School for his "friends and neighbors" birthday party. Two hours - one in the pool, one with the presents and the cake. Isaac was pretty tired actually, and I had to jump in the water to make him comfortable... but it was all fun. We finished the night at "The Nexus" - which is my name for a building that has both a Chipotle (for Bella) and a Smashburger (for the rest of us). Isaac was possessed by some maniac urge, and took my onion rings and plowed them into his mouth by the handful, with a wild look in his eye. It was a little disturbing.

After a bath, those kids were out FAST. It was a long weekend. And I'm just holding on... doing my best to blog.

Onto other things:
1) I love numbering my posts.
2) Angry Birds for the iPhone and iPad is a terrible terrible wonderful addictive thing. I have been playing with every free moment I get.
3) Fringe WAS that good. Dang it, that's a wonderful show.
4) I have an idea of how I might be able to work with those nice people at Epic, and will be sending a note along tomorrow. Watch this space.

And with that, I'm off to bed (maybe one more taste of that Caol Ila 12). Cleveland, I'll be seeing YOU in the AM as well.