35 posts tagged “sherry”
Our Canada Day morning was spent taking down a damaged tree in our front yard. The Tree Guy said that it was going to cost $600 to take it down (plus GST). We took it down for free (with the help of a guy who’s taken down a bunch of trees – my brother).
We wrapped that up by about lunch and then headed to his place to help him with a little gardening too.
But, after that, Sherry and I took a mini-tropical vacation in our own back yard. It was a nice sunny day yesterday and we made frozen Margaritas so thick that they piled up in the middle (they melted pretty quickly in the sun, but they started out really frozen). We then stripped down to our skimpiest swimware and took turns on the massage table – out in the sun.
It was fabulous. Until my Mom arrived. We were barely clothed on our back deck and she came waltzing in our private party and she didn’t leave. Talk about a wet blanket raining on our sunshine. Yikes.
So, the Festival stress has started. We don’t have enough hardware, the hardware is antiquated and flaky and won’t talk to the server anymore (it did on Monday). Aaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh. I don’t get paid nearly enough for that much stress.
To top it all off one of our bigger clients has an emergency rush job that needs to be done sometime today or tomorrow (and it’ll take about six to eight hours to do) and I don’t have nearly that kind of free time with the Festival being Friday afternoon. Ha.
I’m tired.
I’m thankful that we were able to save $600
I’m thankful that Mike was so good at cutting down trees
I’m thankful that Sherry and I were able to share a quiet margarita together
I know that God wants Sherry and me to be a happy couple
I hate it when I have two conflicting projects that are both really tight on time and due at the same time as well.
I have to finish up the install and documentation for my flagship product and get ready for Bayfest at the same time. Yuck.
Two more sleeps (well, really one and a half – we leave at 3am Saturday morning). I’m getting excited now! We’re working on a house sitter for the weekend. Do you know of anyone that wants to house sit a rather High Tech house for the weekend? We have a 12 foot screen in our basement hooked up to a Media Center PC with hundreds of movies on the hard drive. It has 5.1 Surround that will make your ears bleed (if that’s what you like). Anyone?
Sherry had a rough day yesterday. Her clients were so picky that they measured the plan and the install and it was off by one inch and they made them redo it.
When she finished installing it the yard matched the plan exactly and it looked like crap. The installer is supposed to have a little wiggle room to make the yard look right – the designer can’t spend enough time with the drawing to anticipate every little detail.
Anyway, she left it looking like crap because it matched the plan exactly. Stupid picky clients – they’ll never be allowed back.
Michelle is headed up to Sherry’s Mom’s place today for her long weekend. She should have a good time up there. She’s also promised to put some money down on her insurance bill. We’ll have to see how much before we decide if she gets to keep her car insurance for July.
I’m thankful that I did things the normal way and got a normal education and a normal job
I’m thankful that my normal education was at one of the top three schools in the country
I’m thankful that my normal job proved to me that I’m a World Class Programmer.
I know that God wants me to be World Class at what I do.
Apparently I’m getting a little excited about our trip to Vegas! We leave in the middle of the night this Friday. The limo gets us around 3am and the flight out is at 6am (or some such). I’m going to try indoor sky diving (apparently it’s a really tall hollow building, or a really strong fan – one or the other)
I’m still torn on what to do about gambling while we’re there. I have a rather addictive personality and haven’t gambled (other than church raffles) in 17 years. The last time was kinda nasty. I have a feeling that I’ll take the high ground on this one and not risk it.
The weekend was really nice (packed, but nice). Friday was actually an easy night – Sherry was exhausted so we did pizza and a movie at home.
Saturday was jammed. After our regular 6am meeting I trimmed the ivy that covers our house, fixed the satellite problem, revamped our Tivo, cleaned the house, folded laundry, fixed Mom’s digital frame and did some overdue banking. Then Sherry got home from work and the real fun started.
At least date night that night was a good time. We were pretty tired by the end of date night and fell into bed relatively early and pretty tired. There was a storm that night that woke us around 4am – grrr.
Sunday was church and then 6 people over for a Father’s Day lunch. That was nice and went until about 3:00. Then we did some yard work, cleaned out the laundry room and some other random chores around the house. We tried to get to bed early again last night and doesn’t the neighbor set off his car alarm at 4:05am (exactly)! Arrrgghh. If you can’t run the car alarm properly – especially at 4am – then don’t use it.
So, I’m pretty tired today and I’ve been tasked with a nasty project to get our product ready to ship. Trying to position the playback point in a variable bitrate wma file. Yuck.
I’m thankful that I really enjoy the challenges of my job.
I’m thankful that I’m not responsible for Bayfest this year – I’m just a teacher.
I’m thankful that we have a nice break scheduled just before the Bayfest insanity starts.
I know that God wants me to be insanely good at what I’m called to do.
Wow, I think that was as close as I’ve ever been to being ‘depressed’. It was like I was thinking in a cloud – you know how you get when you’re sick and you can’t concentrate on anything (like your thoughts are moving through molasses?) that was the same sort of feeling, but with Fog instead of Molasses.
Weird.
But, I think I’m back. I’ve decided to let the Bayfest thing go – I’m going to turn the code over to EBTech and just trust that they’ll figure something out that’s fair. I’ll spend this festival teaching the tech guys at work to use the system and then I won’t have to do anything else with it.
The only lingering question is why anyone else would want to go through the stress that I went through for the last five years without any payment (other than a dinner that even the ticket rippers get)? I guess that’s not my problem.
This weekend is Father’s Day – it looks like we’ll be hosting that event too. We’re hoping to have steak and baked potatoes for lunch – that should be a good time. I have to be at church this weekend and I have breakfast with Rick. Looks like it’ll be a busy day…
We’re announcing Deep Coffee at church this weekend. I have to decide how I want to introduce it and how the signup will work. Perhaps I should take care of that tonight… hmmmm… Of course I have that Office 2007 class that I’m teaching tonight – that doesn’t leave a lot of extra time… hmmmm…
Sherry is planning on starting in on the interlock patio tonight. She’ll bring home some gravel to level the surface and then we’ll be almost ready to start the install. She has a little bit of work to do on Saturday at work and then we need to get ready for Father’s Day. She’s also planning on doing a little work for a former client (and he’s offered enough to get us most of the way to Mexico –with a little money from my Vinyl to CD business we should be able to get away for a week this fall – yaaaa!)
I’m thankful that the Fog has lifted.
I’m thankful that the Fog is such a foreign experience – I know guys who live their lives like that (yikes).
I’m thankful that I enjoy teaching – it makes it a lot easier
I know that God is my Heavenly Father – and that makes me a Prince in His kingdom.
This is becoming a recurring theme – I had a great weekend, but not quite enough sleep!
Friday was supposed to be a trip to the movie theatre to watch Iron Man, but a friend of ours got sick and she and her husband had tickets to a fancy-smancy dinner that they couldn’t use anymore. The table was with another friend of ours and the dinner sounded amazing, so I said I’d take the tickets.
Turns out that was a really stupid idea. Sherry yelled at me for trading our movie plans for a free $100/plate dinner. Ooops. I’ll never do that again.
The dinner was incredible. They served the best tasting escargot that I’ve ever tasted and the salmon that I had was amazing. Sherry’s prime rib was even better than my salmon. The conversation was fun and the evening was really pleasant. But I’ll never do that again – getting yelled at was pretty traumatic.
Saturday was errands and getting ready for the Poker Party that we were hosting that night. We also started putting the skirt on our deck. Poker was a lot of fun, but a little late. We all lost $10, except Eric who won $50 – which is actually not a surprise – he was there to teach us how to play Texas Holdem.
Sunday was church and we finished the skirt – it looks amazing for two amateurs. We went over to my Mom and Dad’s place to return his table saw and to have tea. Then we called it a night (and made the mistake of watching the second episode of Lost – which made it another late night in a string of late nights…)
I’m thankful that the skirt is done – all that’s left now is the plexiglass – once it’s all done I’ll post pictures
I’m thankful that dinner was so good or I’d be in a lot more trouble than I am
I’m thankful that my friends thought of us to give the tickets to.
I know that God wants us to enjoy food.
This has been a bit of a weird week for me. I guess the trip to TO made it feel like Wednesday was Saturday and now it feels like Tuesday, but tonight is date night (not tomorrow because I’m going in to work to play). Weird week.
I have a list of stuff that needs to get done in the next little while and I’ve already started to think about the Bayfest mess that ensues this time every year.
I actually wrote a letter to the organizers laying out my personal concerns regarding my payment. I feel that I put in a lot more than I get out and I’m tired of doing that. It was fine when the festival was struggling to get started, but now they’re booking million dollar bands (Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Rascal Flats, etc) – I think they can afford to pay me a little now, right?
The weird thing about this is that my brother is tightly involved with the organizers and he’s the one that takes care of the part of the crew that I work for, so really I have to get him to ask for something for me. Weird.
Sherry is installing a 4000 pound rock today in someone’s yard. She’s afraid they’re going to have to make a mess of the flowerbed to get that huge stone into the right place. Let’s hope that all works out – and it’s going to be a blisteringly hot day today. Bummer.
Vegas prep continues. We’re working out who’s paying for what now.
I haven’t seen Rick in a bit – I wonder if we’ll get together Sunday for breakfast – that would be nice. I have a couple of pens for him – he used to use these Zebra fine black pens until they stopped carrying them here at the local stores. I found a place in the States that still stocks them, so he asked me to buy their entire stock.
I’m really enjoying Woot.com. They have a special every day and some of them are pretty good. They have a deal with paypal so that you can make a standing PO with paypal and then to Woot you just log in and press “I want one” – check your mailing info and press done, and you’re done. (Woot is not allowed to just have the one button since Amazon successfully patented that while the patent office had no idea what they were going to do with the Web. Weird)
I’m thankful that my life isn’t always this weird
I’m thankful that we’re in good shape for Bayfest this year
I’m thankful that Sherry and I date weekly
I know that God wants to reward me for all the work that I put in at Bayfest.
Oh my. It’s been a tiring 10 days. Starting with the weekend before inventory, and going through inventory and then getting ready for this stupid meeting in Toronto and we had two more late nights this past weekend and I won’t get much sleep tonight because the presentation is 8:30 am and we’re about 3.5 hours away. Dang.
I need to get a little sleep. I’ll have to make sure that I keep the social calendar down to a bare minimum for a little while so that I can recover.
Michelle called me yesterday. She said she had a favour to ask – she had run out of gas a couple of blocks from my place and she was hoping I could bring a gas can over. As it turns out we always keep 20L of gas on hand in case the power fails for a couple of days (I’d hate to lose the meat in our freezer!). (Ok, do you guys remember the power failure that wiped out the Eastern Seaboard a couple of years ago – the one they blamed on Ontario but was really in Michigan somewhere? That’s the kind of thing I want to be able to ride out).
Anyway, I dropped off the gas and she said that she only had a couple of bucks left until Friday (payday) and that she’d get me the money for the gas then.
If your tank is that empty shouldn’t you just park the car until payday? Anyway, I’m really hoping that she learns the value of money and how hard it is to earn (and easy to spend!) while she’s playing house.
Sherry lost her best worker yesterday. One of the other guys threw his back out and so Sherry’s guy had to go and cover his work. She’s afraid that they’re going to expect her to use the machines that she can’t handle safely. Bummer. Let’s hope today goes well for her.
I’m really excited about what’s going on at our church recently. I’ve been working on building a sense of community and I’m getting some pretty good feedback. We’re going to run a program called “Deep Coffee” there shortly and we’ll see what kind of a turn out we get for that. Let’s hope it works well!
Bayfest is closing in. I’m hoping to do some video work for the organizers. I’m meeting with one of the key people today to see if they liked my proposal. Oh, let’s hope!
Vegas is closing in too. I’m a little too tired to be overly excited about that yet, but it’s on the horizon… I need to get a little sun tanning in…
I’m thankful that I normally get 8.5 hours of sleep every night.
I’m thankful that I enjoy my social calendar
I’m thankful for a chance to show off my program in Toronto tomorrow.
I know that God has given me authority and He wants me to use it wisely.
My daily trips on th
e treadmill are going really well recently. I have my three mile run down to 23:45 or so and I’m pleased with my progress towards slimness. Running to movies is fun too – I just finished “Into the Wild” and it was a decent show to run to.
I invited Michelle over for supper last night - she was working, but she really appreciated the invite. She took home the leftovers this morning when she drove Sherry to work. At least she’s still connected.
My programming has been going nicely too. I’m in the thinking phase for a new project right now – it’s tough to come up with how the screens are supposed to look. I’m also toying with replacing the Data Access Layer that I developed two years ago and replace with a LINQ DAL that’s built into the new compiler.
My internet connection is slowing me down now (and it always does when I’m trying to learn something new). Turns out that Microsoft’s new way of teaching is YouTube style videos. I can’t watch videos on my connection. I can watch one minute of video for every four minutes of download. So the 58 min video yesterday took me about six hours to watch (and it turned out to be the wrong video – the title was very poorly chosen).
Bummer.
Today is supposed to be a rain day for Sherry – it’s pouring out but she’s still at work. She had better not be working outside in this. I’ll make her quit if she gets sick over this.
Not much else to say.
I’m thankful that my job is indoors.
I’m thankful that my job is mentally challenging
I’m thankful that my job is not physically challenging
I know that God wants me to be completely healthy.
It seems that everything is moving according to the new plan. Michelle is in negotiation with her school about how to get to college, Sherry is settling in to her new routine and I’m working on the goals that I set earlier in the year.
We had a guest speaker in this weekend at our church. He’s the head of the Canadian organization and had a lot of really cool insights into the thinking of the Post Modern kids.
He said that their philosophy is all about the journey. They really don’t care about the destination as long as the journey was meaningful. They don’t have answers and can’t articulate why they make the decisions that they do. Their life is filled with mystery.
The old ways are no longer relevant and they reject the institutions and power brokers that Modern thinkers take for granted. Society is far more important than logic.
That actually makes me feel a lot better about where Michelle is right now. Everything that she’s doing is the new ‘normal’ for her era.
An ‘age’ usually lasts about 400 years (it’s been shortening with the globalization of the world, but you can still expect 200 years). That means that there are only a couple of generations that have to deal with both paradigms at the same time.
We need to find and embrace those thinkers who can freely move in both worlds. Bilinguals if you will. I need to find one of these people so that they can explain where Michelle is going to want to head next.
Just one funny story from Michelle’s new adventure: She works 30 hours a week at a minimum plus 1 job and is making ‘pretty good money’ in her view. Until she went to the grocery store. She spent $175 in one trip and used up about half of her paycheck all at once. She still needs to come up with rent, insurance, gas and cigarettes (oh, and phone and electricity and entertainment) with only half of her paycheck. Uh oh.
At least work is going really well for her. She’s in a call centre making appointments for people who have purchased technical support from Best Buy. That means that they are waiting for her call and are excited about getting the geeks into their houses to fix their electronics. She has to maintain at least 12 calls per hour to keep her job and if she can maintain about 24 cph then she gets a bonus at the end of the month. Cool. That $300 would go a long way to fixing her money troubles for June.
Sherry was rained out yesterday and spent her free time getting caught up on some projects around the house.
I got a thank you card from one of the boys that came over to our house for the Guys Games Day In on Saturday. (I invited three dads and their sons to come over and play games in my arcade. I’m running a very slight risk of being like Michael Jackson if I’m not careful…) Anway, two dads and four sons made it out and we played Wii and fooseball all afternoon –from 11:00 to 4:00. It was a Great time. I would say 9.5 out of 10 for overall enjoyment.
I’ll definitely have to throw one of those again! My basement is now legendary in the minds of three families. How cool is that?
I’m thankful that I can build relationships using the stuff that I already own
I’m thankful that I can enjoy my games for an entire afternoon and not feel guilty
I’m thankful that Michelle is making a go of it on her own
I know that God wants me to love those around me and has given me everything I need to do it.
Yes, the love of my life is one more year older today. On this day only a few short years ago a little piece of heaven was birthed into this world and they named her ‘Sherry’.
Sherry blesses me daily with her affection and intuition. She loves to serve (and actually serves to love – ask me about that later). She’s kind, forgiving, thoughtful, considerate and all mine.
Sherry completes me, where I lack she excels – she has never hesitated to back me up and she always makes me look good.
She has an incredible insight into the relational dynamics of almost every situation and will suggest things for me to say and do to make me look good. And she does this often and without prompting.
She’s an incredible landscaper, very hard working, has a remarkable spatial sense and is talented with colour and texture. Our house always looks amazing and our yard is the envy of our neighbors (well, not right now since it’s under some pretty heavy construction, but usually).
She is my angel, my lover, my best friend.
Sherry, I love you.
