Birthday Thoughts
I know I haven't been posting much of late, but a lot has been happening and I've been a little distracted...
The Company gave us Friday the 1st and Monday the 4th off as paid holiday, so I had a four day weekend! The first two days were great...I took the family out for breakfast, we went shopping, etc. Sunday and Monday weren't so great. We didn't get much sleep. Two doors down (past the usually more annoying neighbors that I've complained about) lives a couple with a son who recently returned from 18 months in Iraq. Well, the parents went away, so the young man decided to invite dozens of his military buddies, high school reject friends, and loud annoying young women to get drunk all hours of the night. These nitwits proceeded to set off fireworks on both nights, and as they would get more and more drunk, they would start setting them off in the middle of road (traffic be damned!) and in front of other peoples' houses.
Now, I didn't even blink when the guy had his "coming home" party. The drinking and carousing wasn't a big deal, either; I give the guy his due slack. But the fireworks were basically "community terrorism". These idiots were terroizing the small children and families on the block, and in some cases, the fireworks exploded on peoples' porches and in their yards. The cops were called on them several times, and I personally went over and got in one moron's face to get the message across, to no avail.
Message to recent veterans of the Iraq/Afghan theatres: Don't fight against terrorism and then bomb your own frellin' town to show how patriotic you are!
****
OK, so, on top of that, our Ford Freestar has been having issues, despite being less than 18 months old. One of the automatic sliding doors doesn't stay closed, which is bad for safety with the kids. Nor does the DVD player that works less than 50% of the time, despite 4-5 repairs in the past year, provide much value. We dropped the car off on Thursday, and when we picked it up...the door still wouldn't close. All day Friday, we waited to pick it up, and it wasn't ready until 5PM. Sure enough, on Saturday, the damn door wouldn't close again. By Tuesday, the replacement DVD player wasn't available like they said it would be. Best part? The several calls from Ford Service asking about our opinion of their 5-star quality response. I let my wife handle that one...I'll take care of driving the POS Freestar into the showroom through the plate glass window...
****
But, there's better (or less stressful) news. My promotion was effective 01 Jul, so now I'm officially getting paid more. I celebrated by going to work Tuesday while my wife dropped the kids off with my parents and sister (they are there until Saturday), and I did very little while I was there. It wasn't slacking off...nearly the entire Company is on vacation this week, so there's not much to be accomplished!As it happens, my wife had to go to a workshop for her school this week in Colorado Springs. So she's there until Friday evening (or later, given the weather here and the whole London thing). Hence the kids being away! So she left very early yesterday morning, and I've been home alone since. Yep, we were apart for my birthday, her birthday, and our 9th anniversary. Figures!
That's OK, though, because I decided that I would take a half day yesterday, and then take the rest of the week off. That's right. I've been hanging out without the family for a few days! I ordered pizza, went shopping at Borders, Best Buy, and Home Depot (Happy Birthday to me!), and I've watched many DVDs and played lots of video games ("Buffy" and "Ratchet & Clank", for those who want to know). Thanks to the new roof, we're not going away for vacation this year, so this is my chance to "get away from it all"! And I even took the time to shop properly for my wife's birthday and the anniversary. (And no, I didn't call for any "escorts" to engage in stimulating conversation while the family is gone and the house is so quiet...)
Tomorrow, provided the flight isn't delayed too much, Cris wants to go see "War of the Worlds", and then we're going to go pick up the kids on Saturday. Hopefully, we won't have much else to do, and I can ride out the weekend with relative ease. That will be...oh, 1.5 days of work in a 10 day span...not bad! And thanks to the promotion, I still have 7 days of vacation left and 2 personal days. Plenty of chances to take mental health days!
I want to thank everyone who sent their birthday wishes through BtS and LJ. I'm impressed that some people remembered that it's also our anniversary!
****
So...I'm hoping that I get better with the reviews and writing this summer. I've been otherwise distracted with the goings on at work and home, but things ought to level out soon. To be honest, I haven't been inspired to write much, so it's slow going. I've wanted to finish a couple other things first, like updating my website a bit more and catching up on some other projects here at home. I will get to it again, I'm sure, but it's still very much a work in progress, coming in fits and starts. Honestly, if it wasn't so close to being done and constantly running around in the back of my head, I'd have given up on it by now. But I want closure on this 5 year project already!
Speaking of the website updates...
I've been considering something interesting for a long while. I don't want to say anything yet, but if I decide to go forward with it, it will be very apparent within the next 10 days. The thought has come out of a few comments from naysayers who point out that a lot of my efforts have been rooted in finished series. What, if anything, am I doing to move into the future? That, and I've been thinking about how I approach the reviews as a whole. The process and scope have to evolve if I want to keep myself and others interested, and that doesn't necessarily mean being more in-depth.
We'll see where that line of thought takes me. I have to be practical, after all. Three series of in-depth commentary ("24", "Alias", and "Lost") is enough for now. In the future, I may not have time for adding more in-depth reviews for new series of interest. So do I stop when those shows are done? What if, as I suspect, I begin having less time for the reviews as a whole? Do I fade away gracefully, or do I consider that my reviews have never been more popular or widely read? All of this is bringing me towards a decision that could initially be time-consuming, but could also make things a little easier in the long run.
****
Enough for now...I hear Playstation and an episode of "The Inside" calling my name!
The Company gave us Friday the 1st and Monday the 4th off as paid holiday, so I had a four day weekend! The first two days were great...I took the family out for breakfast, we went shopping, etc. Sunday and Monday weren't so great. We didn't get much sleep. Two doors down (past the usually more annoying neighbors that I've complained about) lives a couple with a son who recently returned from 18 months in Iraq. Well, the parents went away, so the young man decided to invite dozens of his military buddies, high school reject friends, and loud annoying young women to get drunk all hours of the night. These nitwits proceeded to set off fireworks on both nights, and as they would get more and more drunk, they would start setting them off in the middle of road (traffic be damned!) and in front of other peoples' houses.
Now, I didn't even blink when the guy had his "coming home" party. The drinking and carousing wasn't a big deal, either; I give the guy his due slack. But the fireworks were basically "community terrorism". These idiots were terroizing the small children and families on the block, and in some cases, the fireworks exploded on peoples' porches and in their yards. The cops were called on them several times, and I personally went over and got in one moron's face to get the message across, to no avail.
Message to recent veterans of the Iraq/Afghan theatres: Don't fight against terrorism and then bomb your own frellin' town to show how patriotic you are!
****
OK, so, on top of that, our Ford Freestar has been having issues, despite being less than 18 months old. One of the automatic sliding doors doesn't stay closed, which is bad for safety with the kids. Nor does the DVD player that works less than 50% of the time, despite 4-5 repairs in the past year, provide much value. We dropped the car off on Thursday, and when we picked it up...the door still wouldn't close. All day Friday, we waited to pick it up, and it wasn't ready until 5PM. Sure enough, on Saturday, the damn door wouldn't close again. By Tuesday, the replacement DVD player wasn't available like they said it would be. Best part? The several calls from Ford Service asking about our opinion of their 5-star quality response. I let my wife handle that one...I'll take care of driving the POS Freestar into the showroom through the plate glass window...
****
But, there's better (or less stressful) news. My promotion was effective 01 Jul, so now I'm officially getting paid more. I celebrated by going to work Tuesday while my wife dropped the kids off with my parents and sister (they are there until Saturday), and I did very little while I was there. It wasn't slacking off...nearly the entire Company is on vacation this week, so there's not much to be accomplished!As it happens, my wife had to go to a workshop for her school this week in Colorado Springs. So she's there until Friday evening (or later, given the weather here and the whole London thing). Hence the kids being away! So she left very early yesterday morning, and I've been home alone since. Yep, we were apart for my birthday, her birthday, and our 9th anniversary. Figures!
That's OK, though, because I decided that I would take a half day yesterday, and then take the rest of the week off. That's right. I've been hanging out without the family for a few days! I ordered pizza, went shopping at Borders, Best Buy, and Home Depot (Happy Birthday to me!), and I've watched many DVDs and played lots of video games ("Buffy" and "Ratchet & Clank", for those who want to know). Thanks to the new roof, we're not going away for vacation this year, so this is my chance to "get away from it all"! And I even took the time to shop properly for my wife's birthday and the anniversary. (And no, I didn't call for any "escorts" to engage in stimulating conversation while the family is gone and the house is so quiet...)
Tomorrow, provided the flight isn't delayed too much, Cris wants to go see "War of the Worlds", and then we're going to go pick up the kids on Saturday. Hopefully, we won't have much else to do, and I can ride out the weekend with relative ease. That will be...oh, 1.5 days of work in a 10 day span...not bad! And thanks to the promotion, I still have 7 days of vacation left and 2 personal days. Plenty of chances to take mental health days!
I want to thank everyone who sent their birthday wishes through BtS and LJ. I'm impressed that some people remembered that it's also our anniversary!
****
So...I'm hoping that I get better with the reviews and writing this summer. I've been otherwise distracted with the goings on at work and home, but things ought to level out soon. To be honest, I haven't been inspired to write much, so it's slow going. I've wanted to finish a couple other things first, like updating my website a bit more and catching up on some other projects here at home. I will get to it again, I'm sure, but it's still very much a work in progress, coming in fits and starts. Honestly, if it wasn't so close to being done and constantly running around in the back of my head, I'd have given up on it by now. But I want closure on this 5 year project already!
Speaking of the website updates...
I've been considering something interesting for a long while. I don't want to say anything yet, but if I decide to go forward with it, it will be very apparent within the next 10 days. The thought has come out of a few comments from naysayers who point out that a lot of my efforts have been rooted in finished series. What, if anything, am I doing to move into the future? That, and I've been thinking about how I approach the reviews as a whole. The process and scope have to evolve if I want to keep myself and others interested, and that doesn't necessarily mean being more in-depth.
We'll see where that line of thought takes me. I have to be practical, after all. Three series of in-depth commentary ("24", "Alias", and "Lost") is enough for now. In the future, I may not have time for adding more in-depth reviews for new series of interest. So do I stop when those shows are done? What if, as I suspect, I begin having less time for the reviews as a whole? Do I fade away gracefully, or do I consider that my reviews have never been more popular or widely read? All of this is bringing me towards a decision that could initially be time-consuming, but could also make things a little easier in the long run.
****
Enough for now...I hear Playstation and an episode of "The Inside" calling my name!
posted by John Keegan | 10:57
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