Not forgotten..

...another day in a string of exhausting days.

Lots to report on when I have the energy.

Still sick and tired

I could just copy my previous post, change the date and it all amounts to the same. Except now you can add "went to dentist and need root canal" to that. I got something for the pain but now I need to go see a specialist. The filling fell out a month ago and it really wasn't bothering me until this week when I got bad cold. Then it just sort of escalated from there.

But the good news is, I sold my car finally which was a big load off my mind. And I'm taking a mini-break this weekend which is much needed. Work has been the most unbelieveable chaos I could have imagined. I have never worked in such chaos and frenzy in my entire life. I could best describe my days now as "overwhelming." But with all the changes we have been on target for all year and a merger pending on the horizon, the chaos I can only expect to continue.

It's funny because, in the end anyone involved in this merger, integration and so forth can say they really did something special and unique. So why does it feel so pointless and thankless?

Sick and Tired

This week may go down as one of the most stressful and it's still not over.

I worked mega hours all week, had major political strife all the while and a group of developers, programmers and testers all running around the company like feral cats. I had a major confrontation with my boss.. Ugly day, but all came out OK in the end. Then I woke up this morning dead sick, sore throat and dry eyes. I'm on my way to the funk I think. I have 12 design reports to write and I'm exhausted.

I got a ticket yesterday to go to Bay Hill. I may go in the morning and then head to work to just say I've done it.

Orange Blossom Highway

I took a new route home from work today. It's the new 429 toll road which takes you to the far west end of Orlando.

The trip from work to home takes approximately 40 minutes which is a bit longer than the best conditions via I-4. The thing is, you rarely get the best conditions on I-4. The question is, is it worth it to go 10 minutes out of my way, pay $2.75 in tolls to avoid traffic entirely?

Under most circumstances I'd say "no way" but the thing about this route that was so great was just how beautiful the road is! It winds through the orange groves of west Orlando. Though Florida is mostly flat, the area around Clermont Florida is surprisingly hilly and fertile with orange and grape groves. I don't believe the grapes here are grown for wine but rather for fruit eating. In some spots it looks like Italy but moreover, it looks like southern Spain. In fact, it looks like Andalucia in many many ways. The road winds through these farmlands and at this time of year the air is scented with orange blossoms. It was almost overwhelming yet subtle. There are small ponds and lakes in the valleys and though it's a lonely stretch of land (hate to get a flat there), it's serene and beautiful. So while you're driving through this beautiful citrus landscape, all of a sudden on your left hand side you see Disney's Contemporary Hotel, Cinderella's castle and then Epcot's Space Ship earth - all looking like miniature replicas in the distance.

So is the traffic free drive, landscape view and the scent of orange blossoms worth $2.75 and 10 minutes time? Oh absolutely.

Forgot one thing...

I forgot to complain about something in my first post this morning *cue all my friends to groan, 'oh here we go.'*

There's this guy at work who looks like he's on a perpetual bender. Part of the problem is he has the face of a losing boxer and somehow grows a five o clock shadow at 7:30 am. The thing is, we all know he's not been on a bender because he's a complete dweeb.

So, he's a dweeb because he's like the proverbial nerd in every 1980's movie who sticks his nose into business that he thinks includes him but doesn't. He is VERY intelligent but lacks all social skills and is an intellectual snob. You can tell by his glasses, he thinks he's very clever.

I was bemoaning that I wanted to go to Europe for a week and just decompress, run away et al. I like being a foreigner. Matt was busy telling me what an idiot I am (he also has worked extensively overseas and has traveled europe) and I was arguing with him. The dweeb - I'll call him "Bender" for fun - interjects and says something very derisive about my personal preference to leave the country to take a break to London. I said, "I just want to go to London. That's easy." He is virtually sneering at me. He says to me, with all the haughtiness of a minimum wage Estee Lauder clerk, "Have you ever even been to London?"

Now I realize, if you don't know my personal background with London (second home..) it may seem my statement of "London is easy" would seem to be a huge assumption. When I've heard people say that, I always ask, "Why do you say that?" When they respond, "Because they speak english there." I query further because London, despite containing a dialect of English, is hardly easy. London is easy if you're accustomed to it. Rome, on the other hand, is an easy city. Anyway, so Bender is sneering at me "Have you ever even been to London?" and I'm looking at Matt like, "Oh no he di'n't".

Of course, I was nice about it. I said, "I'm familiar with it. Having worked there for years."

My pet peeve are assumptions. Assumptions starts with "Ass" after all.

It's a girl!

I spoke to my friend Jo in Lincolnshire (England, not Illinois!) this morning - she's had a baby girl! I'm so excited for her. Her house is overrun with boys so it's about time a girl came into the picture!
I can't believe how time flies. I remember her and richard before they even had kids!

And so it begins...

I had to work late again last night. The hours are slowly creeping upwards. I will have to work part of Sunday as well. I could do it today but I need rest. It was a very long week.

The stress finally started getting to me yesterday. I got some scary news about Matt and it turned out to be not as scary as someone led me to believe. It was a 'health' scare made into more than it actually was. It stressed me out for the three hours I didn't know what was going on and couldn't get hold of Matt. I was upset because a) I can't deal with project staff turnover and b) he's my friend. The thing is, it is serious what is wrong but it's not life threatening but rather seriously life disrupting. So, he won't let me be nice to him but he'll be back in two weeks. He gave me $6 before he left because he farted in the conference room. I plan to grow rich collecting money every time he gets vile in there. Yes, two weeks apart will probably be the best thing ever for all of us concerned.
But then my stress compounded because of the unhappiness of my two coworkers who are also some of my closest friends. I don't blame them for how they feel but I don't want them to leave me stuck there either. I have to stay..well, I don't have to but it would be incredibly stupid if I didn't. But I made the decision to stay and I can't really change that for six months after the merger. So a week of migraines, a health scare, professional chaos and all that.. I should go on a drinking bender - lol!

Last night I tried to go to sleep as soon as I got home. I talked to Chad briefly and I was rather cranky so I just ended that conversation quickly but then I couldn't go to sleep. Finally fell asleep around midnight.
So today is bigtime laundry and clean up day. My house looks like a pack of wolves moved in. A pack of dirty wolves. I am off to Target shortly for garbage bags and dynamite, I have a feeling that's the only thing that is going to help me right now :-P

STS-61

I lost a NASA patch once upon a time. When I went to Kennedy Space Center ("KSC") a few weeks ago, I looked to see if I could find a mission patch I had once semi-earned. The only thing I remembered from the patch was that Story Musgrave was on that mission but there were SO many shuttle missions and NASA organizes them so poorly in their Space Shop that I never found it. So I looked up the missions online, so I could locate the mission number and eventually go to the shop and replace it. I found it. Here it is:



















So in looking for the patch, I happened to read the mission details of which there appeared more than any other mission I was looking at in search for this patch. I got so excited reading about the mission because the reason I had this patch in the first place is because I did volunteer work for NASA/IMAX and 'earned' this token.

The volunteer work was to log every EVA activity with the video clock. This was so the filmmakers and/or NASA would have a reference point for their video and the activity. In order to be allowed to volunteer, you had to go through several weeks of training on the mission goals, the millions of acronyms (so you had some faint clue of what you were logging) as well as all the parts of the Hubble (so you knew everything they were touching and could log it effectively). I got some nice little letter and packet from NASA and a patch after the work was submitted. My qualifications were a willingness to stay up all night with a team of other volunteers, passing the training course and my status as a Astronomy 101 student (hahahaha).

I may be very naive but I'm amazed at the level of detail on this mission website (it was one of the most complex missions apparently - pretty ambitious agenda). I actually do wonder if any of it was aided by the data we created. IF in fact we aided in this, here are the passages that I logged:

The astronauts struggled with the latches on the gyro door when two of four gyro door bolts did not reset after the astronauts installed two new gyro packages. Engineers who evaluated the situation speculated that when the doors were unlatched and opened, a temperature change might have caused them to expand or contract enough to keep the bolts from being reset. With the efforts of determined astronauts in Endeavour's payload bay and persistent engineers on the ground, all four bolts finally latched and locked after the two spacewalkers worked simultaneously at the top and bottom of the doors. Musgrave anchored himself at the bottom of the doors with a payload retention device which enabled him to use some body force against the doors. Hoffman, who was attached to the robot arm, worked at the top of the doors. The duo successfully latched the doors when they simultaneously latched the top and bottom latches.

I logged all that! Everyone was actually really jealous of my segment because it was by far the most intersting event the entire mission because it was so annoying and if you think about it, predictable.

Read all about it here at NASA's STS-61 mission detail webpage.

Technology sorted

After weeks of pokey DSL service, I finally called and they made a "programming change" and now it's all sorted. I can actually be online and use my Vonage phone without any interference. I almost canceled the vonage because the fritzy line was so frustrating!

I had an interesting day today. Spoke to Matt today at length about doing what makes you happy and not worrying so much about Keeping Up With The Joneses. He wants to change careers and he made me guess what it is he wants to do for a living. I guessed first guess and I think it surprised him a great deal that I got it right. It surprised me as well but I guess when you spend as much time with someone as we have to, you know more about them than you think. I'm trying to get him to go on vacation, I'm very worried he's about to burn out. I totally know the state of mind he is in. It's me, Zurich 2001. But, it made me think a lot on my own stress and the things I do and don't do out of feelings of obligation and guilt.

Then I found out that another one of my friends at work broke up with his girlfriend. The basic reason was she was always traveling. Even though he is my friend, I really empathise with his girlfriend.. She's only 27 or so and I was about that age when I learned the hard way what working in the big firms does to your personal life. I wonder how it will all turn out for her.

It's been a weird, weird week and it's only Tuesday. And as per usual, it's not even ten and I'm exhausted!!

"Whatever you say, Kirby!"

It's a sad day in baseball today. Kirby Puckett died at age 45.

I like Kirby, his time in baseball coincided with my long summer days at Wrigley Field. My favorite memory of Kirby Puckett actually doesn't even have anything to do with Kirby Puckett.

I was 17 years old, in college and a HUGE Cubs fan. My roommates and I decided it would be fun to spend the night at Wrigley Field for Cubs tickets. In February. On the street. We left our dorm around 3pm and by 4:30 we were situated in the player's parking lot in the 20 degree weather along with hundreds of disgusting, smelly, foul men. We were organized into self-policing "squads". This meant, if anyone from your squad screwed up (got drunk, cut in line or otherwise caused trouble) your whole squad went to the back of the line. Ooo-ee!

They had us line up platoon style in our squads and these rules were shouted at us by a heavy set black man with a small goatee and a dark navy blue jacket on with matching baseball cap. All of us big time baseball fans were all giggling inside as he gave us our orders until finally some wise guy piped up from the back of the squad,

"WHATEVER YOU SAY, KIRBY!"

We all broke out into hysterical laughter - we all thought the same thing.. This dude looked exactly like Kirby Puckett. Kirby broke his drill sergeant face and had to laugh himself. It was a wonderful moment of synergy among baseball fans. Something only the freakishly obsessed would find so funny.

It's hard to imagine one of our not-so-old baseball heroes passing. This is the second sport hero from my childhood to pass away at a young age. The first being the great Walter Payton - the first sports hero of my memory (second was Muhammed Ali).

Rest in peace, Kirby!

Mystic Pizza

I normally don't care for frozen pizzas but I succumbed to a bit of Hollywood and marketing this week and bought a packet of Mystic Pizza brand pizza. It's actually made in Mystic, CT so it appears to be the real thing. I was skeptical but I had it tonight for dinner and it was surprisingly good.

I made my first car payment today. It wasn't too traumatic, especially as I reminded myself I'd be paying that in new brakes on the old car were I still reliant on it for work. I still have the car, though I'm trying to sell it now. If I don't get a decent price on it, I might keep it to just have for small errands and such. It's a fun car to drive and if it's only driven once every few weeks to the store or Disney World (where I could care less if it gets dinged in the parking lot) then it will be OK I think.

I watched the Academy Awards last night. I was only happy that Rachel Weitz won for The Constant Gardener, which grows to be a better and better movie as I keep thinking about it. It's rare you find movies that are entertaining and actually meaningful.

Gahhh, I'm exhausted. Bedtime for bonzo.

A Day of Small Accomplishments

Never has so little been done for so long! Actually I can't say that to be entirely true. My Saturday plan to stay home and get projects done was only semi-accomplished. I did get a fair amount done, including moving my Christmas tree to the garage. The tree was in its box, just not put out to the garage yet. That's quite an accomplishment for those who have seen my Christmas tree easily become an Easter tree :-)

I went out to the Premium Outlets to do a bit of window shopping. I found an Anne Klein pocketbook that was marked down 75% and a Coach wallet for $29. Coach! It's cute and was nearly free. Anne Klein I always thought was an expensive brand, but it seems to have moderated substantially. I looked in Burberry and it's amazing what they can sell in there for $400 a pop. Like a $100 umbrella.. As if! My lovely tartan brolly from Boots in London has been with me nearly ten years now, still functioning and looking very smart as always. If Boots in London sounds posh to ye yankee ears, it's not. It's their equivalent of Walgreens or CVS.

I got home and managed to clean the kitchen, do more organizational spring cleaning type stuff. I managed to fit a nap in there and watch two movies.

First one was The Constant Gardener, with my sweetie Ralph Fiennes. He's not really my sweetie, because if he was I would not be blogging about him unless I was his tacky idiot sweetie. I met him in NYC years back when he was in Hamlet on Broadway. I got his autograph on my Playbill - which might be worth something since he ended up winning a Tony Award for that performance. Anyway, I've completely blown the sincerity of this movie by squeeing over the lead actor. This, in my opinion, was a very good movie in its own right but a movie I reckon everyone should see. I'm sure on some scale or another what happens in this film is true and continues to point out the attitude of other continents that Africa is a disposable population. If we worked half as hard to ensure the health and human rights of Africans as we do finding ways to be politically correct on how to refer to people of color, who knows what we could accomplish. Our focus is entirely in the wrong place. In some ways, I wonder if Africa could be lifted out of the 19th century if it would not bring along tolerance and respect for the descendants living in other countries and continents. Who knows, I've just woken up and my mind is foggy so I can hardly come up with any socioeconomic plan to tidy up race relations.

But it makes me thing about the time I had as a kid and a minority. When I was five years old, the Vietnam war had very recently ended. The parents of the soldiers who were sent to Vietnam had fought in WWII or Korea. Though the issue was with Japanese, Vietnamese and Koreans, all Asians were lumped into the slanty eyed gook category. It hasn't been until the late 1990's that Asians are viewed more as a part of society rather than an insane kamikaze race. I don't think it's coincidental to the relative stability and economic growth of Asia specifically to Japan. When I was five, anything made in Japan was an utter joke today it's quite the opposite. Russians living in America in the 1980's were heroes, brave defectors who shared our beliefs. Now Russians living in America are associated with organized crime and hookers or porn stars. Not coincidentally, that's the association with Russia and all the former Soviet provinces as well. So I do think that if Africa could stabilize, grow and become an economic force then the overall view of what Africans of any country can do would be greatly changed.

I might be drawing apples to kumquats and back to bananas here, but I do think our perception of people does have some correlation to how we few their ex-pats living here. Much like anyone who is British is automatically intelligent and well read. How not true!

Conversely, I finally saw Napoleon Dynamite. Omg, what a stupid movie. Made me remember High School pretty vividly though. I thought it was good but not a life changing cult movie like some have said it is.

So today I have a full day ahead. A guy is coming over around 9 to look at my car to buy it. I got my insurance payment on it down to $50/month which isn't bad at all. So if this guy doesn't buy it I'm going to pull it off the market and end up donating it towards the end of this year so I can get a tax write off. Then I'm off to Grandmother's house, I go, to visit with her and my Aunt & Uncle who are staying with her. We're just planning to do lunch and who knows. I need to be home by late afternoon so I can finish up my projects (namely, laundry!) and to see the Academy Awards tonight. I always enjoy watching that but the last few years I've fallen asleep in the last half hour.

And finally:

New addition to Murphy's Law: When deliberately clicking a link on a webpage, it takes hours to load. When accidentally clicking a link, it's a tenth of a second to load.

Datgummit

Everytime I think I'll be going to Satellite or St. Augustine for a little mini-break, something stupidly enormous pops up in Daytona.

Last time it was Daytona 500 and this time it's Bike Week. Even Orlando is a pain in the butt during bike week (and also explains why last weekend the Atlanta Bread Company was surrounded by Harleys).

A Week Unended

I have no idea what my title is supposed to mean. But today feels like a Friday, yesterday felt like a Friday.

Work has been busy, somewhat comical. But long days are growing longer slowly. Yesterday I apparently was the party planner for happy hour after work. I had no idea of this and went home around 7. I got a phone call from the 'party' who wanted me to drive allll the way back to the office and go to Happy Hour. It was actually quite funny.

My community had a sad incident yesterday as well. A 19 year old was arrested for having 83,000 images of child pornography on his computer. The story was all over the local news and the media was outside the mother's house. I feel so sorry for the mother. This is a small town and now her son will forever bear the badge (and rightfully and legally so) of the worst sex offender. They lived, unfortunately, across the street from the Presbyterian church where there is a playground, a .25 miles from the elementary school, about the same from the local park and apparently he was applying for a job at WDW. It makes me sad that someone so young could be so sick. He's only 19.. There are registered sex offenders out there whose crime is they were convicted of statutory rape by having a 16 year old girlfriend when they turned 18. Teenagers today (and I know they say this about every generation) are not as naive as my generation was. But they also are far more immature, as teens have always been. I am always sad when a teenage mistake becomes a mark you will bear for your life. In this case from Thursday, however, the blessing is he was caught at 19 and not at 59. Who knows where this obsession would have led as he grew older. Hopefully he's young enough to receive some meaningful help and hopefully the legal system will help make sure the children of ours and other communities are safe from him. And I hope whatever they confiscated can be used to liberate and help the children who were used in those images and movies. That would be the best thing that could come of this - the children can be helped and the monsters that did this to them are punished far beyond our imagination.

No matter how you look at it, it's a deeply sad situation for that family and for our community.
Though our community may forget once the commotion and media are gone, the effects linger. Children will continue to have to have play dates behind secured doors. It seems like the only time the neighborhood is buzzing with adults and kids playing out side (in the manner I remember and loved as a child) are on holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Day and Easter. I love those days because when I have my windows open, I love hearing the sounds of an active community. It makes you feel safer knowing people are out and about. A community that is outside and involved is a safer community than one behind closed blinds and doors.

Anyway, on a personal note - I find this to be very difficult to journal about. However I write this, do not mistake the amount of hurt, betrayal and anger I feel about this. But I have a nasty habit of writing with acid and am going to just refrain from making myself angry today.

A week and half ago I went to NASA's Kennedy Space Center with my family - my sister included. We spent a nice day together enjoying the educational experience. At no time did my sister mention she actually happened to know an astrophysicist. Seems like that would have been a reasonable time to mention that. Sort of like when I go to Epcot, I mention I know a person who manages this attraction, that ride etc. Sort of like when I go see an orchestra, I mention one of my friends is a violinist and relay their experience. Or when I go out with my friends to a furniture store and they mention their brother in law makes handmade furniture. It's part of communication and sharing.

The only reason I'm mentioning my sister's absence of communication is because less than a week later, she would tell me she's engaged to an astrophysicist. I never knew she was dating anyone, never knew she met anyone, never knew anything about this at all. I feel less like her sister and more like someone on her mailing list. But, that also means that I was never really close to her the way I thought I was. So her getting married is a blessing for her because she is truly the loneliest person I know.