Hey, where have you been?

It's been a very long time since I posted anything, and it's been a very, very busy five months.

The kitchen is 90% complete. Only a few tiles and the floor are to be finished. Finally! And we love it. 

From left, Kent (aka DH), Peanut (aka Samantha), and Kat (no aka). The photo is a little dark but check out those GORGEOUS cabinets (mahogany-stained hickory) and beautiful backsplash. Highly recommend Costco for kitchen cabinets. 

'Tis the spring/summer concert season for the Tidewater Concert Band, and we've had many gigs recently. Musically things tend to quiet down after Independence Day then pick up again around Labor Day. I'm struggling to get that Stars & Stripes piccolo solo under my fingers but it is hard. I'm not the principle piccolo but we wanted to have at least two piccs playing - for fun, you know? So, earplugs firmly in place. I continue to work. 

Did I mention I got another floor loom? La-la-la-loving it...I know I romanticize the idea of refinishing and reselling old looms but I'm sure the reality is much different. I did have fun with the first one, though.

Speaking of WORK, that ugly word, I am once again managing a software project. Ah, the glamorous life of a m******f******s***f***** business analyst. Nah, I'm kidding, it's not so bad. I am doing another project, a web app again, quite a major addition to a web reporting application that I already manage and previously implemented. It is very challenging to have two developers in one country, 10 hours ahead, and one developer in another country, two hours behind, and none in my own country. The phrase "never the twain shall meet" comes to mind. It isn't anywhere near as awful as The Project From Hell three years ago. Four years ago? Time flies. We are scheduled to "go live" next Wednesday, and we are only a week behind schedule. I would not call it an Agile project, although it started out that way, but it was definitely a rushed project. 

The last day of school was today. DH brought all his stuff home. Three bins. The foyer is again a disaster area with things to be donated and/or loaned, a large stroller and a pink Disney walker (Peanut's), a Bow-flex (anyone? Bueller?), my gig bag and music stand, and the stuff that actually lives in the foyer - salmon sofa, key table, green throw rug. 

Kat and the Peanut are staying with us for a short time. It's a little stressful having a ten-month old in the house, but also quite wonderful having them both here. They are a delight and I get to play gramma to a sweet dimpled little girl whose first words seem to be "doggie." Maggie Doggie has made sure Peanut feels welcome and has allowed herself to be used as a pillow. Tasha Doggie is gentle with her, and Sarah Doggie has kept her distance and let Peanut come to her. DH and I are both charmed, and Momma Kat is getting on her feet again.

DH has officially started his summer gig with the Google CAPE program and there is a great deal of travel occurring over the next couple of months. 

Primo (aka Nick) is still at BB and living in Ghent. Secundo (Patrick) is working, and rescuing stray baby birds, turtles, and tarantulas in Kansas. He's not a dog person, but that apple didn't roll too far away from the tree. 

Much package mailing to do and weaving photos to post. 

All is well.  

Scorecard Purgatory & Other Miscellany

Back in March I wrote (but forgot to finish/post):

I've been upgraded from eternal damnation to mere endless suffering. Once upon a time only one day a week was devoted to dealing with The Scorecard. Now it's two and a half days a week plus the odd 2:00 AM call with developers whose time zone is 10 hours ahead of Eastern daylight.


That was my month of March.


So, in the background Roxio is installing...and for the love of Pete it takes forever! Sheeeeeit. Oh. Because I upgraded to Windows 7 in January and am loading software as I require it. Photoshop was required soonest :) Roxio is required now because I don't like using Windows Media Player for DVDs (it's a Microsoft thing) and I can't put a DVD into my iPad. I bet there's a solution for that.


We're in green smoothie heaven. I know this probably doesn't sound wonderful, but 4 cups of spinach, 1 1/2 cups of strawberries and 1 banana in a high speed blender make 2 quarts of awesomeness. Less sodium than V8. Drink your veggies, people! Oh, I'm not doing the whole "green smoothie revolution" or raw diet thing. I just know I needed more veg in my diet.

As it turns out, that was my April, too. Now it's May, and for two months I've been dashing off posts in my head that never make it to the keyboard. I suppose everyone needs  break now and then. My break is over. I'm renaming the blog, and soon I'll move it to a new address. DH and I were joking around about flutes, and he commented about my playing a bent flute (my alto flute with the curved headjoint). I liked it, so I'm using it. As always, he's The Namer. It's perfect on so many different levels!


I'm still drinking my veggies. I started doing that shortly after I started taking synthetic thyroid hormone, so I don't know if the change in my energy is because of the have a functioning thyroid, the green drink, or both. I don't care enough to mess with it - I just know that 24 ounces of green smoothie first thing in the morning and another 16 ounces or so in the afternoon and I have all the energy I need, no more crashing fatigue that requires two hours of sleep (unless I really haven't gotten enough sleep the night before, ha ha!) Better focus, too, but that's almost entirely due to the thyroid stuff. DH has discovered that this green drink thing is pretty awesome, too. He loves it after yoga. We are purchasing huge amounts of kale and spinach. It's amazing how fast you can go through the greens when you're smooshing a tightly packed four cups (or more) into a blender. Usually we're mixing kale and spinach about 50-50, then either a cereal bowl's worth of frozen strawberries and one banana, or two mangoes and one banana. Thank goodness for Costco's bulk packages. These two seem to be our favorite combinations. Blueberry plus banana is yummy, too. DH did one with avocado but I wasn't that keen, but he also used the "artisan" greens instead of spinach, and I do not like those "artisan" greens.  Blech. As good as the blender is, it still has a hard time with raspberry seeds so we don't bother. 


What doesn't really work? Besides the artisan greens: grapes. Maybe a sweet red grape would be better than the green ones. Romaine, surprisingly. Romaine is my favorite in salads, but for me the taste doesn't really translate in the smoothie realm. There are LOTS of recipes out there on the internet and clearly we've only dipped our toes into that water.


Other things we are doing with our super-duper blender: hummus! Chickpeas, garlic, sesame seeds, olive oil. OMG so tasty with those "Food Should Taste Good" multigrain chips (again from Costco). Tortilla chips too, the thick ones. It's my new go-to comfort food. We're whizzing the tomato soup in the blender. We'll be doing margaritas this summer. We've done an applesauce, with pears, very tasty. Watch out for pears in this type of concentration: can produce gas.


And that's the news that's fit to print.

Brrrr!

The cussing heat pump is rattling like a jar of pennies and we think a bearing is on it's way to the big HVAC in the sky, so we've turned that heat pump off. Good news: two zones! so the second floor is comfortable. Bad news: it's about 50 degrees down on the first floor. Maybe colder. Really chilly down there. Instead of catching up on our Tivo recordings (downstairs) we're hanging out in my lair (upstairs).

Help me name my office/craft room/place where I spend 8+ hours of my day Monday thru Friday. I telecommute from this room. My knitting stash is here. My spinning stash is here. Sometimes my spinning wheel is here, too, but lately it's been in the dining room. My silversmithing equipment is here. My sewing equipment is here. My flutes and music are here. My ginormous Ikea Galant desk is here. And right now I am here. It's a good big room. It has no name. Calling it "my office" sounds a little pretentious. "My room" sounds presumptuous, although it is my room and DH has his room/office/playroom wherein resides his computer(s), misc electronics, big honkin' man desk, theatrical paraphernalia, and Yamaha keyboard.

I also need a name for my spinning wheel. I've been referring to it as Betty but that just doesn't have the right ring. Also, I would like to tattoo the wheel. Or, paint tattoo-type images of Koi and Japanese waves and things.

I don't know why I like this so much: So Now You Know: World's Heaviest Snow Plow, but this blogger shared an amusing caption written for an old wood block print: Cupcakes?

I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 last week. As if I didn't already have enough on my plate what with trying to launch that darned scorecard I mentioned in the last post I wrote in 2010, oh back in August. Yes, since that time I've been pushing developers, negotiating with stakeholders, and writing project documentation all in a race to launch a new online executive scorecard before the end of the calendar year. We would have made it, too, if one of the developers hadn't (a) resigned and (b) failed to actually complete (like he said he did) some key components of said scorecard prior to leaving. He was supposed to leave at the end of December and decided to leave ten days early. What a smeg head. I worked over my Christmas vacation on this. My manager worked over her Christmas vacation on this. We discovered last week that even if the defects we found had been resolved by 12/31, we never would have been able to launch it because, lo and behold, our erstwhile developer did not build the space on the production web server and the new owner of the web server says "oh no, server not stable, can't use it, go elsewhere." No amount of escalation was able to break through that barrier. We have a solution, we repoint the URL to a different web server (found one, owner says "sure, come on in, mi casa su casa," then build the new space, load the code, and test. It was an eventful week.

But you know what? It's friggin' done. The code is complete, all the functions work, the interface is as clean as my stakeholders have allowed (we disagree about flashy thingies) and I'm getting ready for a JAD session to design requirements for the next release. I gave life to this monster but did I mention I have to feed and water it? And, I expect that sometimes it will poop on the floor and I'll most certainly step in it. This has been an enormously valuable learning experience. I've learned that it's okay to break an egg as long as you say "yep, my egg. Does anyone have a towel?"

I wonder how many other metaphors I can mix and destroy tonight. DH will be counting.

I need to upload pictures but there are obstacles. Windows 7 upgrade. Right. Photoshop isn't loaded, but I'll probably do that tonight before bed. MyPad won't sync with iTunes on the laptop. It wasn't syncing before the upgrade so not a step backward. I have an assortment of lovely photos on the iPad from Christmas and, lamer that I am, might have to...I don't know...upload them to a cloud and then download them back again. Google Docs might be the ticket and I haven't tried that yet.

Cya anon.
Erin

I'm in the scorecard business again

Remember once upon a time I mentioned that I had a j-o-b? Most of the time the stress or worry from my job doesn't interfere with life outside the office (other than the fact that I telecommute). This week, though, has been a little different.

I picked up some new responsibilities at work recently. One is to propose and manage enhancements to a monthly scorecard, and the other is to actually OWN and manage the scorecard. Since the time I began working on the enhancements, the scorecard has gone to twice-a-month. Getting the scorecard published isn't particularly time consuming - oh, sure, at first it is because I'm learning all the ropes, but soon enough it'll be second nature. No, the real challenge about this scorecard is that even though we have a stated service level to get the scorecard published by the 10 calendar day of the month, in reality we are trying to get the scorecard published ASAP. Which means that as soon as all the data is ready to be validated, at least two people have to drop what they are doing and make this the #1 priority in their day. If there are errors, the developers have to make fixing it the #1 priority of their day. After it's been reviewed, then I have to review the scorecard and physically upload it to the appropriate directory, and then generate a scorecard communication and have it sent to the scorecard audience. And that becomes my #1 priority of the day.

So you guessed it: twice a month at least four people have to go through a scorecard fire drill.

My frustration is that ASAP isn't a service level. The 10th day...that's a service level. If we can get the scorecard published by the 5th day, or the 6th day, or whatever, then we should say so, and plan to that. There has to be wiggle room for correcting errors, and unanticipated delays, but from a business process point of view, this shouldn't be a fire drill.

And yet for some reason I've yet to fathom, we haven't fought back hard enough, or with the right arguments, to change the situation. And oh by the way this is not a customer-impacting event. There are others who depend on the information that is produced through the scorecard, but they can't really plan either because we produce it on a different day each month. There is a trust that develops when you bring consistency to a process. You can count on certain things happening at certain times. The garbage is always picked up Thursdays. Mail is always delivered by 5pm daily. Street cleaning is done the 2nd Wednesday of the month. And maybe it's just me, but how can I plan anything around a delivery date that changes for each cycle of an event? Does it do me any good if it's earlier? What if, as the recipient, I can't get to it until the 9th or 10th day anyway? Producing it on the 5th or the 7th doesn't do anything for me. Is the 10th day really the best service level? I don't know if we know that for sure.

I'm still trying to put together the right argument. This is helping.

And here's another bit: because of this self-imposed-by-the-team fire drill, I am probably electing to NOT take a planned vacation day Monday so we can "maybe" produce an update if a certain set of data is published because that certain set of data wasn't available to us in time for the fire drill. If we were marching to our original 10th day SLA, it wouldn't be an issue and we wouldn't have to do this twice. I'm still up in the air about Monday. I don't feel good about it, though, and I actually lost some sleep about it last night. It's been a very long time since that's happened.

What's special about Monday? Nothing, really, just an opportunity to spend some time with a couple of women I like and a road trip to the Outer Banks for the day. That's not really the point, though. More, the point is that this is a brand new (as of last week) set of responsibilities for me and I don't want it to fall apart the first time I take time off.

On the other hand, this isn't life or death. I think I'll take the vacation day as planned :)

Coming Up For Air

Life at work...no, let's call that work at work. Work at work has been very busy since Feb 1 and I've been putting in some very long days. If I got paid for overtime I'd be pretty wealthy this week. Alas, I'm salaried. The weekdays look like this:

Work
Come home, eat dinner (maybe)
Do Homework
Sleep
Work
Come home, do homework
Sleep
etc etc etc...

...and the weekends look like this:

Sleep a few hours.
Do homework.
Sleep a few more hours.
Do homework.
Work.
Sleep some more.
Do homework. Think about knitting.
Work - oh crap, it's due Monday!
Sleep, dream about knitting.

...since February1. I think, finally, it's all settled down. What exactly does that mean? Our team doubled. After the MBNA merger project activity wound down last month, a bunch of people were given notice. I don't know how many but there were a lot. It happens. This is corpirate America and it was a merger. Everyone knew it was coming. At the same time, the SCM team (that's us, software configuration management) needed five new associates. We hired out of the folks let go five people on January 31 and since then have spent every day training, briefing, refining presentations, running mock boards...really, this wouldn't all be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that I and one of my peers are launching two brand new configuration governance review boards...and some of these new people are going to run them! I don't think I've ever done anything like this so fast and furiously in my professional life. And all these little "gotcha's" kept coming up at the last minute. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever worked with a group of people with so much professionalism and elegance. We achieved so much. We lucked into a situation, hired terrific talent, and now we're pretty much ready to go for our governance board launch next week. I can't quite believe we chose the day after a holiday, but at least it's a minor holiday.

Two months ago I set aside today as a vacation day so I could take advantage of a four day weekend and spent the last few days making sure that there were absolutely no loose ends. Well, turned out there were a few and I answered email for a couple of hours this morning and made sure a few reports made it to their final destination, but all in all I think we (Karen, Janet, Teresa, Steve, Dal, and I) will all have a relaxing weekend with very little to worry about.

I feel like I've finally come up for air.

Taking a "Personal Day" today

For absolutey no reason whatsoever except that I can. Nya nya nya.

The Manager & The Performance Strategy

Once upon a time there was a Manager who was required by Human Resources to comply with a performance management process. The Manager, who valued his job, was willing to do this. He attended training sessions, and was shown how to write SMART goals, measure success, and rate his employees on a three point scale for performance and behavior: Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, and Does Not Meet Expectations. The Manager was familiar with the strategy, having employed similar strategies in a previous company. The Manager complied, had regular meetings with his employees to discuss performance and behavior, and his employees knew what to expect when merit increases and incentive bonuses were distributed once a year.

And so it went for three years. Some of the finer details of the performance strategy changed, but by and large it remained the same. Most employees met their goals, a few employees exceeded their goals, and a couple employees did not meet their goals. According to Human Resources, there was a Predictable Distribution: of all employees, 70% met their goals, 10% exceeded their goals, and 20% did not meet their goals. Look for this distribution, Human Resources said, and use it as a Guide. If there are a lot of employees who exceed their goals, maybe the goals weren't stiff enough, so it was important to make sure the goals were well written.

Near the end of the fourth year several Managers met and listed all their employees ion a sheet of paper. The Managers ranked each employee from highest performing to lowest performing. There was much discussion. Managers hated this yearly task.

When they were finished and felt comfortable that all the employees were ranked correctly, the Managers sent the list to the managers a level above themselves. The new set of managers incorporated the list into their own and rolled the list up to the next level of managers. This went on until the list reached to top of the department.

The Big Manager looked at the list and said "12% of these employees exceeded their goals. That just can't be. That violates the 10% guide. The employee in the lowest spots of the 12% will be forced into a lower ranking." And so it was.

Then the Big Manager said, "Now there 74% of our employees have met their goals this year. That just can't be. That violates the 70% rule. The employees in the lowest spots of the 74% will be forced into a lower ranking." And so it was.

The Big Manager looked at the list with it's neat, tidy, predictable performance distribution, and said, "Roll this final list down to all the managers to communicate to their employees." And so they did.

The Manager (remember him?) looked at the list and sat heavily in his not-quite ergonomic office chair with the adjustable lower-back support. He saw that one employee he'd given a rating of Meets Expectations for performance, and Exceeds Expectations for behavior, had been bumped down to Meets Expectations for behavior. Another employee he'd given a rating of Meets Expectations for performance and behavior had been bumped down to a Does Not Meet expectations for performance and behavior.

The Manager cried foul. "This employee is a perfectly good employee and his performance and behavior is well within the 'meets expectations' for his role and time on the job." The manager knew that merit increases and incentive bonuses were calculated on the ratings and the ranking. Neither employee would received the recognition they deserved for a job done well.

The Manager did not live happily ever after. In fact, the Manager lost all faith in what should have been a fair system of performance-based recognition. But then, the Manager is naive in the ways of The Big Manager, and hopelessly idealistic.

The End.

Some Week

This has been some week. I wish I could say it's been particularly nuts, but it hasn't. It's just the same insanity as last week and the week before. The inability for us to get our jobs done because of vendor inadequacies is having a snowball effect on things that aren't directly impacted by the vendor. It's taking so much extra time to follow up, and the volume is steadily rising. Not unlike a broken sea wall trying to contain a flood. I'm managing two and three escalations a day, where prior to mid-April it was maybe once every two weeks. It's taken a toll on all of us, managers and associates alike, and it's a no-win situation. We were forced into a corner, forced to utilize a middleman who can't perform, while both they and we are sorely understaffed (which is documented in our staffing model). And inevitably someone from senior management is going to say "you need to examine your processes and resolve these issues" - as if we actually caused this situation. That last hasn't happened yet, but I cynically think it will by the end of the year. Because, you see, this vendor hasn't performed to contract in two years. And I see nothing to suggest that will change anytime soon. I will do all I can to help salvage the situation. Maybe with the weight of our business partners, who have extremely high standards, we can enact some positive change. In the meantime, however, I'm aggressively putting feelers out to other organizations for whom I'd like to work.

Photography has been a great outlet for my stress, but this week I haven't had any time to play. I did do some location scouting one morning this week. It was disappointing. Norfolk is not particularly photographic, from my point of view. How many damn harbor shots can a person take, anyway? I have to really reach to find interesting things that are out there waiting to be photographed. The botanical garden is glorious and I can spend hours and hours out there. Otherwise, Norfolk is kinda the pits for an ourdoor and landscape photographer. Even the architecture is middle of the road.

Ah, obviously I'm feeling frustrated over my work and my artistic environment. I'm sure they feed off each other. This weekend we'll be working in the yard: building planting beds, clearing space in existing beds, to plant all shapes and sizes of glorious perennials, paving the way for bulbs in the fall. I had a striking realization about gardening. I garden so I can photograph it, because plants and flowers are things I love to photograph. When I broke from photography in '97, I slowly stopped gardening. Now that I'm back into it, I want to garden again. Sure there are lots of positive by products of this...nice yard, lovely flowers for vases, time outside. But it was always a means to an end. I marvel at this need to garden for photography's sake. Otherwise, I simply wouldn't garden. And haven't for eight years. I guess we'll just see if that theory holds up.

New Furniture

The furniture in my office is

Old
Broken
Ugly
All of the above

I've been talking with a environmental consultant (cube designer) to get this stuff replaced. Actually, our AA has been talking to her for me. What I have is solid heavy light oak. I'd be perfectly happy with utilitarian, easy to maintain Steelcase stand-alone units. It looks like what it's being replaced with is lightweight laminated light maple of some kind by Knoll. My environmental consultant couldn't come up with pictures ("Just go to Knoll's website and look up the model#" except that doesn't actually work). Gee. But I shouldn't complain too much considering that one of the fortunate few managers who gets to have and keep her office! That is if my boss deigns to approve it!

CH Project Status Meeting

My dreaded first of the year meeting with CH and the rest of the transition team went pretty well. I didn't really feel well prepared for it. I actually, naively, thought that some movement might occur between 12/15 and 1/1. Obviously, I was delusional.

LM's First Day

LM showed up in my office this morning at 8:45, fifteen minutes after I arrived, notebook and pen at the ready. "Where do we start?"
Me: We don't, actually. I'd like you to work on packing your stuff for moving later.
LM: Oh? Okay. I thought we'd sit down bright and early and talk about the organization.
Me: Normally, that would be my first choice but I'm not available to do that today.
LM: Are you sure?
Me: (what, I don't know my own schedule?) Yes. If things slow down, we'll spend some time together later today. Otherwise, it'll have to be tomorrow.

I know, joining a new team is rough, especially when you don't know what they do, or how they do it. She may end up being a pain in the neck for me. She wants to control and the first thing I really gotta do is ensure that she knows that I am in charge. Her previous manager warned me about this one. I'll try to be nice because I'm not an evil pointy-headed manager, really.

(Update, August 1, 2005: LM accepted a job in a different department.)

Last Day of Vacation

Having spent my entire vacation at the mercy of Christmas and mandatory (corporate) training, I feel ready to have some legitimate time off. Ya. That or a stun-gun to my boss's groin. iHubby laughed at me that I was doing mandatory CBTs at the very last minute, which reduced me to a pile of tears. It's a sad reminder that this entire year has just been one big headache. Gross amounts of overtime have been incurred in order to meet expectations - let's not even talk about exceeding expectations. Which, of course, brings up the entire issue of performance reviews, a.k.a., judgements.

Wicked witch CH can't seem to do any wrong and I can't seem to work at all effectively for her. My commitment falls completely flat. I wish I knew why I feel that way about anything and everything about her and her leadership. She hasn't actually done anything. Uh. Maybe that's why. Duh.

Happy Friday

Smobriety Day 18. The craving comes and goes, especially when I finish a particularly daunting - or unwelcome - task. Frequently happens at work. Ha ha.

It's official, Nick has dropped out of school; to his credit he promptly took the GED test. Now we wait for about six weeks for the results. I still have mixed feelings about it all and despite all good intentions will continue to wonder where we screwed up. I'll probably never know.

Work continues to be a blessing/curse/confusing conundrum of politics and actual productivity. Things that I think should happen quickly, don't. Things that I think shouldn't happen so quickly, do. And everyone absolutely has to cover their collective asses. Well, ok, I do too but at least I'm not so damned obvious about it. There is no real place for idealism in corporate America. Maybe I've just become One Of Them, and cynical to boot. But the pay? It works for me.

Summer is here, practically speaking. The ambient temperature is between 89 and 100 every day, with lows around 70-75. It's the heat index that pushes it up so high. It's unbearable.

I've had weird physical things going on and now I wonder if they are connected. Clumsiness. More than the usual. Some small balance problems, mild dizziness - like Labrynthitis but fleeting. Of course, I'm always tired - I have been for some time. Motivation? Libido? What're those? Fatigue, muscle tightness, joint stiffness and pain...and, just the other day, the strangest episode of total disorientation. I was driving up the ramps in the parking garage, listening to All Things Considered. Nothing unusual. First I noticed that there were three parking spots next to an elevator where before there were no parking spots. Now, that's pretty odd, I thought. How is it possible to move an elevator and add three parking spots? Was I in the right garage? I rounded the corner and there was another elevator with three parking spots that shouldn't have been there. On one side the the garage there is an elevator with no parking spots next to it, on the other side is the elevator with the three spots. I looked out beyond the openings to locate a landmark and couldn't find one. Where the fuck was I? Was I in the right garage? I looked at the floor letters. Shit! They moved those too! I was starting to panic. Surely this wasn't right. Finally, I got reoriented. But I was scared. Terrified, actually. I figured out that somehow I thought I was on one side of the garage when I was really on the other side (just writing about it gives me the creeps!). I think. Actually, I don't know. I just know what for about 30 seconds the garage and surroundings I saw everyday had changed.

I've made an appointment with Dr. Garris. She'll know what the hell is happening.

Quit Day 5

I quit on Saturday. At about noon, to be sort of exact but still vague. Made it through Saturday pretty well. Sunday not quite as well but still pretty good.

Monday
My Smoking Buddies (Gary and Toni) are out of the office so the social temptation is weak. I'm hyper. I mean, really bouncing off the walls, babbling, wired up.

Tuesday
Gary is back, Toni is still out. I told Gary that I quit so not to invite me to the loading dock. He's been very supportive. I also told a bunch of other folks at work that I'd quit. I figured that instead of not telling anyone (just in case I failed) I'd tell everyone so I had lots of support.

Wednesday
Argh! Definitely the worst day by far. Taking lots of big, deep breaths. I'm coughing. I had a cold when I quit which kinda helped me quit since the smoking wasn't helping the bronchitis. So I have cessation cough and bronchitis cough. Frieda dropped off a little square of Ghirrardeli dark chocolate as a reward for making it through another day. She's great.

Thursday
Not a great day, but still a day. I've made it through another one. Coffee tastes different but I don't have the craving for a cigarette when I have my coffee, which actually surprises me alot. I experimented with green tea earlier in the week and like it. Liked it with honey and a cinnamon stick. Here's my green tea recipe:

4 tea bags
1 4-cup tea pot
4 cups boiling water
2 TBL honey
1/2 cinnamon stick
4 drops of vanilla (or an eighth to a half tsp)

Add the tea bags to the tea pot and add the boiling water. Let steep for five minutes. After steeping, remove the tea bags and add the honey, cinnamon stick, and vanilla; adjust to taste; stir. Pour into favorite cup and sip slowly and leisurely.

The vanilla was an inspired addition which I really like. I've been using a green tea with honey, ginseng, and ecchinacea. Not because I like the ecchinacea but because I like the honey and the ginseng. In fact, I should find some ginseng.

In any case, I played with tea over the weekend and that helped get through. Want a cigarette? Make another pot of decaf green tea.

I'm waking up in the middle of the night, multiple times. Kent quit with me. He's tired all the time. I'm wide awake and ready to run the mile (not that I actually would, of course! gimme a break). But I have indigestion, too, which is a real pain. No pun intended.

Time for bed. At least, time to crawl into bed and read. Rereading Catch-22. It's wonderful, even 20 years after the first time. Better. Always pertinent.

Wow, Vaio, Wow

I bought a Vaio this week. Wow. This has got to be the best laptop I've ever used. The best computer I've ever used. I'm a walking talking advertisement for Sony Vaio. Go. Run and get one. Now. You won't be sorry. It's a GRX670, which is a recently discontinued model but who cares, it's still faster than the P3 that the boys have completely taken over. Funny, it's a lot like a MAC. Or wait, is that the XP Operating System? Hm.....

Actually, XP is much nicer than it has any right to be, and I'm surprised I like it so much. Microsoft finally got plug-n-play right and mostly handles it in the background.

The sound and video cards on this machine are to die for. Beautiful sound on my headphones which aren't the greatest. SonicStage is a neat little piece of software. Not enough visualizations.

Moving right along. Starbucks recently opened a store located on the route I take to work. Hee hee. 8:30 every morning finds me getting my venti Breakfast Blend with extra room for cream. Nya Nya Nya.

I feel overwhelmed at work and in school right now. Work has me on the merger technology transition team. I'm taking on more responsibility than I'm used to and it's kinda scary. I talked to my boss about it and of course he is more than willing to mentor me along. That's good, too, because I need it. My challenge is that I'm barely keeping up with both the transition activities, my regular stuff (like one-on-ones with my directs, taking care of escalations, managing processes), and the application I support and maintain and program and tweak.