It's been a beautiful fall, and I've been out enjoying it all. It feels like years since I've last seen such a prolonged and sumptuous display of colour. I keep walking around feeling a sense of wonder, and trying (not too hard) to repress yet another "my GOD it's a beautiful day - Look, Look! It's gorgeous!!"
I went home on Sunday to visit my family, and although they had only hours notice, they managed to cobble together the traditional family birthday gift- (small amounts of cash), birthday cards (one doing service for the second time), and a flaming pastry (a half-eaten apple pie with a lighter wobbling unsteadily), and they sang and danced (or was that me?), until we were all exhausted and happy. It was one of those classic family visits, full of hoople and racket, and it was really great. I was glad to see mom before her big dental surgery happening Friday- when I next see her, she won't be so chipper, I think. : \ Poor momsy.
Saturday morning, bright and early, Linda and I are embarking on a road-trip. We'll see Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Tetons (& Jackson Hole), we'll hit the Moab Fat Tire Festival in Utah, head to Vegas, and double back via the Grand Canyon. Wheeee!!! (hoo hoo, ha ha!!) I can't wait. I have been feeling the burning need for an extended vacation instead of just long weekends, so I'm breaking the vacation bank with this one. We're loading up the e with camping gear, mountain bikes, climbing gear and other road-trip necessities, and heading for parts South, dusty, and warm. Poor little Dallas will not get to come, but will have her own mini-vacation in London, doing the retirement stroll, and playing with Popcorn the cat. And anyway she can watch the video, from the mini-dv camcorder I'm going to go buy at noon... (ooh, think of the geeky photo-editing opportunities!)
The last few weeks have been really stressful, with the biggest reason being work madness... we've had to punch, push and squish our work into an ever constricting schedule, and two days from my vacation, we hit this crazy awful show-stopper defect, requiring the modification of a JDBC driver integral to our data currency feature. Colour me terrified (we do not build JDBC drivers here for a reason). I'm going to change the schedule and flee to the desert, leaving another well-meaning project manager in the path of "oh, the risk isn't that bad...", and "what? why this much additional testing!!??" This little defect, found 3 days before we were going to release to field test, is going to push our target date out a month. (i love my job- i do, i do...)
Work makes me crazy sometimes. Nevertheless, I like to sing along to the mp3s on the hard-drive- today's 2 favourites-
Mother pack me bags because I'm off to foreign parts
Don't ask me where I'm going 'cause I'm sure it's off the charts
I'll pin your likeness on the wall right buy my sleeping head
I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead
By this time in a week I should be far away from home
Trailing fingers through the phospor or asleep in flowers of foam
From Macao to Acapulco from Havana to Seville
We'll see monoliths and bridges and the Christ up on the hill
An aria with the Russians at the piano in the bar
With icefloes through the window we raised glasses to the Czar
We squared off on a dockside with a coupled hundred Finns
And we dallied in the 'dilly and we stoaked ourselves in gin
-drunken boat, the pogues
and the ever irreverent: Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and FIGHT!
la la la
I'm going on vacation!!!
