White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Last night was fun. After I had gone to pick up our Terribly Cute and Affectionate Children, the Mrs arrived at the International Haupertonian HQ and Manor. By the time I got back from the extraction mission, she had completed her decompression routine and was walking out the door to unload some of her stuff from the Family Tank. I was in the process of unbolting the Jacob when she got to the Super Saturn. The Hounds were prancing about in the back yard and they attracted the attention of the twins. At that point, we decided that since it was still light outside, we should have one of those rare family moments and let the kids play on the nearly complete Twin's Twin Towers. A great deal of fun was had as Jacob mastered the stairs and ladder to the North Tower slide and Alexis found that the South Tower slide suited her just fine. Much to my amazement, all she wanted was to be able to hold my hand as she slid down the slide. Of even greater astonishment was the discovery that with the swings at 6 inches from the ground, she was more than happy to either sit in your lap while you swung back and forth or sit in it and hold on while you moved it to and fro imperceptibly. My little girl is becoming very brave at this swing thing. Her audacious leaping behavior is another thing entirely. I need to put up the observation ports on the open spaces soon so she does not try to leap out from a 5 foot height and break something. Like my heart.

Once we tore the kids away from the sand-pit and dusted them off, I returned to the back yard to pick up where Hero-Dad had left off the previous day. He managed to knock down a couple of rather large rounds of wood and I was determined to repeat his success. So I started in on one of the chunks that had already been beaten down a bit and found that I was woefully unprepared for the task at hand. In a cowardly act of capitulation, I chucked and stacked the bits of wood he had left behind. I did manage to split 4 or 5 smaller rounds and break a few chunks off of the larger round, but became disinterested as I found myself tired, sweaty, in the dark and being quietly surrounded by swarms of hungry skeeters. Hmmm, that analogy kinda works for some of my work-days.

As the evening ground on, I found myself crawling into bed early while the Mrs was talking to various important friends on the phone. I was pretty sure she was talking to Lucy in NY about this coming weekend's activities and apparently she had also called a local friend Patti S. In disturbing news, an acquaintance of ours had just been diagnosed with cancer that was found when a tumor got removed from this guy's neck. Not good. I see his wife in church every so often when she has their 4 young children with her. He is a contractor and thus has little if any insurance or savings. I have a feeling that this turn of events will be something I hear much more about in the future.

I had to get up absurdly early this morning so I had a chance to get to work for that damn 0700 meeting. I hate those meetings. Most of the information that gets relayed is puffed up and pretty much of no real importance to me. I would be much happier if it was sent out as a monthly newsletter that I could read at my leisure ... at 0800 ... in my underwear. But I'm not the boss so I don't make the rules. At 0515, I'm up and staggering to the bathroom to try to bring my hesitant body on-line. I get most of it going by the time I finish up showering and primping. By that time, the Mrs makes it out of bed and I head off to let the dogs out. I had Katie put in her kennel last night to keep her from letting loose with the dog-piss escapades. I knew full well that I would be in no mood to have to deal with that. Much to my surprise, there was no mopping to be done from Thor and Katie was dry as a bone. She was fairly anxious to be let out and I was more than happy to oblige. It might have been that it was earlier than normal for them to be let out that helped her keep it in, but we will see on the next day. I am happy with the results none the less and grant an extra cup of dog-food as a reward. It was being eagerly devoured as I shuffled upstairs to go tend to the children.

I manage to get to work by 0645 and struggle with the coffee machine there that is a menace to grounds everywhere. The damn thing made a quarter pot of sludge this morning out of a bag of AA Kenya. I drank it anyways. I was that desperate. The second pot fared much better but the damage had already been done. We slogged through the hour and half long ass meeting where we heard a monologue about various potential contracts and clients. This was followed by a brief gsi talk and the annual health insurance dilemma. Should we switch? Is Blue Cross ok? Is it too expensive. I gave up on this last year and switched to the Mrs's corporate plan. Big Pharma Company == excellent coverage, no questions. The next bogus discussion will be the 401k carping. Ugh. Yet another sore topic, I lost a good 60% of my investments in the 'dot-com crash' (read: it was an adjustment) and probably deserved the spanking for not paying attention. I have come to the realization that I will probably work for the rest of my life and most likely will be much happier because of it. Don't ask, you wont like the explanation.

At the job site, I check for SpongeBob Garbage orders and find ... none. Heh, big surprise. It gives me time to do some blog slumming. I was directed by re:becca to take a look at this site and found that it was a pretty good read. The guy is pretty sharp, and not too pompous either. I have not finished yet, but am sufficiently entertained to schlep it into my blog-roll.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 7:41 AM