Random Bits of Info

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted.

It's my busy season at work, I've got three huge surveys going live in January and I'm trying to make sure that'll happen. I've got oodles of developing to get done and I hope none of my clients throw a wrench into the process.

For Fern's birthday in July we gave her a weekend at the beach for her and two of her friends. This past weekend was it, I took the girls to Ocean City. It was a lesson in patience. It takes about an hour for three teenage girls to wake up in the morning and to cycle through the bathroom for showers after beach time. I tried to give the girls their space at the same time as being the parent on duty. I think everyone had a good time.

I've finished the rush of Girl Scout vests that were dumped on me during the summer. My in-box is empty, but I still have many other projects that require attention. Like the new pair of socks I'm knitting, because I just had to have a new ball of yarn from that shop on the boardwalk.

Long-time readers of this blog may have noticed I haven't posted anything about my Mendoza line in quite a while. That's because I've been over my I-shall-never-be-over-this-weight weight for almost two years. I was successful losing some weight last spring in preparation for our 10-day cruise so I could get into summer clothes. After we got back, I gained it all back and then some. It would have been very easy to just throw up my hands and change my Mendoza line, but I didn't want to, I didn't want to settle for that. I was past the edge where I should buy the next size larger clothes. I didn't want to go up that next size, I didn't want to discard what's in my closed (again) for new, bigger stuff. Dan's been doing Weight Watchers now and has lost some weight. I was watching what I was eating and lost a little, but wasn't really getting significantly nearer my Mendoza line. Now I'm doing WW with Dan and all I can say is "Wow!" First of all, I never realized how much I was eating until I started writing it down and assigning points to it. Secondly, when I started eating within my points range, the weight started to really fall off. The "just one more" mentality does make a difference. I didn't need just one more. It's getting easier to retrain that part of my brain that wants to snack all evening to a) eat a smaller snack serving, 2) eat a healthier snack, and iii) skip the snack altogether. I'm still above my line, but it's within sight, and I'm very excited about that.

I got called a "good mom" by a woman who was about to get her nipples re-pierced.

Weekend Round-up, Among OtherThings

I'm not usually one of those moms that dash off to the ER at the sight of blood, but when the sight of blood wasn't ending, I took The Boy in. I knew there was nothing to stitch up, since the edge of his left index finger was gone, but I knew I couldn't stop the bleeding by myself. He was cutting salami.

Dan was in Tampa for the weekend golfing with his friends.

I did a lot of laundry this weekend. The last load is in the dryer right now. It's the "everything else" load. Usually I pick through what is on the floor of the laundry room to make a load of like items, darks, pastels, colors, whites, towels. The "everything else" load is the stuff that falls through, the stuff that doesn't pass muster on previous sorting rounds. It's the load you hate to put away because it's usually a bunch of mismatched socks and shirts that are too small for your youngest child. You know. I'll have that load waiting for me tonight. Oh joy.

Lost is back tomorrow night after a nine-month hiatus. I gotta make sure the DVRs are set. Yes, both of them. I started a Lost marathon yesterday by rewatching season 5. This interrupted a Lois & Clark season 1 marathon and ended up being interrupted by watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days because we wanted to send it back to Netflix.

I found Season 1 of Lois and Clark on eBay for The Girl (and myself!) because I enjoyed it 16 years ago and thought she might like it, too. "Like it" turned out to be an understatement. She loves it and thinks Dean Cain is wonderful, gorgeous, and very good-looking. He was quite yummy in that show, wasn't he? I found Season 2 on eBay and she had that watched in a heartbeat. Now she's dying to have Seasons 3 and 4, but I can't find them as cheaply as I found 1 & 2 and I'm not willing to pay $61 per season at Borders, or even $40 at Amazon. She'll get her homework done and I'll keep looking for bargains online.

I've had 21 Girl Scout vests to work on this month. I didn't think my stack would ever diminish, but it's down and I now have only four to go, then it's back to personal sewing/quilting. Yay.

The quilt retreat is coming up at the end of next week so I've made a list of projects to take with me. It's a small list, only ten or twelve things. Sheesh. I probably ought to take my ritalin with me so I can stay focused and not get overwhelmed. And get stuff done. There are three guys in my office whose wives are due with babies and I've promised them all baby quilts. Silly me. The nice thing about baby quilts is that you can make them small and no one will complain.

I ordered a portable sewing machine table with some birthday and badge-sewing money. It should be here in time for the retreat. This new table will make it easier to do machine quilting at retreat, where it was impossible before because the table was not flush with the bed of the sewing machine.

Since I haven't had a proper blog post in a while, I'd better stop here. I can't give away all my secrets at once, and, I still have real work to do even though the crush is (almost) past.



 

Folded Rainbows

Work is still crazy-busy, and I still can't find my card reader so this is from my phone of 54 of the 71 pieces of fabric I dyed over the weekend.

To-Do List

Today, I'm breathing.

The other day my boss heard me exhale. It was one of those long exhales at the end of a short encounter with him and my mind was reeling from all I had to do and ws making mental lists of things I had to accomplish pronto. We are mailing out a survey on the 26th and I've been working on validations and fixes non-stop for several weeks.

Our sponsor is known for taking their time on things despite the firm mail-out date, for example, we just got the final form last week. So my boss tells me I wasn't allowed to breath yet, had to wait until mail-out. Yesterday we pushed the survey out to the public server so the sponsor can do their testing. (I hope they know they don't have until March.) So, today I can breathe a bit until the testing results come back to me and I have another list of things to do.

I've been working through a pile of Girl Scout vests in my spare time. I've gotten five done in the last week or so, but the pile isn't diminishing any. I hate sewing those badges on when there's not a lot of room left for them. I raised my rates again to $40 so the workload is more palatable.

There should be a package on my porch right now for me (aren't tracking numbers and the Internet the greatest?) containing a new bolt of muslin to dye and two new dyes. I plan on dyeing a slew of fabric this weekend so it'll be ready for our bee's next exchange project next Wednesday. I'll post pictures of my dyeing adventures. If I can find my card reader, that is.

I was rooting through old photos and found this one from 2003. Enjoy.

To hold you over

I'm still alive.

Work is still crazy-busy. I wish I could blog more. Someday...

Here is a picture of my newly re-done sewing room.

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see some quilt blocks I've been working on. Look in the mirror on the wall.

 

Code of the Day

I haven't been able to post a lot because I've been working at work (and getting stuff done). To prove this point, here is my code that makes validating ±500 fields a lot easier. Don't get me started on why this is necessary in the first place when I should be able to use built-in checks. Suffice it to say, the guy is an idiot.

sub ah2_valid
{
my ( $c ) = @_;
my %errors;
my $data = $c->stash->{form}->get_values;
$c->log->info("***  ah2_valid  ******");
foreach my $k (keys %{$c->req->body_params})
{
next unless $k =~ /^ah2/;
int_comma_err($data->{$k},\%errors,'ah2') if $data->{$k};
#print STDERR $c->req->body_params->{$k} . "\n";
}
return _set_custom_errors( $c , %errors ) ? 0: 's2/ag' ;
}

Happy New Year, if I don't get back here before Friday.

Work at Dawn

I got to the office at 6:30 this morning. As you know I love time-lapse movies so I set up my camera. This is what I got until the battery died.


 

Of Work and Golf

Wow, I can't believe how quickly I get behind in the blogging world. I worked from home yesterday and got a lot of real work done. Sometimes I think I get more done from home than at the office. Something about the combination of not having the office distractions and not wanting my working-from-home privileges revoked if I don't get a decent quantity of work done. Anyway, the point is, I didn't take the time to waste time blogging.

AM and I flew to Florida on Friday for a weekend golf trip. We flew into West Palm Beach and stayed at the PGA resort. They have four courses on-site and one more ten minutes away. We played the Palmer on Saturday and the Squire on Sunday, the two "easiest" courses. Ha. Lots of water in play is never easy.

It was hot, humid and rainy on Saturday. Thunderstorm-kind of rainy. We finished our round after 7:00. Actually, we really didn't finish since we stopped after 16 holes with more thunder in the area. And this was with an 10:28 tee time and a major storm delay. Newsflash: Florida is humid. I'll never wear a nylon golf outfit to golf in again, even if it was a gift from AM, and as cute as it may be. I was so sweaty-stinky at the end of the day, eesh. I needed tongs to remove it from the laundry bag. Cotton is better for me.

Sunday we had an 8:12 tee time and finished at 12:15. No rain! We were paired with a couple who lived on the course and evidently plays there a lot. After several holes the wife started pushing us to play faster, "We're behind pace...we're 15 minutes behind...we have to do everything we can to pick up the pace...." She had lipstick on her teeth. She bugged me. I started out playing well on the first several holes but then I went downhill, coincidentally with her nagging. This other couple decided two twosomes can play faster than one foursome so they played on ahead of us at 11. We never saw them again, good riddance, and we still finished in good time, no course marshall ever scolded us. The nice thing about them leaving was my mojo came back. I hit great drives after that, even got a par on a par 4 hole and a one-over on a par 5 hole. I finished the back nine with a 51.

We had plenty of time to drive around West Palm before going back to the airport. We got to see the famous Worth Drive where all the fancy-schmancy shops are. But it was a ghost town, the shops weren't open on Sundays so there was hardly anyone around. We found a nice upscale Italian place open for lunch with valet parking, but the valet was getting off work so we parked ourselves for free.

The flight home was uneventful, unless you count a thunderstorm over Tampa which delayed our incoming jet, which delayed our departure by almost two hours, and then the baggage carousel got stuck at BWI making us wait 45 minutes for our suitcases. The golf clubs came our almost immediately at the large item door. No wonder folks like to carry bags on.

Now it's Wednesday already. What's up with that?


 

Sorry I haven't been blogging much. Last week was vacation, this week it's been work. We have a ticket system now where the testers will find something wrong and put in a ticket to get it fixed. The tester started testing my survey while I was away so I came back to about 15 tickets to attend to on Monday. Some were easy and got fixed fast, some more complicated opening up a whole can of worms and are still not completely resolved. But now I finally have a few minutes to blog before the next thing comes along.

---

Vacation was nice, we spent a week in south Myrtle beach, Surfside Beach, to be exact. I attended a two-day golf school Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. There's just so much to learn, or re-learn as the case may be. The school makes a individualized CD of your lessons so you can remember things and practice them after you go home. Check out Ritson-Sole golf school.

We arrived at our rental on Saturday, a cute little 3-bedroom house up on stilts with a carpark underneath. Sunday we spent at the beach and I got burnt where I missed with the sun screen at the edge of my bathing suit. Grrr. Monday Dan golfed while I took the kids up to Wilmington to pick up Fern's friend who was spending the rest of the week with us. Fern's so much easier to entertain when she has a friend along. Anyway, Dan calls me from the golf course. He thinks his camera was stolen out of the car. His work badge was not were he left it, which had been on top of the camera in the central console. Grrr.

The rental house did not have internet. Grrr. Tuesday Dan went out to a Dunkin Donuts with free WiFi to surf the web for a while. He came back with a newspaper someone had abandoned. There on the front page of the community section was an article about how the Surfside Beach police arrested five persons for breaking into cars, estimated 30-50 cars, on Sunday night. Really now? I just knew that's were our camera had gone, Dan was skeptical. He feared it would look like I was just "shopping" if I just went there looking for a camera we hadn't reported missing.

Later that afternoon I took the kids out to the dollar store and Walmart for sundries and swung by the police station on the way home. I told them our camera was missing, and yes, the car had been unlocked, shame on us. The girls wanted to go in with me, experience the whole police station thing, so we were escorted back to the room where they had the collection of the stolen property.
"What kind of camera was it ma'am?"
"A reddish-maroon little Nikon."
"Like this?" as he pulls out a camera fitting my description.
"Yes, exactly like this," I said. I turned it on and reviewed the pictures in the memory. "Hey, there are your pants you painted," I said to Fern, and "There I am golfing." The officer in charge of the property looked at the image of me and had me sign the form stating our property was returned to us.

We were escorted back out to the lobby where I had to fill out a report of the incident. I texted Dan: "At police station, got camera." He texted back "Wow!!" Oh ye of little faith.

The rest of the week was pretty tame. Thursday Dan golfed and I took the kids to Le Grand Cirque, which is a cheaper version of a Cirque du Soleil. Friday I golfed and Dan took the kids to the water park.

Dan got a 15 minute head start on the drive home on Saturday, and went to I-95 via Wilmington and I-40. I went to I-95 via US-701 & US-421. When we were both on 95, he was about 30 miles ahead of me and his lead grew even more when I had to stop for gas and lunch. I was not going to win the race home, not that we were speeding or anything. At Richmond I took the 295 beltway, then US-301 to Bowie, he stuck with I-95. I beat him home by 30 minutes. Yay me.

Now it's back to the real world, and there are two more weeks until school starts.


 

I'm back from vacation.

I'm trying to tame the laundry beast.

659 new email messages were waiting for me at work.

My back hurts.

I haven't been sleeping well.

How are you?


 

The End of a 9-Day Weekend

I'm back from vacation.

I'll be posting a review of our hotel soon. I came back to work to 775 unread mail messages that I'll have to work my way through. Not to mention catching up on blogs, too, right?

The play is over, we finished up our run of Willy Wonka last night. I really had fun running the spot light and am ready to do it again next time.


 

When Government Bakes Cookies

It's no secret I work for a US government agency. I'm not telling which one.

I found this in my "food" file, where I keep take-out menus and recipes, and thought it was time to share. It was originally in the Washington Post over 20 years ago.

A Bureaucrat's Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies

For those government employees and bureaucrats who have problems with standard recipes, here's one that should make the grade—a classic version of the chocolate chip cookies translated for easy reading.

Total Lead Time: 35 minutes.

Input:
1 cup packed brown sugar
.5 cup granulated sugar
.5 cup softened butter
.5 cup shortening (really? do people still bake with shortening?)
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
.5 teaspoon salt
12 ounce package semi-sweet chocolate pieces
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Guidance:
After procurement actions, decontainerize inputs. Perform measurement tasks on a case-by-case basis. In a mixing type bowl, impact heavily on brown sugar, granulated sugar, softened butter and shortening. Coordinate the interface of eggs and vanilla, avoiding an overrun scenario to the best of your skills and abilities.

At this point in time, leverage flour, baking soda and salt into a bowl and aggregate. Equalize with prior mixture and develop intense and continuous liaison among inputs until well coordinated. Associate key chocolate pieces and nuts and execute stirring operations.

Within this time frame, take action to prepare the heating environment for throughput by manually setting the oven baking unit by hand to a temperature of 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Celsius). Drop mixture in an ongoing fashion from a teaspoon implement onto an ungreased cookies sheet at intervals sufficient enough apart to permit total and permanent separation of throughputs to the maximum extent practicable under operating conditions.

Position cookie sheet in a bake situation and surveil for 8 to 10 minutes or until cooking action has terminated (and before burning action commences). Initiate coordination of outputs withing the cooling rack function. Containerize, wrap in red tape, and disseminate to authorized staff personnel in a timely and expeditious basis.

Output:
Six dozen official government chocolate-chip cookie units.

From the Washington Post by Susan Russ

My comments are in red.
I've never actually tried this recipe. Maybe someday when I'm not on a diet. If you try it, let me know how the "cookie units" turn out.
 

I was very frustrated at work yesterday. This new system.... it's still being developed while we are learning how to use it. I can't get any formal training in the technologies it uses. As smart as the lead programmers are for the new system, they are not teachers. I need to convert my "monster" project to the new system and have it ready for production by the fall. Which means it'll need to be ready for usability testing by the summer. Which means I need completely understand the new system, like, yesterday. I'm amazed I have any hair left.

Today I was called up to see the chief in charge of the "monster" project. [insert dramatic music here] He slid an unmarked manila folder across his desk to me. It contained a special recognition form extolling the work I did in the last year on the "monster" and I'll be getting a tidy little cash award in a couple weeks. I'm sure after taxes I'll be able to maybe buy lunch, but I'm thrilled, I can't stop smiling.
 

Ta Daa!

If you like photo sequences, here's two more in the old work building deconstruction project I can see from my office window. I haven't posted any in a while because it just looks like the same big pile of rocks to me every day, but they are making progress, I think. Yesterday:



Today:


Here is a earlier post that showed many shots of the deconstruction.

I picked up some of the ceramic pieces Fern and I made in our class. The rest of my pieces got fired in the high fire kiln and they're not ready yet. They only fire it up at the higher temperature once a month or so. It was scheduled to go on Saturday with a cool-down Sunday and Monday, but I heard they had trouble with the gas Saturday and may not have gotten the kiln fired. I'm anxious to see my pieces.



This is a close-up of one of the corner blocks I designed with all the partial seams on the quilt I'm making for my mom.



Here's the whole thing. I spent about an hour last night trimming up some of the seams that I'd missed. And, in the process, un-sewed and re-sewed several seams that didn't meet my momentary high standards.

Looking Up

I'm pretty sure I won't have to change cubicles.

No sorting, no packing, no fussing with my lights.

Happy Dance time!

Weekend Round-Up

One of the springs that holds up the garage door broke a month or so ago. I was so good about buying replacements. But then the weather was so bad I didn't get to install them. It was cold on the weekends or warm on the weekdays but dark by the time I'd get home to attend to the job. Then, when I had the time, I found out I needed another part from the hardware store. Grr.

Yesterday the weather was fine, in the 50's, and I got a part from Lowes, and finally got the new springs up. The door had been operating on one spring for so long one of the guide wheels had gotten out of the track, but a good whack with the hammer fixed that.

We're going on a cruise Christmas week (can anyone give us a ride to the airport?) and while we're gone, my neighbor/walking buddy, L's out of town guests will stay at our house. That means we have to clean it. Dan and I took off work on Friday and started to tackle some of the neglected areas. He did a fabulous job on the spare bedroom, I got a lot of laundry knocked out. For some reason, in our house we don't use dressers. We pile clean clothes on top of them. I hate that habit but that's how I am. So I spent some time clearing off my dresser, got some stuff hung up, socks put away. The rest is now in a pile on the floor. Sheesh. Maybe I'll re-learn the art of putting clean clothes away. Yeah, right.

I started to work on the shower in the master bathroom. Criminee. It hasn't been thoroughly cleaned since we canned our cleaning service. I tried the automatic shower spray, which helps except when Kevin finds it fun to play with. I got the Comet cleanser and made some progress but it's not done yet. I want to coat the tile with Rainex when I'm done so it won't get so scummy so quickly.

And while I took Friday off, look what they did!

From 12/8/08

From 12/9/08

From this morning.

For comparison's sake, this was taken on 9/19/07 before the landscaping was put in, and before the start of the demolition of the old building.

More of the Same

I don't have much to say about the weekend. It was cold. I paid two boys, AM's son and his friend, to rake leaves. I was going to go over the yard with the lawn tractor to suck up the leaves but I couldn't get it started. It cranked, but wouldn't turn over.

I've got more pictures of the old office building deconstruction. After they knocked down the front corner they did a lot of the work on the back side so we couldn't see from our window. At the end of last week they moved around to the front again. We now can see what's going on, hence the pictures.



10/22/08









10/24/08









10/27/08









12/05/08









12/08/08

As Time Goes By

I always loved the time lapse photography from school science films, flowers opening, things growing, well any time lapse is cool. I've often thought how cool it'd be to set up a camera and take pictures of everyday things throughout the day or even a year. One of my ideas is doing a photo series of set-up and take-down when our quilt guild does its annual show. The big thing holding me back from projects like that is a camera with an automatic timer to capture images every 10 minutes, so I just think about it instead.

That's why I'm trying to take a picture out my office window every morning, trying to capture the building destruction in progress.

Friday:


Thursday:


Wednesday:

Newsflash!

Dad got pictures on his blog without my help! Check them out

 

Thar She Goes!

The deconstruction of the old office building continues, but now I have a front-row view:




Several of us gathered round to watch, unfortunately, you can't hear the whole conversation of my office mates so what you can hear doesn't make sense:

A Peek of the Wedding Quilt in progress

Please say it ain't so

Here in our new office building there are several kitchens on every floor. They're not real kitchens, per se, more of a "pantry." They have a sink, a microwave, a refrigerator, cabinets, and three trash bins, but no real stove or oven.

This morning I was bent over, nose to glass, watching my water heat up for tea. I wanted to open the door early if the water came to a boil before time was up.

The fridge opens away from the rest of the kitchen so I couldn't see who said "Hello Anne," while they put their lunch in, and I didn't recognized their shoes.

How did they recognize me? By my big butt sticking out?