dancerjodi

I've been enjoying the cooler air, getting excited about fall. I love summer 'stuff' but hate the heat. Fall is surely my most wonderful time of the year. I do regret not getting to the drive-in yet this season, though we still have some time. We only made it to the beach once. We did enjoy our neighborhood spray park a good deal. And walked a lot. And ate a lot of local ice cream. We've been enjoying the free concerts on the common a good deal. Mina has a 'boyfriend' there that she calls "Bat". He had a Batman shirt on the first night she met him, a month or so ago. Last night's band was really kickin', called "Legit", they are a huge wedding band. That girl was ripping up the dance floor, getting a lot of attention from the locals.

Our summer ballet hasn't come back which makes me feel lazy, but the studio will open again for the year in a little over a month. Mina will start lessons in the baby class. Just nuts! She is growing like a weed, so I'm hoping she can get away with wearing the size 7 tap shoes I have for her. She is just almost out of a 6 now. We went to buy her some more shoes this week, a 6.5 and a 7. The girl loves shoe shopping. I am doomed! She picked out some BRIGHT aqua blue Saucony sneakers. The bigger ones are Stride Rites. Investing in proper footwear is important to me, because I want to keep her walking well.

She is talking up a storm. And counting! At school yesterday the director said "look at these two pretty girls!" and Mina replied "Kyla 1, me 2". She counted them! We talk all the time, do our abcs and 123s and count things out for her. All kids reach things at different times and by kindergarten they are all pretty on par with each other. It is just nuts to hear her conversing in sentence-like phrases and she's 19 mos.

Sleeping is getting better. She's staying in her bed more, and we are putting her down awake, though still sitting with her, holding her hand/rubbing her until she is asleep. She is surely a snuggle bug.

Work is getting interesting with lots of people leaving and things up in the air while we are in the process of a potential merger with Partners and are waiting for new IT systems to go in (unrelated to the Partners thing). Last year I had a reading from a reputable psychic/medium, and she told me that she saw great change/upheavel in my professional life coming, but didn't see me moving location. This could surely be it (if you tend to believe in those sorts of things). One thing is for sure, I am never bored here.

I'm looking forward to a few days in the White Mountains and then some local day trips for our (finally) vacation.

Convention season is ramping up. I need to figure out what I want to wear.

And I want to get sewing and knitting again. And cooking and baking. And cleaning/organizing our house. Fall/Winter is the best time of year for these kinds of things for me.

My last planned day at work is a week from tomorrow (1/13). I have never taken this much time off from a job, as long as I've been working in a taxpaying capacity (age 14). Brian asked me the other day how that felt, and at this point I just can't grasp it. I'm sure that the time is going to fly by.

I've been slowly working to try and prepare things that I do to run without me while I'm gone (or put them in a state where they can just sit for 12 weeks). It is nice to feel important. There is a lot of construction and moving planned in our space soon, though the timing is still up in the air. I'm packing up my cube so that if a move happens while I'm out it will be easier for people to move my stuff AND easy for me to settle in when I return, knowing how things are packed. Also, my cube will be free for someone to use during the 12 weeks I'm out (a bunch of people are being displaced from their current area while a new call center room is built out for them).

I do have plenty to do to bide my time, but thankfully none of it is mission critical. It is a nice feeling (because I was freaking out a bit a couple of weeks ago).

Alas, Brian can not say the same thing. Things are going crazy at his company and they are not set up well to cover for folks if they are out. Whenever I have the baby, he will be out (and unavailable to the office) for two full weeks. It would have been longer, but they just can't survive without him. That, and his company is not as generous with the paid time off benefit. He has had extremely stressful days at work all this week (he's going in early today for a build but can't leave early due to a meeting/gathering at the end of the day), but then comes home to face last-minute baby prep and a cranky 38 weeks pregnant wife. Our car seat is installed and the hospital bag is finally in my trunk, so the important stuff is done done done at least! I hope that he can get some things resolved at the office before this babe comes so that he can relax a bit.

He sent me the sappiest e-mail the other day, at 1:00 in the morning. We are trying to stay sane and spend some quality, quiet time together before our life is thrown into a bit of a chaos, despite things going nuts around us. He's sleeping in our bed on the second floor and I'm sleeping on the loveseat with my feet up on the first floor. When we're in the living room hanging out before bed, we can't even share the couch anymore given my 'feet above my heart' needs. I miss snuggling with him and our cats. Still, I know that this adventure will be over soon and bring its own set of new adventures for us to explore together. I think most fascinating from this experience is the effect of hormones and the situation on your relationship. I think we really could take on anything right now. I felt like that before, but this is just more raw - or real - or something. Evolution at work! Survival of the Species! ;)

A fresh hair trim
The Elephant Walk
Cats that let you rub their belly
Tea
The preciousness of life

My old coworker lost her husband of almost 50 years to cancer this week. She is such a sweet woman and I know he had been sick for a while, but I feel so terrible for her. I'm glad that she has a lot of family and friends around to keep her up. Since she retired from our group she would e-mail me from time to time to see how my cats were and to give me updates on her own.

My old boss is at the end of her own battle with cancer. It started in her breast in 2002 (found in a self exam) and despite active treatment spread to a few places. We've heard that she was slipping into a coma and was being transferred to a hospice facility. She is young, and has two school aged children, diagnosed in her mid 30s.

Please keep them all in your thoughts. And please try and remember the gift of time that we have on this world and make the most of it.

Forbes lists Simmons as in the top 10 http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/12/womens-colleges-student-forbes-woman-leadership-graduate.html

Does anyone know how to get this kind of functionality http://help.pop.psu.edu/help-by-software-package/sas/lag-and-dif-functions in an MS Access query? Access will take some VB and SQL script, but I'm not able to get anything out of it using what I'm familiar with.

Thanks in advance! :)

The plot thickens:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/23/partners_insurer_under_scrutiny/?s_campaign=8315

Healthcare and the economy: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98738877&ft=1&f=1006

No more ER diversions in MA: http://www.wbur.org/news/2009/82311_20090101.asp

I'm at work today, catching up on some small miscellaneous things that have been sitting around for a while. I think that only three from my department (including me) will be here today; its a ghost town. I really enjoy coming in on these kinds of days due to less traffic on the roads, not worrying about how loud I can play my iPod (Rush on random at the moment) and the freedom from interruptions.

20 things I wish I knew from a favorite blog of mine http://zenhabits.net/2008/02/20-things-i-wish-i-had-known-when-starting-out-in-life/

Working out without a gym: http://zenhabits.net/2008/08/minimalist-fitness-how-to-get-in-lean-shape-with-little-or-no-equipment/

I bought a small Italy calendar for my office to remind me each day about our impending trip. I cannot believe that after all of these years we are going! I cannot believe that we've been married for almost 10 years!

Ciao, amici!

Here's a crazy graph thing they showed us yesterday (what not to do). Its a riot!

http://www.imeem.com/hulksmaash/video/o6PyqMpK/vizomatic/

It had an ad first and took a bit to load, but once its done its thing its pretty quick. :)

and ironically, this *is* what I do for work

</td><td valign="top">You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.

You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!

Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!

You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

You are 30% geek

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

About a guy that started a website to support blue collar workers, and those wishing to go into blue collar work:
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