I’m Ready to GO

Today started out SO crazy. An update to one of our servers at work created a huge problem for a whole bunch of schools, and starting last night the emails started flying about who to fix it, how to fix it, when to fix it, whose fault was it, and on and on and on. I was second in line of triage, the first being the tech agent who discovered the problem. It was my job to figure out who to send it to for resolution.

Normally a big problem like this one would fall on my co-worker. He’s worked for this outfit for several years now and knows just about everything there is to know. But he’s on vacation, and since I’m his partner, everyone assumes that I know everything that he does. Well get this… I don’t! So I passed the buck onto one of our senior tech support people, and he ran triage. So phew. I still woke up to about 50 emails in my box about it, and a list of things I needed to accomplish, but thankfully I wasn’t going to be the go-to person for it.

It stressed me out though and I’ve spent the rest of the day just waiting for the hours to pass so I could log off my system and take a long weekend away.

That’s right… AWAY! As soon as I pick up Carolyn from the airport tomorrow we’re going camping. 3 days of fun in the sun and (river) water. I’ve been prepping all week. I’ve got the camper cleaned out and organized. I’ve been working off the lists Carolyn and I made last weekend, and I’ve been busy making sure everything is ready. All that’s left to do is a final grocery store run and some house cleaning.

My daughter is staying home alone to housesit and take care of the animals. We wanted her and her boyfriend to come with us, but she couldn’t get the time off work. She recently turned 18, and is getting ready to start college in the next few weeks. That’s a whole nother story, but for now I’m happy to at least have her be old enough to stay home alone and not have to hire a housesitter.

Of course her boyfriend will probably be here the entire time. I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that it will be any different. I’ve instructed her to say goodnight to him each night… at the door… and that I didn’t approve of him staying over, but I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t care. The only thing that keeps me from freaking out about it is that I like the guy. He’s responsible, and treats her good. And well, when I was 18, I probably would have done the same thing if I’d been given the opportunity.

My son is camping with us. He’ll have his own tent so he can be dirty and throw his stuff everywhere and just have somewhere to go and mellow out and read.

We’re meeting Carolyn’s family at the campground. Her brother and his wife will be there, along with their mom and dad and aunt. It should be a fun time, and after a week like the one I’ve had, it’ll be really nice to get away.

Missing Her

I was doing pretty good. My week started off pretty content with feeling like I could make it through another week without seeing my love. And then I woke up this morning. I immediately felt lonely and like I wanted to talk to her. Of course, I can’t talk to her. Not only is she in a different time zone, she’s completely occupied with her work, AND due to the nature of the US Government and their stance on homosexual relationship, it’s freakin difficult to talk.

I’ve never hated her Navy gig as much as I do right now. They’re keeping her busy from 4 AM to 10 PM each and every day. And on top of it, she has a roommate. A married roommate who never seems to leave the room or give her an ounce of privacy. I’m hating life. I feel lonely and bored and I want my girlfriend home!

I really shouldn’t be bored though. Work picked WAY up this week. I think I saw a statistic come through email that said there was something like 42,000 logins to our website the other day. That’s a hell of a lot of logins, which of course generates quite a few calls to tech support. Thankfully, I don’t do that frontline work. I basically work with premium accounts and big deal problems.

There has been a bunch of work for us though. My little fingers have kept pretty busy typing away emails to various people. I’ve tested a bunch of different scenarios within our program. I’ve adjusted all kinds of settings on different accounts. I’m definitely not bored like I was THE ENTIRE SUMMER.

But I still miss my girlfriend, and I want her home.

The Whirlwind Visit

I got to see her for one day. It wasn’t enough, but it was enough.

Carolyn was gone all week last week doing her first week of her 2 weeks a year Navy reserve gig. She left this morning for her second week. This time on an airplane, and traveling to the other side of the country.

We had a whirlwind visit, much of it spent with her organizing and reorganizing her things and uniforms for this coming week. That was ok with me. I got to see her and talk to her and offer what small amount of assistance I could, which basically consisted of moving the laundry from washer to dryer to stacks of clean stuff on the bed.

We also did some running around stuff in town. When she gets back on Saturday we’re taking off for 3 days of camping fun. So we tried to get a jump on that a little… making lists, grabbing odds and ends, and basically just making sure it could happen after another bag repack for her on her return. I think we managed to get everything done I needed her help with.

We had plans to go out to a local winery after all the errands. We had been talking about it for weeks. It’s a lovely place, a grand estate with wonderful wines and gourmet dining on an outdoor patio with a glorious view of the estate and the surrounding hills. At least, that’s what we’ve experienced in the past, and we figured it would be that way this time too. Well, the view was there, but the table and meal were not to be ours this time. Seems as if there were some issues with getting us a table, and in the end, we ended up leaving after only sampling some wines. Oh well, they gave us a $25 gift certificate for the mess up, so we will be back, with reservations in another month or so.

We ended up going to a japanese restaurant for dinner and eating sushi. That was yummy. The wasabi was perfectly hot and my mouth got off time and time again. We talked about getting married, and set a tentative date for spring break. I’m sure there will be plenty more about this in future updates.

So now she’s gone, and I’m home with kids and a probably busy work week coming up. It’ll be hard to have her gone for another week, but I’ll just immerse myself into my diet, my work, my kids, and probably some random exercise, and hope that the week moves by quickly, but the upcoming weekend moves really slow.

A Taste of What’s to Come

I still haven’t really decided what the format of this blog will be.

I have in-depth knowledge on how to write a journal type blog. But part of me wants to have a blog that’s not really about me, more one that links to cool and funny things. I suppose it will end up being both, because really, it’s my blog, and I am both. I spend a lot of time on the internet, and I spend a lot of time with just me. Now if I can make myself be consistent with this, I might be able to come up with something that’s at least interesting some of the time.

With all that said, I need to learn how to be a writer again. I need to start digging in and figuring out some stuff to write about. It can be difficult for me to come up with topics, even though when you look at it, I probably have plenty of content each and every day.

My job can be somewhat boring, but I’m hoping that since it’s going to start picking up pretty quick here, I’m going to start getting more and more calls, and hopefully some of those calls will develop into some interesting stories to share. You’d be surprised at how many college professors are weak on the computer, (or just plain old), but trying to teach classes using our fairly intensive software. Plus the fact that with every update of our software, we introduce more and more bugs into the system. It kind of feels like I work for Microsoft some of the time.

My relationship is stable and doesn’t contain much, if any, drama, so there won’t be much in that department. But her job provides some great stories sometimes, so that might be a content source from time to time.

My kids will probably provide some stories. They’re pretty social and in constant motion, I would expect they’ll be content from time to to. My family also has its moments; so I probably have enough content for some time to come.

I spend tons of time on the internet, my job has major lulls and there’s not much else to do while waiting for the next person who has a problem. So I’ve found lots of ways to kill time. I have a huge list of daily reads, only a few of which are on my blogroll. And when I’m really bored I play StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is one of the coolest things out there by the way. I can’t even tell you how much time I’ve spent waiting for people to call me or write me stumbling around the internet.

Just for kicks, here’s a link to a site that amuses me each and every day.

Setting Goals

I’ve never been much of a goal setter and it’s probably caused some issues in my life.

I was reading on a career site once that one of the top 10 reasons why people get fired from their jobs is that they don’t have any goals. That’s me. I’ve been fired several times. Not because I wasn’t doing a good job at what I was doing, but I didn’t really have any aspirations to do anything else. I’m not saying that’s the only reason why I got fired, but it could have been a determining factor in how my managers saw me.

In my new(est) job I had to fill out this form at the beginning of the year for my manager that stated my goals in my position. This was SO difficult for me! It took me days of thinking and racking my brain. Finally I came up with some ideas and got them on paper, and sent them away. It totally sucked though. And of course now I have to be accountable, or face the consequences: guilt.

Maybe that’s what it’s really all about though. Being accountable or being guilty. It’s much easier to play each day by ear. That way I don’t have to feel badly if I neglect something.

I was at weight watchers last night and my leader had us write 5 things we wanted to accomplish before we die. I didn’t want to do it, thinking if I write these things, and then I do them, then I’m good to go… as in die. I like what my friend Kathleen did once though, 50 things before 50. Although that’s more goals, it at least doesn’t have a death sentence tied to it.

So I’ve been thinking of making a list, and setting some goals. I don’t know though, old habits are hard to break.