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January 23, 2006

Coming out of Busy-ness

It's been a busy week and a half around the lair. It has seemed like every day has been stuffed full of something important to do, or recovery from it. I love the busy weeks, when they come, but I'm sure glad when they come to an end, and I can go back to normality.

Last weekend was the start. At work, a short term contract position opened up for someone interested. I got the spot. As a result, I was able to take part in a major software migration project for a television station located approximately an hour and a half from home. This meant working all weekend, with long days, and three hours of commute per day. The job involved removing Novell clients from the computers, installing Outlook, setting up accounts, and testing. Saturday was spent walking from computer to computer, which was a nice change of pace from my daily work. We were expected to complete 60% of that particular migration that day, and we completed 100% of them. That was nice. Sunday, we spend the first part of our day setting up Outlook web clients. Since each test process required sending 3 test emails, which had to be typed in separately (only one small opportunity for non-unique pasting of text) we had to hand-type almost everything for the tests. Over the course of four hours, I estimate that I sent between 250 and 350 emails.

Monday, the wife and I spent the day shopping and cooking. We visited three different stores, one of which was a half-hour drive. We picked up a lot of food, ranging from bulk-bin rices to fresh fruits and vegetables to pasta and sauce-makings. This was an hours-long process. Immediately following, we began what turned out to be just over 5 hours of cooking. The result? We have 18 family-size pasta dishes prepared and frozen, for use as quick-cooking, no-prep-time dinners. We have enough bag salad for two weeks, and enough makings for more than a week and a half of chicken and something meals. For the next month, we've handled virtually all of our dinner needs and many of our lunches and breakfasts. This cuts the evening food-prep time from 30 minutes or an hour of prep and cooking to, usually, a quick pop in the microwave and a wait. This results in more productive time for ourselves in the evening. That's good.

Tuesday had me back at the TV station, doing desk-to-desk checks on the users and their new configurations. Any problems had to be dealt with, and many users needed training on their new applications. This was the easiest, and most fun part of the project.

Wednesday started out nice and relaxing, as it was my "day off." In the afternoon, however, projects took over, followed by church and the youth group's worship service.

Thursday, it was back to my regular work at the job. Since the contract at the TV station had been handled through my employer, I wasn't worried about the time off. I didn't really have any. Getting back in the regular groove was easy enough, and I was glad to be back to normality. After work, though, I had enough time for a quick dinner (luckily, we have those now) and then it was off to a training session. I took part in the first class of a series to qualify in the National Incident Management System (NIMS). This lasted until after 9pm, and then I was home in bed soon after.

Friday, another normal day at work. Anyone who knows me, though, knows that Fridays are an important night at the Ogre's Lair. Friday is when Stargate SG-1, it's lesser cousin Stargate Atlantis, and the best show on TV: Battlestar Galactica come on. The wife prepared dinner, consisting of marinated, baked chicken with brown rice, steamed vegetables, and roasted, marinated brussels sprouts. We then settled in to watch our block of Sci-Fi. Unfortunately, before SG-1 had finished, we had both fallen asleep, missing the entire evening of TV.

Approximately 10.5 hours later, we woke up to start our Saturday. Though much more relaxed, Saturday was also spent doing a bit of food shopping. This time, it was staples and snacks. The bulk-bins at Whole Foods provided the daily snack-bag of nuts and dried fruit I like as a mid-morning protein break. Food Lion was the source for Breyers Fruit-on-the-Bottom yogurts (on sale). World Market has the flatbread/crackers we have discovered for our hummus, cheese, or spread snacks. They also have their own brand of chocolate/hazelnut spread similar to Nutella (yum) and we discovered a delicious dark chocolate bar flavored with strawberries and pepper that is out of this world.

While at Whole Foods, I asked the cheesemonger what he thought would be "the best snack-on-crackers cheese I've never tried." He suggested a Pirrano cheese, which is from the Gouda family. This is a great strategy for you to use in discovering new cheeses, and since I'm trying to discover new cheeses, I'm glad I tried it.

Saturday evening, we finally watched the new Battlestar Galactica. This show just keeps getting better and better. If you haven't watched it, you're really missing out. Grab the Season 1 DVD set and start watching.

Sunday, it was Church, followed by lunch with my parents (as usual.) After, the wife and I went home and watched a mini-marathon of the first 5 episodes of Lost, which we'd never seen. We look forward to the next mini-marathon, coming soon (perhaps this coming weekend.)

Now, the rush is over. Work is normality. No more rush for a while. Of course, there's always the conversational Spanish class which starts tonight...

Posted by Lockjaw at January 23, 2006 1:08 PM

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