Category: daily tedium

I got yelled at today. No, really, I did. One of the guys who sits across the hall from me yelled, “Kevin, if I hear you tell someone else you’re going to France, I’m going to scream!!”

Yeah, so, I’m going to France, and I’m nervous as hell. Logically, I know I’ll be fine. I know enough of the language to get around, buy food, and I don’t really fear getting lost. But, I can’t help it. I’m nervous. I know I’ll be fine, but it doesn’t stop the nervousness.

Tomorrow is the day… off to Paris for a meeting, and then to Mandelieu La Napoule for the conference. 11 days away from home, away from Jen and Max, and away from my own pillow. As sad as missing them will be, I am excited. I couldn’t be more excited. I’m almost all packed except for the clothes in the dryer and the many sundry drugs I have to take with me, but still have to ingest in the morning.

It’ll be nice to get away from the news for a while… really.

Just in case anyone cares, I’ve updated my Wishlist. You know, cuz my birthday’s coming up and stuff.

All set… really. I am. I have plane reservations, and tickets are being printed tomorrow. I’m going to Paris for about 18 hours, then off to Nice for 8 days of conferencing. Wheeee!! Hello, jet lag, nice to see you again. This time, I’m definitely taking a tylenol PM after dinner, so I sleep the whole way. No staying up watching movies and trying to read magazines. I will be the snoring jerk that keeps everyone else awake, waking up right as we pull into the gate in Munich, get my stuff and make it to the gate for Paris.

I know, you’re all sick of hearing about this, but I’m excited. I can’t help it.

So, my trip to France has been approved, and it looks like I’ll be flying Lufthansa, which has a gorgeous business class. Wow… Now, I just need to book the hotel, finish the grammar refresher, buy new shoes, and read a bunch of documents.

I couldn’t be more excited. Really.

Can I take more motrin now? Root canals suck. Kids, remember to brush your teeth, floss, and never mainline cough drops. I have cavities in the weirdest places.

Things in my head are kind of weird lately. Weird in what way, I can’t really say. Thoughts are jumbled and incoherent. I’m more absent-minded, as ideas are shotgunned around in my skull. I’ll start thinking about politics, and jump right into my big project at work, and then off to Dublin (where I might be going again in April), to some flukey design idea for this site or one of the others I need to redesign, to the fact that I should probably clean out the dishwasher, to phone calls I should be making for church, to what I need Jen to get at the grocery store this afternoon, to lunch, and then back again. It’s hard to concentrate, to focus on any one thing for very long.

Is it a sign that I have too many things going on? Or is no one thing pressing enough to grab my full attention? Am I over-medicated , hopped up on allergy meds that dry up my brain as well as my sinuses? Am I just out of inspiration? Have I used it up?

On the good news front, I am still in love with jEdit, and Jen (who I am definitely more in love with than I am with any text editor) agreed (easily, I might add) to switch to Linux once we get the cable modem set up (tonight, tonight, tonight). And, Max knows more about the human body than most sixth graders, and knows the scientific names of more bones than most high schoolers (I’m betting, anyway). We had a quiz (his idea, which is even freakier), and he could name all the “major” bones, plus knew that his fingers are phalanges, and that the bones in his wrist are called carpals and metacarpals. The only bone I stumped him with was the shoulder blade, I think just because he has a problem saying “scapula”. The kid surprises me every day.

Ok, back to work… no more day dreaming.

Busy, sick, installing open source content management systems, and working too. Watching TV, playing video games, giving son a bath, sending e-mail, making phone calls, playing video games, making the best roast ever, planning on voting Democrat in ’04, watching as Clark grows on me while Dean cools off, loving making lists, getting tired of explaining the benefits of XHTML/CSS and web standards in general to people who should already know, getting frustrated with unwilling webservers, and really really tired of software with crappy documentation. Jeez, people, if you’re going to write software that other people are going to use, freakin’ document it.

Things to do now that I have AOLserver, PostgreSQL and tDOM installed on the Powerbook:

• Start working on Heather’s site and build the CMS that I want (well, that she wants, but built the way I want).

• Build a note-taking utility that came to me in the shower the other day.

• Build an organizational management tool that can take imports from our crappy tool and make them better.

And this weekend, we get broadband at home!! Finally! I just couldn’t take dialing up anymore. It’s painful and just not worth it after sitting on a gigantic fat pipe at work all day. I got the gear for a nice wireless network so I can surf in style on the couch, and I should have time tonight or tomorrow to hook everything up. Then, it’s bye-bye Microsoft, and hello Fedora! I just have to convince Jen to switch to a lawver.net e-mail address… wish me luck.

And how are you?

I’m at work today, and loving every minute of it – really. Sudafed and Exedrin are keeping me awake, and I’ve finally got my plane tickets for Saturday. I do feel a lot better than I did yesterday, but I’m still far from “normal” (OK, “normal” for me…). I’m probably running at about 60, and hoping that the percentage increases to at least 85 by Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t accomplish much in my two days at home. I am kind of proud that I finished all the special features on Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean, and most of them on X2. I also gained four or five levels in Kingdom Hearts. Yeah, I’m a doer…

I think I’m going to go home now. I’m exhausted. Toodles.

What a perfect time to get a sinus infection!! I’m supposed to get on a plane in about 72 hours to fly across the Atlantic… Perfect time to have clogged sinuses.

I’ve been home for work for two days, missed a deadline, and still feel unwell. But, I’ll still be at work tomorrow in meetings and completing that thing that was due yesterday. Wheeee!!