This is just the fun stuff. I am leaving out all of the fevers, vomiting, face implosions, second-degree burns, and tears:\
We left for my parents’ house in Mississippi on the Friday before Christmas, a day earlier than we had planned, because Max kept nagging us about wanting to be there already. The drive really was better than I expected, but I had to pull out a DVD about three hours into the second day’s drive. That kept everyone happy until we got to town. Yay. We got to Miss about 1 pm. It was so nice to see my parents. I just wanted to hold hands and sing “Kum By Ah.”\
While there we went to the zoo and had fun having a sing-along with a dancing, singing Santa statue and dropping coins into the spinny, twirly donation bucket. Yea, that isn’t a ringing endorsement of the zoo, is it?\
My parents took the kids to see the chipmunk movie and they both loved it! (Which is difficult to achieve with their age gap.) While they were doing that, Kevin and I saw Charlie Wilson’s War. Woot!\
On Christmas Eve, we drove to this little town, Tylertown, to see a Christmas lights display in the town’s park. One hundred miles round trip for a 13 minute drive through the park. Do I know how to prioritize my resources or what?\
My dad had fun taking the kids for rides on the trailer attached to his riding lawn mower. That is our version of a hayride, I guess.\
One of th gifts Brian received is a Barbie, because he’s been asking for one for ages. My mother-in-law let him play with one at her house and said that he just loved it. Well, I am not sure exactly what was going on there, but all Brian wants to do with his new Barbie is “smell her butt.” Yes, he’s three.\
My mom invited a friend over for Christmas dinner. She is a gifted educator. We talked for awhile about Max, and she kind of spurred me on to do more about Max’s schooling. It’s been really hard to find out answers here and I keep getting the run around. Boo.\
My dad and Kevin took the kids fishing for the first time. Apparently everyone had fun. I only have one picture though because the adults were too busy keeping the fishing hooks out of the kids’ eyes and keeping the kids from falling into the lake.\
The town had a fund raiser by selling giant fiberglass swans to businesses and organizations. It was fun to drive around town and spot them. Think of the painted cows in Chicago and you’ll get the idea.\
Probably the highlight of the trip, and isn’t this sort of sad, was watching the USA-version of The Forty Year Virgin with my parents. No F-words, but all the raunch. That movie is hysterical. For some reason, let’s blame the eggnog, it was so much funnier the second time around.\
I was really intent on trying all the yummy regional food: fried catfish, shrimp creole, bbq ribs, and Krispy Kremes (heh). Add all of the holiday food on top of that and I need to eat salad for the next month to cleanse the body.\
We left a day later than we had originally planned. I needed that extra day with my folks; they just live too far away now that I am hampered by school vacation schedules. Boo. Before we left, we made plans to go down there in June and then drive to the beach, plus my mom said that she and my dad would come up here next Christmas. :)\
There may or may not be pictures posted soon.
Ack!
I just dropped Brian off at big boy preschool. Cries.
HA!
The GOP political candidates in Buffy-speak: Clicky here to see.
Happy New Year and Twitter Stats
We had a lovely time in Mississippi eating way too much fried/barbecued/fatty food (I only gained one pound, and have promptly lost three, so no worries), playing with the dog, hanging out with Jen’s parents, fishing and watching the boys ride around in the trailer behind Grandpa Brian’s lawn tractor. I’ll try to upload pictures tonight.\
I’m back at work, and having a hard time getting back into the work groove. So, I got my twitter stats instead… yeah, productive, I know (I also cleared out my inbox, remembered my kerberos password, did annual review feedback for folks, updated SVN and set up a meeting for this afternoon).\
What I found funny is the tweets per hour. Since I got the blackberry over the summer, I twitter more at night while watching TV than I do while I’m at work. I also seem to post a lot around 11AM, which is usually when I take my first break of the day. All in all, I post a lot, which doesn’t really bother me, or seem to affect my work. I love the “noise” twitter generates. After working for almost 13 years with constant interruption, if I don’t get interrupted every ten minutes or so, it feels like something’s wrong.
Also, March was my heaviest month o’ tweets, which isn’t surprising since SxSW was right smack in the middle, and that’s where I really “got it”. I’m not sure what happened in May, or why December was so high – especially considering I was at home for almost three weeks and without “real” bandwidth for a week.
I think I’ve reached a sort of twitter equilibrium. I follow about 200 people, with only about 50 sent to my phone, which keeps the noise on my phone when I’m not near the computer down to a dull roar.\
(I generated the stats with the very handy script written by Damon Cortesi)
The Book Has Arrived!!
Not in stores or anything, but I got my author copy of Adapting to Web Standards from the very nice FedEx guy today. Christopher Schmitt had to convince me over IM to actually take the plastic wrap off and take a peek inside.\
There’s something really weird about seeing something I wrote in a real book… one that has my name on the cover, on the back of it… etc. But, here it is, sitting next to me on the desk – yep, still has my name on it.\
I took a look through it, and it’s gorgeous. New Riders went full-color with it, and it’s just plain lovely. My chapter’s been edited to the point it actually makes sense, and the other chapters are stellar (I wouldn’t say anything if they weren’t, but they are really good). What I like about the book is it’s not flowery. There’s real actionable stuff in it, and advice for how to solve not only the technical challenges of a project, but the human ones. There’s a ton of good stuff in there, and I’m not saying that because I wrote a part of it (the good stuff is in the other chapters anyway).\
I had a lot of help. Kevin Luman, Michael Richman and David Artz all sat through interviews (I’m sorry, guys), and Christopher Schmitt and Victor Gavenda (our editor) were always ready with an encouraging word or constructive feedback. And of course, Jen already puts up with a lot, with travel and long hours. She was very nice about letting me disappear for several weeks after getting home from work to go write.\
I can’t wait to have people read it and see what you all think. A lot of smart people worked on it, and I think it’s easily the best writing I’ve ever done (and then edited even more to make it readable!). I’m honored that Christopher asked me to help out, and I’m pretty damned proud of the result.
Shake It Up
Yesterday was apparently Lawver day at Cheeburger, Cheeburger, the new burger place by Wegman’s. Kevin, the kids, and I went there for dinner last night. Their onion rings were so OMG!delicious, Kevin was really happy with his burger, and I was really happy with my salad. The highlight of the place, though, is the drinks. They have over 50 shake flavors, and you can mix and match more than one to create something unique. I didn’t order a shake with my meal thinking that I would get one to go before we left. (I remember rushing my order during my first visit to Cold Stone Creamery last year and how I was horribly disappointed with my choice- plain chocolate and nuts. What was I thinking??- and spent the rest of the visit trying to snag tastes from other people.) This time I knew to take my time. I spent all of dinner going over the awesome shake combinations: raspberry chocolate marshmallow, strawberry pineapple upside down cake, mango coconut cream pie, peppermint smores, caramel banana cheesecake. There are just too many awesome ones to name. They need a little taster menu of three tiny shakes. 🙂 They also had tons of other old-fashioned drinks, like floats, ice cream sodas, egg creams, and sodas. It was too much! I was paralyzed with indecision. I ordered water and didn’t get a shake to go after all. HA!\
Earlier in the day, Kevin’s mom and sister went there for lunch. Heather waxes poetic about their burgers but completely neglects to mention the shakes! Silly girl.
Oh no!
Max’s ‘intro to martial arts’ class was canceled because he was the only one signed up. Drat.
Woot-ish.
The past couple of days, Brian has been sleeping in until 5:30, give or take a few minutes. It’s so awesome, I love it. This is happening just in time for us to go to Mississippi where he can once again wake up at 4:30. (Cries.)
Yay TV
Dexter really messes with my brain sometimes. The show is so fascinating and yet the character is so self-involved, in a completely unattractive way, he could have been a regular on 30-something. I still find myself rooting for him. It’s crazy. Manipulative tv bastards make some good stuff, though, huh?\
Who else is watching this show?
Say what?
One of the kindergarten teachers at Max’s school doesn’t use correct grammar. What’s up with that?\
While on the phone with the office at the school, the woman who answered kept saying, “Try later,” because she didn’t understand what I was asking. What’s up with that?\
Grrrrrrr.