Fun and Games Dept

We have a very big software migration project coming to fruition next weekend. The requirements have been all over the place, some of the testing team has been quite cranky, and the migration date has been pushed off a number of times. It looks like things are a “go” for next weekend. Of course they picked the weekend our friends Jeff and Mark in town for a visit.

I’ve been working many extra hours over the past few weeks, trying to keep up with all the demands of the job. I’m tired. And as I discovered when we first moved to Chicago, the business world in the United States is all about the Eastern Time Zone. Folks on the East Coast forget that a meeting at 8:30 AM there is a meeting at 5:30 AM here. Oh well, I guess.

I was playing around with a cheap webcam on my old Mac mini in my office and just took this photo. The workstation behind me in the photo is where I do all my day job work. I’m not particularly a fan of Windows 10 and there’s many times when I think, “I could do this much faster on a Mac”, but I don’t have that choice. My employer is in love with Microsoft.

It could be worse.

Jinx still isn’t sure about me yet.

I’ve been wanting to escape to our northeast for a week in pursuit of some severe storm chasing. My husband said he’s not really feeling the need to join me on this trip. With his blessing, I’m off for a week the first full week of June.

I’m really excited about this.

I think I’m going to fly to a destination and then rent a car to drive home, focusing on storms and back roads. My plan is to avoid freeways whenever possible.

I’ll be armed with a camera or two, some weather radios, some “real” maps, and a little more than a week of open calendar and open road.

I’ll be blogging about the experience when this takes place. Hopefully Mother Nature will be cooperative.

My mother hates being called “Ma”. As kids we were always corrected to use “Mom” instead of “Ma”, usually through loudly executed dialog.

I talked to Mom this morning and wished her a Happy Mother’s Day. She was outside enjoying the Central New York spring weather with my nephew’s dog. As part of the CNY ritual, she was sitting in the garage with the door open watching the activities in the neighborhood. That’s what folks do up there.

Here’s a photo from 2019 that makes me smile. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Waiting in a drive thru shortly before 1:00 AM.

We decided to go out to dinner this evening. It was a good time; even after 26+ years we still very much enjoy each other’s company

The service at the restaurant was a little uneven. This didn’t deter us from an enjoyable evening, but the awkwardness was noticeable. The server seemed to be struggling a little bit, for example, when he ran down the dessert list he mentioned “chocolate chip, pumpkin, strawberry shortcake, etc.” but didn’t tell us what the dessert actually was. To avoid making things more confusing, I passed on asking “chocolate chip, what?” and just went with strawberry shortcake, which turned out to be a cookie with a scoop of ice cream.

I had written a long post about modern day Christianity and my thoughts around it. I found the post to be extremely hostile and “loud”, something I’m trying to avoid this week.

Instead, here’s a video of Samantha and Endora arguing over the Stephens’ living room furniture.

I’m a little concerned that the Vanilla Latte Buzz was spelled “Vanilla Late Buzz”, but it was still enjoyable for brunch over the weekend.

Photos taken tonight.