Some NaBloPoMo, eh?
2007-12-03, 12:58 p.m.

Day 1194 � 1198

First, welcome to December � birthday month for my brother, mother, wife, myself and of course, the little baby Jesus. Want to see how December greeted us this year? Too bad. Here�s a look out the window from our home PC:

Geeze, commit to writing an entry a day for a month and what happens? Nothing apparently. It�s funny how life and work conspire against what you thought you could do. Maybe I need Oliver Stone to come along and expose the conspiracy so I can start to combat it.

Anyhow.

Wednesday I had the unadulterated joy of taking Bob in to get the stitches from his surgery removed. It was a blast. Lots of driving involved. Work to Bob�s apartment � 8 miles. Apartment to hospital � 8 miles. Hospital back to apartment � (guess, I dare you) 8 miles. Then I�m taking the rest of the afternoon off (what�s left of it), so Bob�s apartment to home � 10 miles (fooled you a little, didn�t I?).

Insert 24 hour break here.

OK. New day now. Geeze, just as I�m griping about how hard it is to get an entry done, things get busier. Better shut about it, shouldn�t I?

The Bob�s surgery follow up went fine. He�s got some daily dressing changes to keep up with still. Getting the visiting nurse service to cover that. It�s just impossible for one of us to be there every day to see that it gets done and done properly. Lets remember, the day after Bob had the surgery he didn�t remember that he had it. You think he�s going to remember his post-surgery care instructions? Me either. That�s why I have copies of the instructions and spare dressing materials. (added later � the steri-strips that were supposed to stay on for a week? He scratched off in under 4 hours. Before we could even schedule a nurse visit.)

What else? Oh � I have that oatmeal/chocolate/raspberry/almond cookie bar recipe copied. Unfortunately my scanner wants to either produce a copy or save everything as a jpg file. Going to try munging it into a pdf, but it might not go well.

Just to add to the disjointedness of this entry, lemme tell you that NOW, it�s Saturday morning. I added that little pic of out lovely outdoor view (almost Christmasy, dontcha think?). Our outdoor thermometer says it�s 10 degrees, but I think it�s a lying hunka junk. It�s probably closer to 25. Tropical, eh?

Now that we�re here at Monday morning (told you this was going to be disjointed), the weather is only getting worse. Had to break out the snow blower Sunday morning. Had a solid 4 inches on the ground and it was still coming down. Of course, it warmed up and by evening the snow changed to rain & freezing rain.

Outside of that � accomplished a whole lot of weekend type activities. Went through my filing and dumped about one entire file drawer through the shredder. Had another half a file drawer of stuff that had no identifying information, so that just got chucked into the recycle bin.

Got no hunting in at all. Didn�t get to the gym over the weekend either. Gym-wise, I�ve only been doing the 3 spin classes a week and it�s starting to show. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Work has been seriously kicking my butt. Got a grip on both problems I�m working on. One (the one in production) looks solvable, but it�s going to cost $$ to fix it. The other one, we�re sniffing around the problem, but have yet to get any solid evidence as to what�s causing it. Since it doesn�t involve production, it gets back burnered. On top of that, I�m supposed to be in a 3 day training class for a new software tool I�m supposed to know how to use by early next year. Right now, I�m 4 hours behind the rest of the class and don�t think I�ll make it there today. Maybe tomorrow. Need to resolve the production problem first.

Had another solo session with my shrink Annette Thursday. Wow. What a head spinner that was. Cindy was in one of her moods during our last couples session. Annette, being a shrink and all, picked up on it. Annette had even asked Cindy directly if she�d been drinking prior to coming to the session! Personally, I hadn�t thought so, but it was interesting to watch Annette at work. Cindy�s mood was one of those where she utters one or two word answers, complains that no one communicates or understands, but refuses to say what�s on her mind. So Annette finally got to see that first hand.

When I saw Annette solo Thursday, that�s all she could talk about. Her first question was �Is that how she is all the time?� I admitted that it was limited to once or twice a week, usually for less than a full day at any one time. Even at that, Annette�s whole deal was how/why put up with it? Up to that point, she�d been pretty optimistic about how things have been progressing with us as a couple. After seeing how Cindy was on that one visit though, she�s getting all �If she�s going to be like that, I don�t see how this is going to work out�. She also asked if Cindy had made her appointments with her own 1 on 1 counselor. Annette knew she had made the initial visit, but was unsure after that. I was reasonably certain Cindy had made the second appointment, but didn�t know about a third.

We meet again as a couple next Wednesday, I see Annette solo the Wednesday after that. It�ll be an interesting set of sessions to watch. Too bad I have to actually be IN them.

So that�s how THAT�s going. No more deer, lousy workouts, odd counseling sessions with more in store. At least Cindy has been feeling a little more frisky of late. Slowly, slowly getting her to expand her repertoire � gotta get variety one way or another. If I can ever get her to expand her bag of tricks to what Ms. CL had in her arsenal . . . . (Of course, I can NEVER let Cindy know that�s what I�m aiming for. Or maybe I should?)

I�m rounding up ingredients for those chocolate/raspberry/oatmeal/almond cookie bars. In great shape except for the chocolate/raspberry swirlie bits. Found swirlies with caramel, white chocolate and peanut butter, but no raspberry. I�m going to check a couple more stores (different chains) before I give in and use the white chocolate ones. It�s just that around here, Wegmans is so dominant around here (I have 3 of them within 4 miles of home) that even the evil empire (you know, the store that Sam started) is having trouble gaining much foothold. But I can check them out and see if they have the elusive raspberry swirlie chips. Plus, that particular outpost of the evil empire is right across the street from another Wegmans I haven�t checked out yet � and they�re BOTH on my way home from work. I need to get these cookie bars under way. They�re bound for cookie trays other than my own (I know better than to have them hanging around in MY house) and I want to get them finished before the real holiday rush.

Got an assembly manager hovering around. Guess lunch is over. Better go figure out what our �path forward� is going to be.

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