Four posts in four days

So I said on Monday that I would be getting back to writing and promised that I would be posting at least once a week.  Now it is Thursday and I’ve posted four times in four days.  Well, what can I say.  I guess I’m just an overachiever.

Stop laughing.

A buddy of mine invited me to go with him and some other old friends of mine on a camping float trip next month.  I got permission from the boss and in a few short weeks I will be making myself miserable in the middle of nowhere.  On purpose.  Sometimes we humans just don’t seem very bright do we?

I mean seriously, a camping float trip?  I mean, sure, it sounds fun… but in reality?  The first day and night will be fine because we can have real food.  Meat and other niceties will last in a cooler for a day no problem.  However on the second night I am assuming that I will be eating a rehydrated meal consisting of meat flakes and unidentifiable vegetable concentrate.  And a Rice Krispy Treat.  Because we have boxes of those from Sam’s.

Normally on a float I would consume an obscene amount of alcohol (at least in my younger days… maybe not now) but on this trip I will not be waking up the next day in the comfort of my own home.  No, I will be waking up to a sore back from sleeping on a thousand pointy rocks.  We’re in Missouri, there is no soil.  Just rocks.  Look it up.  If I get hungover, I will spend the entire day miserable and stranded on a rock outcropping in the middle of nowhere with no fresh food or water and no Internet.  What does Internet have to do with hangovers?  Nothing, but it’s all part of the misery.

So, I don’t even think I’ll be taking any alcohol.  Maybe a few beers for the initial float to the camp site but nothing else.  I may be able to drink soda warm but warm domestic beer is just not worth it.

Oh and since we are camping half way through the float that means that everything has to fit in our canoe.  Cooler, tent, sleeping bag, clothes, towel, toilet paper, sun screen, insect repellent, food, snacks, drinks, teddy bear, axe, rope, fishing pole and gear and whatever else I can think of.  Canoes are not large especially when you are sharing one with another guy roughly the same size as myself.  And I’m not terribly small.  I’m just saying.

So what have I gotten myself into?  Am I nuts?  Yeah, probably.  Am I still going?  Yeah.  Why?  Well, I’ve never done a float like this before.  I’ve been on tons of float trips but never one where you had to bring everything with you and camp on the river.  If nothing else, I want the experience.  I’m hoping to reach level 8 by the time I finish the trip. (If you didn’t get that joke, you are probably better off…)

I’m meeting with a few of the guys tonight to go over what extra stuff they might have that me and my buddy can borrow instead of buying.  Going to need a couple of dry sacks at least.  I haven’t seen my tent since we moved in either.  We lost a lot of stuff that was in storage with Graebel that we was never returned.  That’s a whole ‘nother story.  Suffice it to say that I don’t think we have all the gear that we used to have.  And that sucks.

Unmotivated. Still?

I’ve been feeling pretty unmotivated as you can tell from my lack of posts here lately.  And from my lack of new comics.  (OMG has it really been eight months since I posted a comic???)  I haven’t posted any new drawings or any new writing.  I haven’t even posted any pics of our now nine month old little girl.  Three more months till her first birthday.

Damn… time flies.

Well, I need to get out of this slump and the only way I know how to do that is to start posting.  It may not be earth-shattering (and honestly, when has it ever been here) or even interesting but I need to start posting.  I’m always seeing things or reading things and thinking that I need to post about and vent how I feel about it.  And I haven’t been.  I’m not making excuses or apologies.  It’s my site. *sticks tongue out*

So… to start off slow and to not overwhelm myself as I am apt to do, I am going to promise myself that I will post at least once a week going forward.  I may post more often than that but I don’t plan to post less.  And considering how few posts I’ve made in the past few months, that is a marked improvement.

Yeah… I can do that.  It’s August 17th and only two weeks left in the month.  I can post at least once more this month.  No problemo.

And if I can kick my own ass into shape maybe I’ll even work on a comic or two or do a little fiction.  You never know.

3rd Wedding Anniversary

Today – July 23rd, 2009 – is our third wedding anniversary.  That means that we got married on July 23rd, 2006 just before we moved from St. Louis, MO to Hong Kong, China.  Why am I writing like this and being so specific?  Because it makes it easier to search on later when I forget the next time.

Not that I’m in trouble or anything.  We both forgot about it actually.  My Mom actually reminded Michelle about it which is how we found out in the first place.  If it hadn’t been for that, we might have completely forgotten about the whole thing which would have been kind of confusing when a few family member sent us cards that arrived yesterday.  Meh.

Now the really funny thing is that Michelle had made plans to be out of town this week before we knew it was our anniversary.  Of course she was nice enough to ask if she should cancel her plans but that is just silly.  Realistically we would have gone out to eat (if Kira cooperated) and maybe had a little alone time later (if Kira cooperate) and that’s about it.  We can do that when she gets back.  No big deal.

So, to my out of town wife, I just have this to say:

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!

Love,
Vince

The world we live in and life in general

So much happens on a day to day basis to me and everyone else that there is no possible way to for everyone to keep everyone posted on the goings-ons and what-nots of their lives at all times.  It’s just not possible.  So we share small samplings of our lives on bliggity blogs and our face-spaces and we move on.  Years ago we didn’t even do that much.

Kira and Michelle have both been sick for a little over a week now.  So far, I have been very lucky to not yet get sick.  The wife went through antibiotics and had no result so more than likely she has viral bronchitis just like our poor baby girl.  Kira has to breath in medicine in vapor form from a mask hooked to a loud machine.  She was basically tolerant of the experience at first but I think her patience is getting thin for that routine.  Not sure how much longer she needs that treatment but hopefully not too long.  She seems to be a bit better.

Kira continues to amaze me with her progress and ability.  Michelle continues to amaze me in taking care of Kira every day and the house and everything else.  I know she thinks I don’t appreciate her and the hard work she does every day but I do.  I really do.  I am very proud of both of them.  I really don’t think that Kira would be so well adjusted and amazingly advanced if it weren’t for Michelle being with her every day and working with her and taking care of her.

We have been getting the run-around with Graebel… again.  You may remember we had issues with them back in October of last year.  Well, to one extent or another we have had continual issues since then as well.  Now for the past few months we have been dealing with trying to get our insured items covered and repaired.  Some things have worked out and many things haven’t but nothing has gone smoothly.  You can read up on the current problems over at the wife’s site.  I have given up dealing with them and turned them over to her to deal with.  I’m betting they are now wishing that they would have just worked things out with me.  If we ever decide to move to a new city again with my current employer I will do everything I can to NOT use Graebel for that or any other move.

I’ve been busy working on a few different projects at work.  I’m working on getting some new security software rolled out to all of our computers (actually our Altiris guy is doing all the work) and I’m in the final stages of getting ready for a big office integration in New York City.  I do not look forward to being away from the wife and our little girl while working on that project and I’m sure Michelle isn’t looking forward to it either.  But I don’t have to travel too often and I’m still employed so I do what I have to do.

We were planning on migrating from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to the new Exchange 2007 and I’ve been working on the testing and planning of that for a few months.  However, now that Microsoft is releasing the next version (2010) earlier than expected, and faster than any other major revision cycle in history for that product, we are now on hold.  The idea is that we will now skip Exchange 2007 and go directly to 2010.  OK cool.  We can do that.

I have been working on some new comics for A Little Scary in my “spare” time but I missed my re-launch date of June 1st already.  I’m hoping to get a couple done soon.  Here’s hoping.  I don’t want to start up again without at least a small buffer or I’ll just end up getting discouraged again when a deadline comes and goes with no update.

Bonus points if you can tell me where I got the title of this post.

Then just like that…

Strange things happen.  My family has always been blessed/cursed with that sort of history.  I’ve lived with that all my life.  Today was just another one of those days.

Many people claim that writing is therapeutic and I am definitely one of those people.  I have a hard time expressing my thoughts and feelings on a regular basis but I can pour my heart out with writing.  However, I never thought that my writing about depression and the loss of my USB drive would have the effect that it did.

I was in a two hour meeting this morning where my boss and I were trying to figure out the extrordinarily poorly documented process of getting SSL setup with Windows 2008, IIS7 and Exchange 2007.  I did a lot of pacing and leaning on the desk as we worked through things as there isn’t room for two people to sit at his desk.  Inevitably at one point I started fidgeting and put my hand in my pants pocket and started fiddling with my key ring.  I do that sometimes.  Just a nervous habit I suppose.

It was then, while I was in mid-sentence, that I realize that I had something small and plastic in my hand and I was spinning it around on a pivot over and over.  Another nervous habit but one that was lost when my USB drive disappeared.  I kept turning it a few more times in my pocket while my brain started putting two and two together in a fairly efficient manner that was thoroughly clouded in a haze of WTF.

Then just like that I pulled my hand from my pocket and looked and sure enough – there was my little black and blue USB drive completely intact.  Of course my boss had turned to look at me since I had stopped talking mid-sentence and I had to explain.

Of course the funny thing is that there is no way that the drive should have been in my pants pocket.  It’s been over a month… maybe a month and a half since I actually lost the drive.  I’ve worn these pants since then and the pocket it was in is the right front that I use most often.  And these are not the pants that I wore the day I lost the drive or on the day before which was the last time I had used the drive.  I had searched both those pairs of pants.  And of course I had put my keys and pocketknife in that same pocket this morning like I do every morning and didn’t notice it then or even when I was putting the pants on.

But strange things happen.  We were also missing a portable hard drive that we had backed up data to for the trip from Hong Kong.  It showed up two days ago in a bag that we had both searched previously.  Muse had lost her Nikon flash for her camera after just having it in Chicago.  It showed up buried in a box of stuff in the office that had yet to be unpacked.  Yeah.  Strange things.  It’s what we live with every day.

Of course this USB drive doesn’t show up until I write about losing it.  It’s not until I tell the world that it went missing and how it made me felt and how its loss was a focus for so many things.  It wasn’t until I opened up after a long break that it came back in the most impossible of places.  So you see, writing is therapeutic for me.  Just maybe not in the way I would have expected this time.