Holidays Update

It's been a good holiday season for the family so far. Only the New Year's holiday left and then all will be back to normal. We have had a wonderful time hanging out with family and it has reminded me of what I've been missing since we moved to Florida. We had so many folks together on Christmas Eve at my brother in law's house and on Christmas day at my mother in law's. Food in abundance, good cheer. The kids have had a great time seeing everyone and made out like bandits yet again. Can't help it if they are well loved ;-)
I now know what my wife felt the first years that she was with my family during the holidays. When the conversations get to the "remember when" stage, you sometimes feel on the outside. Even on those times, I wouldn't trade it in for anything. We have all taken turns during the visiting times to host: Xmas Eve at brother in laws, Xmas Dinner at mother in laws, a mid week grill out at our house and tonight it's Chili at the brother in law's again. Tomorrow our visitors from out of town head back home in time for New Year's.
Work has been a bit slow this week, but a much welcomed time since the pace has been maddening going back to Thanksgiving. I've been able to catch up on some smaller parts of my current project, assist with a shutdown of another project, get the laptop up to date with the latest drivers and security fixes and reflect on the year a bit. It's almost annual review time so I have to get all my ideas in order for the formal process that could lead to raises in the coming year.

Ramping up for the holidays

Well it's official, I am on vacation from work. Seems like it's been a long time since I've had a break with the latest project turning the month of December into a blur. Time to get cracking at the holiday finish line as the days are coming quickly. It will be Yule on Friday, the Pagan celebration of the winter solstice and the longest night of the year. This year it doesn't quite feel like winter. We had a cold snap in the beginning of the month and even saw snow flurries, but since I returned from Tampa it's been nearly 70 degrees each day. So much for coming north for the cold. After that it is the Christmas holiday. I'm looking forward to spending time with the extended family this year. I have missed the gatherings from when I was growing up and our recent years we've been apart from everyone. This year that's changed.
With work being so busy, I have really missed out on a lot of my favorite things this year, the baking and time spent making memories in the kitchen. I get stressed with the decorating because I am impatient and I'm not very good at it. We have the tree up and lights on the house, the stockings are hanging in hopes that Santa will still come visit.
It's been a long year with many events and milestones. First dance recital for Morgan. First home purchase. The big move. Learning to work from home. Alex's first soccer moments leading up to his first goal. Learning and growing to be a veteran at work instead of just the young kid. Still didn't take all my vacation time. Learning that it's nice to be able to be a handy man and fix things. As we move into the new calendar year (the new wheel began at the end of October), I hope that we can continue to grow as a family, learn to be closer with one another and truly settle into our new home.

Making the switch

Today I am taking the first step on the blog and flipping it over to the new version which will run under my google account. Seems like they have gone through a lot of trouble to get this up and running. Also it's all over the blogger.com site. Better take advantage of the new stuff so they can turn off the older stuff. Being a veteran of the IT industry, I definitely understand needing to get the user base to upgrade quickly. Here's to taking the plunge! Thanks to the Google team for providing us with a boat load of free stuff that is so cool.

It's been a blur!

It's been a while since I've posted but it almost feels like it was yesterday. We had the election day victory for our fellow Dems. There was Thanksgiving where we were able to spend a lot of good time with family and friends. I've finished 3 books: Angels and Demons, The Davinci Code and Eragon. Work has been pushing me hard of late with the new project but it's very critical to our overall goals and I'm happy to be involved in such a high visibility project. I found out last Tuesday that they wanted me to travel this week for an education class. I'm in Tampa after a flurry of action getting things done at the house prior to my trip. I was able to help put the lights up on the house and get the tree up for the holidays. This week's class is mainly for the software development team, but because I am going to support them and the project they wanted me and my friend Nghia to come down and take the class to learn the new software projects. The pain has been that this huge project is still going on and I'm having to miss chunks of class to put out fires and get things working again. Today I missed two labs and two hours of instruction. Hopefully I can make up the lab work early before class starts.
I miss the kids and Kelly this week, but I've met another co-worker who lives up in Middle TN who is also down here for the class. We've been getting together for dinner each night after working late fixing problems and finishing class. Last night we found a new fun place in Tampa called Bar Louie. It's a great place with about 40 beers on tap with a friendly atmosphere. I had a little more than I should have but seemed to have survived the after effects.
Saturday I have a date with the puff to go and see the movie of Eragon (she's franticly trying to finish reading before we go see it). I highly recommend the book to anyone who likes the fantasy set in Medieval times mixed with a dungeons and dragons type theme. I have the sequel book called Eldest that I will have to start soon. Been hard with the late nights and change window weekends, plus trying to spend time with the kidos and get ready for the holidays.

Until next time...