It feels like a lot more than three days have gone by since I last posted.  It has been a week to forget, work-wise. 

It started last weekend.  For once, I wasn't on call, but I had to get involved anyway.  Long, long, long story as short as possible:  A vendor had a failure Saturday night, took them 'til Sunday night to fix it.  Not so bad, since that was all nonbusiness hours.  Monday we were good.  Tuesday morning, we're back down.  We scramble to bypass the problem.  Tuesday night, it's back up, no, wait, it's back down.  Wednesday morning, it's back up, but I'm not confident that we should get off our bypass method.  Major blow-out with boss about it (our first in the eight-plus years I've been there).  End up partially going off the bypass late Wednesday.  Decide, after much debate, to move to new platform (a project which had been in the works for several months), a bit early.  Means we won't do quite as extensive testing as we would prefer, but expect it to be more stable than current system.  Second blow-out with boss about this, as boss will be out of town when move occurs. 

Go to Giants game Wednesday night; train gets delayed, miss first inning; it's a special event night, so stadium is full of non-fans, who are busy being annoying to actual fans; Giants lose; get home around 11:00pm; work for 30 minutes or so then try to get some sleep. 

Go to work at 7:00am Thursday.  Start move to new system late Thursday afternoon, which brings system down for longer than we would have liked, but up and running satisfactorily within a couple of hours, and almost perfectly by 8:30 or so.  Work until 9:15, go home, work for another hour, try to get some sleep.  Just to spice things up, we're having a heat wave and the house is uncomfortably hot, making it very difficult to sleep. 

Get to work at 7:15am today.  Finish moving off bypass and on to new system.  Troubleshoot and correct variety of problems.  Everything seems to be running properly.  Cross fingers and finally leave office at 5:00.  So far, so good this evening. 

And another annoyance I didn't need this week:  The MySpace Truth Box.  The equivalent of saying "Hey, here's a Slam Book page with my name on it.  Posted right on my own site.  For everyone, including me, to see. Oh, and say anything you want, 'cause it's anonymous."  The Little Missy has a private MySpace page, where only people she "approves" can visit.  So these anonymous comments are from people she thinks (thought) were her friends.  She had some not-so-nice comments; nothing truly vulgar or nasty, but enough to upset her.  I made her take it down. 

And I'm out.   

Early Friday evening the J-Boy came home for the weekend. That started things off on the right note. 

Friday night was the Little Missy's choir concert.  There are six choirs at her school, with about 160 total participants (some sing in more than one choir).  It was a great concert, as usual.  The choir director is an amazing young woman.  She gets those kids so fired up about singing and performing that the 'sixth' choir isn't even a class; it's kids getting together at the school one night a week to sing and prepare for concerts.  And they are fabulous. 

Saturday I lazed around most of the day.  I alternately watched reruns of the current season of ANTM (my guilty pleasure), read a book and did laundry.  Both kids were out, so the Husband and I went to dinner, then came home & I was lazy for a while longer.  I went to pick up the Little Missy from a friend's house, came home and went to bed.  It had been such an exhausting day! 

Sunday I got up early, as usual, took a shower, started some (more) laundry and got ready for the Giant's game.  The kids and I went and sat in the bleachers (not my favorite spot for viewing): 

That's Aaron Rowand on second (white uniform). 

Saturday had marked the season debut of my favorite, Omar Vizquel, returning from knee surgery.  He had a great game, going three for five, so his average was outstanding: 

That's .600 if you can't see it. 

Sunday he was batting eighth; you can see the pitcher's average (.067) just below Omar's. 

They intentionally walked Omar three times, then walked him a fourth time that probably was intentional. 

After the game, we took the train home and the Husband made dinner; he bbq'd the steak I had bought, baked potatoes and steamed zucchini and broccoli, and worked with the Pillsbury doughboy to make biscuits. 

He and the J-Boy had met up at Best Buy the day before and picked out two awesome gifts for me:  an external hard drive, which I would have bought anyway to make sure my PC is backed up, and an FM transmitter for my iPod, which I wouldn't have bought for myself so it's a great gift! 

The J-Boy didn't stay for dinner because we wanted him to get back to school at a reasonable hour, which he did (he usually remembers to call when he arrives, and last night was one of those "usual" times). 

After dinner, the Little Missy and I watched Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters, and then I crawled in to bed. 

All in all, a good weekend! 

Aaaand, we're back...

BOPC finally showed up tonight after flaking last night.  The man that came was the same man who called me three times last night, the first time to say he was going to be very late, the second to tell me that he was not approved for overtime and therefore wouldn't be coming, and the third time to confirm for tonight.  It turned out to be the modem, which may or may not have been fried by the power problem on Saturday.  Luckily, it was under warranty so there shouldn't be any charge for the replacement or for the "house call." 

So I uploaded a couple of photos.  First, the view from my seats for the series of tickets I bought this season: 

I don't care for this view as much as the view I had last year.  I was higher up, but directly behind home.  Now that I look at this pic, I should have used the zoom a bit more, as the view is actually quite a bit better.  The players don't really look like ants from where we sit! 

And, here is "my" side of the garage pre-Clean Sweep on the left and post-Clean Sweep on the right: 

The cardboard boxes on the far right of that picture went to the garage sale, so everything that we kept fits under the stairs rather than sticking out into the main space. 

And the big green fish (a backdrop from the school play) is now on the ceiling.