That picture should give you a clue that I’ve been on vacation. I took it on July 5th in Magnetawan at about 10 o’clock at night. There are lots more like it in this slideshow.
Due to some insane thinking by my boss, I wasn’t allowed to use a full two weeks of vacation this year and only got to take a week, so I took the week of July 7th and snuck out of work early on Thursday, July 3rd. For some strange reason, I decided to take the eastern route up to Canada (Niagra Falls). It’s only about 30 miles longer than taking I-75 to Detroit, and I figured it’d be a nicer drive.
I can’t say that it sucked, but it did rain for most of the night and I pulled into a rest area in PA at about midnight on the 3rd, totally exhausted. Slept for about three hours and then continued north, arriving at Ahmic Lake at around lunchtime. A cheese sandwich thus began my week of bliss with Cy, “T”, Dad, Dianne and – briefly – Diane Neusse, Billy someone and his fiance, Faryn, and another lady who’s name I can’t remember.
It was a typical Ahmic vacation, with dominoes and cards and beer and reading and sleeping and beer and tennis and bears and swimming and cocktails and great food and staining the deck and beer and sunsets and baby birds and boating and walks and beer and laughs and fun. All this for $75 (if you don’t count the $400 in gasoline). Thanks as always, Mr. and Mrs. Tall.
Far too quickly, it was the folloing Saturday morning and I had to head for home. I took the western route this time and it rained for most of the early part of the trip. That had stopped by the time I was on the outskirts of Windsor, Ontario – and so had the traffic. Completely. As in people were getting out of cars, walking around on the highway, meeting other people, trading vacation stories…we had a ball for about 45 minutes.
I stayed that night in Lima, Ohio (my traditional halfway point) and made it home Sunday night. In the rain again. Another vacation gone, but I’ve still got ten days left to burn later this year.
As I mentioned in the previous entry, I was painting my deck before I left for Canada. Julie and I did manage to finish that project on about July 2. For the most part. As I type this, I still need to apply a second coat to the floor of the thing, but it still looks pretty good and I hopefully won’t have to do that again for a couple of years.
When she wasn’t helping me with the deck, Julie amused herself by swabbing primer all over my spare bedroom, assuming that I would finish painting it while she was in Minnesota on vacation. Well, she’s been up there since last Friday and she gets home in two days and I haven’t done a thing. Ha!
It appears that I will indeed continue to receive a paycheck from ye olde AT&Te for the forseeable future. I just got the call this morning and, barring catastrophe, I’ll be working for a guy in Mission, Kansas. While I’m not entirely sure of my job duties, they will involve creating metrics reports from a number of U-Verse databases and making them availalable via a web interface. This is something that’s been in the works for the last month or so, and I was never sure if I’d get the job or not; so it was kind of a relief to finally get the voice mail today.
Yes, I said my boss will be in Kansas. I, however, will be at our U-Verse operations center right here in Tucker, GA. Most of my team is already there – has been for a year – but I’ve managed to sit tight in the BellSouth building where I’ve been working for the last 6 years, although I do have a desk at Tucker and most of my stuff has been there for several months. I’m not anti-social or anything. I just don’t want my current boss to realize that I have virtually nothing to do. Shutting down a company is BORING, people. I’d guess that I do actual work-related stuff for a total of about 45 minutes a day. The rest of the day is spent surfing the net, watching movies, listening to music, walking around a nearly-empty building….not the type of stuff you’d want to have your boss see.
I do come up with little projects for myself (inventorying the basement, building webservers for shared documents, cleaning the crud off of mouse balls….) but if I really WORKED at doing those things, I’d be done in about 4 hours. I have to spread these tasks out over a couple of weeks to keep from gnawing my arms off.
Tomorrow, morning, I get to play at the DCI Southeastern Championships with the GA Defense Force band. Oh joy. I’ll get to stand up there in front of 30,000 people who know what a brass band is supposed to sound like and play the national anthem with 13 other people who seem to care more about the fuzz on their army berets than on intonation.
But it’s a free ticket into the competition, which is basically the only reason I agreed to do it.
On Sunday, as I said, Julie gets back into town. I’m supposed to be picking her up at the airport sometime…I’ve lost the itinerary she gave me. Then, at midnight Sunday, I go on call until midnight next Sunday. So there’s two weekends shot. I’d hoped to go camping the following weekend, but – wait for it – I’m on call AGAIN that weekend, filling in for a guy who took my on-call July 6th so that I could go to Canada. After that, we’re starting to get close to football season and all of my weekends will be shot for a few months. Guess hitting the woods is going to have to wait.
Speaking of football, I get to fly to another game this year. Oh joy. I do so love to fly. But Furman’s playing at Colgate and I’m not willing to drive there. The guy who I work for in the sports network (I’m now the official radio photographer…you didn’t even know radio people needed photos, did you) called me yesterday and told me he’d booked me on the charter. I was really sort of hoping to miss that week. This year is going to be a bear, much like two years ago. We’ve got away games at Boone and Elon (NC), Blacksburg (VA), Hampton (NY) and Birmingham. That Birmingham trip will actually be the shortest for me (remember, my “home” games are still 150 miles away). I don’t think I’ll be doing a whole lot of sleeping during the football season. I do think a number of my shots from last year might be in this year’s programs, however. That’s sort of cool.
Well, I just realized that it’s pushing 10 and I’ve got to be downtown at 9 tomorrow morning for the DCI thing, so I think I’d better get some sleep. Hope everyone’s having a happy whatever. I’ll try to update this thing in a few weeks if anything exciting happens.
TWD