If I miss a day recently, it's because it was packed FAR TOO FULL of craziness for me to even get a chance to write about it!!! So, here are the past two days.
APRIL 6thThursday morning I don't recall anything totally out of the ordinary. The day went pretty OK, until the afternoon. Oh yeah. Jen had something scheduled where she needed to leave some kids with me, and I had some pretty big, intense projects I was working on, so it was not looking that great, but I really wanted to keep as many kids as possible so she could enjoy herself. It was a homeschool clothes trading event. Things she really loves. So, I really wanted her to do it.
So she took Ian (7) and Julia (3 weeks) and I kept a sleeping Kirstie (2) and a computer playing Alex (4). Alex did OK, except that he was in my office, and I got to hear about every shot he made in Gopher Golf, or every accomplishment in any other game he was playing. That was slightly better than when he went downstairs to play on his computer, though. Because then there were just long moments of silence. Alex knows how to get in some pretty good trouble, so silence is not usually good. :-) So, I had to frequently check to make sure all was OK.
About an hour and half before Jen got home, Kirstie woke up. I let her play in her room with Alex for about 30 min, then went to get her. (Remember, I'm working on some intense, and more difficult than usual projects while all of this is going on...) So I got Kirstie out of her crib, and thinking Jen would be home in about 30 minutes said, "Daddy still has to work, you play this computer while Alex plays his." (We have a lot of computers.) She said, "Uh huh..." So all was good. I instructed Alex to make sure Kirstie didn't leave. I was not too excited about his slow head non while his eyes did not part from the Backyard Basketball game, but I had some things I really needed to get done in the office... so I left them.
Not too much later, Kirstie comes ambling up the stairs with her Nuk, and slowly peeked around the corner with a cute little wave saying, "Hi Daddy!" :-) She wanders around a bit before getting into EVERYTHING she should not be getting into in Daddy's office... so I pick her up and take her back downstairs. We do that a few more times before she finally decides to stay down on the second floor with Alex. She kept shutting the door to my office so I could not hear them, so I would go down and open it again.
(Remember, I have some intense, more difficult than usual projects that I am working on...)
Finally, after about 10 minutes of quiet, I notice that there has been 10 minutes of quiet. That's not a good thing with a four and two year old on the loose. So I call downstairs... no answer. I walk downstairs... Alex is playing his computer, Kirstie is I forget where, but not where she should have been.
Needless to say, when Jen got home at five, I was quite relieved.
Unfortunately, I was not done yet, nor did I feel like I was making any progress at all. I ended up emailing the client after another hour trying to make it work and said, "It's not going to work." So, the afternoon had a very incomplete, almost wasted feel to it.
I think Alex and Kirstie had fun, though. :-)
We had a nice breakfast meal for dinner. Pancakes, eggs, meats and all the good stuff. Was nice. I like it when Jen cooks. :-)
APRIL 7thThe day began at 8am, when my alarm was supposed to go off, but I beat it to awakeness. I woke up about one minute before it went off. I had a meeting with a client this morning up at the local coffee house at nine, so I was up to get my shower and get some things in order before taking off.
As I stepped into the shower that had been running for about a minute or so, I noticed that my foot was really not warm at all in the running water. I checked with my hand... definitely not warm. So I turned the faucet all the way to hot. Definitely not warm. Argh. I figured one of the kids had bumped the hot water heater thermostat again. So, I got dressed again and went down to the basement to turn the thermostat back up again.
Have I mentioned how much I don't like early mornings?
When I reached the water heater, I noticed that the thermostat was on the correct setting. That was bad. So, in my still sleepy stupor, I got down on the floor to check the pilot light. Out. Argh. I went upstairs to get some matches, and attempted to re-light the pilot. No luck. I dismantled the front of the water heater a bit more and checked in there... definitely out. So, I got a few more tools, and read the instructions on the side of the tank and tried to get it started. No luck. Three times. No luck. "Bad thermal coupler..." I thought to myself, being the true handyman that I am.
Turns out, I was right... but that's for later in the day.
So, it's now 8:30am, and I still have not showered, nor was I going to it seemed. I left the water tank undone, and made a mental note to return to that mess later in the day. I ate some breakfast on my way back upstairs to get dressed, and then got my laptop and headed out the door at 8:50am.
My client was already at the coffee shop at about 8:53am when I got there. He bought me a chai. That was cool. We chatted about our various endeavors and families and then got to business. He's a very busy guy, so at one point he had to excuse himself to join a conference call meeting on his cell phone! That was funny. So, I just chatted with the coffee house folks. They know me well. (I like coffee houses.)
After our meeting, I headed across the street to pick up the chairs I had dropped off at the furniture store on Monday. They were not able to repair them, but I was going to save the one that had not been broken. Well, it was broken. Argh. No chairs to claim. A piece of Walker family history... lost. That was too bad, but kind of expected. So, I chatted with them about future furniture purchases, and after pondering the staggering figures for a moment, said I'd have to do that at a later date.
As I headed out the door, I thought... "Dude, I could do a webpage for them in exchange for some furniture..." :-) So I went back in and proposed the idea. It was very well received, so we'll see what comes of that.
So at 11am, I already have new business for an old client, a new project for that same old client, and a potential new client. We're doing pretty well today...
I headed to the grocery to get a few things for tonight's dinner with friends. Went in and quickly got what I needed. That all went very well. Nothing spectacular to report there.
Got home and relayed the days happenings up to that point to Jen. Everything seemed to be pretty OK with the family, so I headed upstairs to take care of some more business that I needed to cover that morning. BUT, before I could do that, I had to get TWO packages ready to mail back. TWO things I had purchased recently were not the right things. Not what I wanted at least (my fault...) so I had to package them up to send back. Things to print, people to call... done, and ready to go.
I think I spent actually all day on the phone.
As I was calling people, sending things back... I got the crazy idea that because of the new
Boot Camp software for Intel Macs, I should return my iMac G5 that I just ordered last week, and get an Intel iMac, since I now had Adobe Creative Suite 2. Long story, but... I got the iMac G5, even though it's the older computer, because the new Intel based iMacs do not support the older Mac software (OS 9). ALL of my web design software (the Adobe Design Collection) is OS 9 still. SO... I had to get the G5. BUT NOW, since I had the CS2 (OS X) version, I could get an Intel one... AND, I could test pages in Windows with the cool Boot Camp feature - that only works on an Intel Mac.
All of that made sense, so I called Apple and got a return authorization from them for the iMac G5. Too bad, but a good move overall.
Not even a couple hours later, I realized that the software I would use the most on the Intel Mac was the Adobe stuff, which is NOT Universal yet (which means it would run very slowly on the Intel Mac, since it is not written to be used on an Intel processor. Kind of confusing, but you can check out
apple.com/rosetta for more on what I am talking about.)
So I call Apple up again and say, "Uh... Hi. I'd like to cancel my SECOND order today and uncancel my first cancel." No can do. Already shipped. So, they issue a RMA. Now there are TWO iMacs heading my way. I spent an hour probably calling several friends whom I knew were thinking of purchasing a Mac to see if they wanted to purchase one of these computers instead of sending it back to the Apple store. No luck. Looks like I'm sending one back.
Too bad. :-)
So in the midst of all this, I'm working on two other clients sites while three new potential jobs came in via a few phone calls today. It was a CRAZY day.
In the middle of all
THAT, I was making bread for our dinner tonight!!! I made two loaves of French bread to use in French toast! Oh my!!!!! It was fantastic.
At 5pm or so, I headed downstairs to start prepping to make dinner tonight. We were doing another breakfast meal. This time, custom-to-order omelets and the extra cool french toast! Wow was it good! ALL of it!!! Our friends came over with their baby boy at about 7pm and we had a nice evening talking while taking care of 5 small people. :-) It was nice. We showed off our new toy, the Mac Mini. It was a fun night.
After cleaning up, we got the kids in bed and I came up to write this.
The end. For now.
:-)
More, much more... later.
[Posted from the HOME OFFICE in Palmyra, NY.]
