I’m going to be a godfather again… for twins! Come on, you guys have to love the irony of me taking sacred oaths to raise kids in a church, right?
Thanks for the vote of confidence Jamie and Greg. I’m honored.
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Good Report…
I’m happy to say that Winston came home from the vet this evening with a fabulous report. Everything sounds and looks good, which is a relief, particularly as my good friend April points out, bulldogs are notoriously prone to a number of respiratory and joint problems. Hopefully his (and my) good luck will hold. The vet wore him out and midnight bathroom breaks are wearing me out! It’s soooo time for a nap!
It’s small and furry… and no, it’s not the damned Easter Bunny.
I’ll be doing a little reshuffling of my schedule for the next few months in order to accommodate the addition of a new fuzzball to my household. Everyone say hello to Winston (and 
don’t blame me for lack of creativity, his paperwork went in before I got him). I was leading more towards Wellington or William, personally. Don’t let the rotund little guy fool you, he’s a bundle of energy when he’s awake. He’s bully through and through. The timing wasn’t exactly how I had planned to make an addition, but when opportunity presents itself, I suppose we have to take advantage. More pics as I manage to take them.
Swan Song…
This trip reminded me why I have enjoyed the work in emergency management since I first got the bug five years ago… It’s also reminded me why it’s time for me to go. While I’ve been here smoothing ruffled feathers and talking up our operation, I’ve been constantly peppered with emails from the home office about things that could more easily be handled by others. With a rare few exceptions, everyone in the office is senior to me in terms of years of service by 20-30 years. With that many years of experience stacked up, an office should be able to run for a week without sending major decisions through me for evaluation or to send in a report about how many of our people are working overseas. Sometimes I can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s amateur hour at the icecapades around here.
This trip is probably my last big roundup before moving on to other pastures, but one of the most gratifying things in it all is knowing that my opinions in the field are sought out by senior leaders and people who awed me when I was just starting out. It’s a little humbling… but fortunately, my ego is sufficiently large not to be too deflated by that.
Second time around…
Well, here’s hoping I manage to get it right the second time around. I’m leaving tomorrow on a redux of the trip I was too sick to go on last month. Mercifully, I’m feeling well and it’s possible that this will be my last big trip before the job swap takes place. I’m not holding my breath on that one, though. Seems no matter what my job is, I’m always needed somewhere other than where I happen to be at the time. After a long weekend of waging war on my back yard and getting it primed for spring, I think I am ready for a nice quiet boondoggle. Talk to you from Kansas City… Or from the airport if I see something that just demands an immediate rant.
News of the world…
A man’s girlfriend spent two years sitting on the can… and he just got around to thinking that something might be wrong… She’d been there so long that her ass was growing to the toilet… That’s right. Growing. To. The. Toilet. All I can say is, WTF?
Damned free market…
OK, so I am usually a dyed-in-the-wool champion of the free market… unless, of course, it’s doing something bad to me. In this case, the national slump in new home sales has driven the builder of my subdivision to take a different approach. Instead of selling their new construction outright, they are coaxing people into “lease-options”… effectively turning all the unsold houses the subdivision into very large stand-alone apartments. I don’t have any particular problems with apartments, per se as I lived in them for a long time and enjoyed it, but the approach he decided to take does all sorts of weird shit to the value of the existing stock of houses, particularly to those of us who bought into the subdivision early. The builder is in it to make a profit and I can’t fault him for that, but still, it creates a giant pain in the ass for me… and we all know what I think of things that do that.
Snow…
It’s Memphis… in March. There is absolutely no reason there needs to be snow here and yet, it’s out there covering everything. Actually, if I were being more specific, it’s slowly turning everything into a sheet of ice. Folks here are good at doing things like making barbecue, but when it comes to having a clue what to do about a couple of inches of snow, they should leave that to the professionals in the northern tier. I always mocked Washingtonians for their raging incompetence in dealing with this stuff… Now that I’ve seen how the south reacts, I’ll never say another bad word about them. These people couldn’t plow their way out of a parking lot, let alone keep the major highways clear. I’ve got a laundry list of things I wanted to do today, but I just don’t think I have it in me to go out and deal with “Memphis on Ice.”
Server…
I realized I might have a problem when a WoW server collapse nearly caused me to go into a twitching state of withdrawal a few minutes ago. I just needed to kill one last dohicky to collect the last thingamajig I needed, too. If I would have known what a perfectly wonderful addiction this was, I would have started years ago… of course I would have never passed any of my classes and quite possibly not manage to show up to work on time. I guess there is something to be said for moderation and developing a modicum of self-control in my old age.
Things you learn from weather.com…
Sometimes I question myself for picking up and moving down here. Of course it would be nice to be closer to everyone and everything… and I’m still convinced that DC is the center of the universe… but then sometimes I surf by weather.com and realize that it’s 50 degrees warmer here than it is back there. At times like that being here seem like a much better idea.
The South is a different world, but it does have a few perks. Of course when it’s 110 in August, my calculus will probably be a little different.
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