Blogrilla

The final topic this evening is the kids.
They had their last day of school today and had a great day. They came
home with very good report cards. They had parties in each of their
classes. Each of their teachers wrote wonderful things about them on
their report cards. Ben got the best card of his life. Every time we
get a report card from him its an improvement over the last one!
I’m very proud of how well he’s doing. A couple of years ago he got a
“1-” on his reading skills. I was very concerned (read: distraught) and
wanted to know what was going on. I think part of it was that he didn’t
test well and I think part of it was that he really wasn’t very good at
reading. Since then he’s fallen in love with reading and reads for
enjoyment often! And it shows in his grades. Super kid.
Likewise, Gabriel also had his best report card ever. You can see on
the card his stead improvements over the year and he’s got solid grades
that he should be proud of. He’s got good scores in math, science and
reading. He’s doing just great.
Chloe had (get this) a PERFECT report card! Her marks are a little
different in kindergarten than the boys. I think there’s “Needs
improvement”, “Improving” and “Proficient”. I don’t think those first
two are quite right, but the point is that she got ALL PROFICIENT’s!!
How great is that?!
I’m so thrilled for her!
To say congratulations we took all the kids to Barnes & Noble and
treated them each to two books. Most weren’t really noteworthy. Except
for the one I suggested to Gabriel.
He wound up getting “Owl Puke”!
Its a book about owls and their lives and dietary/predatory habits.
They made it a pretty interesting book all by itself. But it also comes
with a dissection kit for an “owl pellet”. See, they swallow their prey
whole and then allow their digestive juices to take care of the meat
and soft tissue. The remaining fur, feathers, bones etc etc are all
compressed using strong muscles in the gizzard. Then the owl yakk’s up
this very dense hairball made up of undigested mouse-parts.
Pretty foul, eh?
Anyway, this kit COMES with an owl pellet for some lucky 7-year old to
dissect! How cool is that?!
Gabriel thinks its pretty cool.
They’re looking forward to getting the summer started tomorrow. I think
they’ll have a good time. They don’t have any special plans for this
week.
I have: A new car to pick up A haircut tomorrow A driveway has to get
demolished A driveway has to be poured on Friday A driveway has to be
ground down and smoothed out on Saturday Fireworks on Monday
Miscellaneous tourist-type activities with visiting guests
Busy.

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At 9am I had a meeting with my workflow
administration group — we’re supposed to be coming up with standards
and policies and procedures that will govern how my company performs
the care and feeding of the SAP Workflow system. We recently found out
that the VP of information technology was peaved with us for not being
more productive. So we had a lot to discuss and now I’m trying to
motivate my colleagues in to working harder. It was a stressful
meeting.
After that we had a kick-off meeting for the First Responders. I’ve
taken some basic first aid and CPR instruction at work and now the
company wants to set us up as “first responders”. They gave us a first
aid kit in a fanny pack and showed us around the building to see where
the equipment is. All this took two hours.
Ugh.
Anyway, its done now. I had to cut out a little early so I could go to
my dentist appointment at 12:15pm. Kathy, my hygenist is so nice and so
good at her job! She’s a sweetie. I took the opportunity to bring a
Baja Burrito from Baja Fresh back to my desk at work.
By then it was time for my weekly team meeting. This time we got to see
a new monitoring product called Horizon from Tidal Software. It looks
pretty great and could enable us to be a lot more proactive in our
problem resolution. If only we can round up the $30k!
That took an hour.
Finally I had a meeting at 3pm with the server team — I need the UNIX
guys to install Kerberos on a test machine so I can get SAP’s Single
Sign On functionality working. Our parent company has some instructions
but they were originally written in another language by a college
student and its difficult to read. The UNIX team wants me to provide
them with clear, step by step instructions, which I can’t. So I’m
trying to convince them to work through it. I think they’ll come
through for me.
At last I was able to place a couple of personal calls regarding the
new Odyssey. We’re taking posession of it on Thursday evening at 6pm. I
need to tell the insurance company what’s going on, too. And I need to
call the bank to get a certified check. Whew!! There’s a lot going on!

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Wow, Tuesday was really busy. I
actually managed to get up at 5:30am again and got out on the bike. I
tried that alternate route I had mentioned and it mostly worked out
well. I got to go down a giant hill but never had to climb one like it
coming back. So that was good. But overall the route was shorter and
was somehow less fulfilling.
So, I think I’ll head back to Wakefield on my next trip.
I notice that my office is only 12.8 miles from my home.
hmm… 12.8 miles is not that far at all, really. That’s about how far
I go when I pedal up to Wakefield and back. And do that in about an
hour. That got me to thinking that I COULD, conceivably ride my bicycle
to work!
What troubled me most about it was originally the route: I was afraid
there wouldn’t be a good way to get there without going through Lynn or
spending some kind of time on a highway or a speedway of some kind.
But I found a route that goes from Wakefield and would keep me on
backroads the whole way there. I could TOTALLY ride my bike to work. If
I left at 5:30am I would get to work sometime between 6:30am and 7am.
That would give me some time to clean up before settling down and
working.
When I come home, though… well, drivers aren’t as courteous at 4pm as
they are at 6am. Still, if I left at 4pm I could be home shortly after
5pm! Hmm… that might be something to remember for a Friday!
I could totally do that.

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