Wow, so that was christmas/newyears, eh?  It went by relatively quickly.  There was a lot going on at the Solomon house.  Christmas was nice and quiet and mostly uneventful.  I have some photos that I will post - they’re of the kids decorating the tree and whatnot.  We got a little more snow.  I damaged my Honda Odessey by catching the front bumper cover on a snowbank and tearing it.  $500 to get it fixed.

Grrr.

My 86 year old grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s this year and she took a sudden turn for the worse just before xmas.  I took Ben and Chloe down to Washington DC for a short visit.  She was doing so badly we weren’t sure how long she was last so we got down there lickety split.  By the time we got there she had a remarkable turn around.  It turned out that she had an infection in an abscessed tooth.  After they treated the infection all of her symptoms subsided.  Doctors were writing her off entirely.  They still seem unable to explain why an infection would have that kind of impact on her.  I mean, literally overnight she went from “forgetful” to completely disabled and befuddled.  So by the time we got there she was on the mend in a rehab center.  She was doing better, but still had some disorientation.

We visited with my parents and my brother.  My folks were great hosts we had some wonderful meals from my childhood.  It was a pretty excellent event.  My brother and I took my kids to the Smithsonian museum of air and space.  EXCELLENT museum.  We had a good time there.  In fact, on the last day my father took us to the OTHER air and space museum out by Dulles air port and that was even better!  They have a space shuttle ( Enterprise ), a concord, a blackbird SR-71 and a whole slew of fighters from WW II up through modern day (F-104, F4, A6, F-15, F-16).  The even have the original Enola Gay!  We were only there for an hour but it was really worthwhile.

So all in all it was a very good visit.  Ben and Chloe were great.  My parents’ house is not set up for kids to find entertainment so they were bored much of the time, but behaved themselves REALLY well.  I’m very proud of them.  Not only did they not make the trip (much) more work for me, having them along really added a lot to the trip.  We got to catch up with some family and got to spend some time with my grandmother.  It was good, but too brief.

Now I am back at work and need to focus on putting together some improvements in my systems.  They were set up when this was a smaller company and have a general lack of consistency.  So one of my big pushes lately is to make each system resemble the others, as much as possible.  That is, when a problem hits we shouldn’t be spending our time sorting out the things that make each system unique - it confuses the process of problem resolution.

So that’s it for now.  Take care!

Tags: Uncategorized //