Where was I…?
Posted by mcummings
Ah yes, catch up time 
I sometimes wonder if I don't have a bit of the old obsessive/compulsive affliction. When I was a Gentoo dev, I hated the concept of being an ebuild monkey. But truth of the matter is, that's what I did best. Sure, I was ok at debugging and troubleshooting, but most folks knew me for maintenance of the perl tree. I never really gave it too much thought, but I was in my element when I was going through a hundred or so ebuilds waiting on a bump.
But now that I don't have that topic to focus on (by choice), I find myself wandering from topic to topic, almost obsessively devouring each. First I picked up comic books, because they took me back to when I was kid, reading the comics my Gran sent overseas each month. Unfortunately, that fascination waned quickly as I caught up with the state of things in comic land (don't laugh). Meh. The charm has waned.
I wondered around a little after that, but recently have begun to look at my old stamp collection. I'm in the process of trying to get things in order. It looks like I left off (and I dimly remember this) in middle of a reorganization about ten or fifteen years ago. The most annoying part is that I go through catalogs, organizing my stamps, I'm seeing pictures of stamps I remember specifically having, but that now I can't seem to find anywhere. I had this old H. E. Harris Independence album, and althought I've found most of the stamps that used to be in it, I can't find them all, and I'm not sure what happened to the album. We think I must have thrown it away, presumably after emptying it, but then where are the missing stamps? Bah.
I suspect that stamp collecting is somewhat of a dead art these days. When I was kid, I remember at least two or three stamp stores in the Furth/Nuremburg area alone. 20 years later and stateside, it doesn't seem like anyone sells stamps locally. The closest you can get is those grab bags of 500 they sell at some of the bookstores, but that isn't really the same thing.
And of course, we are again facing self imposed poverty. We put Katy back in the private school, because it was really the best thing possible for her, but the hit we took in the bank has us down to the wire for right now. And you can't have a hobby that takes money when you are trying to guard every penny (not to mention, what is making the weird noise in the car as the tires rotate??)
Remyndr’: This hump day be pirate’s day, arrg!
Posted by mcummings
Just in case ye forgot m'hardies, this Wednesday be the day where ye talk like a pirate
and after a week off…
Posted by mcummings
So, with everything that was going on last week, I took the whole week off. Here's the summary, most of which is sadly a recap of my wife's blog.
Last Monday was Katy's first day of Kindergarten (pic). Hard to believe that we've been in the house long enough for this day to come. Of course, she's only been there a week and we're already starting to wonder if taking her out of Fredericksburg Academy was such a good idea - I mean, in the long run, is being house poor really that important??
Then on Wednesday, it was Tara's first birthday! (pic). Hard to believe our little squirt is a year old already. Lot of memories from that day last year, some good, some personally scary, and even one or two that were just life altering.
Speaking of Tara, our poor littlest one has had a bad time with allergies for a while now. Suspecting that the 30 year old carpet in the main room was a contributing factor, we finally bit the bullet and got 11 boxes of Legato carpet system. Kim sums this up pretty well, but let me just add the pain part that's associated with laying this crap down. And with removing 30 year old carpet, padding, and the muck that developed in between. The long of it is the living room is mostly done, and now we all mysteriously have horrible sinus/flu symptoms. Yeah, we're that much fun to be around, honest.
And to cap off the summary of last week's time off (yes, I even turned the blackberry off after the first day and didn't bring it back on until the weekend was over), I did get a bit of writing done. I have three stories I'm playing with right now, with "Gingerbread Men" taking up the bulk of my efforts, when I'm conscious and cognizant enough, which hasn't been much since Thursday when we cracked open the carpet square boxes for our one night (three day) adventure.