An old friend of mine looked me up the other day. It was awesome to hear from him. We hadn’t talked in more than 10 years and it was great to catch up. He just called and we spent some time chatting while the kids mopped the laundry room. It gave a chance to talk, but the basement is now full of water and the kids are soaked.
Anna had a death in the family Thursday, so she’s out of town for the funeral and I’m home with the kids. She left this morning and we’ve been playing. Did you know we have a mountain in the house? Yep, we’ve been exploring it for the last hour – way cool. There’s a castle upstairs and a craft room too (with a craft table with August’s name on it already).
I forgot to mention that with the incredibly low temperatures, the house is making a whole bunch of really loud sounds. Anna and I were woken up last night with bumps and sanps we’d never heard before.
This morning on the way to the gym, the car’s temperature showed it was 25 degrees (probably the temp the last time I drove it) – it was 7 by the time I made it three blocks then zero by the time I hit the traffic light (about six blocks) then -6 by the time I made it to the gym. That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen the car thermometer drop; I guess Newton’s Law of Cooling applies in the extreme when it’s like this.
Well, it was -8 degrees this morning, supposed to be -13 tomorrow. Horrible cold. Furnace broke twice in the last couple of weeks. Logs going on.
Contacted one of my friends at Binary Tree yesterday. Got a chance to apologize for the way things ended up. I tried to contact him right after the event, but he wasn’t in the mood to hear from me. I’m glad everything is OK between us; he’s been a friend for a long time.
Heard from my friend Laura – it had been quite a while since I talked with her. It was great to hear some of the cool things she’s doing.
I took my Lotus Domino Developer Certification Exam this afternoon. I registered for the wrong test, so it took a lot longer than I’d expected. I wasn’t very prepared for the test, but I passed – that’s all that matters. I’ve now been a certified Lotus Notes developer since version 2 all the way through 8 – I think I got my Notes 2 certification in 1993? Can’t remember, but it’s been a very long time. I’m trying to find out how many people are left that have certifications going back that far (there wasn’t a Notes 1 certification).
It’s time to start planning for Lotusphere (it’s next week). Always bittersweet for me. I met Anna at the conference, but I also learned my mother had passed while there. It’s year #14 for me for the event, only a few have attended more. I’m looking forward to hanging out with some of my old friends next week. I hope I’m up for it – I’ve been sick all week, I hope I can still party!
Trying to finish chapter 4 of the book. Should have it done by Sunday night. I’ve got some friends reviewing it as I go and I hope to hear from the publisher soon.
Anna’s back is still out although we did get to the Doctor yesterday and have a plan for her recovery. I went to the gym this morning early and when I got home I smelled something burning outside when I came home. As I went inside, the burning smell got stronger. When I arrived in the kitchen, the twins were sitting at the table eating breakfast and Anna was laying down. Turns out the kids got up early and went downstairs to fix breakfast. Elizabeth put a slice of cinnimon chip bread into a plastic bowl and put it in the microwave. Unfortunately, the kids didn’t know how to use the microwave and the bowl they selected was not microwave safe. Needless to say, the kids now know they’re not allowed to use the microwave and we’re short one bowl.
Last weekend when Anna and I finished a lot of the cleanup of the laundry room (basically consolidating photos into a smaller number of boxes) we threw away a storage cabinet I used to use for all of my soccer stuff. During the kitchen remodel, we used it to store all of our foodstuff and I made two small, stacking tables to fit inside one part of it so we could have more shelves. Well, with the little tables sitting on the floor the kids of course wanted them. I told them they could have them and they immediately stacked them against the wall then went upstairs and grabbed paper, pens, and other implements and created a little craft area right there against the wall in the laudry room.
It’s right next to some food storage we keep in the basement, so they’re constantly pulling stuff off the shelf and tracing it on some picture they’re creating. It’s very fun to watch – they spend hours down there creating things while Anna and I go through stuff in the basement.
We had an issue a while back where the kids gave a sitter a horrible time going to bed. One of the things that happened was that they pulled one of the curtains off the wall in their room. It took me a while to rebuild the rod holder so it could go back up. On Wednedsay afternoon I finally got it back up and it seemed sturdier than before.
Well, last night the kids went down well (I thought) but ended up not being able to sleep. August was looking out the window and somehow pulled the curtain rod down again! Needless to say, we’re pretty upset and I really don’t know how I’m going to get it back up there in a way that will stay.
Anna threw out her back in the morning but we still spent all day yesterday going through our filing cabinet tossing everything we just don’t need anymore. We got everything down from two drawers (lateral file drawer) down to one. I loaded up Anna’s car with 10 bags of paper to take to the recycling center.
Good day all. With 2009 there’s going to be a lot of changes here at the Wargo household (more on that later). I decided to start the year using the blog software provided for free from my hosting provider. If you want to access the older blog data, please go here. I’ll keep that up there as long as I can.