Fitting in

I was in Arlington this past weekend, and actually managed to get a good bit done.  I got the yard picked up, and burned the pile of tree trash I'd been collecting, along with Joe's old mattress that the garbage collectors wouldn't haul off. That took a 1/4 bottle of charcoal starter, and about 2 pints of good ol' unleaded.

Whoosh!

I also got the kitchen sink unclogged, and did most of the dishes that had piled up while the sink was out of action. This coming weekend, I'll be concentrating on the basement...shop vac'ing up all the water, and figuring out how to keep it out. I'm thinking that this will involve cement and a sump pump, both of which I plan on buying locally.  If I can get that done, we can start getting rid of the trash in the basement, and turn it into a usable part of the house.

I saw a cammo jacket on sale at MidwayUSA a couple of weeks ago, and bought it on speculation. Surprise! When wearing it doing the yard work, I look like I actually belonged there...given that every other male above the diaper stage wears cammo...and part of the diaper crowd probably does, too.

when was the last time.....

...everyone you know were talking about the same book.  I just saw an Audible.Com commercial which used that as the premise of why you should listen to books. I read a lot. Gayle can confirm this, as can the cats (assuming you speak the southern version of feline). I work in a freaking orthopaedic clinic, where you would assume that we have intelligent employees, but not a single person at work has ever admitted to reading anything, except for maybe the intro to a YouTube video.

Lest you think that I'm putting on airs, I'll admit to trying to slog through classic 20th century novels, beginning with The Grapes of Wrath. The main thing I brought away from that was the instruction that my first creative writing teacher taught was absolutely dead on...DO NOT USE SLANG, "HIP" TALK OR OTHERWISE DATE YOUR WORK. If everyone in the 30's talked like that, no wonder they were prone to lawlessness and gunplay.  Hell, I'd have shot them myself!

On call weekends and gun shows

I'm on call this weekend, and that means I saved some project work to do during off hours. There's always things that need to be done, but require that the users be off the systems. That means that the weekend is the best time for it. This weekend it's moving files between servers, which is easy, time consuming and boring as hell. The main issue is to make sure that all security attributes are copied with the files, so that the correct users have access to them on Monday. RoboCopy is the perfect tool for this, and so that's exactly what I'm using. Tomorrow I'll finish up with this, along with the other tasks I've got on the agenda.

After getting all of this started, I went to the gun show being held at the AgriCenter in Germantown. I've not been to a gun show in forever, and had a fine old time.  It was crowded as hell, but that was really the only downside. And, since you can't go to such a thing without buying something, I picked up a couple of new magazines and 2 metal ammo cans. All of this was less than 40 bucks, so I was reasonably frugal.  There were so many interesting things, that I probably went past every booth at least 3 times just to make sure I'd seen everything.

While all this is fun, I'd much rather be up in Arlington with Gayle. She could use the help and companionship, and I'm just ready to get to where I plan on being for the duration.  I figure the sooner I can get up there and get settled in, both locally and with a job, the sooner we can make friends and actually start to have a social life. I just hope that I can find a job that pays close to what I'm making now...while it's cheaper to live there, I need to really start pumping cash into the 401k.

Mikey just hopped up onto the arm of the chair, to let me know that I've typed enough. These critters sure are pushy at times....