Spring is in the air...

and in Memphis, that means it's either too damned cold or too damned hot. We've already been up to the mid-80's, and back down to frost warnings. Gotta love it.

Work is the same old thing. I've been convincing the kids that I'm over being the person to build all of the workstations, and that they're going to have to pick up the slack. I'm in the middle of redoing our network, and upgrading our exchange infrastructure. In other words, I'm finally concentrating on what I'm supposed to be doing, and leaving the lower level stuff for the support techs.

The search in Kentucky is still slow...though I think that I've stirred up some tech headhunter firms towards moving into the Purchase area. Maybe that will shake things up. I know it's pretty rural there, but there are some large firms that need IT support.

Julian is still a psychotic little old cat. Every time I go to Arlington for the weekend, he drives me totally batshit for the first 4 days after I get back. We've ended up with 2 cats in Kentucky...the father-in-law's tomcat and a little female cat that conned Gayle into letting her in. The tom, Stoopid, is the most laid back tomcat I think I've ever seen. As soon as I can arrange it I'll be having him neutered. I'm sure he'll forgive me eventually.  The little girl needs to be spayed asap, as she's already been in heat. She has the strangest yellow/golden eyes of any cat I've ever seen. I think that was one of the selling points in getting Gayle's attention.

It's my on-call week, so of course I've crap planned for most evenings and for the weekend. It's times like this I think I need to get a life!

Ok, lets catch up...

In case you were wondering if I succumbed to the ravages of influenza, sorry to disappoint. Gayle did call it correctly, and I had the nasty cough for 3 weeks after the fever broke.  As that was the first time on over 20 years that I've had the flu, I think I'll be hedging my bets in the future and getting a flu shot every fall.

Gayle's still in Arlington. Her mom's been in the nursing home since November, and Gayle's been trying to recover from the stress of dealing with and caring for her parents for 3 solid years. She was going to come down to Memphis this weekend for a break, until she got a call from the home telling her that her mom had fallen out of bed and broken her hip.  So, she's in the hospital in Paducah, with surgery scheduled to put a pin in her hip.

We've retained an attorney who is working to get the house there put into our name, so that we can finally be sure that repairs and upgrades we make won't be on behalf of the government. I've been looking for a job up there, but I'm becoming convinced that nobody uses computers there. There's not even any tech headhunters covering the area...only casual labor outfits like Kelly Services industrial division.

I'll try to keep this up a bit more often than I've been...but with working here, and going to Arlington every weekend that I'm not on call, I find that I can understand just how tired Gayle is.  And I've only been doing this for a year and a half!