Well, here I be (VVQU)
(Almost) all is good in Rick-land. Maybe too good in terms of amount of good, but there ya go.
Biggest fun thing: playing keyboards in the band (DSM). Had our first real gig last Friday night, and it was very well received actually! Practice takes up a night every week, pretty fully.
Work is still interesting which is good, since there's lots more to do. It's much easier to jump wholeheartedly into work that's for improving things, as opposed to mostly being expected to contribute to someone else's self-aggrandizement, and watch the priorities of our group manipulated into ways like that. Much of what I've been working on, of late, amounts rather to stable-cleaning of many things done in haste because of the suck-up emergency of the day -- things that, if done RIGHT, save work in the medium and long term. I keep half-expecting to be pulled off of it (and other priorities DO get in the way, but overall I get to keep plugging away). I love that feeling of making order from chaos (for you techies, this is using radmind to keep a bunch of systems properly in sync, and make it much easier to add a new SysAdmin to the proper files ... and oh, while I'm at it, remove people who left in, like 2003, from the same files).
This does cut into my socializing, though. I have more going on after work, and the nights I don't, sometimes I just get wiped out and veg... don't want to talk much except maybe to Carolyn, don't want to type anymore (so no IMing). I do end up using facebook a lot more (easier to keep up when the expectation is 140 characters and my natural tendency is to write a tome that gets longer with every passing day).
But I really do muchly enjoy all I'm doing... except for the part where I realize "wow! I've not talked to {fill in name of almost any of my friends} in MONTHS!"
I did kinda temporarily burn out today (probably just because I didn't sleep well last night) and came out to LJ mainly to catch up on my closest online friend's LJ -- we've been ships in the night as far as calling each other -- phone rings when I can't get it, or I call her and she's at work. And it's suffered from what I call the Rick-Alanna phone curse -- I always hope to be the one to call her, and when I am about to, something comes up (like I'm about to hit SEND on my cell phone and Carolyn walks in with a huge load of shopping to put away, or I get paged). And then Alanna usually calls the next day and I sheepishly once again say "I almost called you last night."
And, even skipping the memes, I found it took me just over an hour to catch up on one friend's LJ... it'd been three months plus (and felt like one, the way my sense of time goes).
In other news, I've been gaining weight over the winter but finally the sun is pulling me out of hibernation. I went walking in the woods today (I do at lunch most days just to make myself get exercise with co-workers and get myself some sunlight and my typing shoulders/fingers a break), but of course speed is determined by the slowest walker. Today I wanted to walk early and get back soon, so I ended up half jogging/half walking it. My back was really sore when I got done (I think overall it's goodness for my back, at least when I get leveled up on the exercise), but I felt otherwise great. And what takes us about 45 minutes I did in less than 25.
Maybe with more evening sunlight I'll be less wiped out and more evening-telephone social again (probably not IM'ey though, most days now with what I'm working on I feel like I type MORE than enough in a day usually!)
Biggest fun thing: playing keyboards in the band (DSM). Had our first real gig last Friday night, and it was very well received actually! Practice takes up a night every week, pretty fully.
Work is still interesting which is good, since there's lots more to do. It's much easier to jump wholeheartedly into work that's for improving things, as opposed to mostly being expected to contribute to someone else's self-aggrandizement, and watch the priorities of our group manipulated into ways like that. Much of what I've been working on, of late, amounts rather to stable-cleaning of many things done in haste because of the suck-up emergency of the day -- things that, if done RIGHT, save work in the medium and long term. I keep half-expecting to be pulled off of it (and other priorities DO get in the way, but overall I get to keep plugging away). I love that feeling of making order from chaos (for you techies, this is using radmind to keep a bunch of systems properly in sync, and make it much easier to add a new SysAdmin to the proper files ... and oh, while I'm at it, remove people who left in, like 2003, from the same files).
This does cut into my socializing, though. I have more going on after work, and the nights I don't, sometimes I just get wiped out and veg... don't want to talk much except maybe to Carolyn, don't want to type anymore (so no IMing). I do end up using facebook a lot more (easier to keep up when the expectation is 140 characters and my natural tendency is to write a tome that gets longer with every passing day).
But I really do muchly enjoy all I'm doing... except for the part where I realize "wow! I've not talked to {fill in name of almost any of my friends} in MONTHS!"
I did kinda temporarily burn out today (probably just because I didn't sleep well last night) and came out to LJ mainly to catch up on my closest online friend's LJ -- we've been ships in the night as far as calling each other -- phone rings when I can't get it, or I call her and she's at work. And it's suffered from what I call the Rick-Alanna phone curse -- I always hope to be the one to call her, and when I am about to, something comes up (like I'm about to hit SEND on my cell phone and Carolyn walks in with a huge load of shopping to put away, or I get paged). And then Alanna usually calls the next day and I sheepishly once again say "I almost called you last night."
And, even skipping the memes, I found it took me just over an hour to catch up on one friend's LJ... it'd been three months plus (and felt like one, the way my sense of time goes).
In other news, I've been gaining weight over the winter but finally the sun is pulling me out of hibernation. I went walking in the woods today (I do at lunch most days just to make myself get exercise with co-workers and get myself some sunlight and my typing shoulders/fingers a break), but of course speed is determined by the slowest walker. Today I wanted to walk early and get back soon, so I ended up half jogging/half walking it. My back was really sore when I got done (I think overall it's goodness for my back, at least when I get leveled up on the exercise), but I felt otherwise great. And what takes us about 45 minutes I did in less than 25.
Maybe with more evening sunlight I'll be less wiped out and more evening-telephone social again (probably not IM'ey though, most days now with what I'm working on I feel like I type MORE than enough in a day usually!)