Merry Christmas!
The week's been hectic, which I'm sure may be par with most people.
With us, Michael was on-call from Monday to the Tuesday after Christmas. By about Wednesday of last week, he's been preparing for a major upgrade with a very large customer. Some may consider them the epitome of household products. Regardless, they're large. Their research data is large. For earlier upgrade attempts, I think it took Michael's scripts 6-8 hours to break up their data into chunks that could be backed up. Then another 9 hours or so to back up to tape.
Michael worked quite a bit Friday through Sunday noon to prepare for the small window he has to upgrade systems this week. He's leading this project remotely as well.
Friday: I took Jana out on errands with me to return items. I really wanted to return items before the post-Christmas craziness. It rained heavily and almost no one seemed to be out at Home Depot and hardly anyone was at Joann's. We returned an HDTV antenna to Home Depot. It was $50 and Michael saw better reception when he held the bare cable up against the window. I wanted Home Depot to know it was a bad product. But they don't seem to care why I wanted to return it. Oh well. I was surprised to see the first lot of seeds for 2007 gardening in already btw.
Saturday: I wanted to eat out for breakfast, so Michael figured out a way to manage that into his schedule plus let me continue my holiday madness. He runs some utility that keeps screens open remotely with processes running from home while connected to a customer's machine. He then can connect remotely from anywhere else and if he loses connectivity, his processes are still running from his machines at home. Rather slick and it helped. After breakfast, we found free wifi at a Caribou Coffee in Robinson Twp. It was flakey, but he was able to still get work done because of his remote utility.
Great, me and Jana could now continue holiday madness. We first walked into, "The Golf Shop" looking for a pair of Bionics Classics for my father-in-law. Too new, they only carried Bionics Golf. The neat thing about the store is it had a 6-hole putting green with sample clubs out; there were 3 different sized kiddie clubs and the blue-colored one fit Jana perfectly. So I sat on a bench and let her hack away.
Next stop, WalMart for more returning. I heard a great quote from a mom that afternoon, "Yes. Yes. That is your's, but you can't open it until Sunday night. And you have to pretend to be surprised."
Later that day, Jana came with me to Whole Foods for last minute food supplies. About one year ago to that moment, I remember driving to their parking lot and having their hired valet service turn me away because they were so packed. This year, about 2/3rds of the parking lot was open. There were checkout lanes with no lines. Weird.
Sunday: With Michael focused on his upgrade project, I'm able to block his scarf and move it from room to room to avoid him. He never notices. Around 11am, Jana finds dad and says, "Dad, come." Leads him to her bedroom where I have it drying on her bed. "Look, mom made that." Sigh.
That night, we head for his mom's sister's for dinner. It was rather fun. Jana was looking forward to playing with Alexis (10) and Mackenzie (6), her 2nd cousins. All the presents were for Alexis and Mackenzie, not a single one for Jana. No meltdown, I felt lucky that I had been working with Jana all week on making and presenting gifts to others. At least Mackenzie seemed to adore Jana and had her help open her own gifts.
Jana fell asleep on the ride home and that was it for her. That was the first time for us to have been able to carry her home asleep from the car where she continued to sleep through the night. Yes, we did put her into pajamas before leaving.
Monday: Jana has a fever in the morning and looks horrible. The fever seemed to subside after eating (she ate bread and half a container of blueberries!). She was able to open 2 gifts by noon. She really perked up with the drum set from Lola. So off to Michael's parents for lunch at 1:30.
When Jana opened her gifts, she had to enjoy each one one at a time. She was opening gifts until 10pm.
Some observations from this weekend:
* before wrapping battery operated toys, open them and play first. We found out the Thomas and Friends engine I picked up at WalMart did not match the tracks they also sold. Sigh, a post-Christmas return. It also helps to remove the 538 or so stupid wire ties on the toys so you aren't spending precious Christmas present opening time cutting and pulling them out. Not much you could do with presents from others so having wire cutters and pliers handy along with philips head screwdrivers handy doesn't hurt. I pulled out over 15 wire ties on Jana's pirate ship alone.
* I will have to remember to bring Jana a gift for her to have and open then next time we're with Michael's extended family. She was really good about not getting anything but it was damn heart-breaking.
* The situation of holidays, having a sick kid, with a husband who has to put in long hours and a pulled leg muscle are just events with bad timing.
* Jana made her dad and grandma return their knitted gifts to me, because, "That's mom's." I found that to be a warm jesture for her to be "looking out for mom." :)
With us, Michael was on-call from Monday to the Tuesday after Christmas. By about Wednesday of last week, he's been preparing for a major upgrade with a very large customer. Some may consider them the epitome of household products. Regardless, they're large. Their research data is large. For earlier upgrade attempts, I think it took Michael's scripts 6-8 hours to break up their data into chunks that could be backed up. Then another 9 hours or so to back up to tape.
Michael worked quite a bit Friday through Sunday noon to prepare for the small window he has to upgrade systems this week. He's leading this project remotely as well.
Friday: I took Jana out on errands with me to return items. I really wanted to return items before the post-Christmas craziness. It rained heavily and almost no one seemed to be out at Home Depot and hardly anyone was at Joann's. We returned an HDTV antenna to Home Depot. It was $50 and Michael saw better reception when he held the bare cable up against the window. I wanted Home Depot to know it was a bad product. But they don't seem to care why I wanted to return it. Oh well. I was surprised to see the first lot of seeds for 2007 gardening in already btw.
Saturday: I wanted to eat out for breakfast, so Michael figured out a way to manage that into his schedule plus let me continue my holiday madness. He runs some utility that keeps screens open remotely with processes running from home while connected to a customer's machine. He then can connect remotely from anywhere else and if he loses connectivity, his processes are still running from his machines at home. Rather slick and it helped. After breakfast, we found free wifi at a Caribou Coffee in Robinson Twp. It was flakey, but he was able to still get work done because of his remote utility.
Great, me and Jana could now continue holiday madness. We first walked into, "The Golf Shop" looking for a pair of Bionics Classics for my father-in-law. Too new, they only carried Bionics Golf. The neat thing about the store is it had a 6-hole putting green with sample clubs out; there were 3 different sized kiddie clubs and the blue-colored one fit Jana perfectly. So I sat on a bench and let her hack away.
Next stop, WalMart for more returning. I heard a great quote from a mom that afternoon, "Yes. Yes. That is your's, but you can't open it until Sunday night. And you have to pretend to be surprised."
Later that day, Jana came with me to Whole Foods for last minute food supplies. About one year ago to that moment, I remember driving to their parking lot and having their hired valet service turn me away because they were so packed. This year, about 2/3rds of the parking lot was open. There were checkout lanes with no lines. Weird.
Sunday: With Michael focused on his upgrade project, I'm able to block his scarf and move it from room to room to avoid him. He never notices. Around 11am, Jana finds dad and says, "Dad, come." Leads him to her bedroom where I have it drying on her bed. "Look, mom made that." Sigh.
That night, we head for his mom's sister's for dinner. It was rather fun. Jana was looking forward to playing with Alexis (10) and Mackenzie (6), her 2nd cousins. All the presents were for Alexis and Mackenzie, not a single one for Jana. No meltdown, I felt lucky that I had been working with Jana all week on making and presenting gifts to others. At least Mackenzie seemed to adore Jana and had her help open her own gifts.
Jana fell asleep on the ride home and that was it for her. That was the first time for us to have been able to carry her home asleep from the car where she continued to sleep through the night. Yes, we did put her into pajamas before leaving.
Monday: Jana has a fever in the morning and looks horrible. The fever seemed to subside after eating (she ate bread and half a container of blueberries!). She was able to open 2 gifts by noon. She really perked up with the drum set from Lola. So off to Michael's parents for lunch at 1:30.
When Jana opened her gifts, she had to enjoy each one one at a time. She was opening gifts until 10pm.
Some observations from this weekend:
* before wrapping battery operated toys, open them and play first. We found out the Thomas and Friends engine I picked up at WalMart did not match the tracks they also sold. Sigh, a post-Christmas return. It also helps to remove the 538 or so stupid wire ties on the toys so you aren't spending precious Christmas present opening time cutting and pulling them out. Not much you could do with presents from others so having wire cutters and pliers handy along with philips head screwdrivers handy doesn't hurt. I pulled out over 15 wire ties on Jana's pirate ship alone.
* I will have to remember to bring Jana a gift for her to have and open then next time we're with Michael's extended family. She was really good about not getting anything but it was damn heart-breaking.
* The situation of holidays, having a sick kid, with a husband who has to put in long hours and a pulled leg muscle are just events with bad timing.
* Jana made her dad and grandma return their knitted gifts to me, because, "That's mom's." I found that to be a warm jesture for her to be "looking out for mom." :)