prince_eric | Ugh.....

So.

To update, since return:

Three days of work, then Thanksgiving. Fairly uneventful -- did dinner at my parents' house. During the extended weekend, the only thing I remember doing was removing the screens from the windows on the front of the house, and then getting all the wreaths down from the attic and getting them put into the windows on their hangers, and then putting the little electric candle thingys into the windows. Oh, and finally taking the $300 pile of bark mulch that's been sitting in the driveway since July, and putting it where it belongs, so that when the snows come the driveway can be cleared without creating a huge mess. And clean up the garage (sweeping, organizing, etc.), finish cutting the fallen trees in the back yard so that they're not sticking out in the way of where the no-show siding guy would need to work, and clean the basement. Deal with running issue with boiler that required me to run downstairs and power-cycle the control unit on top, until on Saturday a senior tech that could help find the problem was available. Have him out, track down the problem to a specific subsystem when he accidentally reset it, and made the problem disappear. Not 5 minutes after he was gone, boiler was out again. Have him back (while we're having dinner with friends), and spend another 2 hours isolating the problem. Sunday, visit my parents with the baby (as the wife was working), and end up bringing my sister's PC home to fix, as she uses dialup, and appears to have gotten scanned and infected after her system was in storage for almost a year when she sold her condo, and was looking for a house, and all her anti-virus software and the like got horribly out of date. So I guess I do actually know what I did during this weekend.

Monday of this week, work. Work on cleaning ticket queue as best I could as I'm out the rest of this week on vacation.

Tuesday of this week, go into work for quiz in class. While there, realize that I didn't reload the backup library with tapes, and do that so that for the next two weeks it'll be all set, and it won't fall on co-workers to deal with.

Wednesday and Thursday, work like crazy -- finish getting all Christmas stuff down from the attic. Assemble Christmas tree (though the branches still need to be opened and made to look all pretty and shit, and the ornaments put on), hang garland from the bannister handrail. Work in basement, installing hangers for the plastic pex tubing that supplies the baseboard heat to the first floor (and cleaning up the mess that was made by the fucking butcher that installed it in the first place as best I could; i.e. in order to actually untangle things and make them look neat and professionally done, we'd need to disconnect the tubing, rerun it all, and then reconnect it and bleed the heating system to purge the air), and insulate about 75% of the hot-water pipes. All the laundry is done (the last load is running in the wash now), the bed linens have been changed. Re-install my sister's computer, download patches, install new antivirus software, install anti-spyware software, clean and disinfect the machine thoroughly, reload a few little bits of software that she uses (mainly Office), install and verify that dialup works (as the initial problem I was asked to look at was that her modem had 'disappeared' from her system, so dialup no longer worked). Wednesday, get woken up by call at 7:10 telling us that in 30 minutes tech would be by with parts to fix boiler. 8:00, tech shows up, and fixes boiler.

Today -- get up at 5 AM (well, OK, more like 5:15 or 5:20, but still, close enough). Bring wife into local hospital for wrist surgery. Bring wife home from wrist surgery. Get suitcase packed with clothing for next week's conference in San Diego, get most of stuff ready for trip. Go outside, help in-laws rake and dump leaves from their yard (3 hours in 40-degree weather. Fun does not begin to describe it). Go back inside, work more on getting ready for trip (driving directions to great-aunt's house in Chino Hills from hotel, now the only thing missing from suitcase is random toiletries that I'll use in the morning, then pack away). Spend time catching up with

filidh, get carryon together (need to download code for next week's class assignment to laptop, and let iPod finish charging, then we're ready to close that up as well), fold two loads of laundry and get the last one started.

Still outstanding for tonight:

1. Cut flowers, put into vase
2. Refill the food bucket for the cats so that their dish can be filled next week
3. Sign and seal two last Christmas cards
4. Wake wife, have her take pain meds
5. Pour a glass of this, and sit down and watch Star Wars Episode III on DVD

For tomorrow:

1. Clean litterbox
2. Clean mudroom
3. Get together clothing and the like for baby, so that my parents can pick her up for the week owing to my wife not being able to pick up anything heavier then 10 lbs at the moment.
4. Get ride into airport, fly to Sandy Eggo.

Still undone, that I'd like to have gotten done this week:

1. Letter telling BA where to stuff it, how to find said location, and a mallet for helping in the stuffing
2. Silicone caulking in the basement, to seal up places where holes were punched into the outside walls for exterior lights/outlets, faucets, etc.

Gah.