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Yes, I've been very bad about updating this site -- almost five weeks with
but a single entry. It's been years since I've had a gap like that.
I've been busy...
That busy?
Well... okay, blame some of it on Netflix... and 24...
Yeah, excuses, excuses...
Here's my list:
- Work. Well, besides the usual work-fills-all-the-space-available thing, the
company I work for (that Big Blue computer company) is closing the office
where I (technically) work. This means that I am officially changing to
work from home status. (instead being somebody who is assigned to an office
but who only bothers to go to that official office once or twice a month).
This meant meetings and red tape and ordering new stuff and throwing away
old stuff and emptying file cabinets, etc. [Once upon a time -- and not
too long ago -- if your company were closing your office you would have
a choice of relocating or being out of a job. Now we are just all going
to work from our homes. Three cheers for the Internet.]
- More Work. The floor of my home office now has a couple of boxes of books and a
printer and a computer and monitor and a box of office supplies and...
Well, you get the picture. Stuff in boxes just sitting on the floor. I
now have lots of stuff to find a place for.
- Still More Work. A couple of weeks ago I spent a week at a technical conference in Las
Vegas. Yeah, I know, big deal, it comes around every year. This time, however,
I delivered two presentations at the conference. Preparing for that ate
up a bit of time. You'd think I've been around long enough to have learned
never to volunteer, right? *grin* Actually, it gave the conference a real
focus for me and I enjoyed doing it... and I'm already thinking about an
idea for a presentation at next year's conference.
- Taxes. I don't know about those of you who live in other countries, but here in the U.S. we undergo an annual torture session computing our income tax. Oh, sure, I use tax preparation software, but we still have to gather all of this information (and all of these pieces of paper!) about income and taxes and expenses and... Oh, it is pure torture and it takes hours and hours.
- Web stuff. Sometimes Nancy and I work as attendants for weddings and such (sort
of a combination of historical building baby-sitters and museum docents
and prom chaperones) at the Narragansett Towers and the Kinney Bungalow.
(For example, here
and here and
here. Well, I've been building a Web page for Kinney Bungalow (Yeah, go take a look... I'll wait here for you to
get back.)
- Netflix and 24. Jill and Jeremy gave us a year's subscription to Netflix for Christmas. It is quickly addicting... you can choose from thousands and thousands of films... not just current hits, but oldies as well. A few weeks ago we watched Chaplin's Modern Times and the other night we watched A Man and a Woman (Une homme et une femme) -- *sigh* -- when I had watched in a theatre in 1966 I was able to understand the French without having to read the subtitles -- this time about five minutes into the film I had to stop it and start over again with dubbed-in English). Right now United 93 and a recent Bruce Willis thriller are sitting by the DVD player and D.W. Griffith's Intolerance is just a half dozen films down in our queue. But you can get more than movies on DVD these days... and we got hooked on 24... six episodes per DVD... so we went from being people who rarely turned
on the TV in the living room (well, except when major tennis tournaments
are on and Nancy is glued to the TV) to being people who turned it on three
or four nights a week! The Sopranos is one of the few TV shows we watch
-- but we are three episodes behind in watching it (thank goodness for
digital cable on-demand because we were four behind until we watched the
April 15th episode last night).
- Spring. Yes, winter is over, spring is here -- and gardening begins to demand
our time.
Well, those are my excuses. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
What else... well, besides the production of Oklahoma! that I mentioned in my birthday entry, during my lack of entries period
there were also productions of The Fantasticks and of The Clean House at Trinity Rep and Shaw's Major Barbara at 2nd Story Theatre.
Things continue to be busy... Tomorrow is Jill's birthday and we will be going out to dinner at The Mews Tavern (yes, that does seem to have become our restaurant-of-choice for birthdays
and such). Friday night Jill has having friends over for what has become
her annual birthday bash while Nancy and I will be attending a student
theatrical performance at the middle school where she teaches and then
joining several of her colleagues in some local establishment that serves
adult beverages. The weekend should bring a walk on a beach and I promise
there will be photographs. I will get back into more frequent posting.
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