jimsjournal
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jimsjournal |
What gorgeous weather! -- 10/21/09 |
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Yesterday and today were mostly sunny -- and seasonably mild -- and tomorrow is supposed to be not only mostly sunny, but also nicely warm with a high temperature in the upper sixties. Friday is supposed to be partly cloudy and quite a bit cooler with a high in the lower fifties. Saturday will be a wash-out, with rain predicted for most of the day (so I'd better get some tarps over my wood piles before then). Sunday is the day I'm most concerned about because Sunday morning is the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer fund-raising walk. A few days ago the long-range weather forecast was guessing that we'd have rain on Sunday, but now they are saying "partly cloudy" and that sounds good to me. (It's not fun walking three miles in the rain.) The new siding is now on much of the front of the house -- except mostly for the area above the front porch. Will and Rob expect to replace the windows for our second floor hallway and for the front side of our bedroom plus get the rest of the siding on... and maybe even get the porch put back together (they had to remove two sections of railing in order to remove the old siding and put on the new). I'd show more work-in-progress photographs except that I do not know where the USB cable for my camera can be. I think that some of the occupants of this house (quite possibly the ones who are in their twenties) seem to borrow USB cables for some of their electronics... so, just words tonight. Actually, I do have some fireplace photographs but, to be quite honest, I do not have the energy to open up Photoshop. I started work a little before seven this morning and shut down about quarter to six tonight. During that time I took a twenty minute lunch break (at which time I ate a bowl of cereal because I had never found an opportunity for breakfast). Now it was not non-stop work. There were a couple of times when (while stuff was downloading, etc.) I did grab coffee and wander through some Web pages... and when Nancy got home from work I took a break and had a cup of coffee in the kitchen with her. This was partly due to a number of extraneous but still work-related tasks -- such that company sponsored charity drive for which I ended up being a canvaser. There is an incredible push for 100% response -- not 100% donating, but every single person going to the pledge Web site and making a decision to contribute or not to contribute. This being the final week of the campaign, that means a conference call each day. That mean I had four different meetings today -- all without needing to leave my den. Oh, plus I had to do some set up work for an online course I am going to start taking next week. Yeah, and somewhere in there I had to do productive work as well. One of the things causing me to put in some extra time in recent weeks is that I am working on applying for my company's accreditation in the learning profession. This mostly involves putting together a package of written documentation about what a super-duper wizard I am (although it will also involve an hour-long telephone interview answering questions about my accomplishments). This is something relatively new. They view it as a first step of a process leading to certification in the learning profession. (As you can see, we now prefer the word learning rather than the word education -- thus, at some point my job title changed from senior education specialist to senior learning specialist.) Certification is a really big deal in my company in all the technical fields. In my field certification requires putting together a package that is at least three times as thick as for accreditation and involves going before a three person board for questioning, etc. (Not only that, certification has to be renewed every three years.) As I said, accreditation is considered to be a step towards certification but I have no desire to explore that. I am aware of what my age is and see no reason to push for that. (If I were to take leave of my senses in that fashion I would just start working on a doctorate -- that would at least have some value towards part time work once I retire.)
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