The Good: Accolades & Unexpected

The software which my team was developing and testing since January went live a couple of weeks ago. The end of the development cycle felt like Kermit trying to keep things together on the muppet show. Go Live was rough for us, with the usual too many deadlines in too short a window, long hours, many details which got missed and had to be accounted for late. The process was rocky for us, but smoothed out quickly (which is a good sign). Most of the problems which came to light we dealt with same day, sometimes within an hour. So although there were a lot of small things, the world wasn't falling apart.

Last week I set up a meeting with the boss to get feedback from outside our little bubble of fixing problems. The short version is, though we felt every rock in the road, our users are happy and really have no complaints. Which, considering our user base, it nothing short of miraculous. My boss was very effusive with gratitude. The CEO wants to have a meeting with my team and walk through some of the features of the system. For an introvert like me that is both scary and gratifying.

On the home front, last week I was finally able to get caught up on the lawn and finish mowing everywhere in one week. It was really only possible because it didn't rain at all in the evenings, so I could work on it an hour every evening after work. I did skip Friday because it was so damn hot and humid. It had been hot and humid all week, but Friday was just too much.

As I was mowing I noticed some more volunteers below the barn. In the spring Derien spread compost from our bins into the holes around the ash tree stumps (we had to take down several old dead/dying trees). We now have delicata squash an tomatoes growing around two of our tree stumps. The one above the barn has some really happy squash, with good size fruit and some green tomatoes on the vine. The one below the barn is more shaded, but there are tomato flowers. I'm quite happy to have volunteer veggies. It looks like we may get more squash from the lawn than we get from the garden this year, which I find quite funny considering how much time and money has gone into the garden.

I got a three day weekend week before last, worked five days last week, and have vacation scheduled this week. I've spent the time so far just trying to get caught up on all the little things I haven't been able to get to over the last few months. It's actually really nice to have a few days off to work around the house and yard. The wood is now all put up for this winter and next. With one more brush burn we should have all the brush from spring cleaned up (we produced a lot this spring and didn't manage to get it cleaned up). Still tons of things to do, but there are always tons of things to do.

The Bad: No one expects the Spanish inquisition

Since I didn't have the wherewithal to make camping reservations early and everyone seems to be taking camping vacations this year, Derien and I got the idea to skip trying to camp on the weekend and head out to find a spot this morning instead. We figured if we could get an early start today, we should be able to find a spot at one of the campgrounds which does first-come, first-serve. Mondays and Tuesday are usually the least popular days at the campgrounds.

We decided to make this a test run for multi-day backpack camping, as opposed to car camping. That meant different meal prep and different stuff to pack (less and in a smaller space).

So yesterday evening we started packing and preparing, starting last minute because we had been trying to get stuff done around the house and yard all day. We started by preparing camping meals from our dried components: five different meals from dried/dehydrated components. That took a while because some of the products had gone from being ground to being rocks in the time since we last any. We have a tomato rock. It reminds me of the old U2 video for Sunday, Bloody Sunday, live at red rocks.

After that we went through the hiking checklist and made sure we found everything to go in our packs. Then got our clothing together and got that into our packs. By the time we were done it was after 10pm and we were exhausted. Still possible to get a fair amount of sleep, get up a little after 5am, have breakfast, and be out in the mountains before 9am.

I was just sitting down to make sure I had directions to our possible campgrounds when my cell phone rang. It was sister #2 letting me know that sister #1 had taken a fall yesterday: cut on head, broken collarbone, admitted to hospital in MA. Tests so far all negative. MRI to be done. Didn't even get off the phone with her and sister #1 called, she sounded pretty good, clear headed, but didn't have any idea why she just dropped as she stood up. She has given the hospital my name and number in the event things go pear shaped.

So yeah, didn't get to sleep until midnight last night, didn't leave for camping this morning. We'll see if things define themselves today. Crisis may mean a trip to MA. Not crisis may provide an abbreviated camping trip. Vacation plans just don't seem to be working for me this year.

I decided to try to make lemonade out of the lemons, so I started working on replacing the rotted boards around the garage doors. That is rapidly turning into a nightmare of epic proportions. To replace eight boards (2 on each side of 2 garage bays) I'm going to have to disassembly most of the side of the garage, destroying maybe 25 other boards in the process. To quote Worf: "I am not a merry man!"