Category: Family

The Wife and SIL trade off who hosts the holidays. This year, Ward Manor hosted Thanksgiving. The TLDR is that we had a nice crowd and lots of food. Too much in my opinion, but I’ve been on a kick to keep leftovers to a minimum. Mostly to avoid waste. Personal opinion, not shared by most of the family.

We did almost lose one of the cats. Freya, our crazy yearling, decided that Thanksgiving meant Ward Manor had to be treated like a rally track. This resulted in her shooting through some gaps in the furniture at breakneck speed. She didn’t always judge the gaps the best – including the one between the couch and sofa end tables. Which had my laptop and fresh cup of Earl Grey tea. The good news is that I didn’t need to shell out a couple grand for a new laptop. The bad news is that I didn’t get a new laptop. Well, that and we had to go through the hassle of pulling up and washing the front room rug.

Just life at Ward Manor – even during the holidays.

Last week was unusual because my job sent me to a conference in Orlando. I was presenting on a project I participated in while at my previous position. I was asked to go because the primary developer does not travel, and they needed someone who was familiar with the history of the project to be there to talk to it. Because it was just over in Orlando, The Wife decided to come along for a change of scenery.

Overall, the conference was good. I got the opportunity to meet people in person who I’d only met online. Including my new supervisor. It was also a good chance to catch up with a bunch of people who I’d worked with in the past, but who had gone on to other jobs across our area.

The bad? I missed the last day. Why? Flu shots are a requirement for my work, and the facility was nice enough to offer them at the conference. I took advantage of it because that means I don’t have to make a trip somewhere else, and it makes sure that it gets into my personnel file. Normally, I don’t have much a reaction to the flu shot beyond a sore shoulder. This time? I woke up at oh-dark-early feeling horrible. Not as bad as the 24 hours of hell with the COVID boosters, but pretty bad. Talked it over with The Wife. We could wait until daybreak to see how I feel, but I doubt even if I felt better that I would be up to the conference. So, we made the decision to trek back across the state at oh-dark-early. I shot off an email to the boss, we packed up, and headed home. We ran into more construction, but the lack of traffic evened it out. Particularly since we missed the Disney traffic and the I-4 buildup around Tampa. We did give MIL a scare coming in so early. The rest of Thursday I was kind of out of it. More due to odd hours than anything else.

Saturday was a day trip with The Wife, Mom, and The Brother. We went down to Arcadia. Mainly so The Wife and Mom could go through the various shops. The Brother came along to spend time with the family. Arcadia hasn’t fully recovered from Ian or the other tropicals that blew through there since. We spent a few hours there before heading back and picking up barbeque from a local place. All in all, it was a good day.

Sunday was a frustrating day. Work gave me a new dock that would allow for three monitors plus the laptop. So, I picked up an LG Dual-up monitor. It’s essentially a really big monitor that will mimic two monitors stacked on top of each other. Great. Neat. Except the ports on back of the monitor don’t exactly match up to the ports available on the new dock. There was an emergency run to Wally World to get an HDMI/Displayport cable. After some frustration with cables and settings, I finally got it to work. Mostly. For some reason, it wants to think that my bottom screen is to the right of the upper screen. No matter how I arranged it in settings, that was the only config that would work. Feck it. Let’s do some more testing by logging into work. Except, I couldn’t log into work. After multiple attempts, I call the help desk. Um, yeah, we can’t see you on the remote access list. WTF?

This resulted in me having to travel up to Tampa to log into work from there to request new access from behind the firewall. Which involved trying to find a place to work. That’s difficult because even with people on hybrid schedules, space is kinda scarce. Fortunately, I know folks who owed me favors. By mid-morning my accesses were restored, and my boss agreed to let me take a long lunch to go back home.

Now things are returning to their normal routines. For which I am very happy about.

Last year, The Wife and I were out of town for the holiday. This year, we set up a table at the end of the drive and set out candy and other treats. The big fad was teal buckets with things other than candy for kids with allergies or other issues. Sounded like a decent idea. And heck, a bunch of party favors were cheaper than candy. So, we had that and a traditional candy bucket. The Wife and MIL put together little candy bags to ration things.

The grandniece came over and visited the neighbors. She was dressed up as a mermaid Escorting her was The Wife’s mother and The Wife dressed up in a Mama Shark costume. Let me explain this costume. Imagine one of those blow-up lawn decorations turned into a costume. Yeah. The cats were slightly terrified when she tried it on. Still, they enjoyed making the lap around the houses. The Wife’s niece then took the costume for a later shindig. We sat outside handing out candy and toys. I was surprised at how popular little slinkies were.

Plus we got to see the next door neighbors’ new baby dressed up as Mario.

This past weekend The Wife and I traipsed across the state to the House of Mouse’s shopping mall – otherwise known as Disney Springs. Why? Mainly so I could go to a concert at the House of Blues. It’s kind of funny that out of a four-band lineup. I was only really interested in the two middle bands. It was also a chance for some couple time for The Wife and I.

Anyways, we decided to get that the smart thing would be to get a hotel on Thursday, spend Friday in Disney Springs, and head home on Saturday morning. We even got a hotel close to Disney Springs so we could walk rather than dealing with parking. However, since I was busy with my new job, I didn’t do my normal checklist for the trip. As a result, some items were forgotten. Such as The Wife’s neck fan, her portable bedtime fan – and my ear pro for the concert. There were some other interesting difficulties. I purchased a new safe for travel. It required some last-minute jury-rigging. That requires a full review in another post. Maybe after another trip.

We had fun exploring Disney Springs. There was a Diwali Dance shindig going on. We got to see a few dozen folks in colorful costumes dance up and down the way. This is the kind of multicultural stuff I like. Bring your neat stuff in and show off. We spent a lot of time visiting the various shops. The Wife loves handbags, so we stopped into a couple of stores for the brands she really likes. She has the same experience that I have with gun shops. It’s neat to see the new stuff but damn those things are expensive. At least The Wife can see if the items she was lusting after show up at the outlet stores near us. Then there was the issue of the lightsaber. Did I want the lightsaber? Yes. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pay what they were asking. The Wife, being The Wife, walked through the fact that yes, we could afford it, and I was just having sticker shock/repulse. So, a replica of the original Luke Skywalker came home with us. I will admit that it was neat when one of the hotel employees stopped us on the way back the room to see which one I got – and then proceeded to show us his collection.

The concert. At The Wife’s urging, I got one of the upgraded seats the House of Blues was offering. Expensive, but worth it – for the most part. I didn’t have to fight the floor crowd. Just sit back and watch the show. The only issue was that it felt like my seat was under a fan. If I do this again, I’m bringing a jacket. So, as I stated earlier, I forgot my ear pro. The lady running the VIP program was nice enough to find me some foam earplugs. From prior concert experience, I knew those weren’t really going to help. So, I decided to try using my AirPod Pros with the ANC turned on. Yeah, that helped out a lot. First band was Edge of Paradise. Their overall music isn’t bad, but I dislike how their vocalist sings. It sounds too shrieky. Next was Nanowar Of Steel. I was disappointed that they didn’t play “Pasadena 1994.” However, they more than made up with their stage presence. This is a band who knows they are there to make the audience laugh and rock. Between costumes and antics, they more than fulfilled their purpose. The third band was Amaranthe. This was the band that really drew me across the state. They were the first band I heard that did the clean female, clean male, and growling male vocal combination – and they do it so well. The funny thing with Amaranthe is that some of their songs I’ll recognize immediately, but some I need to hear a bit. They played most of the songs that I love hearing. The final band was Dragonforce. Yeah, I didn’t stick around for their show. It’s not that I didn’t want to see them. It’s more that I had seen the two bands I really wanted to see, and I was feeling the combined discomforts of fatigue and sitting on a metal barstool for a few hours. Do I regret not staying? No, not really. At that point, I don’t think I would have enjoyed the performance – and I don’t want that kind of concert experience.

Saturday morning was a nice drive back. And we even managed to pick up the groceries. Overall, it was a successful trip. I just need to find a place to mount my new lightsaber.

It was my last week at my now “old” job. I worked for that division for fifteen years – my entire professional career. There was some concern HR wouldn’t be able to finish their pre-work before I was scheduled to transfer to the new division. Thursday I had lunch with my teammates. Well, most of them. Some were either ill or dealing with ill podlings. That time of the year. Friday was my last day. I’m excited to start my new job, but I know I’m going to miss my team.

Saturday, The Wife competed in our Area Humorous Competition and took first place. I’m extraordinarily please that she will get to go on to division. Which means The Wife and I have to do some editing and rehearsal to get her ready. Now. if only the contest wasn’t on the same day as a big craft fair that we usually try to hit with Rocket Engineer Brother’s wife and my mom.

On Sunday, I put up a pole for a couple of our bird feeders. The Wife wanted one close to one of our windows so the cats can see the birds up close. During this I found out one of the other poles had suffered a structural failure. Probably due to us exceeding the weight limit with one of the feeders. Fortunately, Amazon had a heavy duty one on a lighting sale. We also put up a new camera to cover one of the blind spots. Because one of the neighbor’s windows is just in the camera view, The Wife and MIL went over to let them know. Which gave them a chance to see the neighbor’s new baby.

It’s been an interesting week at the Manor.

Last week I get a call that there’s some suspicious activity on The Wife’s debit card. I look at the transaction. It’s not something I recognize. Go to ask The Wife, but she’s in a meeting. In an abundance of caution, I tell the bot that we didn’t authorize it. They cancel her debit card. The Wife gets off the phone. Yeah, it was the payment for one of our streaming services. They upped the price, which is why it didn’t match what I had on our budget. Oh well.

Then the cats gave us more fun. EBC and Colonel have been sparring partners since we merged clowders five years ago. This has resulted in EBC picking up some injuries that need tending – and occasional vet visits. This time, The Wife found what looked like bite marks on EBC’s chin. WTF? Some drainage and anti-biotic ointment did some good, but not enough. Vet time. Good news – it wasn’t a bite. Bad news – some other type of infection. A shot of antibiotic seems to have helped, but EBC was a bit wonky for the next day or so.

Saturday, The Wife and I decided to do a couples day. We went to the Dali Museum up in St. Pete. They have this new Dali 360 presentation, which was really nifty. I would highly recommend it. Then we went through the main museum. Interesting bit of trivia we picked up from one of the volunteers. Because the museum is on the water, they keep all of the art on the top floor. You know, in case of storm surge. The only downside was when we tried to become members. Their promotional materials stressed that we could apply our day’s admission against the cost of membership. It would help if any of their staff could have actually done that. We’ll still likely become members because it gets us free admission to a few other things around here that we’ve been planning to go to. Afterwards, The Wife and I went to the Rosemary and Thyme in Sarasota. It’s one of our favorite restaurants. During the summer season, they run a fixed price menu, which is always good.

Sunday we had our first cold front come through – which meant the morning were cool enough for The Wife to use the retractable screen we had installed on the front door back in March. The cats, of course, found that fascinating. The Wife went over to SIL’s place to provide some instruction due to SIL receiving a brand-new Cricut for her birthday. MIL and I later her joined her, with a bag of airsofts I divested from my collection for BIL.

The Wife and I also started binging through Ashoka. I already agreed that I would have to explain a lot, since The Wife did not see Star Wars Rebels. However, the shifts in continuity elicited a comment that we needed to rewatch everything chronologically. Um, okay. That’s a lot of stuff, but I’ll suffer through it.

Tuesday was the rescheduled party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of our Toastmasters club. Part of that was a fundraiser where you paid to taste and judge brownies brought in by some of the club members. The Wife – at my prompting – brought orange-chocolate brownies.

Last week, I got the call offering me a new position. The job is pretty much what I’m already doing, but with an expanded scope. Plus, I’m going to be essentially building a program up. It’s going to be interesting work. Even better, they don’t have physical space for me, so I get to continue my full-time telework. However, the transition looks like it’s going to make a hectic month. Particularly as I try to figure out who can absorb my duties. Particularly since my team is losing another senior person at the same time. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Over the weekend, The Wife, MIL, Mom, The Brother, and me drove down to see family in Okeechobee. We don’t get down there as much as we would like, but we have some relatives on my dad’s side we like chatting with and visiting. We had to go a different route than normal, which meant going through Yeehaw Junction. The Wife hadn’t been that way, and hadn’t seen the Desert Inn. It’s pretty much dilapidated these days, but I have memories of waiting in that parking lot with a broken down van. Anyways, we had a good visit with lunch at a local place called Lightsey’s. If you’re in Okeechobee, it’s a great spot for fish.