Pat's Journal

I'm on "pinz!" and needles

It's a good feeling to not be pressured at work. I was expecting to have to be ready for a major software installation at one of our company's plants this week, but after attending a meeting at the plant this afternoon, I found out that others need to get their tasks done before the installation can proceed. So that gives me more time to prepare, and a few minutes to blog.

Sharon went back to work today, and the kids are back in school, now that the Minnesota teachers' convention is over. We didn't do much during their time off, since I still had to work. Sharon has recovered from her medical procedure last Tuesday, though she will still need to take it easy and not lift heavy things for a few weeks.

I did get an unexpected vacation on Friday afternoon, when the power in the area around my office went down around lunchtime. I went to lunch, figuring that by the time I returned, power would be restored. However, it wasn't, and when it was determined that power would not be coming back on until 3 PM or later, the company sent everyone home. I had already left by then, since my laptop's battery had died and I couldn't do any more work at my desk.

Over the weekend, K went to a birthday party at a new entertainment center nearby called "Pinz!" (I love to say the name because it has a Z in it.) It features bowling, as you would guess by the name, but also has a huge arcade, laser tag, and a restaurant. I asked K if she went up to the service counter and asked the staff why they spelled "Pinz!" with a Z, but she said no. No guts, no glory : - )

While K was at "Pinz!", Sharon and I went to a huge furniture clearance sale, jointly run by HOM Furniture and Gabberts. HOM sells run-of-the-mill furniture while Gabberts is known locally for having quality merchandise. That's exactly what we saw reflected in the merchandise available. Most of the HOM stuff was mismatched or had major flaws, such as chunks of wood missing, but was hugely discounted. The Gabberts items were not as heavily discounted and few had any flaws. However, even at the discounted price, the Gabberts items were still more than we could afford, and I did not want to purchase any of the HOM items as the flaws were too major, so we ended up not buying anything. Next time there is a sale similar to this we'll be sure to get there on the first day when there are still good items to buy.

We also watched "Slumdog Millionaire" on HBO Saturday night, and the Vikings Sunday afternoon. "Slumdog" was a very good movie which deserved the awards it won at the Oscars, though it was distressing to see how some people live in India. The Vikings were distressing in other ways. (Nice segue, huh?) The defense fell apart in the fourth quarter, and they were lucky to win when the Baltimore Ravens missed a field goal with 2 seconds left.

In geek news, I reformatted the hard drive on our home desktop computer this weekend, since it had picked up a nasty virus that thwarted my usual methods of cleaning up a virus. It disabled the "system restore" function and would not let the computer boot up into "safe" mode to do repairs. After backing up the family's data - mostly K's drawings and S's iTunes MP3's - I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the original applications. It works much better now. I also spent time organizing my MP3 music collection.

The weather was nice on Saturday, Sunday, and today, but since it's October, it won't last long. Back to the 40's and rain by Wednesday. Oh joy.

Until next time...

posted by pat @ 3:49 PM