Grumpy...

I haven't been posting much recently. Partly because I have been kind of grumpy over the last few weeks, and I try not to be too negative here in blogland.

A lot of the grumpiness is due to our lovely van which has been broken down. It all started with trying to fix one little thing which started a chain reaction making it undrivable for the past three weeks. I seem to have this strange connection to my vehicles which makes me physically unwell if they are not running properly. Today the last part that is needed to fix the van is arriving, so hopefully the van and I will be feeling better soon. Winter is almost over too!

To celebrate Valentine’s Day we went to see a play. It was a really well done romantic comedy starring Neve Cambell (she was in "Party of Five", not that I ever watched that show), Kristen Johnston (she was in "Third Rock from the Sun"), and Michael McKean (he was in all the Christopher Guest movies: "Spinal Tap", "Best in Show", etc), and Cillian Murphy (who I've never heard of before, but he was really good).

On Sunday we went to watch the Chinese New Year parade. It was very short (which is good because I loose patience with parades very quickly). After enjoying the parade we went in to see London's China Town. This turned out to be a mistake because it was really crowded (I think there were as many people in China Town as there are in the entire state of Idaho). We escaped China Town and went to see the London Science Museum.

Monday was my 31st birthday. We went to my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant and enjoyed a feast. I got some really good presents from Heather. She got me a big collection of "Father Brown" stories by Chesterton, a book chronicling one of Bob Dylan's famous comeback tours, a Bob Dylan record (for which I still do not have a record player), and some chocolate. With my combined Christmas and Birthday money, I bought a new digital camera. Nothing special, just something very portable and capable of higher quality prints.

I had to eat all of the chocolate fairly quickly because Lent began this Wednesday, and this year I am attempting to give up sweets. This includes desserts, candy, soda, and just about anything with added sugar. I am hoping that along with the physical sacrifice, I will be able to achieve some spiritual growth in the season leading up to Easter.

JE

Crunch time...

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. This year has been dominated by work so far. On the 7th of February I will have been with this company for 1 year. I am now getting to the “crunch time” for the design that I have been working on since I started last year. There have been a lot of distractions (other little projects and changes in the specifications) that have caused this design to really drag on. All of a sudden everyone is panicking about getting this project finished, so by the end of this month, we will be releasing all of the design details to our manufacturers. Personally, I welcome the additional pressure. A little bit of pressure seems to bring out the best in me and really helps me make the final push to get things done.

The downside of working hard and putting in extra hours is that I am completely drained by the time I get home. I have had a hard time getting motivated to work on my music and recording project.

In other more random news… I stayed up watching my beloved Bears blow it in the Super Bowl on Sunday night. The sad thing was that the game stayed close enough throughout that I had to keep watching until the end (3:30AM). There was always a chance that they might put a couple of drives together and get back into it. Sadly, this never happened, despite the best efforts of the Chicago defense, the offense never got going.

I got caught up on my sleep last night by getting to bed early. It was one of those strange nights when I heard noises in the house, but was too dead to realize what might be going on. This morning when I woke up there was a dead mouse in the middle of the rug in the living room. The noises that I heard were the cat scrambling around after a mouse and then proudly yowling about her catch, but nobody got up to admire it.

JE