Fairwell, Zigmund

Ziggy was a good hamster. He was a little black furball of little black furballs. He gave us nearly three years. And he finally bought the tank.

Diane noticed that something stinketh this morning. Uh oh. She lifted his igloo, and there he was, curled up taking the celestial cedar shavings nap. He seemed healthy to the end, so we have to attribute it to old age. I'm sure I saw him out and about two days ago, so he musta checked out yesterday. At least he far outlived Zoe (Mrs. Ziggy), and their one offspring we kept, Zuckerman, yeah, named after the farmer in Charlotte's Web.

Gosh, hammies don't have a long lifespan, when you're used to 15 to 20 years from cats and dogs.

Home life is recovering from 11 days of County Fair mode. Diane's busy with followup tasks, along with her normal full schedule. It's all about investing; in our girls, in our jobs, in our future together, so it's all worthwhile.

It's still kind of wacky crazee at work, and probably will be into next spring. As always, I'm not griping, 'cause God is providing, and besides, the alternative ain't fun. I'm not hearing much good about the IT job market lately. It's not like the good old days when you could count on at least one or two recruiter calls a month. The economy's changing and adapting, as it alway's has, it's just growing in other directions (and countries!)

Matthew 6:34: Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Snoopy Unplugged

Yay for wireless networks! I brought Snoopy (my iBook) to the Cumming Country Fair just to fill the idle time and catch up on some work. 'Course, I had to see if there were any access points in the area. Well, lo and behold, the Fair has it's own network! Great signal, too! It's the second golden age of wireless!

The Fair itself has yielded about fifty or so leads to follow up. The weather's been mostly pleasant, though some of the evenings have been pretty chilly. One more day to go. Any I won't be keeping the laptop out much longer, because it's very breezy, which means dust is flying, mixed with cinders from the steam engines powering the sawmill.

My main project at work is now handed over to the testing group, though I'm still tweaking and adjusting things to improve the stability of the system. So I'm kinda over the hump now, and can "relax " a little, relatively speaking. Just in time for the holidays.

Sorry, no Scripture quote this time. I need to get under cover because the flying coal ashes are getting into everything. Take care, y'all! Enjoy your weekend.

Time funs...

The hecticity in our lives is running around a 7.8 on the Rusheder scale, which ranges from sleeping == 0 to everything flying apart from centrifigual force == 10. We have many irons in the fire, and no shortage of tasks needing attention. God bless ya if you can carve quite moments out of busy lives to, oh, I don't know, catch your breath, balance the checkbook, read a book, read The Book, study, learn to play a new instrument, learn to speak Russian, develop a budget, hike the A.T., blog. Some people seem to be able to pull it off in spite of their situation. Alas, I don't have youth on my side.

Work is going at a feverish pitch, with several major production deadlines begining on, hmm... mischief night of all nights. This should be the storm before the Holiday calm, but you never know. It's always a relief to get a major project pushed out of the nest. Especially when it doesn't nose dive into the thicket.

My bride's busy almost every day at the county fair (Oct 7-17), promoting our Shaklee business and products. Her team (downline) is doing very well. She's made director level in three months because of everyone's hard work, and she's got several folks very focused on building their own businesses and helping others. Really cool to see the ways this opportunity is taking off. There's a saying that can be applied to every part of life, but it's especially true with Shaklee that "he climbs highest who lifts another up".

I'm still working through some minor health issues involving tivial things like, oh, breathing, and hypertension. At least, as Erin my Eldest mentioned, I don't have asthma. Didn't really react to the methacholine challenge. Don't know what the outcome of the other tests will be, or how the side effects of BP meds can be eliminated. And guess what? A side effect of the BP meds is breathing troubles. Arrggh! Forget about non-med advice from doctors, they don't have any. Be careful, kiddies, it's not an easy road back when you've neglected exercise and diet for years. By the time you realize what's going on, you've got no quick and easy fixes.

My eight-year-old has discovered the percussion section on an old Yamaha keyboard, and as I write this, she's composing drum sequences for the unit's canned tunes that didn't have them to begin with. Ideas for Christmas dance in my head. And who needs iTunes? (Me! Me! And a 40gb iPod, and Bose headphones, and... stop! stop!)

Mark 4:39: He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.