Ah, and extra day off is good. Especially after a few days on the road. I'm glad the woman said that today must be a rest day. And by rest I'll of course sort though my closets, wash the Montero, bike and her car and possibly finish wiring up those lights I've been meaning to do for so long now.

Saturday and Sunday we were up in Shasta county again looking at dirt. She found a piece that she likes well enough to put an offer in on. The woman is pretty good about making up her mind and then doing something about it, so much more than I. The pics are here and the last 15 or so are of the 20 acres (everything after the pic of the deer). It's actually flat, buildable and hasn't been torched in a fire in the last 20 years. She's got the paperwork and will submit the offer tomorrow most likely. She was amazed that the Montero didn't break down on us with all of the miles and 4x4 activity. I didn't let her see the power steering pump leaking though while I was checking the oil.

My dentist thing on Wednesday was OK. I almost fainted after he did all the injections. I was so panicked about the whole thing, and then nothing happened, that my body just gave out. I thought I was going to fall out of the chair while I was sitting there drooling on myself. Not a pretty picture.

Yesterday we actually ate stuff from the garden. Check it out, the largest of the carrots:

It was pretty tasty! The others won't be that big I don't think. Everything is having trouble growing because the boxes are too shallow. The onions are trying to grow on top of the dirt, and the edamame have sorta reached max height at 1.5' and that's not tall enough. This would be a lot easier if everything wasn't made of concrete around here.

Saw the 3rd Star Wars movie last night too. It was OK, I liked how everything was drawn together and it seems like Episode IV will make a lot more sense now as to why things are the way they are. The acting still sucked though, I wonder if Lucas makes them act that way. You know, to keep in the theme of the rest of the movies when the actors really did suck. I was also disappointed that it was mostly just CGI carrying the movie, the characters weren't that exciting. Oh well, it's a famous space opera, it doesn't have to be good. :)

A productive day. I got the bike washed, the woman's car washed, my closets cleaned out (generated two garbage bags of stuff for goodwill), got the lights wired up, the house vacuumed, finished another book, relaxed, and finished up with BBQ-ing turkey legs (just like the renaissance fair!) and giving myself a hair cut. My hair is really, really getting thin. I swear there is like 50% less hair in the tub after a shave now then when I started just a few months back. I figure within 3 years it's got to be gone.

I'm going to the dentist today to get a filling. If I wasn't already stuffy with allergies, sick to my stomach due to lunch and afflicted with some serious butt issues due to the afore mentioned lunch, I would be worried. That, and the poison oak looking stuff I picked up this weekend (and I was soooo careful) is spreading on my arm more. I'm a wreck.

Whoa, I spelled "siebzehn" correct on the first try. I never get that one right. And why is the spell checker saying "spelt" isn't a word? Isn't the past tense of "spell"... spelt? Maybe I need a remedial English class.

Today Ed pulled us into a room and told us that he had his 1-on-1 with his boss (the CFO) and was told that we are now getting a new CIO that Ed will report to. Well, surprise, surprise. Ed had no idea it was happening, he didn't get to interview nor talk to the guy or anything. Sounds like we really are screwed.

Saturday's riding lesson was much better than last week. Same damn annoying horse but I was a lot more aggressive with him and he listened. I also had a different instructor and her voice was a lot LOUDER so I could hear without any problems. You can tell she's used to teaching kids, she was amazed every time I actually did what she told me to do. I'm not a spoiled 12 year old princess, I actually admit I don't know what I'm doing and do what the instructors say so I'll learn. Imagine that.

After the lesson we got cleaned up and went out to Half Moon Bay for a BBQ. One of Kristen's friends his house sitting for some rich people who have a huge house right on the beach. The BBQ was awesome and it was almost warm enough to wear shorts. I took about an hour nap in the sun and since I was wearing SPF45 I didn't look like a lobster like the woman did.

Sunday we drove up to Shasta county and looked at land. Nothing was really good, but I took a zillion pictures anyway (on the main page). It's all too steep, or too rocky or has no water/power/etc. We're either going to have to double the amount of money we're looking to spend, or go elsewhere, to get something worth owning. We did cross about 5 streams in the Sentra, and at one point I thought we were going to get stuck coming back up this really bad hill (next to the burnt out minivan in the pics). Next time I think she'll agree with me to take the Montero. It's a POS, but it's a 4x4 POS and that means something in these parts.

I was hanging out in HR talking about hiring the dude we interviewed on Friday (whew, one position hired for, 3 to go) and the HR people told me that we're getting a new CIO. We don't have one now, and Ed (my boss the new VP) had no idea what I was talking about when I hinted that I heard a rumor. Either Ed doesn't know, or he's a fantastic actor, or in fact they hired a CIO dude without telling anyone that might end up reporting to him. There is a new exec VP in the new hire alert system, so someone is getting a new boss at the end of next month.

This morning we did the round 2 interviews for India and we've got a guy we want to hire. If he takes the offer we give him tomorrow (which I still don't know how much it is) then I'll have 2 hires down, 2 to go.

I love the smell of a bookstore and new books. Brings me back to a quasi-happy childhood. The good news is that Absolution Gap, the last in the series I was reading, came out in paperback. The date says "June 2005" and since it's only May I think I'm lucky it's on the shelf. I also picked up Chasm City which is the same genre but a different unrelated story. At least I've got more good reading material.

Netapp released this press release. Other than the typos, they made us sound smart.

Kenny is back at work at MSFT it sounds like. Guess there is no other employer in Washington. Maybe he'll get to keep vesting stock. Speaking of stock, I sold off some of the management shares I get every quarter. After taxes it's like $4k. Hardly worth the effort but maybe it will pay for Kristen's ring (which I had forgot about paying for, so I guess it's a good thing I put the sale in).

I cleaned up the home page a little. I compressed the camera indexes into separate pages for each year other than the current. I've been taking a lot fewer pictures as the years go by. Guess I'm learning that taking shots of every damn thing isn't as useful as taking a few good ones of something. I gotta burn some CDs of all the old pics too.

I'm still having tons of really bad dreams and not getting any real sleep. It sucks, and I don't know what to do about it. The woman says that I have to talk about my problems before bed and not dwell on them or I'll get nightmares. I'm not sure how my work stress is making me dream about finding dead bodies behind the refrigerator, or getting sick off bad ice cream, or falling off a ladder and breaking my arm.

Pong has yet another new home. Since the TV was already out of the hole, it was time to drill through the floor and get a cable run to the garage. Once that was done dad and I mounted up that shelf kit that I've had for 8 months and moved pong, the router, cable modem and UPS down. We had to run an Ethernet cable up to get it to the replay but that's not so bad.

Saturday Kristen and I went down to Monterey to meet up with Don, Eric and Elana to shoot the .50. I think these photos speak for the trip. With the surplus ammo the gun shoots pretty crappy, like a 3" group. With the ammo I loaded myself, .75" at 200 yards. That should be good for a sub-6" group at 1000 yards. Maybe next year I'll get to try that.... although there is a 800 yard range in Sacramento somewhere.

Before we went to Monterey we had the horse lesson of course. They put me on a new horse "Max" who sucked ass. He fought me for control the whole time doing all sorts of annoying and stupid crap. They retired this horse once before because he was too stubborn to be a school horse anymore. Not sure why they pulled him out of retirement for me, other than to cause me grief.

I keep forgetting to put this in here, but Ed gave me a "silent" promotion to Sr. Manager, grade T10, and bumped my salary up by $10k. He won't tell the other managers that I'm technically "above" them now. It's only useful if he leaves, then the person they hire or promote into his VP slot will know I'm the head dude among the little managers. That's worth something. Hmm.... unless he's secretly promoted someone else too...?

Two days of horse shows.... man am I tired. I didn't even do anything, just being out in the sun, wind, rain and cold took it out of me. I got sorta cooked during the little bits of sun on Saturday and wind burnt today. It was worth it though, at least for the woman. She got 3rd and 4th place yesterday, and got 1st and 4th today which combined with some other magic crap allowed her to be the overall points winner in her division and get her a "division champion" ribbon and a saddle pad. She's very happy. My parents were there both days and dad took zillions of rolls of film. I took a few shots, but the camera wasn't happy, it wouldn't focus for crap and the shots themselves look really bad. I swear these cameras seem to wear out. Pics are on the main page, but here are the two important ones. A good jump, and her with a bunch of winner's crap:

This morning while Kristen was getting her 1st place finish I took mom up to Alice's for breakfast mother's day. She seemed to like it, other than the crazy twisty road we took to get up there. It's so slow in a car vs. the trips up on the bike.

Yesterday after the show we went to the jewelers and I gave them a printout of the ring pic. They'll get some diamonds in for me to look at and then once I've picked one they'll make the ring. Getting closer.

Today after the show we went for pizza and while she talked to her mom I sized 30 .50 BMG cases to load some ammo for next weekend. We'll go down and meet up with Don and I'll see if my .50 actually works right. I have no idea how accurate, or inaccurate, it might actually be.

Hmm.. what else went on this week other than it being really busy. I got approval to bring in 2 contractors to help blast out the backlog of work we've got. We'll probably end up keeping one of them when it's all said and done. We've also done some interviews for the replacement p4 admin (as Lemoine is leaving at the end of this week, yea! My problem employee took himself out so I didn't have to fire him... I got lucky this time). Good talent is hard to find still. India is worse, the guys we're getting over there suck. Maybe the US will get to keep it's jobs for another few years.

I think BMW is trying the "sex sells" type stuff now. They made a really strange movie, sorta in the spirit of the short films they made with that Clive guy a while back. This one really sucks though and isn't worth the download other than for this one shot of the hot chick on the bike:

I kinda like the bike now. :)

Oh, and we finally found a pic of the ring that Kristen likes. Whew. I was afraid I was going to have to buy it at a mall!

I love it when I find that I've added my favorite misspellings into the custom dictionary on ispell. Doh.

Busy weekend as usual. While the woman went to a "mindful meditation" class (for her CE credits to keep her nut doc license current) I went to yet another psycho class. The reviews were supposed to be once per quarter but they seem like they're at least 6 times a year now. They also changed the rules that if you don't do two reviews in a row you have to go back and take another 2 day class before you can take a review. They had to kick another dude out of class this time and they're not happy about that. I may not practice between classes (shh) but at least I don't forget everything and have to start over like some people do.

The highlight of the class was the simunitions training. It's sorta like paint ball, but the guns are real and they fire much more accurate (and $3 each) rounds powered by primers and not air. They only had a 1911 pattern .45 there so the Glock crowd had to adapt. They only let each person have 1 chance at defending themselves against a knife attack. I was the 3-4th person to go so I knew what was happening and had my little plan all worked out. Ha, that didn't turn out so well. The second the guy yelled and ran at me with the knife, I sorta panicked and drew the gun and fired 4 rounds (all they gave us) into his chest. He kept running at me so I kept firing but in reality he probably didn't have time to stop running before the 4th round hit him. In "real life" I would have just emptied the gun into the guy apparently as the only thing that made me stop at 4 was that's all I had. I did step off the line of the attack, but would have gotten cut anyway. Doh. I gotta work on doing the right thing next time.

Sunday the woman had to go to a baby shower (bummer for her) so I got to goof off all day. I ended up vacuuming the house, watering the plants, doing a load of laundry, putting lock-tight on the baseplate screws on my Kimber mags (they're getting vibrated loose from all the shooting/dropping), watching a few episodes of Futurama on the replay, catching up on the issues of Cycle World and Men's Health I had lying around, going to the range to sign up for the next psycho class (wanted to check the calendar at home before I did) and going to the mall to get another pair of Levis (two isn't enough). The dude at the Macy's gave me 20% off "just because". Uh, OK, what's up with that? Kristen says he was flirting with me and that I had just been effectively "bought my first drink by a gay man". Whatever, I saved 20%! :)

Dinner last night was marinated tri tip, bread sticks and some green beans the woman sauteed with onions. Tasty. That grill has so improved our eating.