New Eats +1

Yesterday I had a lot of people needing help at work. Problem was I needed to go into the office for a required meeting. I helped out with the highest priority items. Then I bolted. On the road, a manager called me up. Told him I was required to go to a meeting. Advised him to call me or another guy I was meeting at the meeting.

The meeting had lunch served there. That was nice. Had a chicken caesar salad with a coke. In the middle of the meeting, the guy next to me handed me a note. They needed me to call into a conference. We both joined the call after the meeting. I told the people I needed to get home. Then I could help them.

Back home, I figured out the problems found by one of our teams. It was a bad product. The testing technique was wrong. Then the big boss tasked this team with some new actions. They told me they needed help. I told them I needed to go. It was dinner time and I had plans to meet a friend. I gave them some tips and wished them good luck.

I drove to my buddy's house. He was in the mood to try something different for dinner. I volunteered to drive, and we headed to the outskirts of a big city to try this fancy Italian restaurant. Food was delicious. Service was top notch. Price was pricey.

Familiar Face +1

Today was a bad day. As soon as I started work, there were emergencies to deal with. Not a good time since I had an exam for my college class to take today. I barely made it out to pick up some fast food for lunch. Dealth with problems and meetings all afternoon.

I tried to sneak out to go to my exam. The big boss wanted something done. I had to tell him that I would do it after my exam. Crazy. I had working late after I come back from school. There was bad traffic on the drive to school. Luckily I left a whole hour before class started.

For once there was plenty of parking in the school parking lot. It was chilly out. As I neared my building, who do I see walking towards me from the side? It was Kit Kat. She had just finished her job for the day and was going home. That's the first time I have ever seen Kit Kat on campus.

School News +1

Yesterday I got a letter in the mail from my college. It had the work "library" stamped on it. Great. Do they think I checked out a book a never returned it? No. It was an invitation to join some honors society. I got one of those before when I went to school the first time around. Did not join then. Is it time to give it a try now?

In other college news, Kit Kat got a letter from the four year college she wants to transfer to. She did not get accepted. Oh no. Her options are to try to raise her GPA. Or she can try to get an Associates degree at the community college. I had told the family that if Kit Kat does not get in and stays in the house longer, we can buy some more gerbils. I guess we will be visiting the pet store this weekend.

This morning I got up and attended a marathon phone conference. Had to run that job from the other day for real. It turned out well. It just took a long time. I worried that I would have to clean off the snow from the driveway really late when the conference was over. I got lucky. The sun melted almost all of the snow.

Yoda Lives +1

I needed to run a job at work. But I had to wait until another one finished. The problem was that I had to go to school in the afternoon as well. I called up a coworker and informally agreed with him that we would run the job when I got back from school at 8pm.

After school I came home and Little Kat said I needed to call Momoko. She was supposed to pick up dinner for the family. She said we should go out to eat. No good. I needed to return to work. Kit Kat picked us up some burgers at Wendy's.

As I waited for the food to come home, I took a rest in my bed. Figured I might be working late into the night. Had to relax for just a bit. Then I heard a conversation in the other room. It was only Little Kat and me in the house. I heard Little Kat talk, and Yoda replied to him!

I guess Little Kat has perfected my Yoda imitation. Ha.

Driveway Extension +1

I try to park my car close to the edge of the drive to give Kit Kat plenty of room. Recently I have been driving my front wheel off the edge of the driveway onto the grass. With all the snow melting, it left a rut full of water just past the edge of the driveway.

Today I figured I should do something about the depression in the grass. At first I tried to fill it in with crushed rock. But it did not provide much support. The rock just sunk down. I put some concrete mix on top. Then topped it all off with some more crushed rock.

Let's see how this works after the ground dries. I am hoping I just extended my driveway by six inches right where it counts. After working the driveway, I headed to the back yard where sticks had fallen down everywhere. Time to do the dance calling picking up sticks.

Out of Time +1

Yesterday I was getting close to finishing my current task at work. It was due today. I needed input from a couple other people. Had to wait on them to comoplete my task. I was getting nervous as it was already afternoon and I was not making good progress.

Finally I finished my part and handed it off to another team. I waited for the other team to finish. They were taking longer than normal. Plus some another colleague told me my fix would not work. I told him there was no time for it not to work.

As I was waiting for the team after me to complete my part, it came time for me to go to school. I helped that other team get past some nasty problems. But I had to go to school. Wouldn't you know it? Class lasted longer than normal. After school I came back home and got back to working.

Disoriented +1

I had a hard day yesterday. Started work at 6am. Went to school in the late afternoon. Studied and did homework at night. I tried to have a good night sleep after that. However my alarm clock was still set for the wrong early wakeup from yesterday.

I was a bit behind schedule on my current project. Made me skip going out for lunch. The key to getting back on schedule was to not let any other coworkers derail me. Some tried. I denied them. I am responsible to ship my software on time.

In other news, Little Kat broke his laptop while spending the night at his friend's house. Momoko bought him some laptop/tablet replacement. But it ran the Windows RT operating system. That meant he could not install the edition of Microsoft Office that we own.

I saw Little Kat's programs freezing up on his new tabplet. The thing was cheap because it was refurbished. We needed to send it back. Momoko got all her money back. We hired UPS to come by the house to pick up the package. Let's hope the next purchase Momoko makes for Little Kat is a win.

Shocked +1

I got a call Sunday night from my team lead. He said he had been working all weekend on a big problem our customers we having. He needed more help. The rest of our team was on vacation. So I needed to come in our Monday, which should have been a holiday for me. I worked pretty much a normal work day on Monday.

At lunch time I was going to eat at Jerry's Subs and Pizza. It is a relaxing atmosphere. However Momoko and Little Kat were home from work/school because they had the day off. They wanted some Chinese food. So I had Little Kat drive me to our favorite Chinese food carryout restaurant.

Before heading out for lunch, I complained to Little Kat that I had a lot of static electricity today. He asked whether the humidifier was turned on. Of course it was, since this is winter after all. We went down to check and found it was turned off. What the heck? How have we been surviving all winter?

A Matter of Pay

We got around 12 inches of snow the other day. Everyone except me was off from school and work. Kit Kat was sick so she could not shovel any snow. Momoko said she was just not physically up to the challenge of snow removal. So she hired Little Kat to do the job. She said she would pay him at least $50.

At lunch time, I took a break from work. I looked out the window and saw Little Kat taking a break. I decided to go help him. I only had an hour total for lunch. So I worked really hard and fast. I let Little Kat use the best shovel. Poor guy had tried to get the snow blower to do the work. It clogged up due to the wet snow.

I had to come in before my hour was up to get back to work. After work I saw that Little Kat did most of the driveway. He expected more than $50 pay for clearing the driveway. Momoko declined. When is this guy going to learn to negotiate pay BEFORE starting any work?

Strange Goings +1

Kit Kat left for school early this morning. She has an early lab on Wednesdays. She was gone by the time I woke up for work. I was the last person in the house awake. That's okay. I would be the last guy working too. Some time late in the morning I heard some noise upstairs. That was strange. Kit Kat works until the late afternoon I thought.

I had meetings until noon. At lunch time, I go upstairs to investigate. Kit Kat's car is not there. Momoko and Little Kat are nowhere to be seen. Strange. I did not have a lot of time for lunch. Was starting to run late on my project. Great. I can order some Chinese to go.

I watched some Rocky IV on the television while I scarfed down my General Tso's chicken. Then Kit Kat comes in the door. It was too early for her to be home already. Turns out she was sick. And the trooper came by earlier to get her medical card and head to the clinic. Momoko and I like when Kit Kat takes care of business like that for herself.

Turns out Kit Kat has mild brochitus and some other ailment that I never heard of before. Luckily her school is closed tomorrow due to the weather. Let's hope the school is closed Friday as well.

Shopping +1

I woke up today after everyone had left for work and school. It has snowed yesterday. Of course nobody did any shoveling of snow. Usually I end up doing it. Luckily it was only a light snow. The problem, of course, was that people drove out of the driveway, packing down the snow as they went.

At lunch I headed to the post office. After eating a nice sub, I went to Walmart. Got a refill on propane for the grill. There was no hurry. We always keep an extra tank of propane handy, at the request of Little Kat. I searched for rock salt to melt the snow and ice. Could not find any.

This is a growing problem. None of the stores ever hae any rock salt for sale. There has been so much snow and ice this winter that people clean out the stores. I almost wish the stores would raise their prices to stop the sales. But I guess they won't do that, in order to prevent the appearance of gouging the customers.

I might have to resort to buying the rock salt online. That is expensive due to shipping costs for heavy bags of salt.

Coming Along +1

I have been slowly teaching Kit Kat how to drive my manual transmission vehicle. I am taking it easy because the last time I taught her driving, I pushed her hard. There were a lot of tears back then. And eventually she had a melt down. Now I take it slow for the long haul.

I do have to push Kit Kat a little. If she had it her way, she would not take the car out of first or second gear. Our goal now is to become comfortable driving over to her friend's house. She has troubles with some of the sharp corners. She also needs to get it into third gear on the main road.

So far Kit Kat is doing well. Today we made two rounds trips to her friend's house without stalling or any other troubles. We did have a hiccup when she tried to get it into third gear on a side street. However she recovered herself by downshifting into second gear. Good job Kit Kat.

Problems +1

Last night I had a lot of work to do. The main thing was studying for my college class. I did not stay up late since I was tired. Figured I would wake up early today and get a good start. That did not happen. Maybe because it was cold. My alarm went off and it took a while to get out of bed.

I checked my answering machine. No messages - that was good. Then I logged onto my work computer and found there were some problem from the previous night. Got on a call and figured out what they were. Luckily out test team had identified the problems before. I had a fix ready.

Next up I needed to do a presentation for the customer. All was going well until a member of my team mentioned that I missed something. Now I got to recover from the miss. Busy busy busy.

The Ice Comes +1

Last night it got very cold. Couple that with some rain, and you get evil ice. I could see it on all the trees when I woke up. It was even worse when I went outside for a drive. The funny thing was that Momoko's school did not close nor open late. Poor Momoko.

I was busy with meetings all day today at work. There was a small window for me to grab some lunch. I opted for Roy Rogers, mainly because I love putting their BBQ sauce on my fries. I had to rush through their drive though to get my lunch to go.

When I got home, I felt double crossed. The little packets of BBQ sauce they hand out in the drive through are not the same sauce they have inside the restaurant. What a waste. At least I was not hungry after lunch.

Email Replies +1

Little Kat has sent his history teacher a number of emails since our last parent teacher conference with him. And what do you know? The teacher is actaully replying to the emails. Now Little Kat just needs to take that feedback and make his grades rise up.

This morning I woke up for work around the normal time. Kit Kat was still sleeping. I guess this is one of her late days. I was surprised that Little Kat was still home. His bus comes very early in the morning. A text from Momoko later confirmed that Little Kat stayed home sick.

Too bad Little Kat could not make it to tomorrow. He has a half day at school for some reason on Wednesday. In other news, I am getting back into the exercise routine. Got to do something after overeating during the superbowl.

Superbowl Food +1

Momoko had decided we would eat finger food for the Superbowl. I was surprised that I got a 12-inch sub right before the game. How would I make room for all the finger food to come? Luckily I skipped lunch that day. That gave me a fighting chance.

First came the chicken taquitos. I only grabbed a few. They tasted delicious with sour cream. I would have thought chicken would not be as good as beef. But they were tasty. Then came the jalapeno poppers. Momoko really likes them. This batch was way too spicy for anyone's taste though.

Kit Kat cooked the best for last - the chimichangas. These were filled with beef. They were mini, so I grabbed a bunch of them. I was so full after all this feasting. I skipped breakfast and had a tiny lunch the next day.

I watched the game for the commercials. Little Kat was depressed that the Seahawks blew the Broncos out of the water. Not sure why Little Kat was cheering for Denver. It is not his team. I could care less who won. It would have been more exciting had the score been closer at any time during the game.