7:58 p.m. - 2003-10-19
Got a moment?
and so... after days and days i finally get the chance (okay take the chance) to sit down and write a little. i need to be doing the rest of my homework and my assignment but i needed to write. i wanted to write. so here i am!
WHAT A BUSY WEEK! if work wasn't bad enough life seemed to pick up pace this week. we had a lot of things planned this week and it caused both He and i to rack up the miles on our cars. can you believe my car, which is only a year and a half old, is all ready to go in for it's 45,000 mile checkup? yikes!
to backtrack a bit. work this week was busy but for the most part it wasn't "to bitch about" busy. it just seemed like from the minute i walked in until about the time i tore myself away i had stuff to do. and of course everyone wants everything yesterday but sometimes they just have to wait because there is only one of me and there are many many of them. i think i just got sick of being stressed out about it all, plus, things are starting to calm down and the politics between everyone seem to be allayed for a while... this is where the "To Be Continued" sign pops into mind but i suppose we'll see. i don't really care as long as they leave me the heck alone and let me do my work.
my time in meetings has increased but it hasn't been bad so far. nothing too unnecessary, which is good and i still manage to be productive AND make sure that these projects are being designed right. i need a personal secretary though to do all the damn paper work and documentation i have sitting there to do. one of me... 51+ databases... someday maybe i'll give up.
thursday i went to Worcester for a technical conference. that was a decent day. i may or may not go next year depending on the presentations. it's tough because many of the DBAs in that group are DB2 for OS/390 DBAs and here i am in my little unix world nearly all by myself. so while the classes are interesting to me they do not always prove useful. i lucked out and one of the ones i attended was specifically aimed at the unix flavor of DB2 and i actually got some helpful hints from it. this is a good thing!
i left the tech conference early and shot back home to get ready for the ballet. we went to see Don Quixote up in Boston at the Wang. we went out to eat at Montien which turned out to be a fabulous thai place. i enjoyed it thoroughly and was quite sufficiently stuffed when we left there. the ballet was great albeit i'm not sure i could be an avid ballet attendee because the lack of words sometimes gets a little boring if the dancers can't enthrall me. it was beautiful though and funny at times too.
friday it was race home and pack to leave for Amherst and that's pretty much how it went. i wasn't ready to go when He got home but with His help i was able to catch up and out the door we went. it was a decent car ride out to there as the traffic was a bit heavier than we would have expected but then i remembered and reminded Him that these were probably all the leaf peepers heading out to find a place to crash until the daylight returned and filled the world with the blazing colors of the trees.
honestly, the valley was simply beautiful. it wasn't painted with one color, but instead many colors. different shades and hues and it was simply amazing. the smell in the air was definately fall and just standing in certain spots and looking around awed me. i had brought my camera but we never really had the opportunity to stop and snap off shots.
i'm glad that we got to go out there this fall. i sometimes miss the place and this year has been one of those years where i seem to miss it more than ever (good lord i hope that has nothing to do with the length of time i've been away because i don't want the longing to get worse!! ;) ) the leaves were crunchy under my feet, the students were just as obnoxious as i can only imagine we had been to the alumni strolling around on other homecoming weekends while i was there. He and i shared stories about this that and the other thing as we walked around checking out the bonfire... watching one of the football team members jumping and beating the snot out of our beloved minuteman... poor guy *smirk* it was nice to walk around there again even though so much has changed... just in less than 5 years!
saturday morning we were up early enough to watch the first Yu-Gi-Oh (yes, we go away but we -can't- miss Yu-Gi) and then out the door by 10ish and off to explore Amherst/Hadley for a few hours before the game. more leaf peeping time for me as we drove along the farm road and up to Dunkin Donuts and the mall. He got to play Yu-Gi-Oh with the owner of T&T Collectibles while i opened the new set of cards (yeah, can you believe they actually already put out ANOTHER set??) then we whisked off to the football game.
football isn't quite the same when you're not familiar with the team and such. i never went to one of the games while i was at UMass... i went to the basketball and hockey (yum, sweaty players!!) but never to a football game. He, on the other hand, having been with the band for a few years, sprung off shortly after we sat down to go and see some fellow band alumni leaving me poisesd on the freezing seat by myself. that was in the first quarter.... at half time (or shortly after the band left the stands to go out and line up) i trudged my tush up to Him and pouted about being left alone for that long. but i understood, none-the-less these are people He hasn't seen in some time and people He spent a lot of time with while He was there.
UMass won, in any case. we saw the band perform at half-time and the post-game show was certainly better than the half-time show but, being picky as an ex-bando is prone to be, there were definately some elements in the show that weren't the former "Power & Class of New England" style. the guard was messy. sabers, rifles and twirlers were somewhat sloppy. marching was... well, half and half but if it were competition that would mean they sucked. all in all, i enjoyed the shows though, critiquing eye aside, because i miss the music and the formations and the movements and the sheer power that marching band has to offer. Plus the excitement that it infuses the crowd with. ahh... the good ol' days.
after the show we listened to Parks speak a little to the alums and the band and then we sauntered off back to the car and off to Holyoke so i could finally find something to buy for Christy's baby shower (which was, of course, today) then we went down to Hartford and went to the Society. it was kind of weird for me to be there. i don't know if it was because i was tired or not but i just felt slightly out of place. i know that i had a headache and so i spent most of my night curled up on a pillow at His feet with my head on His knee, perking to talk to people i haven't seen in quite some time.
perhaps i've become somewhat of a snob when it comes to play spaces because of social eyes because society and social eyes vary by leaps and bounds but i just thought about the fact that for Society, that space is OUR space and we fought hard and worked hard for it and i'm still proud that i was part of it. i'm going to chalk my anti-social, anti-play mood last night to my exhaustion from puttering around Amherst and Hadley all day prior to our arrival at the space.
we didn't get home until 2... not into bed until nearly 2:30 at which point i'm near positive we were both out cold at the second our heads settled comfortably onto the pillows. we woke before my impending alarm at 9:30 and lounged and such until i had to get up to shower and get ready. He had been lucky enough to switch with one of the girls at work so He didn't have to go in until noon... i, on the other hand, got myself together, grabbed the present i had purchased the night prior and off again to the car i went to drive all the way up to Gardner.
i must say that i am most impressed with the colors everywhere this fall. though sometimes there's a predominant yellow there's multiple colors everywhere. it's a gorgeous fall this year... i wish every year could be this colorful.
it's traumatizing to see my best friend's little sister as pregnant as she is. it was even worse to see how many of her friends already have children too. and here i stand at 27 years of age without a want for a child at all yet. i'd like to say that i was smarter than these kids but truthfully, i wasn't... i suppose i was just luckier. not that i had sex much, ha, who am i trying to fool, it's not like i had sex AT ALL until after high school and even then we sometimes practiced not-so-safe sex.
she's so young... and being a descendant of her parents and her grandparents she's not all that big... in fact, to me, she could still pass as a lower classman in high school she's so tiny and childlike in her features. but she's now got some maturity behind her eyes that can only come from the situation that she has found herself in. but this baby will be loved and let me tell you, this baby is already SPOILED! you would not believe the presents that were in that place! it took her (and Jason later) about 2.5 hours to get through them all. it was nuts. i helped out as much as i could. glad to do so. i was just as exhausted as everyone else when it was all done but i followed the present caravan back to mom & dad F's house to help unload.
then i froze my butt on the concrete steps in the front while i chatted for a bit then hopped back into the car and came home.
it's been a long week and weekend and i'm glad that it's over. this coming weekend is looking different than this one that has just past and i'm hoping for a slower moving weekend even though we'll be on the road again.
*laughs softly* maybe by january i'll have a free weekend to sit around the house and get stuff done or just veg and sleep. i have so much to do in such a short time and if i don't get cracking neither He nor i will have halloween costumes for Pandemonium. i'm going to take a few days off from work to do those... under the guise of documentation... though i have to do that too. all in good time i suppose...
oh and a test comign up in my class... i suppose i should study for that too.
speaking of which. i'm off to finish my homework!
bye for now!
