‘Tis the season, and then it’s over.
My favorite time of the year is from the day before Thanksgiving, until the week after Christmas. During this period it seems like things at work are slowed down a bit, there’s the added benefit of 4 day weekends, vacation, plus everyone seems to be in a better mood; myself included.
Having kids I try to take off either the week preceding Christmas or the week after depending on workload, I usually try to alter this time off every other year. This year, I took off the 3 days prior to Christmas when combined with our company’s holidays, I was off that entire week. I must admit it was nice to have off and spend some time with the kids, watching the Christmas excitement build on their eyes. It would have been better if we didn’t receive 24 inches of snow that week, and it would have been ever better if I wasn’t sick with killer sinus headaches and a nagging couch. But nonetheless, I was grateful for that time off.
Now that New Years has passed, it’s time for all of this celebration to come to an end. The kids go back to school this coming Monday, and at work it officially is the start of our project season. I’m counting down the hours until I go back to work, trying to relish ever last remaining minute of time before the return to work, serious work. We have some ambitous schedules ahead of us, and I look forward to being able to get some real work done, not just patch work. With everyone back from their vacations, it’ll be full steam ahead.
Here’s hoping that 2010 is a happy and healthy year.
The worlds best guacamole.
If you’re anything like me, once you find something you like, you don’t want it to change. This would go for recipes, televion show time slots, and traffic patterns. When it comes to recipes, I think my wife and uncovered probably the best guacamole recipe, and it’s amazingly simple. This past summer we were shopping in Trader Joe’s, looking around, and found in their small produce sectioin a small plastic container that contained the following items.
2 Medium sized Avacados
1 Small onion
1 Plum tomato
1 Jalapeño pepper
1 Lime
2 Garlic clove
For roughly $4 we had the makings of guacamole, my wife said that price was good since at our local supermarket 2 avocados can cost over $5. It was a beautiful Sunday evening in late August, it was typical New Jersey 80% humidity and 90 degrees, perfect weather for eating light.
Directions, serves 4:
Scoop out the avocados from their skins, remove the pits, place in a small bowl.
Peel and dice the onion into small pieces
Seed and dice the tomato into smaller pieces.
Seed and dice the pepper into small pieces
Skin and mince the garlic cloves into small pieces
Cut the lime in half
Take the avocados, and in a small bowl, mash with a fork until there are no large sections. Add the onion, jalapeño, tomato, and garlic and mix with a fork, then squeeze the juice of the lime, mix everything together with a fork.
The lime juice adds subtle flavor and also aids in the guacamole not turning brown after sitting out for a little bit.
Serve with fresh corn tortilla chips and you will have a fresh snack that takes about 5 minutes to make, and if you’re anything like me, you won’t feel guilty since you’ll what all of the ingredients are, and tis’ a relatively healthy snack. If you’re going to serve later, place into the refridgerator and be sure to cover with plastic wrap that has been conformed to the top of the guacamole, not allowing any air to hit the top of the guacamole.
Wow, is all I could say, the guacamole was perfect, creamy and full of flavor, bits of tomato and onion present in every bite. I think that this recipe has spoiled me, I can’t eat any other recipe with out comparing it to the guacamole my wife had made on that hot, humid summer day.
When Carol had asked if I was interested in having guacamole tonight, I told her I was interested as long as she didn’t divert from the recipe we had last summer. After Carol had made some again tonight, on this cold December night, I’m reminded of that day in August when everything was perfect, or at least the guacamole was.
What I’m thankful for.
In talking with my kids earlier this week the topic of Thanksgiving came up. My wife had asked the kids what they were thankful for, it got me thinking about the topic myself. Naturally, the kids asked my wife and I what we were thankful for. I explained to them, that I was most thankful to have the people that lived in my house as a part of my life. I have two wonderful children and they make being a parent a true pleasure, but I wanted to expand on the list of what I was thankful for since there’s so much more I was truly thankful for than just the people in the house.
First, I’m thankful for my wife. I’m thankful that she is so vigilant in raising our children, and she is so selfless in her care of the kids as well as addressing the day to day things, such as Doctor appointments, and calls to the teachers, and health insurance companies. For example she makes their lunches for school every day without complaint (except that the kids are so unwilling to try new foods), she does her best to see that the kids are provided with a well rounded lunch. My wife does an awesome job, and it seems that sometimes I don’t give her proper recognition for all that she does for our children. I’m also greatful to my wife becuse she’s understanding when it comes to my job. There have been times when I’ve had to call her and say that I’m running late in coming home, which have sometimes been followed up with another phone call where I’m telling her that I’m going to be really, really late. She doesn’t give me grief about this, which is so helpful. It allows me to concentrate on the problems and work without having to worry about getting grief about being late for dinner, or missing dinner altogether. There have been times where I’ve had to bail out on plans we’ve made because something has come up at work and she’s been completely supportive, often telling me that she feels bad for me because I’ve put so much time in there. She does so much for all of us, and asks for so little in return.
I’m thankful for my children. They are two of the sweetest kids I’ve ever met. Every day when I get home from work, I am greeted with hugs and kisses, and I can tell that they are both happy to see me arrive at the end of my day. This makes my hour long commute much easier, and I actually look forward to seeing them at the end of a stressful day. I’m so hopeful that I can maintain this relationship when my kids are older. My kids appear to really appreciate what they have in life. As an example, this morning I ran to the supermarket and I was going to stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I had asked my son if he had wanted anything, and after some deliberation we decided that I was going to pickup some hot chocolate and munchkins for a breakfast snack. While I was out at the store, my son had told my daughter that I was picking up hot chocolate and munchkins, my daughter’s response was ‘this breakfast keeps getting better’, showing me that she really appreciates the little things we do for them.
I’m thankful that I have a job. Work has been strange lately with everyone on edge, sales being down, every is unsure about their future in this economy. However, I’m thankful that I’m not forced to look for another job at this time, although I’m giving some serious thought to looking for a new job, as of right now I can do this on my terms.
I’m thankful that I have a house. This was something that my Mom had always instilled in my when I was a kid. She would always reinforce that we should be greatfull that we had somewhere that kept us warm when it was cold out, and somewhere to keep us dry when it rained. I used to get annoyed when my Mom would keep reminding my brother and I as to how lucky we were, however, I find myself doing this with my kids too. I get the impression that my kids do appreciate it more than I did when I was their age. I can not say how much I love owning a house, despite the stress that comes with ownership and despite the fact that this is probably not the ideal house for us, it is nice to come home after a long day at work and be able to sit on my aging couch and just know that while I’m home I am in my sanctuary, regardless of how small and cramped it seems to be at times. It’s also nice that I have somewhere I can call my own, and when I’m not feeling well my recover is always aided by being in my house.
I’m thankful that I can afford to have some luxuries in my life. Although I would appreciate just having the basics in life and do realize that I’m fortunate to have what I do, there are somethings that I’m thankful to have that are not necessities. First, would be having two cars. Although the car I drive on a daily basis is a 10 year old Honda, it’s been reliable and gets me to work and home every day accumulating 25,000 miles a year. While my wife drives the newer car, just the fact that we have two cars makes our lives so much easier giving us added flexabilty. Then there are the ancillary things that I’m thankful to have. Cellphones, cable television, game consoles, iPods, DVD’s, CD’s, and computers are all things that make life more interesting, convenient, and at times more fun.
There are so many things that I’m thankful for and I could go on forever on how fortunate my family and I are.
This is what I’m thankful for.
Trader Joe’s Organic Mint Melange Tea.
Wonderful infused green tea, with a hint of lemon grass, peppermint, spearmint with a nice golden color. A box of 20 tea bags was less than $4 if I recall correctly $2.29, which was a little cheaper than a similar Tazo tea. I’m an occasional tea drinker and do not claim to be any type of expert, however I do know what I like and what I do not like, and I do like this tea. I would not say that it’s any better that the Tazo variant, it’s got a subtle mint flavor and is good whether server hot or cold.
We recently got a dedicated ice machine at work and I now have the ability to cool a hot tea using our commercial ice make with the shot glass sized ice cubes. The ice machine, a box of tea bags in my overhead, and I can save a few sheckles when I have a drink at work.
Work
There’s a really weird vibe at work these days. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I can say that it’s related to the economy, and it’s related to our company’s down turn in sales. When the company was doing really well, about 24 months ago, the feelings of uncertainty were not there. Now after mandatory pay cuts, and rumors of layoffs coming, and conflicting messages from upper management I’m not really sure what’s going on.
I’m sure that I’m not the first person to have these feelings about their job, but I get the feeling it may be time to start to think about moving on, after 12+ years at the company, this is not going to be an easy decision. Moving on has it’s postive benefits, as well as it’s downsides. First, having a job now, I can be selective in looking for a new one where I wouldn’t have to take the first one that was offered to me, being a little selective about location. Secondly, if I were to find something I wouldn’t have to take it, I could make a decision on whether I actually wanted to make the job change.
Things I’d like to change about my current job. First, I want to get out of the retail sector. Too volitaile, and as of late there has not been enough of the upside that comes with the cylical nature of this business. Location, I’d love to get close to home. I currently live 40 miles from my office. Not far enough to justify moving closer, but just far enough away to be a nuicance. I’d love to find a job less than 10 miles from home. Hours, although I currently put in about 10 hours a day, 7:30 – 5:30, this coupled with the hour commute each way is starting to take it’s toll on me. It would be awesome if I could find something about 10 minutes away, where the hours were a standard 8 hour day. I’m not afraid of putting in long hours, however, if I was looking for the perfect job, this would be a requirement. I’d love to be able to see my kids off to school, or be able to wait for them as they got home from school, but that’s for this vision of utopia I have.
We’ll see what happens.
Online training
I’ve been participating in an online training class that my employer has paid for since Tuesday of this week. There is lecture during the class, and then after the lecture there are labs to do. Since this is all online, it’s all done via Elluminte Live a virtual meeting place similar to WebEx. The meeting place is setup up so that we can get remote control of workstations that are running VMware workstation. Inside these VMware Workstation hosts machines, there are two to three VMware guest machines, and these are what we are doing our lab exercises with.
Moved blog from blogger.com
Rush – Vital Signs
I’ve always had an appreciation for the bass lines in this song as well as the sound that Gedddy gets from his Fender Jazz Bass, it’s timeless. Pay attention to the underlying bass lines, they are very complex despite the songs overall simplistic sound. This is my favorite song from their Moving Pictures album.
The video concept is so 1980’s, and this is such a good song.
Check out Neil Peart’s vintage Motreal Expo’s hat, you don’t see too many of those anymore.
My Favorite Part Of The Week.
I’m not sure why, but I seem to enjoy Sunday’s mornings the most. I don’t know if it’s the impending thought that the daily grind will resume again in 24 hours, but as of recently I’ve found myself to be most at peace on the 7th day mornings.
My unofficial routine usually starts off by waking up early, sometime between 5:30 – 6:30am, coming down stairs and starting a pot of coffee in my Mr. Coffee 4 cup drip coffee maker. This morning for example, I opened up the front door, opened up the back door and just enjoyed the gentle cross flow ventilation that moved from the front to the back of the house.
I started to hear were the sounds that the New Jersey suburbs have to offer. I heard the early birds looking for their worms, I heard the wind gently blowing across in the tall oak trees in my back yard, I also started to hear the sounds that the coffee maker starts to make; the dripping of the coffee into the carafe and the clicking on and off of the burner. I opened the blinds and a window by the kitchen table and felt the sun’s gentle rays on my face, and felt more of a breeze, today is going to be a nice day.
I sat at the kitchen table, connected my laptop to the AC adapter, and turned it on. I checked my email, nothing really there, opened up Google reader and started to read my subscriptions. I read, while the sun was starting to move up across the trees as a gentle breeze lightly touched me.
There is nothing I need to do today, but there are several things that I should do. Right now, I have no intentions of doing any of them, it’s a beautiful early September morning and as I read the news, I have complete inner peace. My children will be awake soon, more than likely my early rising son will wonder down stairs and greet me with his usual ‘Hey Bud’, and will tell me some things that were in his head during the night, in his usual fact based accounting.
Our family has plans later on today to go to a BBQ, but right now, there is not any other place I’d rather be, than sitting at my kitchen table, reading the news, drinking poorly made coffee and feeling my inner peace continue.
Fun with Googlevoice
My department’s office is a small one. We have 12 people in there, and it goes without saying that a few of the people who work in our office, merely tolerate each other. This gave me an idea.
I’ve been a Googlevoice subscriber for about a month or so, and will often have it open at work, utilizing the calling features from my desk. I will often make work calls from Googlevoice, and have it ring my desk phone, it’s kind of seamless, and you could say that I’m being a good corporate citizen by bypassing any long distance toll charges, since all calls made to US numbers are free.
The lightbulb over my head lights up.
There are two people in our office who do not particularly like each other. What if, as a joke, I had one of them call the other when neither of them wanted had actually called each other. Here’s how I did it.
I get in the office early, before everyone else, just need a minute or two, and login to my Googlevoice account from my desk.
I registered one of my officemates phone as one of my inbound Googlevoice phones. Quickly went to the website, and told Googlevoice do not forward inbound calls to this phone, I don’t want this guy to start receiving any of my phone calls. Waited a few hours, made sure everyone was sitting at their desk.
From my Googlevoice homepage, I pressed the green arrow to call. I entered the phone number I wanted to call, in this case officemate2. I told it which phone to ring, in this case it was officemate1’s phone.
Officemate1 gets a phonecall, he answers, says hello once or twice. About 2-3 seconds later, officemate2’s phone rings, and he picks up on the first ring. Now officemate1 and officemate2 are on the phone with each other, and they’re not sure or how or why. Each one blames the other for calling them, anger ensues. Good thing our office phone’s don’t have caller ID. I sit by and quietly laugh to myself.
