A good start to the week...
I took advantage of the lull in work yesterday afternoon to compile my invoice for my activities since coming down to Houston. Between work for my client and a couple of other assignments, what was in all likelihood going to be a dismal month for billings is now only 7% short of my monthly "nut," and if I were a stickler and decided to bill today's and tomorrow's work (which I will do next week), I'd actually be just over my target.

Apartment hunting yesterday held no surprises, at least for me. Natalie found something she liked, but getting in (and staying in) may prove a challenge. For sure living in the new digs would result in a lower overall school bill, along with reductions in other expenses (tolls, for one thing). OTOH, nobody in this family seems comfortable with budgets, and that includes the parents.

I finished my assigned work about a half hour ago and let TPTB know about it. If I don't get anything in the next few minutes, I think I'll call it a day and go home. The sun is out and I frankly have no great hankering to fight traffic on the way home.

Cheers...

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Ready to roll...
What had started out as an intimidating 47-page assignment was undermined by the unremitting hand of repetitive boilerplate, so despite having done only 12 pages by the end of the day yesterday, I managed to do the rest within the past 5 hours. And that includes a 2.5 mile bike ride in the morning!

We're off to see about a new apartment for Natalie. For the first time in two weeks, the sun is shining on a weekend day. Life is good.

Cheers...

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Ballunar Liftoff '04!
As I was coming in to The Office, I saw a number of hot-air balloons in the sky, which can only mean one thing: Ballunar Liftoff '04!

Here are a couple of shots taken with the new Samsung. From along NASA Road One:



And in the empty lot across from The Office:



Now, down to work.

Cheers...

UPDATE: Oof! Maybe it's this monitor, but these images look terrible, and I'm not talking about the artifacts that apparently were introduced in the reduction from 640x480 to 400x300! It looks as if the default "out of the box" settings on the camera are less than optimal (the sun was off to my side in the first shot), or the camera just plain outright is poor. I shall have to revisit the subject tonight, maybe, after all my translation work is done. Maybe something can be salvaged, if not now, then for the future?

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It's a wonderful day...
And I mean that.

I just got back from a 2-mile bicycle ride, and I feel pretty good. Galina took the bike with her from Pagosa, and I found an opportunity yesterday to ride it to the Hollywood Video store and pick up a couple of DVDs. It didn't take me very long, and it didn't tire me out, either. What's even better, the traffic in our neck of the woods wasn't against me.

The bad news about riding a bicycle around here is that there are no long, dramatic, sweeping downhill runs during which you can coast and feel the wind in your face. The good news, however, is that there are no long, dramatic, sweeping uphill runs around here, either, requiring unholy amounts of effort and sweat to climb.

The idea of biking to The Office flitted -- yes, flitted -- across my mind. It's about 11-12 miles from here to there, but if it took me 15 minutes to bike two miles, you can be sure it'll take a lot longer than 90 minutes for me to go 12 miles. I'm just not in shape.

Well, gotta go get ready for a day (half-day, if I have anything to say about it) at The Office.

Cheers...

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In medias res...
I've done way more than my intended quota for the day, and am getting ready to bug on outa here. Not that this weekend is going to be restful, or anything. The Office is expecting me to come in on the weekend; I think I will comply, but only for half a day tomorrow.

The rest of the time will be spent putting dents of various size in a 47-page item due Tuesday (but which better have major parts finished by Monday).

Galina will be absent for most of the weekend, it is rumored, visiting the home and garden show in town at the convention center.

Oh, what a fascinating life I lead sometimes!

Cheers...

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More of the same...
The highlight of the day was leaving the office at 4:30 pm, after having finished the Monster Procedure on Electrical Cabling. Ptui!

I then returned to the house, had dinner, and as Natalie biked to and back from the video rental place to get Laws of Attraction (watchable, but nothing special), I tried to put the finishing touches on the item due tomorrow morning.

The movie is over, but I just don't have the energy to review the translation. I think I'm going to get some sleep and perhaps get up a little earlier than usual to review and send the translation before leaving for work.

I'm still not off the hook yet; my Denver client is FedExing me some documents that may require me to leave the office early to finish the job. On the one hand, it's not something I foresaw when I took the job; on the other, I can't imagine I'll be requiring much arm-twisting to leave the office early tomorrow. I'm sure things will work out.

I am just full of sunshine and brightness today, aren't I?

Cheers...

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He flies through the air with the greatest of ease...
...how sad he's the high-wire walker, and not the man on the flying trapeze!

Speaking of which, I continue my high-wire act.

I put in my time at the office today, despite a late start due to not being able to find my car keys (a first of some kind... Galina took me to the office and went home and ransacked the place... eventually finding the keys in a drawer I don't remember using since arriving, which probably contributed to not finding them this morning, but I digress...)

Since returning home, I've translated the item due tomorrow, which still leaves me with a stretch of wire to cross tomorrow night. I also took care of some ATA business, which is a load off my mind.

I've been on and off the phone with Drew over the past 10 minutes or so. He's been trying to deal with a problem on the machine we use for FedEx shipments. It seems the license to use the software must be renewed, but the renewal routine pretty much insists one use Internet Explorer to do the job. The problem is: Mozilla is the default browser for the system and there seems to be no straightforward way to undo that. Oh, and did I mention the software has expired?

During our last conversation, I suggested Drew uncheck all the items in the dialog box that appears after selecting Edit|Preferences...|Advanced|System, but there's no news on that front. In theory, faced with a Mozilla that won't respond to a call to action, IE should spring into action, but one never knows.

Add to that the news that some kind of scumware appears securely installed on the system (flooding the screen with popups), and it would appear that our only real alternative is to wipe the OS and start from scratch. (First, however, we'd need to back up the FedEx customer and shipment database, which is a separate issue.) Blyeah.

There are days I hate silicon... I really do.

Cheers...

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The twenty-third hour...
...is upon me again, and I find myself sitting at my computer. Surprise, surprise!

Of course, now that I'm down here in Houston and working a "day job" type of assignment, I'm getting calls on my cell phone offering work like it's going out of style. And since it's been a sort of slow summer, I am taking all the work I can handle.

One glitch in the ointment is the fact that the VAIO doesn't have a disk drive built in, and it turns out Natalie's Dell doesn't have a disk, either. Fortunately, the translation manager I'm dealing with said Wednesday would be okay for the job, but the down side to that is that I must then do the whole job tomorrow night to make the deadline. In the final analysis, that shouldn't be too bad.

We squeaked in under the wire for the refinance of the house whose mortgage company has been such a royal pain in the butt for so many years. To celebrate, we ate an early dinner (sort of) at the Vietnamese noodle place around the corner from the Tokyo Bowl.

Compared to my Kazakhstan trip, this kind of narrative seems pretty mundane, but I'm sure it'll get better as we go along. I still need to maintain focus.

Cheers...

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All is fair...
All translation is done for the day, and it's a good thing, too seeing how late it is.

Galina, Natalie, and I stopped by the house where the renter is planning to move out soon owing to having had his job downsized, and we discussed alternatives to his breaking the lease. On the way back, we stopped at the ever-popular Tokyo Bowl restaurant (where I learned to eat Nabeyaki udon) for some sushi. Galina originally thought I had over-ordered, but it turned out we were all pleasantly full by the time the last morsel was gone. Literally. About the only thing left to eat at our table in the end was a pea-sized chunk of wasabe.

I managed to struggle through most of the questionable terms in the translation (no sentences, a lot of impromptu abbreviations). However, one item kept popping up and I could not for the life of me find out what it meant. (For the curious, the item is a "точ.-пропыл. станок," which I suspect may be a misspelling. It's some kind of machine that does grinding and... something else.)

In desperation, I actually called the plant where this machinery is found and asked the person who answered the phone what the animal might be. I was asked to call back at 6 pm Moscow time (it's about 8:15 am there now), when my party would be able to give me an answer. That's still within my deadline, so I guess I'll go to sleep hoping the answer will come tomorrow. If my attempt ends in no joy, I'll simply fall back and punt with something imaginative, such as "special grinder."

In the meantime, before I leave for work tomorrow I have to make sure I can get at my files since I have again forgotten my VAIO's detachable floppy disk (and am not about to buy a third unit, fer cryin' out loud) and the ability to jack a JumpDrive into various machines is still not any kind of sure thing.

The important thing in the next couple of days is going to be: focus! Galina says we simply must close the refinance tomorrow, and I must address some issues having to do with the ATA and my over-the-transom Denver-based client, besides the usual stuff with my local Houston client and the new client acquired Friday.

It's something to sleep on, that's for sure.

Cheers...

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Slow day...
Most of the day was spent working. I've got a 15 pager due Monday for a new client, and the going is slow, based on this morning's session. Then I went to the client's office for a 4-hour stint, then came home, ate dinner, and sat down to work again. The major problem has to do with the absolute awful quality of the original fax (which looked a lot better on the screen when I first saw it).

B0-ring!!

The good news: Galina pulled into the driveway around 9 pm or so. Yay!

We ate dinner and watched a little tube... checked out the Olympics, saw the Aussies take the Women's 4x100-m relay and the Belorussian woman win the 100-m sprint. Then fatigue overcame us both. Galina is asleep. I'm going there.

Cheers...

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Flying...
You know you're in for an interesting day when you're dropped off at the airport and the drone behind the counter greets you with, "You're one of the people who was leaving on the 7:50, right?"

"Um, yes," came my lame reply.

It turns out the incoming flight had arrived late the night before, and the crew was resting, and so forth, but the bottom line was that the flight was scheduled for a 10:20 am departure, so I have almost 4 hours to kill before wheels-up.

Not to mention I have a new connection, too.

I suppose if I had made any kind of fuss, the drone would have given me a voucher for a cup of coffee at what passes for the restaurant at the airport, but I was trying to maintain a calm mental equilibrium, and thus went off and had some (awful) coffee and (equally bad) breakfast burritos on (far more than) my own nickel.

I went through security early and sat down to wait for my flight. In the meantime, two wannabe valley girls sat down within earshot (i.e., in the waiting area) and started to, well, talk.

Why do we Americans speak at such high volume in public places? (I notice I do this as well, sometimes, but at least I react to dirty looks from strangers. :^)

At 10:30 am, another drone walks up to the counter in the secure area and announces the boarding of the flight scheduled after our flight. We who are booked for a 10:20 am departure are still airport bound. Eventually, everyone gets their stuff wired together and -- despite a handful of idiot passengers who want to delay boarding and departure to discuss whether the flight will arrive in time for them to make their connections (!) -- we board and eventually take off.

We arrive in Denver 30 minutes before my Houston flight departs, which means that boarding has started as I begin my trek from the "big" end of terminal B (numberwise) to very nearly the other end of the building. When I get to my goal, it turns out that flight, too, has been delayed. That gives me a chance to grab an overpriced pizza from one of the airport vendors before wedging myself into seat 6F for the long haul to Texas.

Half an hour before arrival, the captain gets on the horn and tells us we've been ordered into a holding pattern. He helpfully adds that those of us interested in following the air traffic control chatter can listen in on channel 9. I do so.

Several minutes later, I hear Houston Center tell my flight to proceed to such-and-so intersection (an arbitrary point on the geography) and hold there until further instructed. A time for expecting further word was quoted forty minutes into the future.

Half an hour later, our captain gets on the horn to Houston Center and tells them he's 15 minutes from "bingo fuel," i.e., from having to commit to a landing site (e.g., Austin if he can't land at Houston). My blood pressure probably exhibited a small spike a that moment, as I imagined the plane taking me to Austin. (Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I wanted the guy to try landing at IAH in the middle of a thunderstorm, but a diversion to Austin probably would mean it'd be faster to rent a car from there and drive to Houston than any alternative offered by the airline, assuming such alternative was voluntary.)

Anyway, I finally got to the house in Pearland after first stopping at the Verizon booth in the nearby Wal-Mart. It turns out there is a special going on that I was eligible for: a Samsung A610 (with photo capability) for less than $50. I'm sure I shall be changing my tune before my renewed 24 month obligation runs out, but it appears to be a lot more phone than I need at present.

Work today was crazy. Management organized an ersatz Olympics, pitting various departments against each other in all sorts of strange events (e.g., cubicle volleyball). I was involved in the last event of the day, the typing relay (one person types, a second person runs the copy to an office down the hall). Laurel N. and I won the silver for the translation department and missed the gold -- which was won by another translation team -- only because we interpreted the rules too literally. (Yeah, so call me Alibi Ike!)

I plan to go in tomorrow, since I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked. More later, maybe. Natalie has plans.

Cheers...

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If it ain't completely broke...
My attempt last night to replace the ailing router with a new one almost ended in disaster. The new one wouldn't connect to the internet, and when I tried to reconnect the old one, suddenly my desktop refused to see the router (or anything else). Fortunately, onegin can see the world, which is the important thing.

As can bagger, the Linux laptop, which I am using right now -- supposedly to retrieve info in mail.

See y'all in Houston!

Cheers...

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A different point of view...
In the car going home after shutting up the store, Galina sighed and said, "Well, it's been a very productive day."

I was stunned.

Now, we did do two runs to the waste station (or, rather, I did the runs), which pretty much cleared out the space under the verandah. And the architect did come by earlier in the day to show us his plans for this place, which turned out to be fairly impressive -- certainly much better than the other proposals we had received from others -- so that was a plus as well.

Nevertheless, I've got 3-4 hours in which to try to put a dent in the rest of the stuff I'd planned for today, so I had better get cracking.

Cheers...

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On being 'overcome by events'...
I'm sure I could have done worse today, but so far, events have conspired to keep me from getting to a lot of the to-dos I'd put down for myself today. I'm at the store right now, so it's a good thing I have the list online; I've been readjusting things and figuring out what is realistic in the time left today and tonight.

Cheers...

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Back home...
Winston Churchill is reputed to have said, "There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as being shot at and missed." And while today's procedure was nothing as dramatic, it is now in the past and all would appear to be okay on the health front. I was, in fact, quite impressed with my BP and heart rate during my visit, which normally shoot up about 20% whenever I'm in a doctor's office. Stage fright, I guess.

So, it's two wakeups to departure on Thursday, which means tomorrow will likely be a fairly busy day. I've been adding stuff to my to-do list like a demon the past couple of hours, and it's sort of scary that most of those items really do need to have been done by the time I'm wheels-up on Thursday.

BTW, it turns out the paperwork on our refinance (which was supposed to have occurred about 10 days ago) won't actually be ready until after I've left for Houston, so Galina will have to bring it down to Texas for us to sign them. It turns out someone (appraiser) didn't submit some report when they were supposed to, which just about scuttled the whole affair. I'm sure, however, that said party will want to be paid in full for whatever the heck it was they did do, but I'm not going to dwell on that right now.

I think I'm going to take it easy tonight... rub Galina's feet... watch a little of the lobotomy box.

Cheers...

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