Busy Weekend
Phew.
So my sister Bridget and my nephews Rich and Steve were making the trek from Jacksonville, Florida, up to the Chicago 'burbs for the Fourth of July weekend. They stopped in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the night Thursday night and then drove all the way from there to little ol' Villa Grove on Friday. My sister Megan flew down there earlier last week so that she could be along for the ride, so to speak, and help out with the boys, who are a handful.
The boys swam Friday afternoon and evening and the sisters and wife and I had some wine and a very nice visit. Saturday morning they were up at the crack of dawn so that they could make it to Palatine for a parade that started at 10:00 a.m. Much too hectic traveling for me.
We had our (ninth!) annual Fourth of July party on the 3rd this year, so that we'd have two days to recuperate instead of one. This year was made extra special by the fact that the sweet corn at the farm was "ready" by this weekend, so I went and got a tubful.
It took a while to shuck it all but it gave me something to do while waiting for people to show up.
The pool has been a pain in the neck this year. I was happy a week or so back that at least it has gone from being green and murky to blue and murky. I still can't get it to clear up though. I think I probably should have replaced the sand in the filter at the start of the year. I'm probably going to have to replace the whole top of the sand filter next year, so that might be the time to do it. The pool is being held together more and more with rubber bands and duct tape. One of these years I'm going to need to have some serious work done. But at any rate, it's starting to look good now.
So we had a good turnout Saturday afternoon/evening and everyone seemed to have a good time. No pool noodle fights, none of my kids' stuff got destroyed, and no "hey let's all go to the VFW" at 10:00 p.m. or anything. Two of the blue corn hole toss bags ripped open, but I sort of figured that was going to happen at some point. Cheapo "baggo" bags...
It was also very nice because my cousin Stephen and his daughter Sofie made the trek up from Columbia, Missouri. I haven't seen him in over ten years, so we had a great visit. The kids and I are going to try to go down there later in August and stay the night and then go see the White Sox play the Royals in Kansas City. Should be pretty cool.
The redhead and I are also getting better and better about picking up and doing dishes along the way so that Sunday morning the house didn't look like the aftermath of the party in "Sixteen Candles." I picked up a few cans, threw away a few stray paper plates, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher a couple of times, and that was pretty much it.
Well it's looking more and more that my main source of funding may go away in September of 2012. I know that's a long way out, and that when I say it is my "main" source, it really is only about 25% at this point since I'm working month-by-month on several other projects and the department is also picking up 25% of my time for server stuff (and that might increase to 50% too). Either way, a lot of positions are opening on campus due to the recent rounds of "voluntary separation," it we IT people have been told it's a good opportunity to look for some new challenges. So with that in mind, I think I'm going to apply this week for a Unix administrator job that has opened up on campus. While I like the web/database developer gig, I think I'm leaning more toward enjoying the *nix aspect of things, and this might be a good fit for me. We'll see what happens.
I suppose I should clean up the kitchen the rest of the way. Took my son to "work" today at 6:30 and then came home and went back to bed. I'd say "my poor boy" but he's got more money than the rest of us, and once detassling is finished up for the year he'll be even richer. He wasn't thrilled about working on the Fourth (they started Friday and have worked every day since). Good for him, though. Especially since he's going to be paying for car insurance in a year or so (ugh...).
Posted: Monday, July 05, 2010, 10:35 am
Mood: Relaxed