Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

In case you hadn't noticed based on the bloggy silence, these last few months have been incredibly busy around here, and unfortunately this blog has taken a big hit. I really want to continue posting here, as it's a great way to keep in touch and share with everyone. No promises, but I'm going to give it my best shot. There are two big changes in my life that have provided a major scarcity in free time. The first is a change in my work responsibilities. I'm still a software engineer for Onyx Graphics in Utah, working from home. However, rather than just working on whatever the product manager gives me to do, I am the product manager in a way. Each of us driver developers now have a handful of device manufacturers that we are responsible for, both developing the code and managing the relationship. One of the things this means is more work related travel. I took four work trips in all of 2010. I've already been on three this year, and will likely have some 20 or so b...

After our long drive Friday, we slept in a little on Saturday, then continued our westward journey. Despite being a much shorter driving day, it seemed to take forever. This was complicated by the fact that Carly gave us some unwise directions, taking us from the freeway and onto a winding, two lane mountain road with a ton of stoplights. I told Carly some bad words and threatened physical violence against her. Next time she suggests a detour like that, I'll ignore her and follow my gut. But we got to the hotel, bought our first meal out since leaving, then headed to the beach. That was the point of this side trip to San Diego, after all.

Summer Vacation 2009 - SV2K9 - is off to a fantastic start. We got the van loaded Thursday night, and made it to bed only a half-hour late. Friday morning everyone helped get ready, so although we missed the aggressive goal of a 5:30 departure, we were on the road by 5:47, and that suits me just fine. According to Carly, we drove 904.8 miles in 12 hours and 47 minutes, with just under two hours of stopping time. Everyone was pleasant most of the time, and kept themselves entertained in the van. It's interesting to note that last year Alyssa's biggest complaint was that her feet kept falling asleep, as the were dangling above the floor. We resolved this by putting her backpack under her feet. Well, yesterday we were on our last of our 7 legs when I realized that she hadn't complained about her feet once. I glanced back and saw that they were firmly planted on the floor. She's growing up so fast. After we got to the hotel, we decided it was time for a wind-down swim. Anna...

I have two goals for the immediate future: Sleep 8 hours tonight, and leave home by 5:30 tomorrow morning. Difficult? Yes. But hopefully not impossible. If I succeed, I will credit careful planning and children who were finally old enough to help. If I fail, I'll blame children who were old enough to help, but didn't. We have a growing collection of boxes and bags that are ready to load in the van, and I expect that collection to double by dinner time. If my careful planning comes to fruition, the van will be completely loaded (except for the coolers) by our 9:00 bedtime. Then in the morning we just shower, dress, fill the coolers, warm the breakfast burritos, clamber into the van, pray for safety, and depart for the Great Summer Road Trip - all within thirty minutes. It could happen. Realistically, I'll be fine if we don't leave until 6:00. And I'll survive, even if I don't get to bed until ten. But tomorrow's leg involves 13 1/2 hours of driving time, plu...

Here it is, folks - the last week of school, and time to prepare for the big summer road trip. On Friday, the girls and I will pile into the van and head off across freeways with steadily decreasing designations for the start of our summer vacation. But before we can leave, there is a lot of preparation to do. This past week was already a busy one. I ordered a half-dozen frozen ducks, and had to defrost the freezer to make room for them. Then on Friday, we loaded the sauna into the van for our Saturday delivery. The lady who bought the sauna lives 4 1/2 hours away in Houston, so most of our day was spent driving and unloading and driving again. Fortunately, the apartment where we made the delivery was near an Ikea. Score! We had in-store credit and a completely empty van! The temptation to fill it nearly overwhelmed me, but I exercised caution and just bought four small things, including some lemon cookies. Yum. This week is going to be a mad dash to the finish line. I need to get the ...

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the San Diego area for work. I spent my evenings down by the beach. I really miss the ocean. A plan was hatched that first night, watching the sun dip towards the waves: I could bring the girls to the beach as part of our summer vacation. Now, San Diego is not quite on the way from Dallas to Salt Lake City, but it's actually not all that far out of the way. We would only be adding another 10 hours of driving. The hardest part is the cost of the additional hotel nights, but it looks like we may be selling the poplar sauna , so that may not be such a big issue after all. The schedule, however, is not working out quite the way I wanted. See, the little ice storm we had a while back knocked the kids out of school for a day, and they will now be using a make-up day. Because of what that does to our departure date, the day we would be able to spend in San Diego is a Sunday, and that presents some problems. We've been working very hard at our house to...

I suppose sleeping for 9 1/2 hours at the end of a long trip is not so unusual. The fact that I didn't start sleeping until after 1:30 this morning, though, meant that it was 11:00 before I pulled myself out of bed. Little bit of a shocker there - I probably should have set an alarm. It's good to be home, although the next 50 hours or so are going to be filled with busy-ness getting ready for this next trip. Not that the trip itself will require a lot of preparation, but there are a lot of things that I couldn't do while I was gone, and need to have done before I leave. The lawn is one thing that should be on that list, but I'm going to ignore it for now.

There are storms in Texas tonight. Storms big enough that Frontier canceled my flight home. They booked us all on the next flight, which leaves 3 1/2 hours later than the original. My concerns about not having enough time to get dinner or have my suitcase make the connection appear to be unfounded. Well, at least I hope the concerns about the suitcase are unfounded. I won't know for sure until the bag is in my hot, tired little hand. But as for dinner, I did okay. I found a Kung Pao chicken salad, and it was good. Now I'm plugged up to a power outlet at one of Denver's handy little charging station, using their free internet access. So aside from not getting home until around midnight tonight, this delay is not such a bad thing. And since so many people told me to travel safely, I suppose I have no choice but to wait out the storms.

The time remaining on this trip is now measured in hours. The time before I travel again is only measured in days. I'm not particularly excited about flying off on another trip less then three days after getting home, especially with Kara still sick with whatever virus is hanging out at our house, but a man's gotta do... well, you know. I got my suitcase packed up this morning. I wasn't entirely sure that would happen. It was a pretty tight fit, and I still had a bunch of stuff to squeeze in. Then I noticed that the expand-o-matic zipper was in the closed position. Once I zipped it open, I had plenty of room. The other reason everything fit is that I am leaving behind all but four of the 12 books I either brought, bought, won, or was given over the weekend. I saved Christmas and birthday money for the LDStormakers conference bookstore, where great bargains can be found. I picked up books from most of my writer friends, but failed to have them autographed. Why? I have no go...

I was a little concerned when I found that Anna was staying home from school Monday with a fever, sore throat, and cough. As much as she complains about school, she hasn't missed a day so far this year, so I knew if she was staying home she really needed to. She seemed to be doing better on Tuesday, and talked about going to school when she woke up. But apparently the effort of taking a shower convinced her that she could use another day to convalesce. Hooray, and 'whew' she was feeling well enough to go to school today. Alyssa, on the other hand, stayed home. Sore throat, upset tummy. And Kara was feeling about the same. Yikes! Meanwhile, I'm still in the office working hard. The first two days I had to improvise a bit, because IT was trying to figure out how to get rid of a nasty virus. Today was spent rebuilding my system, because wiping it clean was the ultimate answer. Now I have two and a half days to get a week's worth of work done, and I might - might - be f...

I'm three days into my trip now, and it has been great. Friday and Saturday I was at the LDStorymakers conference in Provo, and it was a lot of fun. I met a bunch of new friends, connected with people I knew only from the internet, and caught up with friends from last years conference. I will post pictures and more details on my writing blog throughout the week, so if you're interested, click on over to see. In a nutshell: I was convinced to finally get over myself and admit that the novel I have written is a romance. I'm a romance writer. (There - I said it.) I pitched my novel to an editor at Covenant Communications, and he asked me to send him the full manuscript to read. This is promising, although it could still come to nothing. I need to knock off a few rough edges and apply some of the things I learned at the conference, and then I will submit it. There was a first chapter contest at the conference, and I had two entries. My full novel (which I now admit is a romanc...

Alyssa qualifies for ESY again this year - essentially summer school to ensure her skills don't regress over the break. Last year, this amounted to 30 minutes of speech therapy each week. Meh. This year, she will be getting 720 minutes a week, covering multiple subjects. 3 hours a day, four days a week. That's a big difference, and very welcome. I think it will really have an impact. And as an added bonus, she'll have a meaningful activity to keep her busy during the summer. One problem this presents is with our summer travel plans. In my delusional exuberance, I planned a nice three week vacation to include the 4th of July weekend. I thought this would probably mean missing two sessions of speech therapy, and it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. But I'm not willing to have Alyssa miss a full twenty-four hours of much needed ESY time. So our summer plans have changed. There is a two week break between the last day of school and the first day of ESY. Guess when we...

Alyssa's big activity present for Christmas was a family membership to the Fort Worth Zoo , and we finally went yesterday. As with our trip to Sea World, the weather was a balmy 80 degrees. Yeah, baby! We saw meerkats and giraffes and a lot of other animals, but I'm not going to post pictures of any more on the blog. You know what lives in the zoo. Here's one of the crew. Anna is finally getting the hang of shooting watchable video. For some reason, this trip really wiped me out. It wasn't as long as the trips to Sea World, and really not any hotter. But man, oh man, I was a basket case yesterday afternoon. It must be that time of the month. (Lyme symptoms supposedly cycle with the moon. Hey - I'll take any excuse...)

I edited up the raw and rough video from the orca show we saw at Sea World yesterday. If the footage makes you dizzy, you should be grateful for the things I edited out.

Yesterday, true to our word, we took the family to Sea World. This involved getting up at 5:30, driving 4 1/2 hours to San Antonio, spending over 5 hours in the park, and then driving 4 1/2 hours back home. Crazy? Probably. But it worked out pretty well, and we're all doing OK today, so I guess it didn't wear us out too bad. Here are Kara and Anna at the park entrance. Here is the trainer in the orca show diving off the nose of a killer whale. Orca back flip. These animals really are amazing. I crammed myself into a little twirly paint can for a ride with the girls. This is the dolphin tank where you can feed and pet the dolphins. Alyssa used her Christmas money for a Super Shamu Sundae. Here the girls get ready for the Viva beluga whale and dolphin show. Unfortunately, the show was more acrobats than animals. I expected to see much more of the dolphins. Here's a shot of Anna with the beluga whale trainer. Kara and the girls get ready for the sea lion show. Anna decided ice...

To celebrate the pending removal of Kara's gall bladder, Grandma and Grandpa are treating the girls to an all-expense paid trip to Washington. The trip includes airfare to SeaTac and ground transportation to the fertile Columbia Basin, where fresh produce and semi-tame cats are on the agenda. The house has been a flurry of finding and packing the last few days, and we leave for the airport early in the morning tomorrow. Since tomorrow is Kara's pre-op visit in Dallas, we have decided to make a day of it. I will hunker down in a library somewhere and work as much as I can, while Kara will take care of all of her doctor visits. Surgery is scheduled for Monday.

OK, so here are some pictures from our grand return adventure. (As soon as Blogger stops being all goofy on me....) Anna managed to stay plugged in and still enjoy the view on our drive to Santa Fe. At the Jackalope Store, you can find metal horses for the same price as a used car, Lots o' rocks Flowers And the pots to put them in. This barbecue grill just oozes irony. At lunch we played at a park with a steam engine And a zip line toy. Then we went to a living history museum, where the girls made their own tortillas. Yum! There was dinner at the Guadalupe Cafe. We called our friends in North Carolina and asked for recommendations. Then it was back to the park with the spinning clover things. Not the best idea right after dinner, I'm afraid.

We made it home, safe and sound and with only a few minor casualties. I managed to undelete the pictures from yesterday. They weren't as great as I remember them, but I'll post them anyway. Tomorrow. We need to unpack and go to bed. Not necessarily in that order.

We did a lot of things today as a family. Fun things. I took a lot of pictures of these fun things. Good pictures. I copied the pictures onto the computer so I could use them in my blog. But somehow the pictures got deleted from the computer. And from the camera. I have nothing. I would tell you about all of the fun things we did today, but I'm just not in the mood now.

We made it to Santa Fe last night with no actual physical violence taking place, although there were more than a few threats made, and the verbal attacks were in large supply, especially in the back seat. You'd think everyone had just spent the last two weeks being overstimulated or something. We had a visit from our friend and former neighbor Shauna and her kids the night before we left. Shauna was a great help to us as we were preparing our move, so it was good to reconnect with her. Then the next morning, after a quick trip to Wal-Mart for Redbox videos and ham and cheese, we topped off our gas tank, received a delivery of forgotten items (thanks, Mom) then made a stop to visit Tristi and pick up her book Season of Sacrifice. It's amazing the difference in attitude and patience levels that exist between the beginning and end of a trip. Yesterday's drive felt all of the 10 hours long. We're staying the day in Santa Fe, hopefully to recharge and renew and hopefully set...