Catching Up On Things

So, what have I been up to recently?  I know I haven't posted often.  Heck, no one really has.  I've been kind of MIA since at least Thanksgiving.  Posting now and then, but not really anything.

So, in November, the family took a run down to the Museum of Science and Industry for The Daughter's birthday and saw the Disney Exhibit.  The exhibit had a lot of artifacts regarding Disney's early life (you know he briefly lived in Chicago, right?).  It was pretty cool.  Props and behind-the-scenes artifacts from the earliest years to the present.  LINK

There was a huge promotional drawing Disney made when he was trying to pitch Disneyland to the bankers.

And then there were the costumes from one of my favorite live action Disney movies, The Rocketeer, and one of Cora's, Mary Poppins.

Before Christmas, we had our work Christmas party at the Art Institute.  We actually got to wander around some of the exhibits in the Modern Wing.  I got to see the very interesting "Woman in Tub" and Chairman Mao looking FABULOUS!

We had a great Christmas.  Well, we had a bunch of Christmases (Christmasi?)  One celebration with our little family where I gave her (among other things) a Hedwig purse.  Yes.  That's a purse.  A backpack purse.  No.  She will never use it as such.

We then had a Christmas out in Seattle, where we went downtown and rode the carousel.  The painted horses weren't nearly as pretty as the gals who rode 'em.

Then we had a "snow" fight with this weird fake snow.  It claimed to be biodegradable, but all it really did was make the bottom of your shoes both slick and sticky at the same time.  And I found bits of it inside my coat pocket over a month later.  "Biodegradable"?  "Half-life" is more like it.

Later, we hit Salty's to see the nutcrackers (no, not that thing I did off the high dive in Jr. High.)  This is also the place where I took those Sound pictures of Seattle (LINK)

Then, we went shopping for a Christmas gift for my father-in-law.  You see, over the summer, it became URGENT that one of these be deployed, but he didn't have one.  Only two of those auger things.  Talk about "stirring the pot".

So I got him a good one.  (Yes, I'm a boy.  I have even licked a fly swatter in a store once.)  Needless to say, it was the HIT present of the party.  (No, he's not drunk.  He's English.)

Once we got back, The Daughter got into one of the monster sized peanut butter cups she got for Christmas.  (That's not the only thing she got, punks.)  As you can see, this isn't the peanut butter cup of your youth.

She was giddy with the awesomeness…

Then tried her best to be serious in her "Panic at the Disco" tee.  As you can see, this is a serious hunk of chocolate encasing the peanut butter.  She didn't eat the whole thing in one sitting.  She wrapped it up, and then, with a knife, would carve out an bit as needed.

Then came the Chinese New Year, so I took Cora and The Daughter out to our local "favorite" Chinese restaurant.  (It is our "favorite" but it is also really the ONLY Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood.  Thai?  There's probably a dozen within a mile or so, but only one Chinese joint.)  As you can see, while she's not blogging regularly at the moment, the wife is still taking pictures.

And now on to why I've had trouble blogging recently:  Work.  We've been working on a huge IT project for about a year that went live on 2014-02-22.  In the fall, I was working from 8:00 am to about 6:00 pm.  Then the leaving time started creeping upwards.  7:00 pm.  Then finally 8:00 pm or later.

One thing about leaving work so late this winter, you got to see how the city handled all the snow.  In the picture below, the Bobcats are scooping up piles of snow that the plows have stacked on the curbsides, and depositing them into a dumpster to get hauled off. Not sure where it goes from there.  Years ago, they would just dump it in the Chicago River, but the EPA has banned that practice.

But the place I've been spending most of my time recently is this:

Yes, my desk at work.  With these fabulous shades of grey and black and beige.  The walls do have a bit of faded weird khaki green.

INVITING!

We've been working on a year long IT project.  Over the course of the project, I think we had around 5 different managers, and the project lead was let go.  So my normal 8 – 4:30 job morphed into 8 to 6, then 8 to 7.  And for the last few months, 8 - 8+.  Finally, at the end of February, we went live.  I went into work around 10 am on Friday.  We started part of the conversion at 9:00 pm.  The major part of the conversion started at 11:00 pm.  At about 12:30, I managed to sneak a little nap for maybe 45 minutes while other processes were running.  We made our 7:00 am deadline to get things back up, and I left sometime around 12:30 pm.  Over 26 hours.  I went home and, **GASP**, passed out and took a nap.  And since the project was over, that meant I got to start going home at a reasonable hour.  Or maybe not.

But I  am glad to report that things have eventually mellowed and we've cleaned up most of the issues.  Now on to the next one.  No chance to breathe.  But, soon I will be moving into a new desk with a little different view.  I'll show you that soon.

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Since I know all (both) of you trying to figure out what all stuff on the desk is.  Starting from upper left and moving clockwise.

• Receipt from when I went to jury duty about a year ago.  I started a blog post on that day that is still in draft.  It still needs a few more hours of work.
• A Venn Diagram on how to do inner and outer joins, some syntax crib notes, et cetera.
• My sweet, super wide monitor.
• A picture of Cora and I from our honeymoon.
• My lunchtime meds.
• A mouse the same shape as the one I have at home.
• My reading glasses.
• Some extra keys, including "PANIC", "EJECT", and "DO PROJECT".  You have no idea have many times I hit that "DO PROJECT" button.
• My cell, to text the wife around 8 pm to let her know when I should be leaving.
• A tiki cup that I use for water.  It used to look like THIS before the paint all fell off.
• A flying monkey.  Yes, a flying monkey.