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The background .jpg is a picture of coffee beans. Since I spent three days this week sitting in on an advanced EJB course (Enterprise JavaBeans) I thought this was an appropriate background. Six people in this class had attended the WebSphere course I taught a couple weeks ago so it was almost a mini-reunion. Probably sometime this winter I may start to teach this advanced EJB class, but first I've got to cram a lot more knowledge into my brain. I've still been neglecting this website, I know, but I've just been too busy and I've been trying to make a point of getting to bed earlier. That totally exhausting week when I was trying to teach WebSphere, putting in extremely long and tiring days, suffering from a bad head cold and severe sinus headaches and a serious lack of sleep... I just decided to make a point of getting to bed by eleven o'clock... in fact, a few nights I've been asleep at 10:30... which makes it much easier to get up between 5:00 and 5:30... I even got out for early morning runs on Monday and Tuesday this week! On Thursday I got home early (a little before six p.m.) and was able to go for a run before fixing dinner. It was dark for my morning runs, but it is a lot darker at 6 p.m than at 6 a.m.... sunset Thursday was 4:24 p.m. (we are in the eastern part of the time zone... as I think I may have remarked when I visited Cleveland recently, there is almost a forty minute difference between Rhode Island sunsets and Cleveland sunsets) I took this afternoon off... I have a bunch of vacation days and holidays that I have to take off before the end of the year -- it's a use 'em or lose 'em policy -- no vacation days or holidays can be carried over from one year to the next. I had expected to take a few days off before school started but ended up too busy (and my kids are old enough not to need to be taken on back-to-school shopping trips) and had anticipated taking days like Columbus Day off... but was too busy, think I missed taking Columbus Day because it was the only day I had to get things done in the office before leaving for Cleveland and was far too busy to take off Election Day or Veteran's Day.... so I suddenly find myself realizing that I had six vacation days and eight holidays to take. So... I'm taking all of next week off... that takes care of three vacation days and two holidays... and I'll probably take all of Christmas week off... and I'm teaching a class the week after Thanksgiving and I will probably have to spend a week in Minnesota (or, perhaps split between Toronto and Minnesota?) so I'm not sure about my schedule for most of December... so I decided to take half a vacation day today (okay, so I had put in a bit over five hours by the time I actually escaped the office) and it was nice getting home early... Jennifer got home shortly after I did. I went for a nice four mile run (in daylight!) and she raked leaves. A friend of hers stopped by to visit. I went out and got Chinese take-out (Sweet and sour chicken, chow mein, General Tso's chicken, white rice, fried rice, egg rolls) and while we were eating another one of Jennifer's friends stopped by and joined us. (Sean is sleeping over at a friend's house and Nancy is chaperoning a dance at the middle school where she teaches math.) I'm home alone now... Jennifer and friends have gone up to Providence. Tomorrow Jennifer and I are planning a trip to Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts... always an interesting place to visit, but we are especially interested in seeing the special exhibit of guitars that they are featuring. I've been going through some boxes of photographs recently, a box in the den filled with pictures taken over the past two or three years and a box in the basement filled with older pictures. I would like to scan some of them in over the next few days, post a few here. Hey! I got through this entry without once mentioning the presidential follies in Florida! I suppose I should make a correction of something I said last time ... I had said I thought Adam probably voted for Nader because he had emailed me a pro-Nader essay written by Michael Moore... it turns out, however, that Adam has the same dim view of Nader that I do and he mailed the article because he thought it was interesting and well-written... He voted for Browne -- just like me. It's interesting to me that we were thinking alike in this area. |