So for the second time in two months I find myself at the hospital. Although this time it’s Sandy who’s under the knife and I’m doing the waiting. This is a really nice hospital, it’s UT Southwestern University Hospital and makes the one I was at look like a clinic. We got here in record time but then again we were getting here at 4:45am so there wasn’t a bunch of traffic and considering we’re 2 days away from Christmas, there probably wouldn’t have been normal traffic anyways.

We’re here so Sandy can have surgery to fix her nose that got broken and healed wrong when we went camping at Dinosaur Valley State Park. So the $1k bike leads to a $15k surgery. At least she’s cover by her military benefits.

As I get older, I’m beginning to lament the path not taken more and more. Don’t get me wrong, I traveled the road that I was supposed to and came out at this end of it extremely blessed in all that I have. But what if I would have started earlier? What if I hadn’t smoked for 20 years? Where would I have been had the military took me?
It hits me when I meet professionals that are so much younger than I am. The doctors that are working on Sandy don’t look over 30 even though they surely are. I wonder what it’s like to have your life on track and things in order 20 years before I did age wise.

I can’t complain too much. I’m not sure what higher power is looking out for me but they’re doing a great job!

Still don’t have the hang of Sunday’s. Oh well, this one isn’t too bad. I’ve been pulling the stuff out of production all weekend and the main part should be down today. What a royal pain in the backside. I’m wondering if Oracle just doesn’t have the talent to tune the database so it actually works right.

The beef tips from yesterday turned out amazing!!! We’ll definitely be making that again. I’ll have to keep an eye out for sales on sirloin and use this as a go to. It has freezing possibilities for quick meals during the week. Check it out and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

There’s football on today so I’ll try to get some more work done in the garage. It’s cold out today and the propane heater works well but give me a headache I think, maybe it’s just work.

Today always reminds me of the Robert Frost poem ‘Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening’. The shortest day in the northern hemisphere and the longest night. And miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep…
It sort of feels like using this time to rest because there’s a lot more to do ahead of you, or at least how I like to think of it.

Tonight we’re trying to make beef tips and mashed potatoes. The recipe came from here and it calls for sirloin beef tips, that’s a rather expensive cut of meet at about $10 a pound currently, it’s basically a steak. The idea was to use like a chuck roast and cube it up and low and slow it. But now that I’m thinking of it, we probably should be doing that in the pressure cooker. I was looking for beef stew tender meat but that takes about 8 hours, this one is done in 3, well supposedly 2.5 but I’m cooking it for 3.

Made more progress on the garage. There was college and professional football on today. Nice to work to. We’ve been having a fire in the fireplace in the evening and the cats absolutely love it. It might as well be for them:)

I got a great start to it today, up at 5 and trying to make the production exports work. I’m not able to pull the demographic data except for 500 records every 45 minutes. I’ve been doing this for something like 19 years and have never seen it this bad, there’s also a lot more coming out but what can you do.

I still need steps and calories but I think I’ll try to handle up on that when the football game comes on. There are a couple tonight including the start of the NCAA football playoffs. Not that I follow it but it’s good to have football on in the background. I like that there’s a live event someplace that people are hanging out at. I don’t want to be there myself by any means but it’s nice to know there’s a party crowd someplace.

Life is good today, it’s been busy but I’m not stressing over things that I don’t have control of. At least trying to be zen about the whole thing. There’s part of me that is dwelling on past mistakes and apologies that can no longer be made because it’s too late. I keep thinking of the scene in Hamlet where he’s confronted by his fathers ghost. ‘Sent to my reckoning with all my imperfections on my head’ or something to that effect.

This is my favorite time of the week. Tomorrow is only one day and regardless how bad it is, 5 o’clock gets here eventually. I’m riding the endorphins from getting an end to end XSL working in TCC. I didn’t do it from scratch but you know what? I don’t think anything comes from scratch any more, it’s forked from another project. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel anymore. Even figured out that pesky empty node issue. It’s honestly been a fun learning experience and pulling back the cover as to what XSL can do has been eye opening in a very positive way.

Tomorrow is Sandy’s last day at work for a week. She’s in for surgery on Monday and recovery until next Friday. Hopefully a nice relaxing weekend and a quite week coming up. It is Christmas already. Not sure how that got here that quickly. Thanksgiving came late this year.

Hopefully getting some garage work done tonight, there’s a good game on Thursday night football. Denver vs Chargers. 9-5 vs 8-6 in a divisional game with playoff implications sound fun.

I usually don’t care for the treadmill. You stay in one place but act like you’re walking. It’s not as natural as just walking because you have to kind of think about it. But with the back room getting put back together I positioned it in front of the TV and gave it a shot for a mile today. It wasn’t bad. I was even able to use the hand weights to do 50 reps of the 10 pound. It’s a little tricky but not too bad. And the big screen helps avoid thinking about the pain. I think I need a fan blowing on me the whole time to help cool down, then I may be able to do intervals.

Once again I’m feeling good but there was a hot minute today that got my heart racing. I was having an issue in that the aggregate notes were way too big, 90k characters or more. Turns out that it was picking up the history of all 6 and put it for each application. The issue turned out to be a ‘./’ was needed and I had a ‘//’ in the code. It wasn’t really that hard to find but I hate the stammer when you finally figure out what’s going on and have no idea why it’s going on. Oh well, that’s coming together.

Had an interview today, it went well I guess. I always come off as such an awkward geek. Although I suppose I was able to answer all the questions. Oh well, I wasn’t actually looking and it’s been a really quick turn around.

Got my steps and everything else complete but I wasn’t feeling it at the gym today. The day sure felt draggy but of course, this too did pass…

So I was cleaning up and putting things away in the back room and ran across a jump rope. I thought to myself, ‘hey, I haven’t done this in ages, I remember it being kind of fun’. So I took it outside and gave it a go. I think the word I’m looking for is ouch. Evidently getting air time when you’re 190 pounds isn’t nearly as easy as it was when I was 120. So there probably won’t be any more jumping rope in my future.

Did make it to the gym today, my arms are sore from yesterday so the weight lifting portion of my walk wasn’t very pleasant. But I got through 100 so that counts. Also biked up there. It was really muggy today but right around sunset we got some rain. I got a chance to go outside and watch it on the porch which is always nice. We just don’t get enough rain around here.

It’s a week until Sandy goes under the knife. While we’re still not 100% sure that it’s going to happen, we’re ready for it. Happy to help get her where she needs to be and get her home. I’m not bad at that.

I was working in the garage and the Jeep Gladiator from down the street pulled up and a young gentleman (Thad is memory serves) was kind enough to return cards that he found in the back of his vehicle. The perpetrator left from our driveway and headed down to their place. It was really nice of him to return those as Sandy didn’t even realize they were gone. Cards were canceled and new ones are on the way. Nothing was charged on any of them.

As I was saying, we’re in process of putting the truck in the garage. Primarily because I don’t want any more hail damage. I’ve actually pulled the truck into the garage before, it barely fits. But if I can back it in at just the right angle, it should fit and allow access to the back for the fridge. I’m skeptical but we should at least try. I pulled out the ladder to access the attic since we already have a pull down stairs.

In order to do that I need to move everything from the west wall to the east wall and generally clean out stuff. I also need to get rid of the garage fridge. We’ve got two out there and just not the room for it.

Sandy and I started the day taking about a 30 minute walk, it was chilly and foggy which is so rare down here that it was neat to walk through. Her leg was hurting so we cut it short but it was nice.

Lastly my watch updated to 6.0 UI. Not sure what the new things are but hopefully one of them is better battery life.

I’ve been having an issue where I get overwhelmed with all the possible things that I could do that I fail to get any of them done. I rocked it today. I got some development work on the XSL done and I’m thrilled that I’m completely understanding what’s going on, it’s all making sense like it’s rarely done before.

Deep cleaned the litter ‘appliance’ and it seems to be working fine. There’s a firmware update for it, I started it about 4 hours ago and it’s up to 95%. How odd. But again it’s now something I understand much better.

And lastly, as the sun was setting at 5:24pm, I decided to have a fire in the barrel. The fire starters that I made from left over candle wax and cotton rounds are simply amazing. I got a fire going and attacked the pile of branches we cut back on 8/6 before we left for our central US trip. This was the first time it’s been wet enough that I wouldn’t worry about starting anything that shouldn’t be on fire.

Thankful for a beautiful day and getting things done.