I’ve been having that “I’m overdue for a post” feeling for the last couple days; good thing I took the bus to work today or I don’t know when I would have even started it. I’ve recently been about as busy as ever with work, so much so that for the first time in my career I actually stayed the night at my office on Monday night. The reason for all this was a free online virtual conference being put on Tuesday by Microsoft, called AzureCon. The event was being held on Azure.Microsoft.com, which is the website my team owns, so we were responsible for creating the page(s) and making sure that our users had an optimal experience.
For the week leading up to the event, our two most tenured engineers were both out on vacation. Then the night before the event our most senior engineer came down with a wicked case of food poisoning, meaning there were only three of us available to see it through to completion. In the end the event was a success, although there were a few adjustments I would make if I could do it over again, but we all came together well as a team and got it done.
Jessica has worked the last two nights in a row, which is her new regular weekly schedule (Wednesday & Thursday nights), so it feels like forever since we’ve all been together for a normal evening. Everything will be back to normal tonight though, and I’m sure that will make the kids happy. We’ll be resuming our old Friday tradition of Jessica and the kids picking me up from work. The girls love coming to my office because they always get chocolate milk, and the drive home is nice because it gives Jessica and I time to catch up without many distractions.
I attended the Microsoft Car Show this afternoon on my lunch break. There were a handful of cars parked outside, including a beautiful Lamborghini, then a whole bunch of others parked underground in a parking garage. Since there was no theme to this show, the variety of cars to look at was impressive. Lots of Ferrari’s, Porsche’s, a cool orange Chevy C10 pickup, and old Porsche 944 (my first car), some amazing camping vans, lots of motorcycles, and my favorite of all, a bright red 1967 Chevy Chevelle, which is probably my favorite muscle car of all time. Nice way to spend your lunch break on a Friday!
Enzo turned 8 months old earlier this week. I don’t remember the girls going through this noticeable of a growth spurt. Even though I see him everyday it’s still obvious to me how fast he’s growing and how big he’s getting. Not only is he getting big but he’s also gotten quite mobile. He’s full-on crawling now, plus he loves scooting around in his walker. Because of this it’s probably safe to say no one loves the wood floors more than Enzo. He’s also standing up on his own, so walking is presumably just around the corner.
Jessica and I recently decided that Elise, or ‘Weese’ as I like to call her, is the missing character from the cast of Peanuts, which I read this morning first debuted 65 years ago today. Between all her messy/dirty faces, the fact that she’s always carrying Pippo around, and that move she does where it looks like she’s sucking on an imaginary pacifier, she’d be absolutely perfect. I can just see her picking out a Christmas tree with Charlie Brown, or singing songs around the piano with Lucy, Woodstock, and Pigpen. She’s been a bit of a drama queen lately, but I think not having Mommy and Daddy home at the same time all week probably has something to do with that.
Ava has recently made a ton of progress with using the bathroom, and I’m this close to declaring her officially potty trained, but we still seem to have one “accident” a day. I’m saying this in jest because it’s not really an accident, she just doesn’t want to stop doing what she’s doing to go to the bathroom. Consequently Jessica and I have to tell her regularly to go use the bathroom, but she’s usually pretty good about it.
Not sure what’s going on this weekend but we’re hoping to get out and do something fun. Honestly what we should be doing is cleaning out the garage, which is still filled with materials from the flooring project, but that may have to wait another week. The weather is supposed to be nice here, and the trees are all changing color, so we should probably take advantage of it and get outside.
Speaking of the flooring project, we really love how it turned out. It feels like a different house and looks so much nicer. Thanks again to Amy and Tom for all their help with that.
Looks like we’re in for a pretty quiet October, followed by a busy November. We have plans next Saturday with Dana and family, and we’re expecting a visit from my Mom for her birthday on Halloween. Next month Jessica and I will be taking our trip to Austin, then celebrating Ava’s 4th birthday and Thanksgiving the following week.
That’s about it for now. Here’s a few recent pics, as well as a video of the kids playing out front.
