More fun than I can imagine.

I've noticed that weekends tend to be very busy around here. You know, I spend all week looking forward to a nice relaxing day, and end up with an activity explosion!

We invited Peyton over to play with Chloie Friday night. We painted nails, made necklaces, and had ziti while we watched Planet 51. Both of them had been bouncing off the walls with excitement all week waiting for Friday, and I'm glad they had a good time.

Saturday started simply enough, slept in an extra hour or so, kids up for breakfast (Tim made eggs... yummy!). Then the kiddos and I left for my parents' house and Tim went to Virginia to visit friends. My mother had hatched a plan... no, this is serious business. While Dad and I went to the AT&T store to get new phones, Mom would take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's for lunch and games. I'd finally settled on a Samsung Solstice. It's a neat little messaging phone with a touch screen and more buttons on the sides than I know what to do with. Funny thing is, I remember when you got a user manual in the box. Now you get a quick start up guide and a CD for the computer with the tutorial on it. Who has time to watch the tutorial to figure out how their phone works??? I just want to know how to set up my contacts! Dad settled on a slider like my sister. It took a little longer picking out and setting up phones than expected, but we finally made it back to Cheese's after 1.5 hours. Poor Mom. Somehow she talked me into playing a few of the games, and among the 5 of us we managed to get 433 tickets. We picked out glow-in-the-dark bracelets and were on our way. I'm told that Mom and Dad stopped by Rita's for some well-deserved tastiness.

By the time we got home, Tim still hadn't made it back, so we ate a quick dinner of sandwiches and finished the Avatar: the Last Airbender series while we baked chocolate chip cookies and I tried a Scottish Shortbread recipe. Tim finally got home late after the kiddos fell asleep. He said he had a good time visiting.

We were almost late for church on Sunday. Tim was released as a ward missionary and the Gospel Essentials teacher. Then he was called to be the Bear leader for our Boy Scouts program. They called Tom Hall to be his assistant. It was an inspiring fast and testimony meeting. I particularly enjoyed listening to Bishop Vincent. Tim taught his last class in Essentials about sacrifice, and our Relief Society lesson was on Service. I remembered that talk from General Conference a couple years ago. It's nice to hear references to talks I've heard; it makes me feel more "into it" than when they reference something from before my time in the church.

Tim didn't have to work Sunday night so we watched a few episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. If you can't tell, I'm a big Star Trek fan... and a geek, but please don't hold it against me.

Monday, oh Monday, a holiday! Labor Day! No school! No work! I weighed myself and discovered that I'd gained 2 pounds back of the 3 that I'd lost. Grrr! I hopped onto the treadmill for double the time, determined to get rid of it. 30 minutes, 1.25 miles, and 145 calories later, it wasn't much better. Tim and Audie helped Steve work on his yard for a few hours. Chloie, Dougie, and I followed them down to visit for a minute before the 3 of us went grocery shopping at the Winchester Martin's. Hannah was taking a bath so we just left the cookies on the counter for her, Abbey, and Steve.

Would you believe that I didn't get lost on my way to Martin's? I was so happy! Even better, we're trying to cut back on the amount of money we spend so that we can pay off our bills and save for a house, so my goal for our 2-week menu was to spend less than $100. Our bill came to $99.45. The kiddos helped me unload everything when we got home, and we had lunch ready when Tim and Audie got back. They got clean (wow, they were dusty), and everyone took a short nap before we went to the Galbraith's house for a Labor Day BBQ. It was good to see them, friends we knew, and to meet new people.

And then I realize how long this post has gotten...

I was on the treadmill again this morning for 30 minutes hoping to work off the good food I ate yesterday. Honestly, I was such a pig! I can't tell if it's working, but I hope that it does some thing soon!

We did it!!!

That big project I've been working on all week? DONE!!!

Randy looks like we just lifted the weight of the world off of his shoulders. Thanks to His and his help, we've managed to complete all of the templates, imports, and reports and we've also done a successful run on each using live data. So far things are working (knock on wood), and there are no foreseeable issues with the system. Yay!

In another area of progress, I've posted in the side bar. I started Monday at 277.4 lbs. and have lost 3.2 lbs as of this morning. The key here will be to keep it off over the weekend.

And now for a moment of cute...

An original Dougie masterpiece!

When progress isn't slow.

I know you were hoping that I'd post something about great gains in weight loss, but this time I'm talking about work. I'm sorry I got your hopes up. :)

We've been talking for a while about how to speed up the prekey process. It usually takes 45 minutes to an hour to manually key in one load of 32 machines. Up until yesterday, that is. I made a breakthrough that allowed me to do the whole process in 10 minutes or less.

Another struggle we've had is changing the graphics on the machines or changing their status to a different build. To do so means that you have to print all of the information, delete the old entry in the system, and re-enter it with the new selection. Figure 2 minutes per machine, average 60 or so a day, and you're talking about 2 hours or more down the drain depending on how well the system is working today. I'm so close to modifying the import for this purpose as well.

I really enjoy this kind of work. It keeps me busy and interested. Often times most of the day will go by before I realize that I missed lunch 2 hours ago or that it is only 30 minutes to shift end. It's particularly nice to see the amount of progress made, and if you think I'm excited about it, you should see Randy (the person we hired to replace me as supervisor when I transferred). He's offered to stand guard outside my door until I get it done.

I only wish my weight loss was working like this.

5 minutes to go

I don't know what I was thinking last night, but I got caught up in something I was watching on TV and was up until 1am. Now I know what you're thinking, but I promise it was for a quasi-good cause. Chloie has a friend at school that liked her scarf so much, that she asked Chloie if her mommy would make her one, too. Chloie was so excited when she asked me that I couldn't turn her down, so I dug out my jumbo knitting needles and the same colorful eyelash yarn that I used before and knitted for two nights to finish it. With 6 inches to go at midnight, I decided to stay up for a little bit longer to get it done. I love the colors...

So I woke up this morning 5 minutes before my alarm, and I'm not even tired. I got up and dressed, set up the treadmill, and cranked it up to a whopping 1.5 incline today! Small steps require enthusiasm so please bear with me. If I don't at least try, it will be the shortest workout in history. In any case, with only 5 hours of sleep I'm usually dragging my behind for most of the day; however, I'm feeling pretty good. Maybe this exercise thing is working after all.

Oh, and another nifty bit of news... they finally opened the new section of Route 9 between Kearneysville and Opequon. Going that route took 8 minutes off of my commute! Sweet!