Jean's birthday

Well this is the week that Jean hit one of those milestone birthday's that cause some to freak.

But in Jean's case she took it pretty much with a so what.

As this is a milestone birthday, I wanted to do something big. I kicked around a trip to Mohican State Park but it's August. Not the best time to camp and canoe.

Next I thought about a romantic French dinner followed by catching Cirque du Soleil Varekai but Jean said for that, she'd rather have a reverse osmosis water filter. This I should have guessed since my wife is on the Acts of Service side Chapman's 5 Love Languages..

So while the budge won't let us get the filter system this month, we did have some coin to get a sweet phone system from Panasonic that will allow us to intercom each other while in the house and has speakerphones built into each handset.

Professional schizophrenia

There are times when I wonder if I'm the only person who suffers from a professional schizophrenia.

A have a voice in my head that tells me that I can do my job and do it well. That what I'm doing is worthwhile and valued. It's the voice that asks "Why not me?" when I start to think about maybe being a product manager or a team lead.

Then there is the other voice that is ready with a laundry list of reasons why I'm just a total screw-up who is one step away from unemployment. Unfortunately this voice is louder than the other, never misses a mistake and has been hyper tuned after years in QA.

Today was one of those days when both voices were going at it. A note of praise for a tech briefing is met with scorn for I felt it should have been done sooner and without so many re-writes. Live Meeting scheduling mishaps with the Outlook plug in and my overview of the web site redesign compounds the feeling that I'm a hack.

Needless to say, working on better self talk is high on my to do list

Missing cell phone and other dis-ease

It’s safe to say that at the moment, I’m frustrated. My right kneecap is sore from kneeling on some gravel, my right side of my jaw is popping in and out in an annoying kind of way and I’ve lost my cell phone.

The cell phone has been AWL since sometime Wednesday night when I last called Jean. Sadly it’s battery is gone or else I would doing some ringtone recon to try and find the thing. Our fear is that John got a hold of it which means it could be ANYWHERE.

Last night I spent the better part of an hour sifting through our weekly garbage hoping that among the diapers and other trash would be the phone as John has thrown away a sippy cup or two in his day. Speaking of sippy cups, I’ve found two during this quest for my Nokia along with the lanyard for my mp3 player missing since April. Maybe this was some kind of lost item quid pro quo. Except that I just got the short end since I wasn’t paying a monthly service fee for the lanyard.