Random

And as I am writing this the day is far from being over, unfortunately.  Currently I am working… Yes I realize it’s 12:44am.   Tonight I happened to log in to do some maintenance and as it turns out something here got really hosed…  No I didn’t break it, and it just happened to be coincidence that I happened to log into work when it went down…   Unfortunately there is nothing I can do and I’m waiting on another team to get their part done before I can do anything.  It sounds like it may be a long night…  Ugh….

But that’s not even the beginning of my day!  I had a pretty decent day at work – a typical Tuesday full of meetings.  I also met with my Pastoral Council Vice Chair today about what exactly we need to do.  After that meeting I felt a lot better about what was expected of me.  This whole "being the Pastoral Council Chair" thing is something that I’m reluctantly doing, but at least now I’m beginning to think of some opportunity with it..  We’ll see if I say the same thing when I actually have to start doing work for it…

But tonight was really interesting.  I went to my folks’ this evening.  With my sister’s graduation coming this weekend and this week being finals week (my mom is a teacher) there is a ton to do leading up to it and I wanted to see what I could do to help around the yard.  So I get there and my mom is grading papers, my sister is out and about with some guy (which is a whole other story), and my youngest sister was working.  So I helped out a bit, then hung out while my mom was grading and we were watching Law & Order SVU’s finale (which was interesting by the way).  Then like at 9:30 my dad comes down and breaks out with "your grandparents are coming over in 20 minutes"..  

Wait… you mean my Grandparents from Arizona?!?  Rolling in at 10pm on a Tuesday night??

Sure enough they roll in…  I don’t know where this bright idea came from, but I’m glad that the communication system is working so well at home.  I only happened to be down there by sheer coincidence, and it would have been very likely that I wouldn’t have been there at all.  My sisters are all doing their homework and working, and here we are with a huge busy week.  Just kinda random to have family showing up.  My guess is my dad knew about it, but didn’t break out with the memo until right before they called.

Now I’m not saying that I wasn’t grateful to see my grandparents.  I was, it was good to see them – but truth be told: we’re not really that close and the last time I saw them was almost 4 years ago.  They’re very nice and very sweet people, especially my grandmother, but it’s just that our family has never been really close with that side of the family, communication is sparse at best so we never really know what’s going on.  That makes conversing out of the blue a little more difficult.

So I stuck around long enough to be polite, and God bless my sister Jessica who did the same as well.  I don’t think either of us really said anything during that time, but at that point she went to bed and I went home.  I probably could have stayed longer, but I also wanted to be conscious of my mom staying up grading papers and my sisters needing to do homework and just thought about how this was a really tough night to host family.  Very interesting night indeed.

As I drove home it made me think about how much I miss my other grandparents.  I was quite a bit closer to them.  We went out to the squelching heat of Carlsbad, New Mexico every summer to go visit them and as much as I joke about how hot and boring it is out there, I had a lot of good memories that I took from that place.  My grandmother passed two years ago and my grandfather passed about two months ago and I just go to thinking that I may never go back to Carlsbad ever again.

Maybe someday when I have kids I’ll take them out there to visit some distant cousin or something, just to subject them to metropolis that is Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Hadn’t posted in a couple of days, so I just wanted to briefly catch you up on what’s been going on…

Today I am feeling very lackadaisical, I’ve been walking around in this "ho-hum" feeling all day.  I don’t mean to dwell on depression, but as I ask myself why I am feeling this way I wonder if it’s due to any (or perhaps a combination of) the following:

– Today is Monday

– Today wasn’t the most productive day at work.  I ended up having 4 meetings back to back, which really put a cramp in my being able to do work.  I’m also in the middle of projects.  After finishing up so many things last week I have new things I’m able to take on, but now it’s a matter of getting started on these things.

-The weather.  It’s been really cloudy all day, really stormy and I’ve head some thunder – but no rain.  There’s no sun either, but it’s still a little hot.  I hate it when the weather is like it.  Either rain or clear up and get sunny – this in-between stuff makes me feel "blah"

-My sister is leaving in 8 days for the summer.  And another Gaudreau moves out of the house – three down, one to go!  It’s kinda funny too.  My sister Amanda is definitely one of the most challenging people in my life, and I think her being away from home will be good for both her and our family, but it’s a bit sad to think of her heading out, especially three days after her graduation party…  I still think it’s kinda lame for her to be leaving this early, but she wants to go to Puerto Rico (despite all of our family’s objections).  I just think about my summer after I graduated high school, and how in many ways that was the best summer that I ever had.  I hope she’s not being robbed of that.

– I haven’t seen Joel or Emily for over a week.  We’ve all been really busy, and Em’s been out of town for the last week.  I guess you don’t realize how much your friends help shape your mood until they’re not around.  Hopefully that’ll change a bit this week.

So that’s my day so far…

Alright, go Fridays!   Pretty typical day, just glad that the weekend is here and I am just thankful for that. Workwise I ended one of the most productive weeks for me in a long time…  Except until about 4pm Friday afternoon..  I decided to work from home (mainly because laziness and convenience took over) when the power went out!  Everything shut down without warning!  I talked to some of the neighbors and it looks like the whole complex was shut down!  You don’t realize just how much you use electricity until you don’t have it.  I still had my laptop on battery, but it did little good since all internet activity was shut down.  So I took this as a sign that maybe it was time to take a break and possibly be done for the day.  So I started to read.  A half-hour passed – no power.  At that point I decided to nap.  It was funny because it was so noisy outside.  It seemed like everyone was running between apartments acting like we’re under some kind of emergency.  It was really funny, but really loud.  I finally drifted off to sleep.  Next thing I know it was 6:30pm and the power had kicked back in..  It’s just funny to think about not having electricity = naptime…  You’d think I’d find ways to be more productive during this time, but noooo…   Oh well.

I then joined my mom and sisters for dinner and on the way home I gave my youngest sister and her boyfriend a ride back to my folks and chilled there…  So here’s where my funny story of the night comes in…

So remember yesterday how I took Sam over to the doctor’s office in the morning?  Well while she was there she picked up a booklet and a bunch of flyers about the 3rd trimester, giving birth and all that good stuff…  Well come to find out that she left it in my car, in the back seat no less.  So here I am giving my sister and her bo’ a ride home (she’s riding shot and he’s in the back) and he didn’t say anything about it!  Now it’d be one thing if they gave me a little crap about it, but he didn’t say A WORD!  And I know that he saw it.  I keep my car pretty clean and it’s the only thing back there, and it’s RIGHT ON THE SEAT!  The funny thing is that I didn’t realize it until after I got in the car to leave my parents’ (and my sister and her bo’ left a lot earlier to go play poker).  How much do you want to bet that there was a pretty good gossip/rumor discussion going on in the car on the way there?.  I had the same thoughts so as soon as I hit the road I called my mom (even though I saw her 2 minutes before) and told her the whole story…  Now I know my parents know me better than to suspect anything, but if our family does one thing well, it’s GOSSIP!  So it’s important that I send out the truth dispatchers right away and dispel any rumors or conjecture…  But still, how funny…

Quick post, as it’s getting late and I stayed up getting some work done…

Today was a GREAT DAY!  A very busy and productive one.  First and foremost I successfully completed my upgrade installation at work.  This has been a project that has been about 6 weeks in the making (but also has been in the pipes for well over a year now), so while I’m grateful that this is off my shoulders I think my boss and team will be pretty excited that we can cross this off our list too.  This clears a final "red tape" hurdle that we needed to take our product to Prime Time, so I’m pumped about that.  So far we’ve been upgrade for 7 hours and no issues to report   I’m happy…

I’m also happy that I went grocery shopping and finally stocked up my fridge with something more than beer, condiments & pop…  Wow, it’s weird to see real food in there! lol…

Also I managed to get some good NCSC work done today as well.  I got the information for our Colorado vacation out.  This is something that’s been looming over me to get done, but once I finally sat my butt down and started doing it – it turned out to be a lot of fun!  Something tells me this is going to be a good NCSC week.

Tomorrow night Sam and I are going down to Coors Canaveral to watch the Rockies play.  Two games in two weeks – woah!  You’d think I was a Rockies fan or something   Also I bought some movie tickets for Thursday, as I think I might come down with a case of "Star Wars-itus" *cough* *cough* and might have to miss a few hours of work around lunch-time…

As far as Mondays go today was a really good day   Looks like it’s going to be an exciting week ahead!

Great weekend!  Did I get any work done? No…  Did I chop any items off of my to-do list?  No…  But that’s partly why it was such a great weekend.  When Friday came I felt that the previous week was quite productive, and getting the rest that I got felt really good.

Now that’s not to say that I sat around and did nothing…  I actually wasn’t home all that much.   Saturday morning I joined my mom at the movies.  We saw "Kingdom of Heaven" – interesting movie.  I’m not really sure if I enjoyed it very much, but I didn’t hate it either.  I wish I knew my 12th century history, then I could better understand the resentment some religious have directed towards this movie.  I was disappointed that the crusades were secularized as much as it was in this movie.   They made the crusades sound like it was more about land rather than the whole "religious war" aspect of this.  But again, I’m not one to make claims given my lack of historical perspective I really can’t make any judgments.  But I’m also disappointed in the religious officials who are making every effort to denounce this movie.  I think that if people accept Hollywood entertainment as historical gospel then they probably have bigger problems.  But to spear the movie-makers seems to be going a bit far.  Let them make the movie, offer historical clarifications, and let the people take it from there.  From a cinema perspective the movie was alright, I was disappointed in the lack of character development in Orlando Bloom’s character.  The action scenes, while good, are a bit "ho-hum" when you think of Lord of the Rings..  Also the movie seemed to run a half-hour too long..  But thank you for tuning into "Behind the Balcony with Jeromey Gaudreau"…

Last night I waxed the car for the first time this season.  I did about as decent job you’d expect for a "Hey it’s 9pm, let’s wax the car" job.  Didn’t really miss a few spots but the irony of it was when I went out to the parking lot today I saw that some bird left me a nice present on the hood.  The humor in life J

The majority of today was devoted to being at Emily’s graduation party.  I love my friend Emily   She’s so awesome and I’m really proud of her achievement!  Her party was a lot of fun.  I got to help with the setup and cleanup, which made me feel useful.  I also got to spend a lot of time with Emily’s family, who I’ve discovered are one of the coolest families I know and were just a lot of fun to be around.  Got to see Jas-TOR and Julia as well, so it was nice being able to see some good friends.  I was there the entire time and this was the only grad party I went to, but it was still a blast

So in tribute to my friend Emily and her big weekend I decided to subject her to my latest Photoshop experiment.  You know those iPod ads where people are dancing around with them and you have those cool silhouettes of people with the iPods?  So I decided to take a picture I had of Emily and Photoshopped her.  The pic was taken at NCSC Orlando Conference…  This is my first attempt, so be gentle (and yes I realize she does not have an iPod in the picture  )

 

lol

So that brings to end my un-productive, but great weekend   And thus begins my summer work working as well.  Monday here I come!