The client I’m at didn’t renew our contract through the end of the month, so I’m heading back in the office after April 24th.  I may already have another client booked but that hasn’t been finalized yet.  To be a consultant on the bench isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’m not bringing in money and it isn’t cheap to sit around doing nothing.  I’m not too worried as I’m continually adding to my skills to be more of a selling point to potential clients.  Enough about work.

School has been crazy, as usual.  I’m looking forward to finishing at the end of this month because Tazz and I are heading to New Mexico for five days and then to San Antonio for four days.  We’re going to see Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico along with the VLA (Very Large Array) near Socorro which was featured in the film Contact.  San Antonio will be four days of unplanned activities, mostly sitting around relaxing with my Aunt and Grandfather.  Tazz has never been to SA so he’s looking forward to it!

The household work has been a blast this spring, already.  Finally got the garage door replaced and entry door removed.  The chimney was falling apart and just dropped $2200 on a new liner and repair.  Next up, our driveway is getting ripped out and replaced because of water issues we were having in the basement.  It’s the year of repairs and I’m doing my part to stimulate the local economy.  (read: sarcasm)

Starting this fall, maybe even this summer, I will be starting initial work on my iPhone application for a migraine diary.  If you have interest in being part of my focus group and potentially a beta tester, let me know via a comment or send me an e-mail through my blog.

The holidays are nearly over and I can’t believe another year is starting.  Next year I’ll be turning 30, will have been together with Tazz for 13 years, had our house for 8 years, been diagnosed with migraines for 7 years.  I have typically established goals for myself in writing on this blog, but never really think about them in such a concrete manner again throughout the year.  To sum up this next year’s goals: be healthy & be happy.  Making a punchlist of dos and don’ts isn’t productive, for me at least.  As long as the choices I make maintain my health and happiness, I’m cool with that.

I’ve had a rash of migraines over the past month that hopefully I can just attribute to stress.  In the past, I would easily have 5-6 episodes a week that would respond to over the counter medication.  However, now I seem to get more frequent spikes of pain that last a few minutes and then go away for most of the day.  Taking any medication doesn’t make sense in these cases as the pain will probably subside before the medication has a chance to be absorbed into my system.  The number of instances of migraines that visibly affect my speech or thought processes are also on the rise.  I don’t normally get overwhelmed with pain to the point where I can’t think straight but at least once in this month I’ve had a migraine that made me feel drunk or like I was stroking out.

Next year my employer’s medical insurance is changing its deductible schedule for physician visits.  My family doctor will increase to $25 a visit and now specialty visits, like to my neurologist, will be increased to $50.  I may see if my family doctor can get my records from my neuro to help with managing the migraines.  I usually only see my neuro once a year but $50 is quite a bit of money to be given the next round of antiseizure medications that help the migraines but put the rest of my body through hell.  I’m sure everybody is going through this same type of change with their benefits, assuming you even have a job during this next year.

Happy New Year everyone.  Lets hope it brings more balance to our lives and a renewed sense of hope.

Camping this past weekend at KOA in Wisconsin Dells was great.  The cabin was cozy, the people very friendly, and the weather beyond awesome.  It put a nice end to the summer season!  This is actually my favorite time of the year, with the trees turning colors and the air a bit chilly at night.  The trees just started to turn in our area and soon we’ll be left with the grey skeletons of branches.  Of course, not soon after those grey skeletons turn white in winter with all of the snow.  That’s fun too!

School has turned out to be manageable this semester.  My Monday night class is a lot of work and the four person team only has myself and one other person doing any work.  It sucks how inexperienced the other two guys are and I wouldn’t complain if this were an undergrad degree.  Master’s degree implies a level of knowledge on the applied level.  I shouldn’t have to teach people concepts that I learned during my Associate’s Degree schooling.

The new client at work has been good so far.  I am busy all day long and have very little time to goof off.  I’m learning a lot as well and finally applying my schooling to my job.  My previous jobs and clients were technical in nature but in reality all revolving around non-software engineering positions.  I’m finally designing applications and also implementing those designs.  Fun, yes, but exhausting.

My Grandather is coming up from Texas this coming weekend to visit mainly my parents, but also my brother and I.  He’s in the dark about me being gas, but he’s a smart guy and probably knows.  He knows Tazz is a friend at least and he’ll be with me when we go up this weekend.  I think it’s good that Tazz get to know my Grandfather a little bit since it explains a lot about my father. 

I’m hosting a carnival next month – topic is art inspired by migraines.  I’ll post more on it later.

I have two classes this semester.  My Monday night class is called “Software Engineering” and it seemed like a fun class when I got the book.  Remember here, I am a geek at heart and stuff like physics and engineering are right up my alley.  Within 20 minutes of night #1, I was already crapping my pants.  Every computer class that I’ve had up to this point with a group project includes a fake company and project to work on.  This class has a real project that we MUST complete by the end of the semester.  Why am I in software engineering if I hate working with other people?  Not quite sure, really.  The application we’re building is going to help the disability services group on campus to manage requests for accommodations due to a disability.  It’s going to a good cause but already, I can see they don’t even know what they need for an application.  Thankfully my Thursday night class is somewhat of a repeat of an undergraduate class I took.

Work took kind of a weird turn at the end of last month.  The current client I’m at (remember I’m a computer consultant/bitch for hire) had me contracted through December 31st.  They are a relatively small hedge fund and recently had to “reorganize” their staff which ultimately led to me being dropped at the end of September.  My employer found me a new client to interview with and they accepted me to start 10/1.  I do feel lucky that I don’t have to sit on the bench waiting for a new client – some of my coworkers don’t have an engagement to follow up with.  The only thing that scares me is that this will be my first real development job.  Up until now, I usually work on reporting with some programming mixed in.  This is going to be a real project with deliverables.  Frightening.  It’s good that I’m finally getting what I want to get into but I can be a baby about it, right?  (Remember, I said back in October 2005, I like to bitch about everything!)

As for vacation, Tazz and I have had our share of adventures this year.  A cruise to the Bahamas in January, camping twice, road trip to Niagara Falls & Toronto and a casino trip last weekend.  All in all, we had fun.  I’m going to San Antonio again this coming Thursday and will be back in town Monday night, late.  I like visiting my family and have been fortunate enough to be able to do it every six months for the past two years.  Our last trip of the year was supposed to be tent camping October 10th.  We decided, because of being rained out last week, to switch it up and rent a cabin so we can’t be rained out.  It’s going to be at a KOA campground, which is to say the least the most commercial campground ever.  We’re going to have WiFi – that’s NOT camping.  But, alas, we’ll be able to have a fire and still do things in the area.

So that’s kind of the catch-up.  I need to get back to the homework so I can relieve the anxiety I have about not having a good grasp around my classes.  Toodles!

We are camping this coming weekend -yay! I finished my summer class this past weekend and I got an A. I’m so happy I get almost six weeks until fall classes.

Not much else exciting on the homefront and that’s probably a good thing!

• Improve my diet.  This means eating my fruits & vegetables, cooking at home with recipes and fresh ingredients.  Reduce or eliminate sodas (sugared and diet) and eliminate dependence on caffeine.
• Exercise on a regular schedule.  We’ve been walking a couple nights a week but I need to follow this up with some Wii Fit time or general Yoga stretching before work in the morning.
• Get rid of the junk around me.  I need to take all the crap we have packed away in the house and donate it to a resale shop or recycle it if it’s really junk.  Collecting “stuff” I think adds to suck up positive energy.
• Finish school.  I still have two years left of school and I am still on track for graduation.  I don’t expect myself to stop going but it is one of my goals that I need to keep on the radar.

Losing weight and eliminating the dependence on hypertension medications is the higher-level goal for the diet and exercise.  Eliminating the junk will help with finishing projects and keeping myself motivated to improve my surroundings.  School is just one of those things that I think I’ll forever be attending.  I mean that in a manner of even after I get my master’s degree, I want to go back and teach.

• Got the garage resided (well, we watched)
• Refreshed the flower beds out front & planted pretty things (they haven’t been used for three years easily)
• Fixed the garage spot light (me on a ladder & electrical wire)
• Removed the 30 year old non-functioning fluorescent lights from the garage
• Put a new, efficient fluorescent fixture in the garage
• Mowed the lawn
• Pulled the weeds/creeping charlie
• Emptied and removed the scary barrel (more later on this)

Whew that’s a lot.  And there is still more to do.  I’ve noticed over the past few years that we’ve let things slide around the outside of the house and a number of things inside too.  I keep a to-do list of household repairs, etc on tadalist.com and it hasn’t changed in a long time.  School is the primary reason but I think, in general, I just gravitate towards lazy.  I’m hoping this motivation sticks with me through the summer!

The scary barrel mentioned above is actually a 50-ish gallon barrel that has been hidden behind our garage since we bought the house in 2001.  The previous owners said they had no idea what was in it so they left it.  Tazz and I were actually afraid to know what was in there until in approximately 2004, I opened it.  It took a lot of effort since it was sealed pretty heavily.  What I found was a bunch of stale water, a wrench, an oil filter, and about 8 quarts of used, degrading motor oil.  The smell was that of a sewer.  I didn’t know what to do with this and neither of our cars at the time would let me safely transport it to a hazardous waste site.  So it’s sat back there, like a nagging blemish.  Sometimes I swear it was calling to me in the night.

I finally came up with an idea on how to get rid of it.  I ended up buying two 5-gallon buckets from the hardware store and carefully emptied the stinky, migraine-inducing contents into the two buckets.  Come to find out the idiot put holes in the barrel up the side and it’s been leaking oil on the ground for years.  Anyway, I got the oil/water/wrench mixture out and have let the barrel dry out.  There is a little bit of oil left but now it can be thrown out.  Now we have two pretty buckets full of gunk.  I wonder how many years they’ll sit in the garage?

I can deal with headaches and crap like that but being sick just plain SUCKS.  Nothing is comfortable and even your bed which is like the number one safe zone turns into a stink pit after two days of being sick.  We did the smart thing and changed all the bedding and kept using new cups so not to reinfect ourselves with the same crap we’ve had.  I, against my better judgment, bought the tissues with the antiviral stuff in them to prevent the spread of the junk.  We’ll see if that helps.

I’m hocked up on cold medicine right now.  I’m looking forward to a normal week of weather.  Only nice thing was both nights of school were canceled this week.  I was not caught up at all from my vacation so I am going to use this weekend to get caught up.  We’ll see if that really happens.