Sunday, September 15 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning everyone! Hope you are all having a wonderful Sunday so far. After beginning yesterday with the "doom and gloom" theme of broken software, things quickly took an upward turn. We walked to Walgreens so I could pick up a replacement USB drive, grabbed some Taco Bell on the way home, then I got to fixing the file server. I had forgotten that at some point I moved most of the critical configuration data onto a more resilient disk, so after recreating the boot drive and importing the old data, the old file server came right back up. It even remembered where Marissa had left off watching the Office and where Rodney had left off watching the Lion King. I had feared the project would soak up the rest of the weekend, but it was all over in an hour. To prevent this kind of issue from happening again, I even added a second identical boot drive. It's pretty gratifying to just rip out a USB drive or a computer part while the computer is booting and witness it pretty much have no effect. As a techie, that might be my version of revving a car engine at a stoplight. I used the extra time while Rodney was napping to clean up some other things that were in the backlog, concluding my Saturday side project stint. Before I knew it, everything felt like a regular Saturday again.

Speaking of side projects, my birthday is coming up, and I think it's a reasonable assumption that I might come into some spending money soon. I'm already starting to think about redoing the tech wall. Last time we checked on it, I had paired it down to just the bare bones router, and there's a pretty big chunk of Plexiglass wide open. But yesterday it occurred to me that it might make more sense to put a shelf or two there. That would allow me to be a little more economical with the space, and be able to rearrange things without having to bug Marissa to break out the powerdrill. And I still think a shelf of miniature servers would look pretty cool, especially if I went with one of those clear plastic cases.

After Rodney woke up from his nap, I took him to Hy-Vee. I didn't have anything wild & risky planned for dinner - just some chicken breasts, asparagus, and potatoes - all things that could be slowly roasted over the same indirect heat on the grill, which gave me plenty of time to sit outside on the porch and enjoy the cool weather with Marissa and Rod. As a little snack, I tossed a few thin cuts of stale French bread right over the coals, charring them for a few seconds. I love experimenting with stale bread - we seem to have it around all the time, and it's pretty expendable. If you mess it up - no biggie, it was stale anyway!

After dinner, I began the rigamarole of putting Rodney to bed. It was a late one, especially because we still had to shower and put his laundry away. Rodney helped fold and hang his clothes. These days, I'm pretty impressed with what he can pick up on. I've started to assume that he can handle any kind of job, and half of the time he gets it right. He can bring things into the house, get things out of the fridge, and put things away. I think we're finally hitting the tipping point, and my head is spinning thinking of all the chores we can finally delegate away.

This morning, we're sleeping in, enjoying the return to 11 AM church services. Getting to mix a whole extra hour into the Sunday morning routine makes a big difference. I'll wrap up this journal entry, then finish a cup of coffee and heat up some breakfast leftovers. Yesterday morning I made a whole Dutch baby that went right from the skillet into some Tupperware. In hindsight, those things are so easy to make, there's no reason to ever make one ahead of time.

After church, Marissa and I had some projects we wanted to get done. We're going head home for some leftovers, pick up a few things at Hy-Vee and Hobby Lobby, then we're hoping to clean the outside windows - one of those chores that we still haven't done, despite living in this house for four or five years. And judging by some of the windows look, it's a chore that probably hasn't been done since the roaring twenties.

After chores, I'm going to make Chef John's RAM Wings for the Bears game. We haven't had a game in two weeks, which has been a real test of my newfound football faith, but I'm still beating the drum.

Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday. Clean your windows, eat chicken wings, and rest up before another work week. See you tomorrow, sports fans.