I figure McDonalds has made a bit of a blunder. I ordered the ‘meal of the day’ or whatever their cheap meal is today and it came out to $5.02. I had a five-bill on me but no change. Begging on their good natured understanding I barted with them for a 5 dollar quarter pounder meal which they accepted. Now if this happens more than occasionally which I’m sure it will considering the 5dollar denomination and the ‘changeless’ state of many people, I bet they’re going to lose quite a lot of two centses.

I had many lovely plans for this past weekend. But little came to pass. Father-in-laws coming to town and that meant I spent the weekend moving the whole house 3 inches to the left piece by piece. At least thats what it felt like. I was told in no uncertain terms that he had to have a bed, and it couldn’t be the couch. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice our bed for three weeks so that meant the only other possiblility was to somehow shoehorn a bed into my office, which meant moving my rig into the dining room, which meant moving the old toys from the dining room to storage and my son’s bedroom, which meant cleaning out, and re-organizing storage and the baby room…and on and on it went.

Currently the house looks like we’re in the middle of a move, but at least Father-in-law has a bed in my office.

…very happy about that…

I’ve spent a good portion of my long weekend consolidating two computers; a slow one I worked on that wasn’t mine and my own system. I pillaged the hard drive containing all my work files and some ram from the work system, and in doing so realised just how slow that computer actually had been.

The time consuming part of this consolidation is organizing the files, formatting and adjusting partitions, deleting, scanning, etc, etc. In doing so I realised that my ‘outlook.pst’ where all my email is stored has grown to 1.3 GIGs! Ouch! I resolved to make a dent into sorting, archiving and purging old stuff. Well I didn’t get far, but it’s great reading old correspondance with friends and family. Particularly touching are emails from dad who died a few years ago, but also mom and sis too. I realise I need to appreciate the import of correspondance with family and friends, and not respond too cavalierly.

Also fun are finding ‘gems’ like this emailed thought to a buddy in 2001:

i think many men, as myself have it all ass-backwards. We come to our wives as children, with our wants and needyness-something for which they are not altogether prepared, and we come to our Lord as men, with our theology, pride, obstinance and self- riteouness.
I think in a certain regard we need to switch this around, coming to the Lord as children with our wants and needyness, comfort, and trust, and then coming to our wives as men, with our leadership, strength derived from the Word, and obstinant judicial decision making…that is, being obstinant that we are always ‘just’ to the best of our abilities.

I have made the decision that after some current obligations are taken care of I’m going to cease any further freelance work for the most part until the clouds of the current pace of my life part and I see a little light streaming through.

Going home and working after work is not fair to me or my family. There I was last night standing guard in the dark at my sons door so he wouldn’t escape for almost an hour as he flipped and fiddled brooding that he wouldn’t go to sleep, brooding that I wasn’t getting work done, brooding that he and Amy had already distracted me so many times that evening, brooding that because I had to work Amy was still in the kitchen till the wee hours of night even though she’s not feeling good and that I couldn’t help, brooding that i was brooding… it was a full-on brood fest culminating in the crystalization of this decision that I’d already figured was a ‘good idea’ last week.

I’ll really miss the money as is much needed, but even with the extra money brought in by freelance I often end up looking back and thinking, “was it worth it” considering the cost to my family and self. Removing that burdon will go a long way to a happier home I’m certain.