I didn’t go to the funeral home to be part of the procession for my aunt. I went straight to the church. I wasn’t the first person here. One of my cousins was already here but she ran out for some reason. We have a lot of people in our family who don’t handle stairs at all and this place is not handicapped accessible.
I’m sitting in the back of the church, feeling very much like a hypocrite.
In celebration of the fact that every side street around Andover Center was closed today for a 5k run, we return to Andover Center. Fitting.
Well that’s good, at least.
The Mighty Spicket was almost dry on this day and it’s almost dry again today.
No, we are not shopping for a new oven. Ours is perfectly fine. We were just browsing.
Picture it: 2010, sitting at my desk in Framingham. I went through a stretch at work that was probably the most frustrating and difficult and stressful couple of months of my whole 18 years at this company. There were two customers. One was really tough on us and found a lot of issues that were tough to solve and fix. They were good people, and when they found out the two of us who were supporting them were hockey fans they actually gave us each a little souvenir miniature jersey for their local hockey team. The other customer was the nicest folks you’d ever want to meet, but their entire system blew up on them when they switched everything on in their live environment and keeping them afloat was just awful. I joke that I still have nightmares about it… but am I joking?
This morning I spent some time working in the first customer’s system. Nothing special. I just delivered a couple of snippets of custom code. It was all straightforward and simple, but I did have a minute where I thought back to how tough they were 12 years ago and felt glad things aren’t that way anymore.
This afternoon the nice folks reported an issue that was similar to something that happened when everything went bad for them and now I know what trauma flashbacks feel like. Oh my goodness. I started sweating and my heart rate shot up. It turned out to be a simple issue with a very simple fix, but damn if I wasn’t stressing out like mad for a few minutes there.
Woah, man. 2010 all over again. How weird was that?
Today was tough all around, but after leaving work almost an hour late I got to spend a little time eating dinner with the love of my life. That was a much needed good thing. Now I’m out getting a grossly overdue haircut. I walk into the salon and the first thing I hear is Peter Gabriel on the radio. Sure it would have been better if it was Genesis, but I know a good sign when I see one.
Now I just need to get back to Jen and then the evening’s redemption will be complete.
