Category: Uncategorized

Welcome to February

January is over.  It’s February.  That means two things.

First, February is crazy music month for me.  I haven’t started yet, so you are safe from the I-wrote-a-drum-part-on-my-iPad idiocy for now.  Expect those posts to begin either later tonight or tomorrow morning.  I can see by your faces how thrilled you are to be subjected to more of that crap.

Second, the bonus is in so it’s time to start planning vacations!  Plural!  Again!  We’re kinda crazy like that.  Nothing is set in stone, of course.  It’s way to early for anything like that.  The rough draft of a plan is to take the kids some where during their school vacation.  They are going on a trip with their dad during their first week off, so we want to take them on a trip during the second week off.

More recently there have been discussions between my wife and the kids’ father about swapping weeks for grown up get aways.  We will watch the kids for a week while they go away, and they’ll watch the kids for a week while we go away.  I have not been privy to these discussions, but I do know that on Wednesday night my beautiful bride became all consumed with coming up with ideas for what the two of us should do on a week long vacation in the early Autumn.  Far be it from me to disagree, right?  I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid!

I need to confirm the dates for the Spring trip with the kids.  Once I have that I will book the vacation time at work.  I have started collecting the various documentation I need in order to get a passport.  Hopefully I will be able to submit the passport request paperwork soon.

It’s February.  It’s cold outside.  We’re expecting more snow this weekend.  What better time to start planning a trip or two?

New England Weather

I’m sure you are all familiar with the old saying, (often attributed to Mark Twain, but is that accurate?) “don’t like the weather in New England? Wait a minute, it’ll change.”

Today has been the perfect example of that. Prior to leaving the house to bring the kids to their dad’s before school, I checked the Weather Channel app on my phone. It said the temperature was an incredible 62 degrees Fahrenheit. To say that temps in the 60’s in January is unseasonably warm is a huge understatement.

At 1:00pm I broke for lunch. I needed to go to the post office so I checked the weather app again. This time it gave a temp of 47 degrees. In about six hours the temperature dropped a whopping 15 degrees.

At 5:30 I got off work and immediately left to get the kids. I checked the temp again when we got where we were going and it was down to 36.

The temperature has dropped 26 degrees today.

I took a little longer than a minute, but it most certainly did change.

Bonus Day

Today is one of the happiest days of the year for the 2-3 thousand folks who work for the same company as I.  Today is Bonus Day.

We are always told that the bonus is not guaranteed, but I don’t think there has ever been a year when they did not give out the bonus.  Our salaries are pretty low compared to other software companies, but the bonus that we get on the last business day of January is sizable enough to let us almost approach income respectability.  Almost.

I’m working from home today so I won’t be getting my year end bonus packet (the check stub is given out in the same packet our tax information comes in) until tomorrow. I checked my bank account though and the amount deposited this morning was nice.  Very nice.  I’m happy.

Now it’s time to start planning those vacations!  WOOHOO