We finally received a snow worthy of winter around Valentine’s Day. It still is fairly pathetic compared to what a real winter should have (100+ inches is respectable). I set out to shovel the driveway and my daughters pleaded with me to shovel the entire contents of the driveway onto the already significant pile that had been created by the snowplow during previous snowfalls. They wanted to make a sledding hill. I began to protest and tried to explain to them that it would require a significant effort and would result in a fairly pathetic “hill” for sledding. They were relentless in their pleadings and I finally relented. It took me a couple of hours but I was finally able to transport all of the snow from the driveway onto the pile at the end of the driveway. I must have looked awfully silly to my neighbors as I took one shovel load after another and walked it down the driveway and hurled it up onto the heap when I could have more conveniently tossed it onto the nearest snow bank.

The girls were ecstatic about my creation and promptly christened the monument to my labor - “Bullet Hill”. They spent the better part of the day sledding down it. I watched them for awhile and initially found it ludicrous that they were wasting their time sledding down a “hill” that provided a two second ride at best. Surely, I thought, they must have named it Bullet Hill because it was not much bigger than a bullet. Nevertheless, they spent hours sledding down it and when I got home from work they related the stories to me and my wife over hot chocolate.

This event reminded me of a trip I took about 7 years ago to the farm in New Hampshire where I spent the better part of my childhood. I wanted to show my wife where I grew up. I remember being struck at how much smaller everything seemed. The giant rock that I used to climb on seemed to have been worn down by the passing of time; the tree house I built in the large sugar maple out back seemed nowhere as lofty as I remembered. It occurred to me that my daughters joy in sledding down Bullet Hill was simply a reflection of the gift that all children are blessed with; the ability to infuse simple things with an imagination and magic that most of us adults have lost. It is a pity that as we mature and become responsible we tend to lose that part of us that finds endless amusement sledding down a “hill” that our fathers made by shoveling out one small driveway. It makes me want to go home and build a tree house.

Damn it is cold up here! The thermometer got down to minus 10 degrees last night and with the wind it felt MUCH colder. It barely broke out of the single digits for a high temperature yesterday. There was a story on the radio this morning about a worm digger who literally froze into his boots out on a mudflat. It was a considerable amount of time before a fellow digger found him and freed him. He is currently in the hospital suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.

It just struck me that you probably ignored that story after the phrase “worm digger”; then your mind wandered off and you began to ask yourself what a “worm digger” was. A worm digger is one of the many people who make a living working Maine’s coastline. They are at the bottom of the social hierarchy when it comes to fishermen. They work, and look, much like a clam digger as they hoe the mudflats of Maine but instead of searching for clams they are digging for marine worms which are prized by anglers as bait. As an avid striped bass fisherman, I can tell you that these things slay the fish. It is like putting candy in the water…



Digging bait is hard, back-breaking work, but it does allow an individual the ability to make a couple hundred dollars on a good day without the confines of a traditional “job” with bosses, time clocks and taxes. Not an entirely bad prospect when you think about it……accept for the occasional frozen boots.

A few months ago my company installed water coolers for our use. There is one directly outside my office. During each use it makes the requisite “glug, glug” as water is dispensed and large air bubbles make their way towards the water’s surface inside the bottle. Every time I hear that sound I think of my grandfather. He passed away unexpectedly when I was twelve of a massive heart attack. I loved him dearly and have spent the past 26 years wishing he was alive to share in the events of my life. Not a grandfather to lavish you with gifts or smother you with insincere attention, he was instead the sort of man who would spend hours teaching me woodworking or playing catch with me in the yard, illuminated by the weak glow of the porch light, long after my mother had given up calling us in for dinner. He was a kind and wise soul and I miss him dearly.

There was much discussion in the day or so after his death as to whether I would be allowed to travel to NY to attend his funeral. My parents and relatives understandably did not want to traumatize me, but I protested angrily and begged my parents to let me attend. They relented and agreed that I could go. I don’t remember much about the service beyond the crushing pain of losing my grandfather, but I do have one vivid memory that will remain with me forever - the “glug, glug” of a water cooler.

I was allowed to attend the viewing in addition to the service, and probably like many people would, found it extremely traumatic to see my grandfather lying in a casket. Upon seeing him, tears rolled hotly down my cheeks and I felt nauseous. After passing by his casket I was delirious with sadness. Noticing this, a funeral parlor attendant guided me into a private waiting room and I sat heavily on a padded bench sobbing. My Aunt soon came in and sat next to me. Putting her arm around me, she drew me near and asked me if I wanted a drink of water. I said yes, and she stood up and went to the water cooler next to the bench. I had never seen a water cooler in my life, and was startled when the silence of the room was broken by the impoliteness of the water cooler’s “glug, glug”. My Aunt saw my response and smiled widely. I smiled back and then we both started laughing.

“Your grandfather would have found that very funny, too”, she said.

I think that I knew then that everything was going to be all right and that I could always carry the spirit of my grandfather in my heart. While the assembled crowds passed by his casket, my Aunt and I stayed in the private side room and played with the water cooler. I still like playing with water coolers and still smile every time they belch their response, and I am quite sure that my grandfather finds it amusing as well.

Happy New Year to my LJ friends!

After a couple of friendly nudges from a few of you, I have found my way back to LJ. I have not even signed on to this site in many months and therefore apologize to all of you as I am quite sure that I missed a lot of your interesting posts. It was not intentional that my LJ slipped into a hiatus; it just sort of happened. After we returned from our summer vacation in August my life got insanely hectic and I just “forgot” about LJ. I won’t bore you right now with all the details of what I have been up to the past many months but suffice it to say that things at work got very busy with international travel and my personal life was even more of a whirlwind. I coached my daughter’s soccer team; became quite active in our church; and most notably, ran (unsuccessfully) for the Maine State Legislature. Add all of that to a typically busy holiday season and I have had little time to sit and breathe, let alone write entries in LJ.

My life is not going to get any simpler in the coming months but I have decided to be more diligent about writing in LJ - if nothing except for selfish reasons. While eating Christmas dinner, family members began trading entertaining stories of our collective lives together. My wife was talking about the first winter in Maine with our girls. Their first “Maine” snow was falling outside and Julia was pressed against her bedroom window and exclaimed loudly that it was snowing outside. Little Anna ran to her bedroom and squealed with delight, “It is snowing outside my window, too”. As my wife related the story, I realized that I had forgotten this story, and it angered me. Admittedly, it is a sappy story but as the parent I do not wish to forget things like that. I have always prided myself on having an impeccable memory, but this event made me start to wonder how “permanent” all of the stories floating around in my head really are. I never intended for LJ to become a running transcript of my life and it certainly will not become that now, but it does serve admirably as a place to get some of the “stuff” out of my head and down on “paper”. So that is why I am back to writing in this journal.

Plus, I like all of you…………….

I am sure that I am not unique in having songs that, when played, remind me of a very specific moment in my life. I have many such songs that remind me of memories so vividly that I can literally smell the surroundings of the memory. I have a whole series of songs from my childhood that used to play on the radio in our barn that make me smell cows and the shavings from their stalls when I hear them played today. My wife calls them my "barn songs" and says that I get this quiet, misty look when they play on the radio in the car.

The strangest connection between a song and a moment in my life has to be the song "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band. I watched a girl drown while that song played. It was 1976 and that song was inmmensely popular. I was 8 years old and was visting a friend who lived in Indiana. He lived in an apartment complex that had a large community pool. I remember the day as being really sunny and warm and the pool full of kids. I can still vividly remember the instant when I noticed the little girl's body at the bottom of the pool in the deep end. I remember not believing my eyes at first and walking down closer to the deep end as kids continued to dive into the water; their splashes obscuring my view. Once I was next to the diving board I was positive though. I yelled at the kids to stop jumping in the water. Another kid noticed the girl as well and we shouted to the lifeguard who was a teenage boy. He was turned around in his chair and was talking to two teenage girls behind him and did not hear us. I ran over to his charir and began screaming to him that there was a girl at the bottom of the pool. In reality it was only probably only a matter of seconds but at the time it seemed like an eternity before he heard my screams. I remember his face as he smiled and flirted with the girls behind him, and more than anything I remember the little black radio that hung on the arm of his chair and the words "skyrockets in flight...afternoon delight" dancing across the pool as I screamed at him. The experience was surreal. He finally noticed and his smile changed to horror as he lept off the chair. The rest of the memory is foggy. I remember them pulling her lifeless body out of the pool and that the sight of her made me cry. I ran back to my friend's apartment and sobbed while the sounds of sirens filled the complex outside. I do not know that little girl's fate but the song still gives me the chills everytime I hear it.

Alright, it has been more than a month since I posted and your patience will not be rewarded with a good post.......sorry.

Anyway, I went to the Red Sox game with the family last night. It was a rather slow game but still quite fun, and the girls seemed to really enjoy the experience which thrilled me because I have such fond childhood memories of that ballpark and team.

Speaking of that....I got to meet a childhood hero last night - Jerry Remy.



OK, so if you are not a Sox fan you could probably care less, but it was exciting for me. I saw hime walking amongst the crowd on Yawkey Way. A couple of us in a group recognized him and called out to him. He stopped and said hello and then began signing some autographs for some children. OK, it was childish but I suddenly wanted his autograph as well. I panicked trying to think of what I had that he could sign. The only thing that I had were the cheap paper tickets that I had printed out at home (The Red Sox have this web interface that allows you to print out your ticket at home). The ticket was folded up in my pocket and was badly creased, but I thrust it out anyway and he signed it with a Sharpie pen. I rushed back out of the crowd and found my wife and kids who had gone to get ice cream. I proudly held out my wrinkly ticket with Remy's autograph and showed my wife. I told her that my only regret was that I did not have anything more significant for him to sign. My wife looked at me and shook her head. "Why didn't you have him sign your ballcap?". I grimaced in pain as I realized that I could have had Remy's signature on my favorite Sox hat which is my most prized piece of Sox paraphenalia. It ruined my whole night.........

I know I should not complain about the rainy weather as there are plenty of you who have suffered through much worse wet weather recently, and also those of you that desperately need the rain. Nevertheless, I am growing weary of my lawn resembling a rice paddy. It is almost made worse by the fact that we are occasionally teased with a sunny and warm day once in a great while. It is not enough to slake one’s thirst for summer weather but is just tantalizingly enough to offer a temporary reprieve from the soggy mood we have been in. Nature offered us a couple of those days in the past month, and when they arrived, the family and I scrambled to take advantage of them.

Is there anything more fun at the beach than jumping in the waves?

I am sitting here at my desk waiting for the day to end. Despite the fact that I have a tremendous amount of work to do, I feel terribly unmotivated to accomplish any of it. It does not help that the sounds of dozens of small children playing in the yard of the daycare center directly behind our building are filling my office. Some days it gets rather loud back there and I have to close my window so that I can concentrate. Today I am finding myself staring at them playing their silly games. I wish I could go out and play too.

I do not have any spectacular plans for the long weekend but I am really looking forward to it nevertheless. Much to my wife’s dismay, my saltwater fishing season starts tomorrow. I am helping a friend put in his boat for the season and then we are going to head out to the ledges off of Phippsburg and fish for cod. My oldest daughter is marching with her Girl Scouts troop on Memorial Day in the local parade. I love parades, especially small town ones. Monday is also supposed to be insanely warm for this time of year in Maine – nearly 80 degrees. With weather like that, I might have to take the kids to the beach. Other than that, I plan on working in the yard and using my grill for every meal possible.

I hope all of you have an enjoyable weekend.

Today is my 38th birthday......

I am not enjoying it one bit. I have not enjoyed a birthday since 21 and every one since then has been downhill. I am trying to cheer myself up by thinking that I am two 19 year olds - I certainly feel like that.

Last week I was entertaining an out-of-town customer at a local establishment that is frequented by kids from the nearby college. A very attractive, but unfortunately drunk, young coed approached me. She placed her hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear that she thought I was "cute" and then proceeded to say that she liked "older men". Any euphoria from the initial comment quickly evaporated. How the hell did I get this old, this fast?

I want to thank sarahshevett for letting me know about a show that is on PBS about cows, and more specifically showing cows at the Fryeburg Fair. As you might deduce from my user icons I adore cows, especially Guernseys. I grew up in New Hampshire on a small farm where my family “played” farmer for a number of years, raising Guernsey dairy cows as well as horses, sheep, etc. It was a pretty idyllic way to spend a childhood. I was heavily involved with 4-H and as such spent the whole summer and fall on the dairy show circuit. One of the fairs that I regularly attended and showed my cows at was the Fryeburg Fair. It really is one the great fairs in New England and watching the documentary the other night on television made me very wistful and nostalgic.

With all due respect to sarahshevett, my amazing goat farmer friend, my favorite line of the show was made at the expense of goat farmers. They were talking to a dairy farmer and asked him about Jersey cows. With a deadpan reaction and the tremendous dry wit that Mainers have, he responded.

“Jersey breeders are too poor to afford real cows and too proud to own goats”

I nearly fell off the couch laughing. Stupid farm humor, I know. Sorry.

A recent issue of Down East magazine listed their 50 (or was it 100?) favorite things about Maine. Down East magazine serves the affluent coastal region of Maine and is also popular with people “from away” who use it to get their monthly dose of Maine news, stories and pictures. As such, many of their choices were rather predictable. I mean did anyone not see “lobster” coming from a mile away?? Regardless, the list did have some interesting items and got me to thinking what I would list as my favorite things about Maine. I ended up coming up with a lot of things that were not on the list. I would like to think that they did not have my items on their list because I have such discerning taste but it also might be that I am just bizarre. Nevertheless, one item that I would have on my list is spider crabs. These spiny beasts may be the best tasting thing to come out of Maine’s waters – and yes, they are better than lobster. Want to see one? Sure you do!


( My 5 year old daughter will oblige… )

One of the Senior Vice Presidents of my new company was in town the past 2 days for meetinngs at the local Naval Air Station and to welcome me to the company. I went out to dinner with him on Monday night and for lunch on Tuesday. We talked about the direction of the company and where I fit in. He also told me of some new partners who would be joining the company, one of which I know very well. I spoke with that individual on the SVP's cellphone over drinks after Monday's dinner. He has big plans for this company. I have worked with him before and he has a proven track record of astonishing growth in the defense industry. He basically told me that I have the chance to get in "on the ground floor" of the development of this company if I so desired. He also offered me a lot of money. This is where the dilemma arises. My "role" in the new company would involve working part time in DC again. I have grown very accustomed to the relaxed pace of Maine and my current position over the past 4 years. I specifically left DC because the stress was burning me out and my family was suffering. However, I am 37 years old and I am should not be "coasting" in my career. I have college educations, weddings, retirement, etc. to pay for. The responsible side of my brain knows that I have the opportunity to make a very wise and profitable career move with this development. The other side of my brain; the one that likes to climb trees in the summer and make snow angels with my kids in the winter, really is reticent to jump back into the rat race. I have a lot of soul searching to do in the next few weeks.

I apologize for talking about work every damn post - my journal is boring enough without adding that to it. I will try to improve...

This is nothing more than a lame post to let you know that I am still here. This week has been a non-stop whirlwind of getting set up in my new office. As one should expect, anything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong this week. It was an endless series of glitches that are only now starting to dissipate. Hopefully by next week I will finally be back on top of everything.

I have been very busy at work the past couple of weeks finishing up pressing assignments as well as preparing to move to the new company. Though I am very excited for this fresh start I am getting a little panicky about all that I need to accomplish prior to the move as it seems that I am quickly running out of time. As part of the preparations for the move I have been going through file drawers and discarding old paper work that is not of any value or importance to me anymore. Most of the files consist of rough drafts of Navy tech manuals that I worked on, old marked-up presentations, 10 year old meeting minutes for Navy programs that don’t exist anymore, etc. It is basically stuff that can be taken by the armload to the recycling bin. Other file drawers have been very sentimental though. There are files of personnel issues which remind me of the 40 or so employees (some I loved, some I hated) that I supervised when I was at the peak of my career back in DC. I also found old date books and calendars from the days when I used to travel extensively (3 weeks out of 4) for the Navy. It brought back a lot of fun memories. We used to work very hard on those trips, but also played very hard after the work was done. The team I traveled with was a diverse, strange, and immensely likable group of men and women. There were stretches in my life when I saw them more than I did my wife and new baby. As I sat there looking at the date book with the destinations and confirmation numbers I began to daydream….

I remember sitting at a bar in Sasebo, Japan well after midnight. It wasn’t any bar; it was a country-western bar. The bartenders were two old Japanese women who were dressed from head to toe in full cowgirl outfits. Old country music played on the jukebox and the walls were decorated with wagon wheels and spurs and the like. It may have been one of the most surreal experiences in my life. A group of middle-aged Japanese business men who had just won a contract (from what we were able to surmise) were celebrating in the corner. They bought our drinks all night long after asking us in broken English if we were in the Navy. My co-worker and I told them that we were not in the Navy but worked for the Navy. They didn’t seem to understand or care, but they hugged us and called us “shipmates” – they were all Japanese Navy veterans and felt a kinship with us. I felt guilty, but drank there beer and shots anyway. Two young and attractive Japanese girls came in that night and told the bartender to tell me that they thought I looked like a “real American Cowboy” and asked if I would sing karaoke with the younger one. I was very intoxicated and agreed. The song was apparently a well-known Japanese love song. I obviously could not read Japanese so I just hummed along. After the song, the girl kissed me on the cheek and asked (the bartender translated) if she could have my autograph. I signed her napkin.

There was also the time at the airport in Toulon, France when I was detained on the tarmac while I had the business end of a machine gun pointed at me by a member of the French military, but that is a long, and VERY funny story, which I will have to tell you another day.

Well, I officially gave my notice at my current company. My last day here will be 31 March 2006. As I mentioned in a previous post, it will be a little bittersweet leaving this company. When we were small and aggressive it was a great place to work. I helped make it a success and was well rewarded for my efforts - a nice combination if I do say so myself. A few years ago we were bought out by a VERY large defense contractor and it has not been the same since. Oh well...time to move on.

I have been meeting with the executives at the new company on a regular basis and they have been falling all over themselves to make me happy with the new arrangement - almost to the point that it is embarrassing. They have ordered me a brand new laptop, additional flatscreen monitors, etc. They have a large private office for me with tons of windows for daydreaming. They asked me about furniture and I said that the items that were currently in the office were fine. They would hear none of it and said that I have an appointment next week at a furniture store to look at executive furniture. I was about to tell them again that I did not need a fancy oversized desk, squishy chairs and the like, but then decided to keep quiet. If they want to spoil me, who am I to argue?

I typically call my grandmother every week, usually on Sundays, to say “hi” and check in with her. She is 93 years old and a widow who now lives in a retirement home. I know that she is very lonely and loves to get phone calls, so I figure it is the least that I can do. Additionally, she only gets to see my children (her only great-grandchildren) once a year so it makes her very happy to hear their voices. My conversations with her always remind me of the Christmas pictures that my mother took of me and my sister every year hanging our stockings by the fireplace when we were children. Every year the picture was identical – same kids, same stockings, and same fireplace. The only thing that changed was that my sister and I got older in each picture. It was an event that became a mechanical function that had to be carried out each Christmas Eve and duly recorded by my mother. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, it is just that you can be sure there would never be anything unique or lively that was ever going to happen at that moment. My conversations with my grandmother are an identical set of experiences.

I always start the phone call by asking her how she is doing, and she replies that she is “hanging in there”. She asks me how the weather is in Maine, and then immediately interrupts me to tell me how the weather is in Florida. She asks me how work is and then immediately interrupts me to tell me how she does not like the box lunches they provide for a light supper at the retirement home and how they are looking into changing that policy, etc. Occasionally, she sprinkles in one of her stories about the “elderly” people at the home that do strange things. (Apparently, there is an old gentleman who always “steals” at least half a dozen little cartons of milk from the dining room after every meal and takes them back to his room. She spends a lot of time thinking about what that man must do with all that milk. She certainly would never ask him though because then she would no longer be able to spend her time thinking to herself about the odd things he could be doing with the milk. I once jokingly suggested that he might be bathing in it and she replied, “That’s a good thought. I had never thought of that!”.)

Anyway, after that she then initiates our little “game”. She starts it off by letting out a big “sigh” and tells me that she should probably let me go because she is running up my phone bill.

“No, it really is OK Grandma”, I say to her.

“Well, I am sure the girls are too busy to talk to me, so just give them my love”, she replies falsely dramatic. The tone of her voice is very funny, because you can hear the subtle “message” coming through very clearly……..”I am done talking to you, Todd, so go get the girls on the phone”.

I, of course, tell her that the girls are not busy and would love to talk to her. I proceed to tell her that I love her, will talk to her soon and then hand the phone to Julia. This process has been repeated almost every Sunday for many years. I often think about whether I would want to live that long. My grandmother’s health is reasonably good and her mind is very sharp which is a tremendous blessing. At that age however, there really is not much left to do except sit in a nursing home and watch the final years of your life slowly play out. I am not sure that is how I would want my final years to be – milk baths or not.

Last weekend my 8 year old daughter and I attended a Daddy-Daughter Valentine Dance put on by our town. It is an annual event that is wildly popular, attracting more than a hundred “couples”. The girls, as you might imagine, get very dressed up for the event. Also, our town is home to a large military presence so many of the dads wear their dress uniforms – which lends a certain pageantry to the event. My daughter loves the event and looks forward to it every year. I approach it with mixed emotions. Each year she seems so much older and I feel like I am losing that “little” girl. It is interesting to watch how it happens at the dance. The first few years the girls dance exclusively with their fathers. By the last few years (the age limit being 12), the girls dance exclusively with their friends and the dads stand uncomfortably on the edge of the dance floor watching their girls grow up. I have just reached the “in-between” stage. Julia danced with me the majority of the time and then spied a group of her friends and asked if she could go dance with them for awhile. I agreed and walked over to the side with the other dads who all gave me halfhearted, knowing smiles. We did end the night dancing to songs like “Daddy’s Little Girl” and “Butterfly Kisses” which made a few tears roll down my cheeks. I am quite sure the guy next to me was teary as well.

It is against my better judgment to post this picture since the internet certainly would be a better place without my face on it, but here we are before the dance.

Just trying to keep my head above water lately....

I have recently been pursued by another company and am on the verge of accepting their offer. I have been at my current company almost a decade, but since its sale to a larger sudsidiary I have grown a little disenfranchised with it. The company had been very good to me, but now it is no longer the company that it once was. All the people who helped make this company a success are gone, except for me and a couple of others. We are now just another subsidiary of a top 5 defense firm. I miss the small, growing company that was agile, aggressive and truly made you feel part of a team. Our holding company is publicly traded and much too large to offer any sense of being part of something. There are a number of other issues that are driving me towards accepting this new position but I am not going to relate them here because they would bore you and I am confident that my e-mail is monitored so I would rather not elaborate here.

One of my doctors has left the medical practice she worked at. I was sad to see her go because she was very nice and extremely attractive. Ok, I know that is very shallow but it certainly does make going to the doctor a whole lot more fun. Anyway, I met with her replacement last week and is was NOT fun. He is a stern man about my age (late thirties) who had the bedside manner of Hitler. He was very upset with the status of my maladies (I have written about them before and don't feel like retelling all of them). One of the complaints I had about my previous doctor was that she often would tell me that my blood work was "not good" and that we needed to keep an eye on it and "talk about it at my next visit". Often she would not bring it up again or say that we needed to run the test again. Since I am an awful procrastinator who generally hates going to the doctor, I never would "remind her" of things we talked about in the previous visit. Well, Dr. Hitler pulled out all of my recent lab work and began spouting off about how bad this number was and how he is upping that medication's dosage, etc. He told me I was a stroke waiting to happen. I felt like he was overreacting until he handed me a copy of my most recent lab work that I had never seen and my previous doctor had said that we "should talk about". The lab had stamped in big green letters in the middle of it: CRITICAL.

I was pretty sure that it happened yesterday, but today I am quite sure of it - the man at the post office was hitting on me. I took a package to be mailed yesterday and I sensed that the male clerk behind the counter was flirting with me. He smiled and looked me up and down while he waited for the receipt to print and then his hand lingered on mine a little too long as he put the change in my palm. Today I went in to mail another package and his face lit up when I walked in and he said he was happy to see me again today. As I walked along the counter to leave I could feel him watching me. I looked back at him and he said that he looked forward to seeing me again tomorrow.

I have no idea why I am bothering to write this in my journal because the event certainly does not bother/scare/offend me. I guess I just found it interesting. As a heterosexual male, I am used to being the one doing all of the flirting. It was an odd feeling to be the recipient of a man's flirting....

I really should not be writing in this today. Work is very busy with an impending deadline and I should be working towards meeting that goal, but I can't look at that damned spreadsheet much longer without going crazy. Matters are made worse by the fact that I got in "trouble" this week over a project I worked on the past couple of months. The customer (US Navy) gave me a project that had very clear instructions, and I followed them precisely. Unfortunately, they forgot to mention that there were cross-refernce files that I was supposed to use as well. Obviously, since I did not have the files and was not aware that such things existed, I did the project as originally instructed. Needless to say, much of the work that I performed is full of errors. On Monday, I was called into a teleconference where I was informed that my efforts were corrupting the database. Despite the Navy's senior managers telling me that "they take full responsibility" because I was not provided the proper information, it still pains me to be the source of errors. I take pride in being very precise and accurate - these errors make me look foolish. After the teleconference they sent me the files that contained the information that I should have had months ago and it made me sick to my stomach. The files COMPLETELY change the way I would have approached the project. Now I have to spend the next couple of weeks correcting what I did.

My wife is stressed out with work as well. My oldest daughter has been crying for two straight days because she says that her two best friends were mean to her and now she has "no friends". And my youngest daughter has a stomach bug which is causing her to vomit quite often.

I need a drink.