Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Short Takes

Much excitement today!  My wonderful daughter, Melody, had her first band rehearsal.  She was very excited to play with the full band instead of just her fellow clarinet players.  They have their first concert in May.  I'm looking forward to it.  Melody is a fourth generation musician in our family.  My maternal grandfather was a professional trumpet player, and my fraternal grandmother played piano and organ.  While my parents didn't play any instruments, one uncle played trumpet, another played piano and organ, and several aunts played piano.  My mother-in-law also played piano and organ.  I played clarinet and saxophone.  Ours is a musical family and heritage.

I saw a show on TV about a restaurant in Minnesota that serves "Finnish pancakes".  I've never had them before, but they sure looked good!  They apparently are much thinner than regular pancakes, almost like crepes.  Now I have to find a place around here that serves them.

My OA, Miss K, invited her colleague, Mary, to the office today.  She was here on Pi Day, 3/14, a few weeks ago.  One reason she was there was to meet me, who Miss K told her is an eligible bachelor.  Mary is a bit young, though...probably about 30.  I think she's too young for someone like me.  I'm 44.  I also did my homework and discovered Mary was still "in a relationship" on Facebook.  Miss K clarified that even though they have been together for about 7 years, she wanted to find someone new.  So even though she was looking for someone, she was still seeing the other guy.  That's a problem.  Anyway, she was anxious to finally meet me.  So I introduced myself and we made small talk for a few minutes.  Mary is very cute, very nice, but I don't think she needs a guy like me in her life.  Miss K told me, after Mary left, that she was still very interested in me.  I just don't see it.

The Maryland Terrapins women's basketball team won their first round game in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday, and they are playing Texas tonight in the 2nd round.  I had really hoped that we could go to the game, which is being played at Comcast Center at the University of Maryland.  It's likely the last chance we might be able to see them play in person this year.  But after a long day of work, and a big crowd expected to be there (the students get in free!), we elected to stay home.  The Lady Terps have been great this year, and will be a challenger for the championship.

One of my employees is retiring this week after over 30 years in the Federal Government.  It's a great accomplishment, and it has made me reflect on my own 23 year career.  The office had nice party for her this afternoon, and lots of nice things were said.  I always find it funny that no one ever says anything bad about the person retiring, regardless of what kind of worker they are.  It's kind of like when someone dies.  It's very similar, in fact.  There are only so many major life events that most people experience.  High school graduation, college graduation, starting a career, getting married, having a child(ren), first pizza, retirement, and death, or something like that.

We bought a new printer for our home a few weeks ago.  I wrestled with what kind to get, and finally settled on a Canon Pixma MG5500.  It seems to be fairly highly rated.  Anyway, it's a network printer, so it's nice to be able to connect multiple laptops and computers, plus our iPhones, to it.  The inks seems to be a dollars cheaper than competing brands, so that works for me, too.  We'll see how it goes.  The average life of our printers is about 2 years or so.  They just don't make them very well.  I may invest in a more expensive model in the future, assuming it will last longer.  I guess you get what you pay for.  And I tend to lean on the cheap side.

My daughter and I have had to reassess our bedtime routines, with the expectation that we get more sleep by going to bed earlier.  My daughter is a wonderful little girl, but the one thing that we struggle with more than anything else is getting to bed.  Since I get up at 5:30 a.m., I need my sleep, and it doesn't make sense to stay up later than we need to.  So it's off to bed in about 20 minutes.

Good night, everybody!

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