Well I’m surviving the winter. I feel better about the season now that there’s snow on the ground. Last week we got a big snowfall, enough to pretty much close the entire New York City for a day. The kids had the day off from school and I helped them build a snow man amid interminable shoveling. But that was nothing compared to my friend John in D.C., who’s endured a few big snow falls, a power outage and a week of from school (He’s a teacher).
I was scheduled to another mixing session with Erik, but that got postponed. We ended up doing it a couple days later and now I have two songs done and sounding totally awesome. One of them, an R&B number with a horn section, almost sounds too clean. Once I get one more in the can I’ll post some audio files for you to hear.
The kids had off from school yesterday and we took them skiing. Another round of fresh snowfall made for a slow drive, but the best conditions I’ve skied on on the East coast in years, maybe ever. As an added bonus, we met our friend Seth on the mountain and it was his birthday. It was snowing so hard we had to stop and buy the girls goggles. It was Michelle’s first real day off the bunny hill and up to the top of the mountain. She was a little nervous abut it, but she did just great, and soon felt confident enough to try some blue trails. At one point there a was a steep spot and I skied a bit ahead, stopped and turned back to see if she could handle it. She just blew right past me going “Wheeeeeee!!!”. Now we can all ski together as a family, which is great, cuz it means we can plan a ski vacation out west in a few years.
Things have been contentious at work recently. My project is behind schedule, mainly due to the Bad Manager, not giving us requirements to work against in a timely fashion. This in turn stems from the fact that he does not have a technical background and is out of his depth trying to manage this project. Last Friday we had a meeting to work our requirements for a particular feature set and yet again he wasn’t prepared, didn’t take notes or understand what he needed to meeting, questioning obvious points but unable to contribute to the actual issues that need to be worked out. So my boss kind of lost her temper and the two of them got into a rather heated argument. Today was yet another meeting, and my boss’s boss and the Bad Manager’s boss showed up, and everyone was on their best behavior and in the end we hammered out the design of the panel resolved. Yeesh.
We’ve been watching some Olympics and been enjoying it pretty well. I like the winter sports, but I must say I haven’t watched regular TV in a long time and I find the pacing and constant interruptions and 50-50 ratio of ads to sports makes it kind of a drag, and my enthusiasm starting to wane. Most people don’t seem to mind or notice this, but TV ads have been out of my system and it’s kind of a shock.