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Coming off the high of first Jazzfest weekend, I had a pretty good week at work. Nothing hot on the burners, just some planning for future projects. Really easy stuff. Wrong. On Friday I was notified the future project was not only drastically modified to fit the client's new timetable, but the entire blueprint for the building move had changed due to sticker shock. Suddenly the well-laid plans disintegrated into a mounds of shredded greenbar. I now face precisely the challenge I faced a month ago; build a server from nothing into a fully functioning file/print server with backup, with all departmental data separated and migrated. That's on top of actually moving the damned thing from one building to another. It sucks.
But I was determined to separate the shit from the shinola, as it was still Jazzfest week. I gave Tracey that Friday for the fest, and picked up the kiddies on my own that day, ready to take on a solo run with just them and I. Translated, that means entirely too much junkfood and a liberal dose of movies to distract them once the sun set. There was only one problem with that plan. Vivian. A couple of days before, we noticed Viv had all these bites. The bugs have been restless as of late, so we thought that's what the deal was. Well, when I picked her up from school that Friday afternoon, a few of those bites had turned into things that looked suspiciously like...chicken pox. Typical childhood illness, I know, but my kids were innoculated with the super-anti-chicken-pox vaccine. Turns out there's a 10 to 30% chance that one can still get chicken pox, even after the vaccine. I'm thinking worst case, so we cordoned her off from all the other neighbors and got her a gazillion movies and what-not to keep her occupied for the weekend. It was a definite kink in the plans for Saturday (I'm still jonesing for the visit to Hong Kong Market), but Tracey and I managed to make the most of it, switching off between all the kids. Come Monday, the doctor revealed that it wasn't pox after all, and just a staph infection, most likely a combination of bug bites and the nasty leftover muck that is New Orleans these days. I'm very happy to say modern antibiotics have cleared up the problem. That's a huge warning, however, to anyone now living in the city to wash yer damned dirty paws.
The other parts of last weekend were pretty nice, though. Had the two crawfish boils, including my brother's, where a lovely, icy-cold keg of Abita Amber was present (not for long, mind you). On Sunday, I borrowed that brass pass and saw Paul Simon's show. He played a lot of his old stuff, but the encore was the real treat. He performed That Was Your Mother (a song about my hometown of Lafayette) with Buckwheat Zydeco on accordian. That was followed by Bridge Over Troubled Waters, with Allan Toussaint on piano and Irma Thomas on vocals, then Graceland, and finally some Toussaint song called There's A Party Going On Down Here, some old New Orleans tune I've never heard before but really rocked with that ensemble on stage.
Since Fats Domino wasn't up for his set (he did come on stage and surprised the crowd with a big thank-you), I took advantage of a swiped pass to the Shell Oil hospitality tent. Free beer, free food, free frozen treats. Nice. We lingered in there, got tanked and stumbled home. I did manage to get the two meat pies requested by Tracey and Robert, so all was good in the world.
Coming down from Jazzfest is such a chore, though. You ingest all the good stuff you can handle, namely for me an obscene amount of Jazzfest food, crawfish and booze over two weekends, and then go cold turkey. My sober misery was lightened, however, by this:
My Queen of Cheese![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
defenestr8r mailed this awesome patch to me. Oh, my Liz, I do love you dear. What a wonderful high in my trip back down to reality.
Of course the work week has been garbage. The project I mentioned above is snowballing. I also had to suffer with more of the timekeeping system I thought was complete. I hate the stress. I did meet one guy at the Shell tent from their IT department. I have his email address and plan on contacting him next week just for grins. Someone somewhere can use my talents I'm sure. And I'd trade just about anything to get the hell out of this...hell. Yeah, redundant. Part of the job.
So it's Friday again. The big plans for this weekend are for Mum's Day. We're leaving for the Farm this afternoon. On Sunday, we're having an extended celebration out there, smoked this and grilled that, but the big event is a rare one indeed. An uncle took down a wild pig on his ranch last weekend and is bringing back down to Cajun country for a family cochon de lait. I don't know if this was the field-dressed weight, but they said the beast weighed 400 pounds! That's a lot of porker, Pawpaw. I figure the full Penguin clan will have pork products stocked for the next year. Well, we're Cajun, so maybe three months.
The weekend's here with unseasonably cool weather and I'm four hours away from being at the Farm. I'm smiling already.
But I was determined to separate the shit from the shinola, as it was still Jazzfest week. I gave Tracey that Friday for the fest, and picked up the kiddies on my own that day, ready to take on a solo run with just them and I. Translated, that means entirely too much junkfood and a liberal dose of movies to distract them once the sun set. There was only one problem with that plan. Vivian. A couple of days before, we noticed Viv had all these bites. The bugs have been restless as of late, so we thought that's what the deal was. Well, when I picked her up from school that Friday afternoon, a few of those bites had turned into things that looked suspiciously like...chicken pox. Typical childhood illness, I know, but my kids were innoculated with the super-anti-chicken-pox vaccine. Turns out there's a 10 to 30% chance that one can still get chicken pox, even after the vaccine. I'm thinking worst case, so we cordoned her off from all the other neighbors and got her a gazillion movies and what-not to keep her occupied for the weekend. It was a definite kink in the plans for Saturday (I'm still jonesing for the visit to Hong Kong Market), but Tracey and I managed to make the most of it, switching off between all the kids. Come Monday, the doctor revealed that it wasn't pox after all, and just a staph infection, most likely a combination of bug bites and the nasty leftover muck that is New Orleans these days. I'm very happy to say modern antibiotics have cleared up the problem. That's a huge warning, however, to anyone now living in the city to wash yer damned dirty paws.
The other parts of last weekend were pretty nice, though. Had the two crawfish boils, including my brother's, where a lovely, icy-cold keg of Abita Amber was present (not for long, mind you). On Sunday, I borrowed that brass pass and saw Paul Simon's show. He played a lot of his old stuff, but the encore was the real treat. He performed That Was Your Mother (a song about my hometown of Lafayette) with Buckwheat Zydeco on accordian. That was followed by Bridge Over Troubled Waters, with Allan Toussaint on piano and Irma Thomas on vocals, then Graceland, and finally some Toussaint song called There's A Party Going On Down Here, some old New Orleans tune I've never heard before but really rocked with that ensemble on stage.
Since Fats Domino wasn't up for his set (he did come on stage and surprised the crowd with a big thank-you), I took advantage of a swiped pass to the Shell Oil hospitality tent. Free beer, free food, free frozen treats. Nice. We lingered in there, got tanked and stumbled home. I did manage to get the two meat pies requested by Tracey and Robert, so all was good in the world.
Coming down from Jazzfest is such a chore, though. You ingest all the good stuff you can handle, namely for me an obscene amount of Jazzfest food, crawfish and booze over two weekends, and then go cold turkey. My sober misery was lightened, however, by this:
My Queen of Cheese
defenestr8r mailed this awesome patch to me. Oh, my Liz, I do love you dear. What a wonderful high in my trip back down to reality.Of course the work week has been garbage. The project I mentioned above is snowballing. I also had to suffer with more of the timekeeping system I thought was complete. I hate the stress. I did meet one guy at the Shell tent from their IT department. I have his email address and plan on contacting him next week just for grins. Someone somewhere can use my talents I'm sure. And I'd trade just about anything to get the hell out of this...hell. Yeah, redundant. Part of the job.
So it's Friday again. The big plans for this weekend are for Mum's Day. We're leaving for the Farm this afternoon. On Sunday, we're having an extended celebration out there, smoked this and grilled that, but the big event is a rare one indeed. An uncle took down a wild pig on his ranch last weekend and is bringing back down to Cajun country for a family cochon de lait. I don't know if this was the field-dressed weight, but they said the beast weighed 400 pounds! That's a lot of porker, Pawpaw. I figure the full Penguin clan will have pork products stocked for the next year. Well, we're Cajun, so maybe three months.
The weekend's here with unseasonably cool weather and I'm four hours away from being at the Farm. I'm smiling already.
