An attempt at normalcy

Good Monday morning to you.

I woke this morning and decided to take back, if not just a little, control of my life. First things first; Today I am going to weed through the 700+ e-mails in my in-box, the 24 voicemails. Delete what is stale or already taken care of and prioritize what's left. I am going to take the first hour of each work day to organize and work through the more extraneous demands on my time then put them aside until the next day. Then work on the most important task at hand, whatever that may be on a given day. I am going to take at least 30 minutes at lunch to walk or read a novel or stand on my head; anything away from my desk. And unless there is a customer outage I am going to leave work no later than 6:00.

This weekend was relatively quite. I did not do a shred of work related activities. Friday night, Karen and I went to dinner with the Legges. It took about a half hour sitting and chatting before I could wind down from work. Good thing our waitress was slow as molasses. Otherwise I would have wolfed down my meal.

Saturday morning it was cranberry pecan pancakes and puttering around the house. I posted a blog entry then left for Michelle's soccer game. It was not our best effort. Team Israel lost 3-0. One of those goals was on a direct penalty kick; not allowed in our league. But the referee didn't know. He was a substitute ref from the older league. There were some good efforts but overall the team played a little flat. After the game the Girl Scouts had a picnic at the park. Mostly the girls played on the playground and the parent chit-chatted.

Saturday afternoon, besides driving kids around, I sat and watched some football and worked on my Christmas list. Duke actually won a game. So did UNC. FSU beat NC State but Sunday, the Panthers beat the 49ers. Plus, Jordan HS won their game in the first round of the state playoffs (more). So overall a good football weekend in Carolina.

Saturday Night, Tyler was out with Melodie and Kyle was at his friend Nathan's house. Karen, Michelle and I had dinner with Howard and Nancy and played some cards.

Sunday I spent much of the day helping Kyle with a school project. We built a trebuchet. The finished Counter balance trebuchet was about 13" tall with a throwing arm of around 16". It can hurl a small rock 20+ feet. After a little tweaking I am sure it will throw even further. Anyway it was fun helping him build it.

Sunday evening Tyler, Melodie, Michelle, Karen and I played a round of Carcassonne, Hunters and Gatherers. I came in dead last. Michelle won. After all the kids were in Bed Karen and I played a game of Carcassonne, The Castle. Karen won by just a couple of points. Our whole family has really enjoyed the Carcassonne series of games. Karen's Brother, Gary, got us started on them. I would highly recommend them as a gift for anyone who like board games. They take anywhere from 45 min to an hour to play. I would also recommend Funagain Games as a place to purchase them. They are a great online shop.

This morning I have my headphone on, Harry James playing on my MP3 Player and am ready to tackle the work week.

Ta