John Denver

So, if you're reading this, you probably know me decently well. (If not, what could I possibly say that you'd be interested in?)

Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm super busy at work. I work in a cube next to a large open meeting area. To concentrate, I listen to my iTunes.

I found that I was having issues concentrating, even with my music, so I turned to the old standby: John Denver.

I have 6.5 hours of JD music in my iTunes. I've been listening to it non-stop for almost 3 weeks. I can totally get into a zone when I'm listening to JD.

I think that because almost every memory of my childhood has John Denver music as the soundtrack, my brain actually functions better when I'm listening.
Yep, I'm weird, but I'm wondering how weird? Don't other people have some music that they feel this way about?

I assume that they do...

I hope they do...

Microsoft Word

Ever since I got out of college, I have used Word to create documentation.

First at Unisys where, for as much as it sucked to work there, the templates/tools that we used to create our documents weren't too bad. (For those of you who work/worked there, I'm talking about BEFORE CMS)

Next at WorkForce where we used Word with Doc-to-Help, or as we fondly called it "Doc-to-Hell". I seriously spent six months of the eleven I worked there just trying to renumber my documents.

Now, at TechSmith we use Word and Acrobat to make our PDFs. I guess that this version of Word has a sense of humor. It likes to catch me off guard when it decides to die and not to give me any warning or message that it's crashed. It's just gone. But, not all the time, sometimes I do get errors. I mean, I'm used of Word crashing, but when it doesn't give me a message, I don't always realize it's gone for awhile. Oh, it only does this when I switch over to another window, so I might not notice it for 5-20 minutes. Nice.

Mothers' Day
We had a nice weekend. We got our "white-trash" pool filled with water, which cost about as much as the pool, but less than a new well pump. We went to my Grandma's on Mothers' Day. Chase again found the booster seat and snapped it on. He did tell my mom this time that he was a turtle. Smart, huh? He's doing so good with his speech that he's able to tell us what he's thinking a little bit. At least now we know that he's pretending to be a turtle, not just goofy.

Everyone in the extended family thinks that I don't do good enough about watching Cory. She runs. She falls. She walks. She falls. (I have the same problem.) Anyway, I can't make her stop running/walking fast. I've never heard so much gasping as I did yesterday. I know that they totally think that I should do something about it, but then they can't give me any ideas about how to stop her. Sigh.

More about Chase
He's doing so good lately, that I want to say that he's not autistic. Again, I wish there was a blood test that could tell us for sure. He's repeating so much, using 4-word sentences, and initiates interaction with everybody. He doesn't talk as much around strangers as he does at home, but isn't that how most 2-3 year olds are?

Fun Times
We're going to Cedar Point on Thursday! I'm so excited! It's going to be me, Susanne, and Ethan (3), and Chase. We're staying for two nights. We got this package for supercheap that gives you 2 evening tickets, 2 full day tickets, 2 nights at the hotel, breakfast, and a parking pass. We also can go to the indoor waterpark for supercheap. I hope that Chase handles the whole thing good. I think he will. He's been there before and like Ethan. Chase is really brave about trying new stuff right now. We'll see how it goes.