Subject: Weekend Update: October 4-6, 2002
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 14:18:38 -0400

At last week's conference in Galveston, Texas, one of the
documentation managers suggested that one way to possibly
motivate a team of writers was to institute a casual
day where they could dress down.  I chuckled because where
I work, we make a "business casual" dress code look like
formal day.  I wore one every day when I started at Wang
in 1984.

That got me to thinking that it might be fun to have Formal
Friday for a change.  So, on Friday, I put on my suit pants,
white shirt, and tie.  I didn't go so far as to add the suit
jacket because I knew my colleagues would have enough trouble
with the tie. I got many reactions of the kind that I might
get if I wore a bathrobe to church.  Was I interviewing
somewhere else?  Was I going to a funeral? Nobody, but nobody
else wears a tie anywhere in the building.  It was fun for
a day, and interesting statement to make, but to be honest
I prefer my collar unbuttoned.  Chalk it up to entropy.

On the home front, I am feeling some separation anxiety
these days because, although we're a family of five plus
one and one, having the younuns as teens in high school
means that I don't know from one day to the next who will
be around and who will be at football, a friend's house,
or an evening out.  Bed times? I think we've lost that,
too, mostly to the unanswerable excuse that homework is
still keeping them up.

Joy went to the church Saturday morning for a children's
Christmas musical rehearsal, leaving me home to figure
our what I should be doing.  Emily, Andrew, and I stacked
more firewood but petered out with another cord still in
the driveway.  I realized that I need to move this and
that to here and there before completing the wood-moving
chore and bring up the remainder of the wood from last
year to use first.  When Joy got home, we had lunch and
frittered away some more time to the TV until the place
got busy with visitors.

Eric, Linda, and Michael came up to go apple picking with
us.  Jessica and David, with their friends Brooke and Jan
also came up for the same reason.  And, Mom and Dad arrived
in time for Mom to come with us, too.  Kimball's farm is
just a few short miles away on the New Hampshire border.
If we averaged the number of apples we pick into the
number of people who go along to enjoy a walk through
the apple orchard, we'd each probably pick half a dozen
apples.  I was armed with a camera so my quota was deficient;
more enjoyment for the tree climbers and apple polishers.
(I got some really nice pics, however, which I will share
with the Pictures email list.)  The poison ivy was easy to
spot because it is turning color this time of year ahead
of the apple trees.  The color seems to be dragging it
feet (or so it seems to me).  That will be good news for
my cousin Kevin who booked his flights to visit foliage
season in New England a week later than he was supposed to.
(We'll still have plenty of color, cousin!)

I spent a good part of Saturday evening helping my father with
his laptop.  What happens to even the more experienced
computer users after time is that files and other things
litter a computer so that it makes it difficult to find
things and use programs, so it pays to stop every so often
to organize and reorganize. Computers can be made to be more
simple this way. Once I was allowed to drive, I organized my
Dad's Program menu of 50-or-more items by creating five or six
menu items such as "Words", "Pictures", "Sounds", "System",
and "Internet" - and "Games" - then moved various programs into
these menus.  Secondly, I pulled all of his pictures into
two folders so that he could organize them better.  (I worked
with Meredith on this, too.) Knowing your file system so that
you know where a file is, or at least how to get to it is a
fundamental need that many of us who use computers as part of
our everyday work take for granted.

Lazarus has not been dispositioned yet, due to hectic school
schedules but Jess and Dave are mobile once again thanks to the
purchase of an Oldsmobile station wagon that an elderly couple
used to drive back and forth to the dump.  To be more specific,
Jess bought my father's second car from him to put Jess and Dave
back on the road. Dave is the new youth leader at the Brockton
Church of the Nazarene, so this big Oldsmobile will come in
handy, and although the car will be in Jess' name, there is
no doubt that "Jess and Dave" will be their collective name
going forward. We need to resolve the paperwork and put Lazarus
to rest, but the new car goes from ministry to ministry.  They
have already named the new car "Goliath" because it seats 9 people.
 
We talked a bit about what Jessica and David's wedding might
look like.  I suggested a baseball motif, since David is a
rabid fan of the Atlanta Braves.  He and the groomsmen could
wear baseball uniforms, the Bridesmaids could wear candy striping
and straw hats, and the preacher could have on an Umpire's uniform,
mask, and chest protector, and the first 100 guests to the wedding
could get a big foam We're #1 finger. The organ can play,
do do do doo do doooo - Charge!  While David was "game" he said
that whatever Jess wanted was fine with him.  Yeah, I remember
that feeling!  Whatever Jess decides, it will be a party next
June 21!

On Sunday, I missed another opportunity to hear Dad speak in Nashua,
because of obligations at church.  I have two more opportunities
in November before Nashua installs their new pastor, so I will
see about those.

Mark