Losing a part of me

This weekend has been unique in my experience. I drove to Strathroy Friday morning and my buddy greeted me and immediately took off. He and his wife are spending the weekend away. I walked into the house and was greeted (somewhat) by sixteen legs… two children (9 & 6 years old), a dog named Buddy, and two cats. If you know me at all you will realize that the first eight legs were no problem, but I am quite allergic to the last eight. Won’t this be… fun.

We spent Friday afternoon in the back yard. They had a blast on the trampoline, and I sat on the patio trying (unsuccessfully) to read. I mostly watched them and relaxed. I prepared spaghetti for dinner, and then we took Buddy for his evening walk to the park. Buddy is a four-year-old Labrador retriever who probably tips the scale at around 100 pounds. He is not overweight that I can tell, he is just a lot more dog than I am used to. As a comparison, HRF Princess Sophie weighs in at just under 18 pounds. The difference did not really hit me until we were out on the walk, with the kids on their bike and scooter. Buddy stopped to sniff and chew and whatever, and when I pulled on his collar to tell him it was time to go I was met with a resistance that I am just not used to. Walking him would actually be exercise.

Did I mention that sometime during the afternoon, as I was sitting in the house for a few minutes, he threw up? This is not unusual for dogs, I know. What was unusual was the size and texture and odour of what came forth. It smelled terrible, but looked like it should have come out the other end! I grabbed some paper towel and picked up the now-confirmed solid component of it and put it in the kitchen sink. Whatever it was, you can be sure that it had spent some time in his digestive tract, if not actually in his stomach. I apologize, I am not an expert in these things. Once I had cleaned up the entire mess, I returned to the sink and rinsed off what ended up being three very small (6-year-old sized?) socks. I was not quite sure what to do with them, but I did not want to potentially contaminate the laundry basket which would not be addressed for at least two days. I decided to leave them to dry off in the basement bathroom. I made a mental note to tell Amanda they are there.

Taking care of very picky children and eating well can go one of two ways: You can prepare two separate meals for you and your charges… or you can resign yourself to eating crap. With the knowledge that my extreme diet starts Thursday, and that I would have to pack them into the car and take them to a supermarket, inviting the constant fight of ‘Uncle Mitch can we get this?’ I opted to try to do my best with what they were eating. As I mentioned earlier, I prepared spaghetti for dinner Friday. I had been told that the kids took care of their own breakfasts (mostly cereals) so Saturday morning I made myself an omelette and a bagel (of which Buddy stole half when I was not looking).

The kids had started haranguing me to go for fast food for lunch on Saturday within 20 minutes of my arriving on Friday. Their dad had already told me that it was okay, so we ended up at Wendy’s. I tried in vain to get them to accept Harvey’s but at a certain point there is no point in arguing with a 6-year-old. Had I known that there was a toy giveaway at Wendy’s it would have made more sense. The meal was enjoyable though – the kids really are well behaved, and a lot of fun – so I did not mind.

While they tried to convince me to either go out for or order dinner in (as well as every other meal all weekend), I managed to convince them to pick something that we had in the house. Chicken nuggets and French fries are not the worst things they could have picked. I eschewed the nuggets for some pasta salad that was in the fridge.

When I told my buddy Friday that I had packed ten cigars, he told me that they would last me at least until the following morning. Ha ha, right? Well I do have one cigar left as I sit writing this two days later… but only one. I also expected there might be something to drink by way of adult beverages… I mean, what kind of person leaves their kids with someone and doesn’t make sure there’s at least a bottle of scotch somewhere? To add insult to injury, I noticed Friday afternoon there was a wine bottle in the fridge… but when the kids were in bed I discovered it was half a bottle of peach Bellini. Not cool.

Okay, at least there were three bottles of decent beer in the downstairs fridge.

Today is my fifty-third birthday. With all of the well-wishers on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as a few more personal ones, I do not feel much like celebrating. Truth be told, if I was not here with the kids I would most likely be working on my computer at home, possibly preparing for my class tomorrow (although I think I’ve already done that), and then smoking cigars on the balcony. It was nice to be feted last week at the barbecue, but I really have not felt festive this year. Can anyone blame me?

I should mention that my godson’s birthday is in two days, so I ordered him a present from Amazon which was delivered yesterday. I do not think they realize that today is my birthday, and I am fine with that. When I find out what time the parents are due back I will decide whether or not I will take them out for lunch… I probably will because I doubt they will be home before 1:00pm. We’ll see.

I should mention that I have not wasted my time here. Last week I booked my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) exam for next week, and I have been studying for it. I brought my study material, and have read over a hundred pages of what I need to read. While I am still certain I am going to fail the exam, at least I will do so knowing that I did take it serious and tried my best. I will spend at least an hour every night this week reading and studying and preparing for the exam which I am sitting next Tuesday. I am teaching a different cybersecurity class this week and while the content is not the same, it is the same general realm which will be helpful. I am not going to go into that exam unprepared. On the other hand, it is probably the highest level and most important certification exam I will have taken to date… and if I get it then it will open more avenues for me professionally – both for teaching and for consulting. Am I nervous? In ways that surprise me.

While I am thinking about it, I am probably going to downgrade my home lab that I built over the last few weeks. The host operating system on the servers seems to be troublesome, and there is a lot of talk online that the latest server version from Microsoft is not very stable. I have found at least three issues that might be caused by an unstable host, and I do not want to spend anymore time troubleshooting it. Fortunately, it is only on the actual physical host servers that i am experiencing the problems. The virtual machines (the vast majority of the work) is stable, and can just be dropped onto the new hosts if I end up doing that. We’ll see. This might be a thought I have while I am 200km from home, but falls by the wayside when I am in front of the keyboard. We’ll see.

Have a great day folks.