Spring Has Sprung...

So last week I looked out my back door at the pile of snow next to the school parking lot.  It was built on a strip of ground that is normally grassy and about twelve to fifteen feet wide.  It runs the width of the parking lot, so maybe a hundred feet or so.  And on it, the snow was piled a good twelve feet tall.  Next to it, the entire last row of the parking lot was down to perhaps a foot wide, as the rest of it was also piled rather deeply with snow.

My wife and I had a chat, both of us expecting that the pile would remain several more weeks.  I figured May 12, she was a little more optimistic, saying May 1st.  This evening, our fourth day in a row of above-normal temperatures, and the coldest, reaching only 78, saw the end of Mount Snow.  It's all gone.  Granted, that's sort of what you expect when you have three days in a row with the high temperature over 80 degrees.  Two of those days set new high temperature records in the upper 80s (yes, in April), and one set a record high low temperature.  

So yeah, we got hot.  And as expected, there's a cooldown coming this weekend, where we expect to see at least some snow on Sunday.

So how's your spring going?

I haven't been able to spend much time enjoying the weather, as over the past few weeks, my employer has been gearing up for a big conversion, which is now taking place.  Some two years ago, I was a member of a pilot project where they rolled out a new piece of software to do our jobs.  The past two years have been both enlightening and frustrating, but today we shifted into a slightly higher gear.

That's step two of three.  The third step is where the other half of our folks join, and we'll all be back on one system.  Which will be fabulous.  I'm not going to give away any trade secrets, but I can tell you after twenty years in IT and a lifetime of using computer software, this is one of those upgrades that is one hell of an improvement.  As I said to someone else this week, it's an awful lot like trading some old metal-wheel roller skates for a sports car - a really really nice sports car. 

Don't get me wrong, there are issues.  Frustrating issues.  But I'm confident that the folks who are working on them will get it right eventually, it's just that right now they have a lot of stuff to deal with, so they're working on that.  

But all of this means that oh, hey, all of those resources we don't have but need aren't available, so them that is get tugged a little further.  Which is another way of saying yeah, I got overtime.  And I've been working for this company long enough now to know that it happens.  Sometimes it's needed, sometimes it's not.  And right now, I'm trying to do my best to make money, while maintaining a good work-live balance, if I can.  

And it's stressful enough, as the youngest of my children is preparing to leave the nest.  So I'm dealing with that as well.  Lots of emotions, lots of memories, lots of cherished moments paired with the mistakes I see I made.  I know that the mistakes are what I dwell on, lost, wasted, or fouled opportunities.  However, I do have to regularly remind myself that he is who he is today because of every single day which came before today.  So he's done pretty good with what he's been given, and he's earned plenty of respect among many people, so I can say that, for my part, I helped do something pretty grand.  Twice, as his older sister is also pretty special.

A very small part of me wishes we'd tried for another child, but there's the cautionary voice in my head that says "if you had, would you still have been to do what you did for these kids?"  I am happy with the people they are.  So I got that going for me.