I probably will have little time or inclination to update the rest of this week (stop laughing), so all my adoring fans will have to make do with this.

Yes, we spent most of last weekend and yesterday cleaning the house from top to bottom, and breaking it from bottom to top. This latter bit is really a very annoying trend. We just "finished" the front yard (well, sort of, it still needs about 327 plants and a new ledge to replace the rotted one--but at least it looks nice!) The new patio furniture makes me very happy, especially as the weather has been Austin Beautiful™ lately. I've been dying to take a good book and a beer out on the back porch after work, and just have not had the time. But Fiona is coming in tonight, and Les Thursday, and I'm sure there will be plenty of hanging around in the backyard drinking. :) And then of course there's the BBQ this weekend. I do have pictures of the house, particularly of the very pretty wooden swing (currently swimming in white flowering vines), the garden (which is fast approaching Eden proportions--or at least starting to produce little baby tomatoes and bell peppers), and the new deck furniture. I will try to post those tonight.

Work. Work is stressful. Critical projects have a way of self-destructing at 9pm lately, and this trend is also very annoying. I have one project right now that reminds me of those Engineer Days at school where people would compete to create harnesses in which eggs could be dropped and expected hoped to survive. Except that this particular egg fires itself downwards at very high velocity and contains about a tablespoonful of nitroglycerin, and so at this point it has been fitted with parachutes, streamers, airbags, jet thrusters, alarm sirens, and even springs to bounce it back up into the air when it hits. It hasn't crashed in about a week, which is an improvement. (This project is a living lesson in the hell of supporting legacy software; all of our other projects continue to behave themselves.) If nothing else, this is great practice in troubleshooting recurring problems. :-P