I spent my lunchtime today being a magnet for screaming kids.

After completing the necessary cabling work at the data center, I dropped by Sam's Club for some items on a list given to me. As I locked the car and obtained a shopping cart from the corral, I passed a mother and her two daughters. The kids looked to be about two and four years old and were clearly in the midst of a temper tantrum.

A temper tantrum doesn't actually do justice to these two kids. They were angrily schreiking at their mother, limbs flailing and jumping up & down, throwing the couple of toys they had. Had they been my kids, they would have received a quick cuff, been stuffed back in the car and instantly driven home with a discussion on how this behaviour is utterly unacceptable, then send each to their respective rooms for the duration of the day.

Alas, I'm not their parent. I skipped past them quickly and went into the store.

I went directly to the back of the store where the bulk of the items I was shopping for would be located. I turned the corner and there they were, mom and the screaming kids, now reasonably quiet. The older kid began grabbing items off the shelf and knocking them onto the floor. Mom told her to stop. Kid resumes her screaming tantrum and begins throwing items out of their shopping cart. I run away to the freezer section.

A few items from the freezer and two rows later, I turn the corner and there they were again, standing in the men's wear section. Mom says no --I didn't see what about-- and the kid resumes her screaming fit, grabbing items from the cart and from the table of men's dress pants to throw on the floor. My cart and I do a u-turn and head for toiletries & pharmaceuticals.

I looked at toothpaste (opting not to buy 'cause I think we have enough), grabbed some generic painkillers, then headed for the cash registers. There were four registers open, all with approximately the same queue length. I headed to the far line for no particular reason.

Guess who gets in line behind me. And begins shrieking yet again.

Mercifully, I was able to pay for my items and run for the door before the Screaming Family could begin even half-way emptying their cart onto the counter. I loaded my purchases into the trunk of my car and drove hell out of there in fear that I might somehow encounter them again before leaving the parking lot. Indeed, I don't think I hit the brakes for five miles until I stopped at the bank to deposit a check. I think my ears are bleeding.

I'd love to report all of the exciting things which have happened today. Alas, none of them were especially exciting although a couple of points were fun.

Today was a work day like most others. After a code deployment, I dashed to the data center to plug a cable into a switch, then drove home again. Yes, I drove 35 minutes just to plug in a cable, then the drive home took 45 minutes because of traffic. Whee.

The drive home was made more complicated by the sheer number of lane closures and traffic redirections caused by road construction, shoulder maintenance, power line work and car accidents. Is there any road in Maryland, DC or Virginia which isn't under some degree of active maintenance right now?

cuyahogarvr and houseguest Karen went to Rehoboth Beach, DE, for the day. They brought back chocolate so all is well.

cuyahogarvr, Happy and I carpooled to Arlington, VA, for tonight's C1 dancing with Doren McBroom. We had a little more than two squares dancing, well above our average of late. Per usual, Doren threw some hair-raising figures at us; while some we managed through very well, some needed a few repeats or walk-throughs. It was all great fun though and the two hours were over before I realized how late it had become.

I've had my late night snack and am now contemplating bedtime. I should sleep well tonight.

Per usual, we were at John Marshall's C2 class tonight. Fortunately, we didn't take on any new calls tonight: it was just review and dancing. I say fortunately because my head began throbbing slightly after an hour and became a full blown headache by the time the evening was wrapping up. (I'm sure the fact we were dancing C2 was purely a coincidence.)

I'm hoping this is just my body complaining about the lack of protein today rather than the onset of a cold or such. I have few evening commitments for the next few days so even a cold wouldn't be a catastrophic issue right now.

By my count, we have about a dozen calls left. I hope we will be pushing through these last ones fairly soon as I'd love to have some Monday night flexibility in my schedule once again.

In other news, work continues to be a roller coaster: some days are incredibly busy, some are boring. Today is a good mixture: a few tasks but nothing especially soul-crushing.

In family news, I neglected to mention my parents celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary this past July 4. We were tentatively thinking of heading to Canada to celebrate with the family in August but it's looking more like we should hoard our pennies and conserve our vacation time, especially if we'll see the extended clan for my brother's wedding only a few months later.

We had a somewhat leisurely day around the house. Among our minor accomplishments, we've applied a second & final coat of paint to the porch ceiling & trim and installed a new porch light. Woo hoo!

cuyahogarvr created a tasty dinner of turkey burgers and corn on the cob. I loved it but I ate too much.

This evening, we headed downtown for the fireworks on the mall. It's been a few years since we've attended so it was a nice change of pace.


kent4str & cuyahogarvr, waiting for the fireworks to begin.


The Lincoln Memorial (west side) at dusk


Fireworks!

It's been a long week. I'm not sure if I should be grateful it's a short working week or curse the universe for making it so, since I think a part of my exhaustion is from packing five work days into four.

Work has at least been interesting. We continue to interview candidates for a senior unix engineering position on my team although it appears one position has been filled. I've been working on a number of projects, each of which has expanded my knowledge considerably although they also caused high spikes in my blood pressure. The worst of those is over... I think.

I've resumed prodding my management about getting my expense reimbursements pushed through accounting. It has come to the point of being utterly silly so the next time I'm requested to purchase something on behalf of the firm, I'm going to ask them to either provide a credit card for me to use or have them do the purchase remotely so I can go collect the item.

Square dancing continues. After a short break, we were back our C2 class on Monday. The biggest snag is that we don't have a space available for the class to continue currently; John & Mary are working hard at getting something lined up and I'm optimistic all will be well.

I called a club night for Chesapeake Squares Tueday night; kent4str called for the DC Lambda Squares tonight. Tomorrow, he's also calling a one hour square dance demo for the IAGLCWDC.

Our original plans for the long weekend have been scrubbed so we're going to be free agents for the while. This should give us some time to finish up the front porch maintenance (second coat of paint, installation of new light fixture) and kitchen plumbing (replacing kitchen fawcet).

Enough fun for now... I'm going to go read for a while and head for bed.

I haven't written a great deal lately, largely because my life although busy is largely routine at the moment.

We didn't have a C2 square dance class yesterday (Monday): caller John Marshall is out of town most of this week. Instead, many of us from the C2 class made a surprise appearance at justetthon's C1 dance. We were just one person shy of a third square so justetthon called while dancing. It has been a long time since I've just danced without calling or pushing my way through a workshop or class... it's a fun reminder of why I do this stuff in the first place.

Tonight, kent4str and I called an open house for the Chesapeake Squares while cuyahogarvr went to Billy Harrison's Galaxy Stars C1 club night. Our performance for CS went pretty well, although we were a little disappointed we only had two newbies, one of which was just visiting from California. After all the work the club has put into our public appearances this past weekend, I think everyone was hoping for at least four newbies. *sigh*

Still, we had fun. We had three intro-to-dancing tips, two Plus tips and an A2 tip for the regulars. I sight-called the A2 tip, working on building up my skills & confidence and am quite pleased with the results.

The Chesapeake Squares also bought kent4str and me a gift Visa card in gratitude for our hours of work this past weekend. Whee! It also conveniently makes up for me forgetting to prepare an invoice for the June club nights we called... Doh!

Wednesday night, a group of us C2 students will be getting together to practice. Thursday, kent4str and I are calling an open house for the DC Lambda Squares. Friday, we crash.

Yesterday, I offered photos of some of the hotter men I photographed at Baltimore's pride parade. Today was Baltimore's pride festival in Druid Hill Park where I snapped a whole lot more. ( Enjoy! )

I was snapping photos at Baltimore's pride festival today. Sadly, a lot of hot guys got away from me: they were moving too quickly, they turned away at the last minute, I couldn't focus the camera quickly enough, someone else stepped in front to block the shot, etc.. ( We'll just have to make do with these... )

Today, we were in downtown Baltimore for the bulk of the afternoon and evening. We first met with the rest of the Chesapeake Squares to set up the sound system on the pickup truck, then noodled our way to our station in Baltimore's pride parade.

Thanks to the presence of multiple umbrellas, there was no rain. It was, however, very hot and muggy. Our staging area was in full sunlight but I hid in the shade across the street. Yup, I'm a wuss.

We were in the first group of the parade, positioned 4th or 5th from the front. While this sounds prestigious, it isn't a big a deal as it sounds: the parade itself doesn't have that many groups marching (perhaps 30) and doesn't go that far, only a half-mile or so at most. In fact, once we started walking, it was all over in a little more than a half-hour.



Following the parade and dismantling our sound system, kent4str, cuyahogarvr and I met up with Mike V. to head out for dinner down in the inner harbour area. Dinner was excellent although I overdid it on the potato skins appetizer and the free pretzels & mustard... yum! Ah well... the rest of my dinner is in the fridge currently.

After dropping Mike V. off at his apartment, we stopped by the park area where we will be calling square dance demo tips tomorrow afternoon for the ongoing pride festival. My dear employer needs me to push some code updates into our non-production systems tomorrow morning but it's scheduled against the time when we're supposed to be setting up at the park! A quick test with the wireless broadband modem at the park pavillion however confirmed that I can do my office stuff from there easily. Yay for technology!

Now to rest up and hopefully get some sleep!

Here's the anonymous hotties of yesterday's DC Pride parade and today's festival. ( Enjoy! )

The DC Lambda Squares will be marching in today's pride parade in Washington DC. kent4str and I will be calling for the dancers when/if the parade pauses long enough to allow us a few calls.

If you're available and would like to walk with us, please do! No dancing ability is required... we still need folks to hand out flyers and cards plugging our upcoming open house and regular club nights.
We're meeting at 5:15 PM on 25th Street NW between M and N Streets NW; it's the purple group, unit P-8, right after the HRC contingent.

Otherwise, watch for us in the parade and pray it doesn't rain.

With FaceBook's new user name mechanism, I can be found there as www.facebook.com/bjarvis .

Imaginative, isn't it?

Futurama is coming back!

Woo hoo!

kent4str, cuyahogarvr and I have decided to make a more determined effort to spend some quality non-square dancing time together. Our schedules are sufficiently weird that getting time together as a trio has been a serious challenge. Being the organizational dweebs we are, we've marked days in our joint calendar expressly for doing something jointly.

Our first date day together was focused on a visit to the Bull Run battlefield in Manassas, VA. In hindsight, visiting the place where 5,000 men lost their lives in two bloody battles 130 years ago probably wasn't the most romantic venue, but it was the perfect day weatherwise and we got that valued time together.

Later, following ice cream and a quick maintenance visit to check up on kent4str's parent's house while they're traveling, we went out to see "Up." As expected, it was a playful and sentimental movie, well scripted and animated. I'd add this to our lets-consider-seeing-it-again list.

Click here for photos from Bull Run.

( And here for the hotties seen there too. )

Today, we had our first committee meeting since April's IAGSDC convention, DC Diamond Circulate.

To the surprise of some, we are all still good friends and are still talking to each other. Today's meeting had more a feeling of group therapy than a business meeting, but we covered a lot of material which needed to be covered. In essence, each committee chair offered a verbal final report including their feedback of what worked, what didn't and what they'd do differently if the opportunity presented itself. We rounded out the agenda with some planning for a thank-you party for the volunteers and staffers, both within DC Lambda Squares and outside.

We'll get together again in a few weeks to finalize the party plans and to begin working on disbursing the remaining funds in the checking account. The precise amount leftover is still to be determined, but the rush of at-the-door registrations (over $14,000 worth) and extreme cost-cutting in March and April when it looked like we wouldn't meet our budget numbers has yielded a small financial cushion. A few bills are still trickling in but we hope to have a firmer handle on the numbers soon.

Then we have to start winding down the 501(c)(3) --or not, depending on what we might want to do for DC Lambda Squares.

I've been in the data center for several hours but have been too busy to write much. I'm awaiting the results of some system tests so this seems like a good a time as any...

The drive to work this evening was horrendous: we've had incredibly electrical storms and heavy rain for a couple of hours, including flash flood alerts for every county around DC until 10:30 PM. During a short break, I listened to the television news in the staff lounge which showed a long list of road closures due to high water, including two lates of southbound I270. PEPCO's outage maps online show electrical outages in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Wheaton, Olney and north-west Silver Spring although our home seems to have escaped it as my server is still responding. North-east DC and parts of Prince George's County adjacent to DC seem to be without electricity, as well as Fort Washington to the south.

Looking outside currently, it seems the worst has moved on so I'm hoping for a reasonably gentle commute home.

Take a look at the astounding world of tomorrow in all its glory --then medicate yourself to ease your inconsolable depression.

Check out This Is Why You're Fat.

Alas, a few of the items actually look tasty...

This day can be divided into two parts: square dancing and family.

The early part was square dancing related. We hosted several newbie callers (inc meinfs with mentor caller_dayle and a square of dancers for a caller workshop. Each caller had a different level of experience and skills: a few of us were working on flow, others on resolutions, others on vocal delivery, etc.. I called a tip myself working on vocal polish, but this particular workshop was particularly focused on four others who haven't been calling as long.

Here's a photo of our happy group (sans kent4str who was feeling a little off after noon):


cuyahogarvr arrived home from a week in Ohio just as the workshop was wrapping up. Yay!

After a quick clean-up and brief nap, my brother (Wayne), his fiancee (Kim), her girls (Catherine & Charlotte) and her mother (Lynn) came by. Lynn lives nearby but Wayne & others are from the Halifax area of Nova Scotia.


We had a lovely chinese dinner --we ordered far too much food-- then went on a driving tour of downtown Washington DC before we returned to the house and they headed back to their place.


I'm feeling rather tired currently and plan to head to bed very soon. Listen for the snoring.