Wednesday Night

Yesterday I went to pick up my kid from daycare, and this is what they gave me instead:


Yikes! This is the same place that lets them play in flour and pours water on them when it's warmish out. It is like she is off taking care of herself, right? What is going on over there?! She seemed pretty happy about the whole thing, actually.

The other kid, whom I do not have such an interesting photo of, is wholly engaged in being alternatingly hugely bratty and ridiculously lovey and capable. She tells me all the time that she loves me to the moon and back, and lately, she is striking out to greater distances, recently, Mercury, and yesterday, all the way to the sun. If you love someone that much, it must be twice as horrible when they tell you in a mean voice to brush your teeth already, for the third time, before I start yelling. So that is when she makes the horrible face and a noise that is supposed to be an angry cheetah. Something like that? Oh, and this weekend, after I went for a run on the treadmill, she was kind enough to tell me that I smelled like the dog's breath. Things are a little weird around here lately, is all I'm saying.

I am on the home stretch of the most stressful project yet at work. When my manager proposed this project to me, I was nerdily excited- it was a tear-down- a manual that needed to be completely reworked, and converted, at the same time, into our gleaming new DITA format. What better test of a technical writer's skill? What could be more fun than this level of ownership? But instead I find myself a week away from my deadline, with four weeks of work left to do on it to make it really good, and one week of work to make it reasonably passable. Could it be (to paraphrase Elaine from Seinfeld) that I am not as awesome a technical writer as I think I am?

For the record I do not think I am an awesome technical writer. But I know I am capable of this kind of project, and it is bumming me out (read, turning me into a bit of a manic crazy) to have too much in the way to do a good job. Which in turn makes me feel like a big nerd, because isn't this the job I am all ho-hum whatever about? I guess not.

This is another one of those everyone gets a turn posts. So what do we get from Jim? He is doing what he does best- considering changing out his camera technology platform. Researching that spot on San Juan island we heard about that is supposed to be great for whale watching. What was that? Planning a date with me on Saturday night? That's what I'm talking about.