So this is the guy? He really does look like a Wall Street trader. And though multiple arrests were made, CNN still used the phrase “lone wolf” in their story.
Arrests made in Pakistan in Times Square probe.

It’s a funny old Sunday for me; had to get up and out the door this morning by 4: 30am to get my husband David off to O’Hare for his flight to Orlando for a technical conference. He’s there, he’s run into some of his list members, he’s That Mailing List Guy.  He runs a lot of mailing lists that cover areas of expertise that are mostly to do with the AS/400 iSeries Systemi whatever IBM calls their midrange computing platform this week.

He got all packed last night, including the traditional “I can’t find my pants” crisis which fortunately was solved easily. Last time this happened, he had packed a brand new dress suit carefully in his suit bag, got to the conference, crashed in a friend’s room before his room was ready, then could not find his pants about an hour before the very important presentation.

He called me demanding to know if I had packed his dress pants. “Where are my PANTS?!? Did you pack them?”

It was the stress, really. He was nervous about the possibility of picking up a very prestigious award, and about maybe having to make an acceptance speech.

I reminded him that he’d packed up his suit bag very methodically with the brand new suit, and while I was checking the closet here just in case, he remembered the part about the friend’s room, tracked him down, and found his pants hanging in the closet.

Pants crisis: resolved.

Last night, it was more of a laundry/underwear crisis, much more easily fixed. There was clean laundry in baskets, but none of them seemed to contain socks and underwear. Keep in mind that we just got moved back into the master bedroom after more than 3 weeks, camping out in the guest room while we worked on our “3 day flooring project.” Our first night back in our own bed was Saturday, and the drawers which had been stacked up in the middle of the room had all be replaced in the dressers, thank GAWD, but there were still several laundry baskets that needed to be folded and put away.

There always are, I think they breed.

Anyway, David had clearly been searching frantically for his oddments of male netherwear when he shouted down from above “I can’t find any UNDERPANTS! ARRRGH!”

Stress, again: this time, it’s the plain old “early flight tomorrow, don’t want to forget anything, meanwhile I’m giving a presentation before the opening session” variety.

Soon enough, after we went through some baskets and checked the dresser drawers (which may have had stuff misfiled in them during the time they were stacked in the middle of the room), the Great Underpants Crisis of Nought ’10 was over. It was nervewracking and there was the distinct possibility that one of us would have to run out and get a 3-pack of white knittery, but fortunately it wasn’t necessary.

So David is off in Orlando, and I’m here for the beginning of the work week thinking about tasks and chores that I’d like to do, but that will probably get blown off if I’m not careful.

Believe it or not, blogging is a task AND a chore, because I’ve fallen out of the habit of blogging lately what with how easy it is to just tweet something, and how hard it is to blog something with the iPhone now that both of my little bookmarklets stopped working. Anything seen during the normal workday is either a quick and easy tweet, a moblog picture (another dead easy function set up via Flickr), a del.icio.us link, or not at all, as it’s no longer a simple thing to pick up a link with WordPress’ “Press This” javascript functionality on the iPhone (although it still works perfectly on a desktop machine). I’m not sure why, actually; it may be a security “feature” stemming from some update or other. I didn’t want to bother David with it yesterday since he was trying to get all his stuff ready and packed, and it can certainly wait for his return.

Anyway, there it is; it’s not easy to blog using WordPress’ own iPhone app, as I just commented on Tiny Screenfuls, yet it’s easy to send a post to WordPress via Flickr, del.icio.us, or Google Reader if you set them up with the right permissions (and in Flickr’s case, a template that applies my beloved CSS drop shadows).

Why can’t WordPress’s app grab a link, for gosh sakes? Why did my handy Press This app stop working right? Grr.

Anyway, my hour of blogging is over, but there’s still a bit more to discuss: my accomplishment of mission.

We had a family member’s discarded laptop, which David got several weeks ago at a family gathering, that he was going to “part out.” After some tinkering around, however, he got it working, but we forgot to take it with us a couple of weekends ago when we met up as a family to visit our young nephew in college for lunch. Darn! So after missing another opportunity to get the now-working laptop back to its home, I managed to meet up this morning after church, although it might have worked to drop it off in the down time I had between O’Hare (5:15 AM) and church (8:15 AM). But no, it worked out fine to meet afterwards, although to make it happen I had to navigate to a shopping mall in Vernon Hills… AND deal with an escalator (I have a weird perception problem that makes it hard to use down escalators, and I tend to balk and head for the nearest elevator to avoid it). Found my family members at the designated drop point, exchanged signs and countersigns (“Hi, you guys!” and “Hey, you made it”), and handed over the laptop.

I thought I had a schedule conflict and couldn’t stay for lunch, but the conflict evaporated, drat it. So: Noodles & Company for me. Later tonight, leftovers. And that’s a little over an hour of righteous, linky-loving blogging.

And thus endeth the post, thanks be to Gawd.

After yesterday’s comic misadventures in travel, today was an easy, perfect day in paradise. We’re not a big couple for grand gestures and super-elaborate plans; we’re more in the “play it by ear” mode of operations. But David had tucked a Valentine’s Day card in his bag and this morning he made coffee and brought me “breakfast in bed.”

Okay, so it was a breakfast bar, because we got in so late last night we didn’t want to take the time to go to the grocery store to stock up.

We woke up relatively late for the first morning in Maui; must have been our very late arrival the night before. Just now David remarked that he already felt acclimated to the time; it’s after 1am Chicago time, and we’re still going strong.

Anyway, we got pulled together and went for a nice long walk up the beach, toward Wailea, enjoying the warm breezes and the soft sand on our bare feet (and picking our way around the occasional outcrops of lava and coral). Everybody and their dog were out today, and in fact it seemed like it was Golden Lab Play Day.

We came off the beach feeling like it was time for Second Breakfast, and I asked a local lady for an “anything but Denny’s” recommendation. She said “Mana Kai Maui,” or the Five Palms, a place we’ve been to before for dinner but not breakfast. She thought it was peaceful there, and you could see the water.

 

Good enough, so we walked back to pick up the car.

 

And a fine breakfast it was – we sat indoors, which isn’t really indoors as they had the huge teak shutters folded open all around (they’re about 12 feet high). While eating, David spotted a paraglider coming down right over the beach in front of us, and we watched him spiral around and around before landing perfectly on the dry sand. A few minutes later, a second paraglider came down, same spot.

After breakfast, we walked up the beach a while, and ran into the paragliders, who had gathered up their chutes and thrown them over their shoulders to haul them back to their cars.

It looked like a gigantic load of laundry.

Then we got back in the car and headed off to Safeway’s to stock up for the first week, and even though we thought we were being conservative about buying small amounts and trying to keep it simple, we still ended up spending $200, even with a pretty good discount going with our Dominick’s card, which is part of the Safeway’s chain.

Once back, we spent some time relaxing on the lanai, I fooled with my new tripod, and David tried to do a reverse update on his iPhone. Then we had lunch – our favorite kind of tuna poke, some tako poke, and I had poi. Yes, I’m weird like that.

Otherwise, it was the typical Sunday afternoon stuff, except with a view of…

LOLWhales! O HAI!

And then there was some fun tail-slapping featuring a mama whale and her calf.

After that, the Fleet was on maneuvers…

and then passed in review.

After all that, I went across the street and wonder of wonders, found two pair of board shorts, to replace the pair I seem to have lost on a previous trip. And these fit me better, being (rather large) men’s shorts and also I’ve lost weight from my hips (yay) although I still have more to lose.

David was still working on his iPhone software reversal thing, so I went down and got in the water, both in the surf a little and in the pool, which was just the right temperature. With all the walking, had a pretty good workout today.

David had spent some time photographing and just hanging out on the lanai and downstairs on the lawn, so it’s been a nice relaxing day for both of us.

Dinner was grilled tuna with rice and steamed veggies (and beer and snacks) and so here we are. It’s the first time I’ve uploaded anything substantive to Flickr in a while, other than mobile pictures, and clearly my skills are rusty. But I also took some photos I’ll be using for textures in Second Life, so it’s been quite a productive lazy day, too.

Think it’s time to call it “another shitty day in paradise.”

Back at work after a somewhat-fragmented work week last week, I managed to get everything done (or contented myself with what I was able to get done) for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day…

I had to work to the bitter end on Christmas Eve, after getting off early a couple of days in a row, but still I managed to fly home, put up the tree, decorate it, and wrap the gadgetty little gifts I’d gotten for the small number of family members that came over on Christmas Day. I didn’t make pancakes, as we already had plenty of food out (got a really good spiral-cut ham at Dominick’s, they had it on sale).

Because it’s been snowy and icy all week, I haven’t been wearing my orthotics, and finally paid for it on Friday because all the standing and singing on Thursday put me through such a workout that I was one big ache the next day.

The rest of the weekend was spend lying around, or doing stuff online learning how to make stuff to sell on Second Life. I’ll go into more, mind-numbingly boring detail on my SL blog later, but even if I don’t break even selling stuff, I figured out how to fund my monthly “virtual land” fees from a reloadable incentive card that I have from work.

For instance, a couple of bookings on the incentive program translates to about a dollar, or approximately $L275. That’s about as much as my weekly “paid Resident” stipend. Not too shabby.

David is home this week, doing upgrades, and I’m stuck at work for the duration until New Year’s Day. We’ll celebrate a Newfie New Year’s Eve (earlier time zone in Newfoundland means we all go home early) and the next day we’ll be down at David’s parents’ place.

And after that, the long boring months of winter ensue until at least April. Whee!

Got it all done, all sung, all decorated, all served, all entertained, all wiped out. Merry Christmas to all, I’m going to take a LONG nap!