Catching Up

It’s been a while since I’ve written much.  I ended up being sent on a last-minute business trip to Huntsville the week of April 19th.  Term papers and final projects were due for my college classes last week. I just got back from a business trip to Orlando this week.  Finished the last of my final exams this morning.  Time to start being a human again.

We’ve got 40+ mph winds here today; it’s crazy.

I have tomatoes, peppers (bell, hot banana, red hot cherry, and cubanelle), sweet onions, green onions, carrots, radishes, green and yellow squash, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, brussels sprouts, oregano, parsley, mint, basil, cilantro, green beans and rhubarb in the ground.  Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.  I still have one more variety of tomatoes to get down and then I think I’m done.

I’m also happy to report that I’m almost famous.

In March and April I was working on a magazine article on software assurance.  After responding to some comments that the editors had, I was informed this week that they’ve accepted it and sent it in as part of the package for the September/October issue.  This certainly doesn’t mean that it will get published; apparently the decision about what gets published and what doesn’t in this magazine is made by Department of Homeland Security.  For those of you who are in the Defense industry, keep an eye out for the September/October issue of CrossTalk.  If DHS liked it, my article will be in there; if not then it will be held by the editors for a future issue.  It’s not a paid thing, but it is very exciting … at least for me.

Also in the area of exciting:  one of my major clients, Xerox, has asked me to participate in a webinar that they will be doing this month about security features of multifunction devices (copiers, for you laymen).  I will be speaking about the Common Criteria during the webinar.  An announcement was emailed out to their customers, but nothing is on the website yet.  I’ll link it here when it does go live.  Again, not life changing but very exciting for me.  These small opportunities give me a sense of validation that I am an expert in my field.

In general, March and April brought me amazing highs (me, famous?  Mamma Mia! on Broadway?) and insane lows (how many people get rejected by Korea for adoption, exactly?).  I’ve been looking forward to some downtime this month to get my classes finished, my veggies in the ground, and back to being a human being….. before classes start again on June 1st.  *ugh*

So This is Easter

I’ll get the happy part out so you can click away to avoid the depressing part. 

Unfortunately I got sick over the weekend, so while John had to get up at 4:30am to run sound for our two church services I was laying awake hoping the sinus pain would go away and trying not to cough.  We had planned to have Easter dinner at our house and invited John’s sister and her family over, but John made me cancel it the day before; and that was a good thing because I don’t think they would have wanted me preparing their food.

I napped for a while, but eventually just had to get up, so I decided to transplant some of my veggies from their starter pots into 3″ bio pots, in order to get them ready to go outside.  I’ve got some extras, so I will probably take them to work — I’m sure Hal will want them.  I also went outside for some sunshine, which felt really good after the very cold winter we’ve had.

I had bought (ok, actually got for free!) an 11lb shank portion ham that I was intending to serve for Easter dinner.  Since I had thawed it out I had to cook it, so we had a mini large Easter dinner.  I got the ham in the oven around 1pm, and John got home a couple of hours later.  He napped for a while, and I napped for a while, and then dinner!  Talking wasn’t working so well, with the coughing and sore throat, I was able to take and make some Easter greeting phone calls.

So now for the depressing part…

So, this was another Easter gone by without eggs, baskets, chocolate bunnies, pink dresses, or cute little suits.  I know this doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, but for people who can’t have children, time starts being marked by milestones — oh look, there goes another Christmas without squeals of joy and photos with Santa!  Easter was yet another one of them for us.  It seriously didn’t help that just a week and a half ago we were rejected by South Korea as adoptive parents.

Seriously — what better way to celebrate a holiday by being told you’re unfit for parenthood.  Somewhere in America, 15 babies were aborted and 27 crack addicts just got pregnant, but we can’t seem to succeed at being parents.  Why me?  Why us? What did we do?  Where did we go wrong?

So, that was Easter for us.  Time to pick up our heads and move forward, and start making plans to avoid leaving the house on Mother’s Day.