Not a New Year's Resolution
It's always hard for the kids to make the transition to "Daddy is working" when, from their perspective, it looks like I'm just tapping away at my computer, as I often do in my spare time.
When my wife interrupted me to ask me to get something down from a high shelf, I had just learned that I had accidentally deleted the directory that contained the entire database for the Seton Hill weblogs, as well as the last 7 or so years of this weblog.
I knew that my ISP backs up my whole site weekly, and I knew that I had added a nightly backup for those crucial files, but I knew that I'd have to put in a support ticket and I knew I'd lost the work I'd done since the last backup. I have an RSS feed that sends me all the comments that get entered into any of the blogs, and I can recover any missing new blog entries from the HTML pages generated by the database. I've been through this before, though not as a result of my own stupidity.
I was a bit cranky, but I got the thing from the shelf. Even though I knew I was poised for a couple of hours of copy-and-paste tedium, as I recreated a course website from the HTML files generated by the database, something penetrated my brain when my wife offered a very nice "thank you."
My wife is of the "I shouldn't-have-to-say-it-because-it-should-be-obvious" school of thought. That generally goes for saying "please" and "I'm sorry," too.
But a few days ago, when the kids were clamoring for attention and she was curled up in bed with the lights off, she said something like, "Your kids are so excited to be able to play with you."
So it seemed, for a moment, that maybe my wife was making a particular effort. I asked her whether maybe she had made a new year's resolution to be extra nice to me.
She had an instant reply. "No, I am not going to spend the year sucking up to you. That's not my idea of a new year's resolution. You can put that in your blog."
Oh, well. It was a nice thought there.
When my wife interrupted me to ask me to get something down from a high shelf, I had just learned that I had accidentally deleted the directory that contained the entire database for the Seton Hill weblogs, as well as the last 7 or so years of this weblog.
I knew that my ISP backs up my whole site weekly, and I knew that I had added a nightly backup for those crucial files, but I knew that I'd have to put in a support ticket and I knew I'd lost the work I'd done since the last backup. I have an RSS feed that sends me all the comments that get entered into any of the blogs, and I can recover any missing new blog entries from the HTML pages generated by the database. I've been through this before, though not as a result of my own stupidity.
I was a bit cranky, but I got the thing from the shelf. Even though I knew I was poised for a couple of hours of copy-and-paste tedium, as I recreated a course website from the HTML files generated by the database, something penetrated my brain when my wife offered a very nice "thank you."
My wife is of the "I shouldn't-have-to-say-it-because-it-should-be-obvious" school of thought. That generally goes for saying "please" and "I'm sorry," too.
But a few days ago, when the kids were clamoring for attention and she was curled up in bed with the lights off, she said something like, "Your kids are so excited to be able to play with you."
So it seemed, for a moment, that maybe my wife was making a particular effort. I asked her whether maybe she had made a new year's resolution to be extra nice to me.
She had an instant reply. "No, I am not going to spend the year sucking up to you. That's not my idea of a new year's resolution. You can put that in your blog."
Oh, well. It was a nice thought there.
Recent Related Entries
Merry Christmas 2008I'm sitting with my laptop in the hallway, guarding the kids' bedrooms, One has already tried to sneak out to watch for St. Nick (I had to put a stuffed snake along the crack under the door to keep her...
Of Captivity Narratives and Xenomorph Face-huggers
Tonight I was reading my 10-year-old son a chapter in Beorn the Proud, a youth historical fiction that describes the relationship between a 9th-century Irish girl taken as a slave by the son of a Viking king. The heroine, Ness,...
My Office Monitor is Bigger Than My Home TV
For the first time this year, I asked my school to buy me a laptop (a Dell Latitude XT, my first-ever tablet computer). I also asked for a new monitor, and it's a beauty.I'm pretty pleased with my setup.Of course,...
Full Circle
Last week, as one of my classes was wrapping things up for the last day, a student who has finished all his coursework noted that I was his professor for the first and last classes of his undergraduate career. He...
Idlewild's Story Book Forest Improves Its Signage
In the past, I have pointed out copy-editing weaknesses at Story Book Forest at Idlewild Park, in southwestern PA. When I was last there, shortly before Halloween, my son stopped in his tracks and said, "They repainted the Little Miss...
Leave a comment