Yeah, more damned snow. Shoveling the driveway more than once a week is for the birds, let me tell you. My snowblower won't start, of course.

Now let's talk about love and marriage, love and marriage. Go together like a horse and carriage etc.

Except they don't. Not always.

My wife and I are back in the limbo stage, where we don't know wtf is going on in our marriage. We both love each other, but we're more like roommates than spouses at this point, and it's been at this point for the last two years, if you know what I'm saying. I think you do.

I have permission (or so she says) to see other people. But I don't want to. I'd rather be alone. I'll never put on a lifejacket again.

I know this has been a somewhat disjointed post, but it needed to be.

I always seem to have to stay at work late when the bad weather comes, making my already long commute even longer. Tonight's drive was as bad or worse than the one I counted as the worst ever a few years ago (when I also had to work late while the snow accumulated). That drive took longer, but tonight's was more of a nail-biter.

It's been an odd week at work. The assembly floor is looking a bit sparse since they've worked through last year's significant back-log already and new orders are sparse, though supposedly starting to pick up. Unfortunately, for a lot of the things we manufacture, there can be some significant lead time before the actual manufacturing begins, so an order doesn't always mean immediate work for the assemblers.

The big-wigs are predicting that things will come back to full swing toward the end of this year, but only time will tell. In the meantime, the most of the hourly folks have some hours cut. I think the cuts are 4-5 hours a week at most so far, but it's enough to cause some animosity since the salaried folks are still full-time. Hopefully things pick up again soon.

Well, for 2 years now I have had nothing to post haha. A brief run-down of the past two years from what I can remember, just so I can look back on things and shake the dust off the ol' memory now and then in the future.

In December of 2008, I finished the degree I was working on. Trying to find time/money to go back for more. Probably not going to happen in 2010, but maybe late in the year I can get started again.

Work is going well. I have a long commute which is getting tiresome. It will be my 10th year here in April, and the past 5 years I've been driving about 100 miles a day for my commute. 2 hours a day on the road--I don't want to think about how much time that is.

My kids are growing up. My son is 11 now and my daughter is 15. Both are great kids for the most part. They get along together well (usually--they *are* siblings after all, so it isn't always sunshine and roses between them). I wish they'd be a little bit more interested in doing well in school. I'm am a poor teacher, and had 0 problems in school--whereas my son is smart as a whip but hates doing the work, and my daughter is a social butterfly at school and seems to focus too much on that rather than taking notes to study from.

In 2009, I volunteered to be a Webelos Den Leader of my son's Cub Scout pack, so I've been doing that for the past year and having a lot of fun. I was in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts as a kid and I didn't realize how much I missed it. My sone will be moving up to Boy Scouts this year. I had originally planned to move up with him and try to find a niche in the Scout Troop to take an active role in, but I've been asked to stick around as a Webelos leader so I'll keep that up for a few more years, since I have a lot of fun. Teaching the kids the values and skills I learned in Scouts has been a very cool and rewarding experience.

So I guess that's it for now.

Just about another year gone by since my last entry.

I've gone back to school to earn my IT degree, and that is going well. I'll be done in November thanks to most of my previous credits transferring. It is going well so far--I just need to keep motivated.

Things are still good on the home front. The wife and I have gotten through the rocky times of a few years ago. Things aren't perfect by any means, but they are pretty good. Good enough for now at least. Like any long-term relationship, there are ups and downs and a steady middle-ground that I'm happy with.

The kids are growing up too fast. 9 and 13 now, and I have no idea how that happened. To anyone reading this who has young children or is planning to, I offer this advice: Do as much as you can to remember as much as you can--pictures, movies, writing--whatever you can do. Because as the time goes by, you'll forget so much without even realizing it. And one day you'll be able to look back at the things you took pictures of or wrote down and you'll wonder just how they grew up without you realizing it.

Almost a year since my last entry, so I guess I'd better write something for myself to look back on.

Not as introverted as I once was (even less so than when I was introduced to this site)--so I haven't needed a more-or-less anonymous way to express myself.

Home-ownership has been fun. Going on year #2, and it's been great.

Work has been going well. Another big raise this year, puts me past a goal I though I wouldn't reach until next year. Hell, before last year I thought it would take me 5 years at least to get this far.

Family life has been much better as well. The wife and I are doing well, I think. Still have rough spots, but what relationship doesn't? We work through it, and we never go to bed mad at each other, which has been an important part of "us" during our 11 years together (7 years married this June...wow!).

The kids are well. Some problems at school, but all in all they are doing well. The boy has joined Cub Scouts and we're having fun with that. He placed third in his Pinewood Derby race, which we were all happy about! He's progressing in his math skills, which makes me less worried than I used to be. I inherited some of my Dad's insane math ability, but not to quite the same degree--hopefully some of that will shine through for my son. My daughter, on the other hand, has math trouble. She has trouble applying herself too, and I'm not sure how to fix that. She's in middle school now, and the less she learns and retains now, means it's going to get exponentially harder as the system forces her through. We may hold her back this year...she's not stupid by any means, just...not concerned, I guess, with what matters. She's pretty, she's popular---the things I wasn't. So I'm not sure how to get her motivated.

For fun, I've been messing around with MUDding again. And have got a coworker/friend going with it too---though we get accused of multiplaying quite a bit lately because we play from the same IP during the day(yeah, one person will know what I mean there. He seems as hooked on it as I once was and am finding myself again.

Earned my CWNA last year, and will hopefully get CCNA, CWSP, and Security+ under my belt soon. Need to stay motivated in that regard, which has been hard to do. We'll see though. When the mood struck me to get CWNA done, I was pretty steadfast, which I normally am not.

Anyway, wrapping this up. Good luck this year, me!