This week marks six months since I left IBM. As with most anniversaries, it feels like both a short time and a long time. How have I changed? Well, certainly the pace of work has slowed considerably. My work days are shorter, allowing me to be home by 5PM most days. I've had to reacquaint myself with hands-on skills, both technical and writing, and am almost ready to call myself competent. Last week I participated in a project where I really knew my stuff and it felt good.

And what of the rest of my day? It appears that I've become more insular. Sure, this journal has allowed me to stay in touch with family and close friends. Son Adam observed that he didn't have many questions to ask me on the phone because the weblog has provided the news already. But my focus is on life at home (or the camp). Caring for our parents is something new and has been a good adventure, even with the challenges of changing roles. At the end of the day, though, I'm eager to get home and stay home. The time will come when I and we get out to see more people, but not now, not yet.

Hurricane Karl forgot to ask directions and may be in Iceland by early next week.

Sandra's mother's doctor had a scheduling problem yesterday, including an operation on a patient with a brain aneurysm. As a result, he wasn't able to perform the back operation. She waited the day, not permitted to eat. All revved up and no place to go. Finally, about 4PM they spoke with the doctor and rescheduled the operation for next Tuesday.

Sandra will return to work today and plan to take next week off.

Today marks the end of summer. In spite of the warm waters in the south breeding a ferocious hurricane season, it's been cool here in New England. We needed the air conditioner for just a few evenings in May. Hurricane Karl is drifting northward, a menace to none but ships at sea.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my mother's death. We observed it in quiet moments, as we do every day.

Today is the first day of Sandra's mother's journey to recovery. She'll have her operation this afternoon. She will be in the hospital for a few days and then a rehabilitation hospital for a few more before coming home. The surgeon expects a full recovery with no limitations.

Sandra is taking the rest of the week off from work and will be at the hospital most of the time. She's bringing a quilt that she's sewing for our next grandchild, due in November. There's a couch in the waiting area when her father can rest during the visits. I'll come home after work, tend to the dogs, and then go the hospital in the evening.

This journal was off the air for most of yesterday. Our internet service provider keeps its servers in Baltimore. Yesterday morning, a big fire knocked out power for a large area, including the building where the servers are housed. The systems came back on the air in the evening and all appears to be in good order.

We had a rainy weekend and stayed home from the camp. On Saturday morning, a thunderstorm rumbled through, scaring the dog. He came upstairs and slept under the bed.

My father is doing better. He was able to do his own shopping last week, although he had to stop and rest several times. We visited with him on Sunday and made sure that he had a good supply of firewood.

The Red Sox have fallen into a September swoon with their pitching becoming seriously unreliable. They should make it to the playoffs, but won't last long playing like this.

Oh, yes, work. This is a journal about work. Yesterday all of my project plans were approved with just some minor requests for schedule clarifications. The next major deadline is not until November, but there's plenty of work between now and then.

After a very long wait (nearly three hours!), Sandra's parents, her sibilings, and sundry spouses met with the surgeon who will perform MRM's back surgery next week. It was a successful meeting, in that all questions were answered and the family felt that it was a team coming together for an important purpose. Everyone came back to the house for pizza afterwards.

My work days are starting to fill up with meetings, both regularly scheduled and ad hoc. Some meetings are more organized than others. Most tend to start late, but end on time, and are rarely longer than an hour.

It still seems like a luxury to be working just 40 hours per week.

I've done nothing to personalize my cubicle. I brought in a couple of reference books, but have added no pictures or other personal items. My desk, for those who've seen my offices in the past, is uncharacteristically tidy. As is typical these days, my work stuff is on a laptop, so I can be as productive in a conference room or at home as I am in the office.

My contract will be extended another three months, providing me with continued employment into the new year. This news, combined with a couple of new and interesting projects, have made this a better week at work. Vacation was nice and re-entry was a bit of a jolt, but the work so far has been good.

This afternoon, Sandra will go with her parents to meet with the doctors who will perform her mother's surgery next week. After those meetings, there will be a family meeting with the surgeon, Sandra's parents and siblings, and sundry spouses. The family meeting will give folks a chance to learn about the procedure and recovery and to ask their own questions in their own words. Everyone is in a helpful and hopeful spirit.

On Saturday morning, we took an hour-and-a-half canoe ride around the lake. The sky was clear and the air was fresh. A few people were outside, working on their camps. We saw just one other boat on the lake. It was a fine example of why we take our vacation in September.

We had a good time, a very good time. We did things and didn't do things. We worked, finishing a few of the season's projects, and then were quiet, particularly during the rainy days mid-week. I'm reading Khrushchev by William Taubman, a professor of Russian history at my alma mater. Sandra's reading Naked in Baghdad by NPR's Anne Garrels. We also watched tv, not all of it bad. It took some adjustment to get used to not having access to the 24-hour news channels. We stayed up late to catch the 11:00 news and even saw David Letterman a couple of times. We didn't get to play cribbage and found the jigsaw puzzle not to our liking. We enjoyed each other's company and needed that quiet time together.

My father can't climb the stairs to the camp these days, so we set up chairs at the water's edge by the boat house and had our coffee break there. We're making plans to build a road up to the camp.

When we thought of work, which wasn't too often, it made us anxious. Both of us are returning to projects that are overdue. I'll go in a bit early this morning to spend extra time on the week's emails. There's never a good time to take a vacation. It's also good to learn that we're important, but not that important.

Sandra's parents have returned from PEI. Sandra's mother will have back surgery next week. Sandra and her siblings will meet with her parents and the surgeon on Wednesday to talk about the procedure and the recovery.

It's also time for me to start thinking about what's ahead for my employment. I'm two months into a three-month contract. There's a very good chance that the contract will be extended, but I can't assume anything. There are a few opportunities in the queue. Mostly, though, I will re-establish contact with friends and former co-workers to let them know that I'm looking again.

It's going to be a busy time. By late morning, vacation will be a distant, though wonderful, memory.

A co-worker stopped by my cubicle yesterday and asked me what kind of dog I had. I told her that we had a black Lab. She said that she saw the nose prints on the back window of my car.

Sandra and grandson Joe are visiting PEI for a few days. Woody is planning to take Joe fishing today. They'll have lobster for supper. Each grandchild gets a flight to the Island as a 10th birthday gift. I drove them to the airport yesterday morning and will pick them up on Sunday.

So Marley and I will pack up this afternoon and, after a brief visit with my father, will go to the camp for a couple of days. Then, Sandra and I will take our vacation at the camp for the week. It's a good, quiet week to be there. We'll tour the lake by canoe and maybe walk around the lake on the shore. We have some work to do. There's always work. The weather forecast calls for rainy weather mid-week, giving us a chance to be quiet as well. We'll play cribbage, work on a jigsaw puzzle, and read.

This will also give me a chance to think about what's ahead for me and my work. I'm nearly two-thirds of the way through my contract. It's quite likely that the contract will be extended, but I need to be prepared in the case that it isn't. I've done very little job hunting this summer. If I'm going to be looking for work, I'll need to start as soon as we return from our break.

Vacations can often bring a renewed energy and focus, a chance to remind ourselves of our priorities. It takes the same amount of energy to work at trivialities or at important stuff, but the result is oh, so different.

It's time for a mid-morning coffee break. I decided to work at home today. It gives me a chance to tend to a few things around the house. For example, I finally had the time to update this computer to the latest Windows service pack. It's not very exciting, but there are times when we need to take of the ordinary things, making the extraordinary possible.

I reviewed a package of information from the senior center in the town where my father lives. There are many good services and activities, but nothing that he needs right now. Sandra and I will continue to stop in regularly and help with his household chores and shopping.

As we've been paying more attention to our parents' health and well-being, it's helped us appreciate what other people are dealing with as well. We hear about others' surgery, chemotheraphy, and chronic pain and have a greater appreciation for how it affects the whole family. It's an adventure, worrisome at times, fun at others.

Another big hurricane, Frances, is heading for Florida and the southeast US. The current predictions don't call for a serious threat to New England, but we may get some heavy rain early next week. Between now and then, we will have a fine stretch of late summer weather. I've left the back door open so that Marley can go out to the sunny back deck whenever he wants to.

We had a wonderful weekend in Boston. We arrived mid-morning, walked from our hotel along the Freedom Trailto the North End where we had lunch. We then took the T to Fenway for a tour of the park. We had a nice walk back to the hotel for a shower and then a a return trip on the T to the ball park for the evening's game. We had a Cuban sandwich at Luis Tiant's sandwich stand and got autographs from El Tiante. (Back in 1975, he commented about the Red Sox fans, "They make me do better than I can do.")

We had good seats, in the grandstand behind home plate. Pedro pitched and the Red Sox won the game 5-1. The crowd was standing-room only. Most of the people were well-behaved, but beer was in the air. It was also interesting that the crowd was so overwhelmingly white.

On Sunday morning, we stayed in the hotel and read the papers over breakfast and coffee.

Sandra and I don't get to the city much. This was the first game at Fenway that we'd been to in more than 10 years, the first time we'd walked the Freedom Trail. It takes less than an hour to get to downtown. We have our habits. Some years ago, we visited with my uncle, Aimo, and aunt, Catherine. We wanted to take them out to dinner. "Why should we go out to eat? We have plenty of food here," they said. We made gentle fun of them at the time, but are now becoming more like them. Why should we go someplace different when the familiar places work so well? Mel Brooks observered that we mock the thing we are to become.

This week I have several chores at work to complete in anticipation of next week's vacation. I wasn't as productive last week as I'd hoped, but I should be ok. I need to talk with a couple of people this morning to confirm that I'm on the right track.

A quick mid-morning note: queenlake.com has finally shown up on Google search. See http://www.google.com/search?q=queen+lake+phillipston&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8. It should be about half way down the page.

Last night Sandra and I went to the calling hours for the mother of my friend, Don. Lorraine was a wonderful, sweet, and kind woman who'd had more than her share of troubles. The family photos, displayed on a DVD, reminded me of my childhood, sitting around with Don and his brother, Vinnie, playing Pipeline on the guitar. (They played; I listened.) At the calling hours, we got to visit with Don's daughter, Sarah, and wife, Debi. It's hard to believe that it's been a year and a half since we last spoke, since Don's funeral. We just missed seeing Ken. People get away if you let them.

I'm halfway through my contract at work. After I return from vacation, Labor Day week, I need to start serious discussions about a contract extension or I'll be looking for a new job in early October.

Sandra's been talking with her parents and her mother's doctors a lot about her mother's upcoming back surgery. I'm waiting for a call from the social services person in my father's doctor's office. In both cases, it's quite a challenge to be helpful without being presumptious. ("Hi, I'm here to help you.") Remembering one of the basic principles of the Hippocratic Oath, we should, first, do no harm.

This weekend Sandra and I are going in to Boston to see a Red Sox game. Pedro is pitching. We're looking forward to having one of Luis Tiant's Cuban sandwiches for supper.

It's back to the office today. I worked from home yesterday and liked it quite a bit. The weather was delightful, something I don't get to exprience much when I'm in the office. Marley wanted to go out often to warn the squirrels away. Finally, I just left the back door open so that he could come and go as he pleased. With a wireless laptop I can sit anywhere in the house, or even outside.

I have to send several documents out for review this week. That's one of the difficult parts of my job, having others comment on my work. I know that it's all a process of making things better, but sometimes I can be rather thin-skinned. Most people won't bother to complete the review anyway, so I will likely only get a handful of comments.

When I'm not able to sleep, I listen to the BBC, broadcast during the overnight by a local NPR station. Generally, the BBC World Service delivers very good news and feature programming. The news is primarily for a North American audience. (They refer to President Bush and then, in another story, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example.)

I often don't sleep well, waking very early and unable to return to sleep. It's been going on for quite while. Although my mood doesn't seem to relate to my patterns of insomnia, my sleep patterns are related to depression. I've been treated for depression for nearly 40 years now, since high school. Most of the time you wouldn't know it. Sometimes, though, it's unmistakable. A couple of times in the 80s I was incapacitated for a month or more. I had a few days last month when I thought I was headed for trouble. We caught it in time, however. With the wonderful support of my family and a good doctor, the episode passed and I'm pretty much back to normal. I'm still wary about pronouncing myself to be healthy, though, knowing the nature of these things.

One of the core challenges in recognizing and treating depression is that it can look like so many other things. It can masquerade as dissatisfaction, sadness, anger, or inattention. I have to be careful, more careful than most, about making big decisions because the emotions that I'm feeling may come from illness, not insight. It's true that events can aggravate depression. I've seen that this year. Looking for a job wore me out, leading to decisions that weren't always the best. In several cases, I abruptly changed my mind and left friends in awkward positions. That led a few folks to ask, "How are you *really*?" It took me a while to catch on. Illness or no, I am still responsible for my actions and feel badly when I fall short with people who are trying to help me.

So how have we treated my depression? As mentioned before, with a wonderful family, dear friends, and good doctors. I take the advice of Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an Illness) and keep laughing. I used to rent Bugs Bunny cartoons to keep the laughter coming. I don't drink, haven't for close to 30 years. Even though I know that I will probably never be cured, I always know that each episode will pass, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but it will always pass. Sandra's a great comfort, supporting me and helping me to focus on the process of recovery. It is scary for her, but we've learned how to get through it. I'm very grateful.

The birds have come back. We were out of bird seed for a few days and it was strange not to have a crowd at the feeder. The chickadees and sparrows, small birds, are the first to return. And then, while writing this note, a hawk swooped into the yard and found its breakfast, a mouse, in the tall grass near the fence. The other birds will stay hidden for a while until they're sure that the danger has passed.

In the overnight email, I learned that the mother of my friend Don passed away yesterday. She had had to bury her husband and both of her sons. Now, we hope, she can get some rest.

The next couple of weeks at work will be busy as I complete tasks before our vacation. That'll be good. Well-defined tasks bring focus to the day. There's an axiom in business - if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. It will also feel good to have earned a vacation. As I've mentioned before, this will be the first vacation in many years when I haven't been exhausted.

On Saturday it rained. It rained a lot. Sandra and I spent a very quiet day at the camp, sleeping late, reading, playing cards, talking. A bit of guilt was sneaking in at the edges - how can we take a day off like this when there's so much to do? Well, doing nothing was the right thing to do that day.

Yesterday my father has indicated that he'd consider have more help around the house. I'll call his doctor today to find out what kinds of services are available with his insurance. But this was a big deal, being willing to accept help from strangers. We're not sure how much help he'll need and he may back off from the idea by the time that we've lined up the resources. Nevertheless, it marks a change. Last week, when I asked if it would be ok for us to make a copy of his house key, he said, "Sure. We're a team."

We talked with my father's next-door neighbors to let them know that we'll be visiting more often. A nice couple with a young daughter. They're living in the house where my grandparents used to live. My grandparents moved there when I was about 10. I would get off the school bus and my grandmother would have coffee and pastries waiting for me as my after-school snack.

One, two, three, four.
I declare a Thumb War.
Five, six, seven, eight.
Try to keep your thumb straight.

Granddaughters Krista (8) and Tess (6) stayed overnight with us at the camp this weekend. It was a fine and fun night. On the way home, the girls thumb-wrestled in the back seat.

We stopped in to see my father yesterday. He's doing better. He says that the pain, on a scale of one to ten, is a two or three. We did some shopping for him and a few chores around his house.

Sandra's mother will have her back operation in September with an expected six to eight weeks of recovery.

The big news of the weekend was the devastation wrought by Hurricane Charley. Sandra's aunt, Marie, lives in Bradenton. My cousin, Norma, lives in Winterhaven. We hope that they and their homes are ok. We'll make some calls to find out more. Today is Norma's birthday.

On Friday I picked up a number of new assignments at work. I spent much of the day getting organized for same. My back-of-the-envelope calculations show that the workload will be just about right. I have several intermediate deadlines before our week's vacation during Labor Day week. My work days are starting to fill up with regularly scheduled meetings. In all, it's settled into normality.

Vacation in three weeks. We'll spend the week at the camp. Labor Day week is a fine time for a vacation. The lake is quiet and the weather is still warm.

You'd think that, after all of the time that I had off this year, I wouldn't be thinking about vacation already. Well, I am. It is different this year, to be sure. For one thing, I won't be stumbling into vacation exhausted. One year, I slept twelve hours a day for the first week that I was off. This year I expect to have more energy. I've been working on a patio at the camp and hope to finish it this time. We have about a half hour's work on the dock that could easily turn into two days' worth. In years past, a kingfisher has followed us as we paddled around the lake in the canoe.

This journal has generated a fair bit of email from family and friends, notes that I greatly appreciate. In addition to keeping me informed about their lives, my correspondents ask good questions. How are you,*really*? Are you still looking for a permanent job? How about a career change, something in music perhaps?

There's an old parable about walnuts and rice. In order to fit both walnuts and rice into a jar, you have to put the walnuts in first and let the rice fill in the spaces that are left. If you put the rice in first, the walnuts won't fit or at least won't fit as easily. The point being, you have to have your walnuts, the most imporant things in your life, in order first. As we go through our days, Sandra and I ask each other, "Is this a walnut? Is this rice?"

We've entered a season where we need to think more about others than ourselves. This includes not only family, but also friends and neighbors. Our next door neighbor fell off a ladder last week and broke his hip; he'll be in a nursing home for a month. His wife is housebound with MS. Their children stop in a couple of times a day. We'll help as we can, taking out the trash and other small chores. Tonight we'll have dinner with friends at a Korean restaurant and then come back for a birthday party for grandson Joe, who turns 10 today. Tomorrow we'll have granddaughters Krista and Tess overnight at the camp. There are those who do all of these things and more with great ease and grace. There's much to learn, much to do better.

And, in middle of it all, I get a call from a recruiter regarding a job possibility. I'll have a telephone interview today. The job that prompted the call would require relocation to Seattle, which isn't an option. We'll talk, instead, about other opportunities that would let me work from home.

Happy Birthday, MRM. Happy Birthday, Joe.

I'm at the point now at work where I can start to create project plans. I spent the first month learning the products and processes. There's still more to learn, but I have a good understanding of what's ahead. Project plans help me clarify what I know and what I don't know. Some people prepare meticulous plans. Mine tend to be painted in broader strokes. A former manager used to say that the good thing about a plan is that you can change it.

I've stayed by myself most of the time at the office, listening to music while working. I suppose I could and should spend more time in the aisles, talking with people, but I don't. The people are nice enough, even inviting me to go on lunch time walks.

Shortly after my car turned over 100,000 miles, the Check Engine light came on. Oh, geez, I thought, here it goes. As it turned out, there was just a minor problem with the emissions system, easily fixed. While I waited for my car at the dealership, I was able to use their wireless network to connect to the systems at work. It won't be long before Internet access will be as ubiquitous as radio.

What have I learned then? Lately, it's been about planning. If I know what's most important and know the resources that I have available, I can make decisions more easily. Without a framework, my decisions are no better than a coin toss.

We're coming to the end of a stretch of hot weather, although it wasn't really that hot. We didn't need the air conditioner; a fan kept us comfortable through the night. The tomorrow's forecast calls for a cool and rainy day.

So, where have I been? Simply put, trying to find balance. In architecture, you acheive balance when you have matched the strength of materials with the load that they must carry. For several years I let my job define my day. The work started early, ended late, and didn't leave a lot of spare energy for much else. Now it's time for something else, to be a husband, son, father, and friend. Those responsibilities, coupled with a new type of work, require different strengths, talents that I haven't used in a while, if ever. I'm not always confident that my strengths are up to these new loads.

Some years ago, Sandra would take grandson Matthew to guitar lessons. Sandra would ask Matt, "What did you learn in school today?" One day, he asked her, "What did you learn today?"Since then, Sandra and I often ask that same question, of each other and of ourselves.

What have I learned? That will be the subject of future journal entries. Now it's time to go to work.

The news of the week has been, of course, the Democratic National Convention in Boston. We watched a few hours of it last night. We tried several stations before settling on C-Span. We would have liked to have seen Bill Clinton's speech but, at 10:30, it was way past our bedtime for a work night. The Democrats have, so far, channeled their anger well and kept a fairly positive focus. It's going to be a very interesting campaign.

Today is Sandra's birthday. We'll go to Mike's for supper and cake. Adam is working at the DNC, so he'll meet Sandra for lunch with Jennie and Lily on Friday. Sandra and I don't exchange birthday, anniversary, or Christmas gifts, but we do have fun with cards.

I've felt off-kilter for a few days. The symptoms are hard to describe and don't make much sense. Each day shows a bit of improvement, however, so I remain encouraged that whatever this is will pass.