AZDonna

Don says it’s time for an update, so I’ll comply. Nathan is asleep in the other room. I brought him home to spend the night and we watched Lady and the Tramp. It’s been a long time since I watched that one all the way through. Boy, if I didn’t have grandkids, I would forget all the great Disney Classics!

I’ve been continuing to work overtime as our chip gets closer to tape out. I brought my laptop home last night and did a little work from home and worked about four hours from my kitchen counter this morning. This project should be done in three more weeks. I leave on sabbatical that Friday. Perfect timing!

I’ve got my sabbatical travel plans just about solidified. My first official day off is September 12 (Dale’s birthday). On Wednesday, the 14th, I fly to Anchorage and will be there for a week. Steven’s first birthday is Friday, the 16th, so I worked out the timing perfectly to be able to celebrate with him. I haven’t missed one of the grandkids’ first birthdays yet!

After returning home on the 23rd, I have a few days to prepare for my 4 week road trip. Glenda and I are leaving on the 28th, and driving northeast. We have stops planned in Evansville (to visit Wendy & Dennis) and Niagara Falls, and on up into New England for about a week. Then we will head south through NYC, Philadelphia and Washington DC. We’ll spend 3-4 days there seeing the sights. As we drive further south to Orlando, we’ll stop in colonial Williamsburg, Atlanta, and possibly try to see the Kennedy Space Center. After 3-4 days at Walt Disney World, we skedaddle home, because I’m sure we’ll both be longing for our own beds by then! We’ll also, no doubt, be out of money…especially if the price of gas keeps climbing like it is. That should be about October 24th or 25th.

My main disappointment has been Alice’s recent decision not to join Glenda and me on the trip. She’s feeling snug in her little home in Portland, and reluctant to strike out across the country with us. I told her we had already dreamed of new memories we would be making with her, and so will miss her terribly. Until we arrive in Buffalo, I’m still going to hope that she will change her mind. (That’s where she is supposed to fly in to meet up with us.)

I found a house and dog sitter who I am thrilled about. She’s a friend from church. She said she is looking forward to my cable TV. I think she will be a Tivo fan by the time I come home, don’t you?

I’m off work until November 6, unless I take an extra week or two of vacation, which I might.
So the countdown is really on now. I have 15 working days left and I’m outta there. See ya later, alligator!

Arthur lives with me now. I am sure many of you know who Arthur is. In fact, many of you live with Arthur also. His last name is Itis. You know, Arthur Itis. I found out today he is responsible for my recent back ache. Naughty, naughty Arthur! Although I prefer it to be Arthur rather than Slipt Isk. You know who that is, right? Slipt is much harder to live with. Slipt usually requires a surgical procedure to keep him from causing back aches. Yes, I can live with Arthur. As long as he minds his own business and doesn’t decide to move to new locations.

And puts the toilet seat down.

If any of you have ever worked in a cubicle environment, you know what that title term means. It’s when something happens and everyone sticks their heads up over the cube walls and looks around. That happened today at about 3:30 when the loudest clap of thunder I have ever heard from inside Intel hit nearby. People were rushing to the windows to look out (now isn’t that the safest place to be??? standing by a glass window during a big thunder storm!) One guy near me was immediately on some weather radar website telling us that three storms were colliding over the Valley. It didn’t last long … at least in that area. But on my way home about an hour later, the radio broadcast was warning of 4″ of rain in Mesa, and lots of flooding. It wasn’t bad where I had to go, but I bet Mom got quite a shower.

Boy, were my dogs glad to see me. They get really nervous when it thunders. I love it, though! Wish it would storm all night.

I woke up last Sunday with a nagging lower back ache. By Monday, it was more than nagging so I took the day off work. I went to see Mark (Heather’s husband, a physical therapist) on Tuesday, and felt a little better on Wednesday. I tried to go back to work, but came home early. By Thursday, I was in agony and went to the doctor. She immediately put me on pain medication, and ordered an X-ray. I had that done Friday but won’t get the results until Tuesday or so.

When I walked into my house on Wednesday, it was hot, hot, hot. The air conditioning had gone out. My friend, Leo, came by that evening and determined it was the fan motor. It took the rest of the week to get the part, so I have been lying on the couch at Brian and Carrie’s for three days. It’s Saturday morning, and Leo is on the roof now. Hopefully, it will be back up and running soon. It’s pretty miserable in here. I don’t know how our ancestors stood it without any means of cooling off a house.

When it rains, it pours, right? (Actually, it did rain quite a lot this week! That helped bring down the temps.)

This has been a work week, and I do mean work. Every day since I got back from SanDiego, including Saturday and Sunday. It’ll probably be like this until my sabbatical, which starts on September 12. We are taping out the fifth stepping of a cell phone chip, code named Manzano. I’m in the Mobility group working on XScale technology, so if you are familiar with any of Intel’s products, you may have heard of it.

Today was a sad day. A little girl we heard of through the MPSIII (Sanfilippo) network died at Duke Hospital this afternoon following a cord blood transplant several months ago. Frannie’s website is here if you want to take a look. It’s a stark reminder of how risky a transplant is, and how well Lauren did because she had a related donor.

Lauren and Carrie have been sick this week. Lauren has been fighting it better than the last two times, but she’s having a harder time than Carrie, naturally. When she ran another fever yesterday, Carrie decided to start her back on Amoxicillin. Nathan was having cabin fever, so I brought him home with me on Friday night after work, and took him back Saturday morning before work. He is always so happy to come to Nonna’s house, and he now recognizes when we get close. He knows the Dr. Geek shop on the corner where we turn into my neighborhood and shouts out “There it is!”

I went to see “Herbie – Fully Loaded” last night with Glenda. It was really cute and I laughed throughout. Herbie still has his charm with some new movie effects added from the original 1967 “Love Bug”. He smiles by turning his bumper up, and his headlight eyes have lids. Quite cute.

The Diamondbacks won today pulling within 2 1/2 games of SanDiego. Woo hoo!

I’m catching up on laundry and ironing this afternoon because, after all, tomorrow is another work day. 🙁