we’ve been without hot water since Monday morning. we got a company to come over and look at it, but they couldn’t come until Tuesday afternoon, and the guy didn’t come with parts despite having been told that manufacturer and model of the water heater. he did come with some sort of cock-and-bull story about how we’re supposed to have some overflow reservoir in there for the way we’re set up, in order to meet “state code”, and he wasn’t “supposed to leave a house that didn’t have that done.” since he didn’t have the parts or equipment for that, either (in his little 1-ton pickup truck), i generously let him leave without kicking his smug ass.

i don’t know why the Spouse Unit called that particular company, anyway. today, we’ll call the guys who came out and worked on our furnace a couple of years ago. they were cool, and one of their managers is the brother of our next-door neighbor.

but yeah, anyway, it’s sub-20 outside and we have no hot water. brrrrrrrrrrrr…… and i’m going to leave out some serious gripes with this company without elaborating on them in the spirit at least attempting to be positive today.

{there, i got the bitching and moaning done first, because there are some great things to celebrate today}

Celebration #1:

First and foremost, a heartly congratulations goes out to Tramplingrose, on the birth of her baby boy on January 3, 2008. I hope Rachel and Alexander will continue to do well, and will accept my apologies for not getting around to other blogs much of late. In fact, I’ve been really bad about that for the past several weeks, so I’m really sorry Rachel. I hope you’re feeling better. And Jay, go have a beer. It’ll help. Not much, to be honest, but it’ll help. I do know how it feels from your perspective, my friend. Best of luck to all three of you!

Celebration #2:

Yesterday, the Spouse Unit received her first formal job offer for a position that would employ her to perform work here in Sioux Falls, comes reasonably close (very reasonably, I might add) to paying her what she’s worth, and would allow her to continue on in the most recent augmentation of her career track, the usability testing and analysis. Even better, the offer is from a former manager of hers out in California who told me, when that company laid her off, that his next big problem at the time would be to find three people for very little money to even replicate her work for him. In other words, he’s been missing the Spouse Unit as an employee ever since that happened, and literally jumped on the chance to get her to work for his new company. They talked on Friday and the offer letter came yesterday. The only down-side, in fact, is that she’d be having to learn how to work from home, which would almost make us co-workers, at least in terms of proximity. That might really be interesting, though!

Celebration #3:

Well, this isn’t much of a celebration per se. We did have our most successful bridal show ever this past Sunday, however, and it really turned out to be a turning point for me, attitude-wise. I’m looking forward to the wedding season now, instead of dreading the work I’ll probably have to be doing alone again this year. But the clients we booked at the show seem to be really great couples, and the ones we’re meeting with from the show over the next couple of weeks are all in the category of ‘very strong’ leads. It helps that I did a better job this time around in communicating what my services actually are and being candid with how they compare to others. But actually, all my clients thus far this year seem like really great people, and we have gotten along quite well in our meetings. This is going to be a fun year!

We’ve got some minor repairs and cleaning up to do yet before we put this house on the market, but moving from here is something that would be good in many ways, as sad as it will make us to leave here. One of the other oddities in that upcoming move for us is that we’ve never move made a ’simple’ in-town move before. It’s always been from city to city. And with at least one wedding reception at the golf course that’s about a mile away from here, driving past here will be kind of sad when it happens, and of course I’ll miss just looking out the back windows and seeing the hawks. Nothing I can’t live with, of course, but still….{sigh} At least we can now move forward with finishing up this little bit of work (plus the damned water heater, now, of course) knowing that at least one serious (in my definition of that term) offer exists for the Spouse Unit’s (and thus our) future. I do believe we’ll be okay, and maybe even in the short term as well as the long term!

That’s really it as far as catching up with where I’m at. Please go browse my blogrolls here and over at the otherwhirled.

we are back from the frozen wastelands of slightly-north-of-here. despite being this far north (relative to the residences of many of my readers), this was our first “truly white” Christmas in several years. yeah, yeah, yeah…there’s been snow on the ground the last few years…snow like somebody went and opened a fifty-pound bag of flour over every square mile. this year, there were actually a few inches of sun-and-wind-skinned snow setting, and some appreciable drifts courtesy of the wind.

it was an early Christmas this year, thanks once again to the sisters’ conflicting work schedules. one of my brothers-in-law got half the family sick because of something he brought along with him after having gotten it from one of his kids. so our short, early Christmas rapidly became a care center for the stricken: my other brother-in-law, my son, and both of my parents-in-law. i knock on wood several times a day.

i am trying to pump out the blog transfer for the otherwhirled and synthaetica, but i have experienced a wordpress import problem that may ultimately require me to do the import directly from the database. in fact, i should probably just do that and scrub the support ticket. it’s been a while since i did something completely databasey, anyway.

and, for what it’s worth, i know this will eventually come up in searches for wordpress+'import & problem'which is by no means the point of this post. but in case that happens, i hope you read down to this to discover me saying “the wordpress import problem is probably somewhere in my php.ini, the default installation of which is an excellent example of too much information in the way of code-comments provided in the file.” because if it wouldn’t be such a butt-pain to read without all the comments, but my limited understanding of regular expressions keeps me from making that available in any sort of responsible, feasible time. besides which, i’m not really confident of the intrinsic, ongoing, and long-term benefit of seeing that file as just a bunch of settings with no explanations. heh. i’ll just have to sit down and read the whole damn thing one of these days, but….*yawn*….

anyway, we are back, except for #1 Daughter, who is continuing her annual stay with her grandparents, who always enjoy her company. she’ll be coming back on New Year’s Eve, i believe. and we are back, but will quite likely be moving—out of this house at a very likely minimum, and possibly even out of the state. it’s all rather hypothetical right now, but the bottom lines are fairly simple. the Spouse Unit is getting laid off where she works, and some of her best job opportunities could potentially lead us to “follow the money” to places as far apart as Santa Clara, CA to Colorado Springs, CO to Minneapolis, MN to somewhere in Florida. Colorado Springs would be our preferred area if our current location isn’t an option, although Minneapolis would put us closer to the Spouse Unit’s sisters.

but even that aside, the other bottom line is the fact that even after putting a lot of money down on this house when we moved here, the inherent limitations on how much i can make when working almost entirely alone coupled with the fact that companies out here do not come even close to compensating intelligent, well-educated females for what they’re actually worth is forcing us to consider selling this house and moving into town. None of us want to do that, but since we put so much down on the house (which was actually a very good idea on the time, just one that was based primarily on the expectation that it’d take the Spouse Unit about six months to get hired. instead, it took almost 18. and then her layoff comes at the bottom of the bell curve of my business cycle (not many people get married in the winter, and soccer’s not a good game when it’s less than 40 degrees. cold-weather injuries are a bitch).

so, it looks very strongly like we’re moving. we just have to figure out how not to make it an entirely bad thing for #1 Son and #1 Daughter. the photo is from our current front porch just this morning. several retouch methods, obviously. predictably, with the prospect of moving looming over us, i will be more inclined to document the views for what little time i have remaining.

congratulations to my father, by the way. it took the VA until just this past Monday to finally award him 50% disability with back-pay. it should have been at least 75%, but now that he has finally been awarded something, the paperwork, while considerable, is much easier to file. i’m glad you finally got something out of them, Dad. hang in there!

damn. i seriously didn’t mean for it to creep to nearly a month since i last posted. sorry ’bout that. needless to say (but i’ll say it anyway), it’s been busy hereabouts.

one of the cool things of that business has been that i am experiencing a lot of traffic at The Otherwhirled, and have a quick method of making posts there, so i average several bits of snarkery per day now. i will also be using that site again to participate in the Blogswarm Against Theocracy this July 1-4. The last one was a huge success for the first time out, so we’re all hoping to get our points across a little better.

we got several graduation photos from The Elder and Unknown, and she seems to be doing alright. i hope she’s not working herself too hard this summer. it’s hard to believe we’re only a few months away from being able to see her.

this weekend, after i get a wedding processed and uploaded, i am going to alter the format of this site a bit, annotate personal things as personal things, and then start using this site to document my studies and re-studies of certain metaphysical things and/or just general observations on reality. but i mentioned a long while back that i intended to split out the personal stuff, and i think it’s about time to do so.

relatedly (in terms of web things), i also have a new website design ready to go for ShadowMoon, which is itself a standalone Wordpress (this blog software) application, so i am still contemplating pulling this blog along with the otherwhirled and synthaetica (which also sorely needs input) onto their own domains on that same server. i’ve had these domains (dawnne.com, synthaetica.com, etc) for so long that the older i get, the sillier it seems to not use them.

i have a wedding here in town on the 22nd, then will be down in Des Moines from the 23rd-27th at the USYSA Region II Cup Tournament as a referee. still, obviously, never a dull moment. shortly after i get back, #1 Daughter will apparently have a new kitten. joyful. i presume, of course, that this blog will begin being one of those cutely annoying kitty-picture blogs. hoo-ah!

happy summers to you all. thanks for hanging with me.

#1 Daughter and #1 Son have been going through random bouts of knucklehead lately….not really sure what the cause is, to be honest. Probably, in some ways, it’s just spring-time, made all the prevalent with the late snow we had, and the rains since, which have unfortunately coincided with the weekends (of course). They’re both still doing great in TaeKwonDo, just randomly and adamantly deciding not to go. I got #1 Daughter to go today by offering her the choice of TaeKwonDo or room-cleaning. I hate having to do that! But I know she’ll have a blast once she’s there, so pretty much whatever method we have to use to get her there is ultimately okay.

I stayed home from TKD today because of my foot. Three weeks ago this weekend, playing soccer (which I know some of you would say I shouldn’t be doing in a competitive league at the age of 40), I made a great save, but I’ve been paying for it ever since. An opponent and I kicked the ball pretty much simultaneously, the short story being I won the ball, but I think my right foot lost the battle. It got bent backwards and underneath me, and I’m pretty sure I pulled the ligaments that raise my toes and possibly fractured some bones in there, too. Thanks to my dental bills, I haven’t taken it to a doctor, and also because it’s still functional, if tender. It really hasn’t impeded my ability to run refereeing, and I played last weekend without any major problems, too. But it’s a constant pain in the butt, let me tell ya!

Somewhat relatedly, I have my first USL/PDL assistant referee gig on May 20th (another reason why I didn’t go to a doctor and wind up with my foot in a sling or whatever). I’m stoked to be refereeing at that level, and the assessment I get on that game, assuming it’s positive, will be the first hurdle I need to cross in order to upgrade.

Yes, yes, if it keeps hurting this much, I will eventually see a doctor about it. But I really don’t want to go tromping around at people’s weddings with a big ol’ soft shoe thing with my toes sticking out of it, which I’m pretty confident I’ll wind up in.

We got a graduation announcement and letter from The Elder and Unknown, which was nice. I was amused that with the wording of such announcements, her mother and step-father have inadvertently formally invited me—us—to attend. The Elder and Unknown’s note was addressed to “(the Spouse-Unit’s first name) and Dad”, so I suppose I could be a bit of a jerk and respond, because she has technically opened the conversation. However, I’m going to refrain from doing so, despite the very strong desire to do so. Anyway, it sounds like she’s doing well and has simply been busy preparing for the end of school and working. Go figure! She’s also been having some email exchanges with #1 Son again, which he’s thoroughly enjoyed.

Well, I’ve got to finish up some client work then try to get outside and do some gardening. See you in about another week or so!

i guess things are going okay with The Elder and Unknown. beyond sending my mother some pix from her prom, we’ve not heard anything her. so, we assume that all is well (no news is good news, right?)

i had training today for refereeing in the United Soccer League/Premier Development League (the league which governs our local semi-pro team). #1 Son and i have had a good time refereeing this spring thus far, despite several rain-out dates (the most in Sioux Falls history to date, apparently). it looks like i may be able to use my USL/PDL assignments to finally move up a state-level referee grade. i am still ’suffering’ from the AYSO transfer of game experience and certification, but that was one thing i neglected to mention in writing about the USYSA conference at the beginning of March: i was able to sit down with the USSF national referee coordinator and explain what happened with my transfer (she balked at my being submitted to USL/PDL last year because i was an unknown). the end result being that there is now a strong likelihood that other AYSO referees who transfer in without AYSO national certification but with several hundred games on record will at least be considered eligible for USSF Grade 7 instead of Grade 8 (the USSF grades descend in precedence), based on training comportment and test scores, instead of forced into Grade 8 no matter what.

why the hell my life is spent helping the folks who come after me, instead of helping myself, i’ll never understand….

the Spouse-Unit and #1 Daughter are up at Big Stone Lake this weekend, and #1 Son and i have basically been left to ourselves. unfortunately, i’m getting responsible in my old age and not just watching sports and drinking beer all afternoon. he has even agreed, amicably no less, to spend some time cleaning up his mess of a room. yeah, we’ll see how long that holds up.

the reason why i’m not posting much (and while more gets posted to the otherwhirled, my throughput is down over there as well) is because i have come to like the wordpress blog system so much, and the overall format to blog design in general, that i am working on completely redesigning shadowmoon.com. we’ll be using a custom template from milo317 and today, i am working on retroactive entries for the main blog there, which will be used to announce engagements, weddings, fine art releases, and the like. the rest of the site will be using standard pages, which are offered in many blog formats, but not often used. milo is working some specialized navigation for that. this is the first time in fourteen years that i’ve handed the site design over to someone else. scary, huh? milo’s work is impressive, however, and i am confident we’ll have a good fit.

lastly, i will be going through this blog and doing some name-removal and slight editing, then getting it registered with some of the national and international social bookmarking systems. while i will continue to have personal stuff interjected here, the focus of this is going to turn to the subjects of raising children outside of the Church in a fairly conservative region, and to the several sides of the adoption process with which i am familiar. relatedly, all the blogs (otherwhirled, synthaetica, and this one) may eventually move to hosting under the new server setup for shadowmoon.com. if that happens, this blog will become dawnne.com, synthaetica will become synthaetica.com, .net, and .org, and i will finally begin moving that domain towards the branding we have long envisioned for digographic products. i’m not sure what of my domains would be appropriate for the otherwhirled, but i’ll figure something out.

all right, enough of all that. get back to your weekends.

one of the nice things about sunrise and sunset photos is that you’re never really sure which is which unless the photographer tells you or you happen to know the scene. but of course, since i’m not much of an east-coaster, i’m sure you can figure this one out. the title of it kind of helps, too, i guess.

this happened basically by accident. i was shooting the sun in and out of clouds, and while i was tracking the bird, the sun came fully into a gap, and whoosh, there was a lot of red light. luckily, i had the aperture squeezed tight and no permanent damage was done to the sensor. it was shot on my original D100 with my 80-400mm VR at 175mm (=262mm for 35mm comparison) in mid-January, 2004.

the mini-trips we took up and down the California coast while we lived in Camarillo are now a fond memory. at the time, it was sometimes a pain in the butt to do so much driving over a weekend, but now they are all treasured moments. if you’re out in Californa, please go stick your toes in the water for me.

much missed, much missed. south dakota has its own beauty, but it’s of a far different nature than the ever-evolving shore. if home is where the heart is, then i am never home.

and yet, of course, always home. i might miss Cali, but i don’t miss the rat-race, the grad students underselling weddings, the thump-thump-thump of passing cars in the night (yo!), the traffic, the…..