Ballgames, Birthdays, and...Work

This week has just been all kinds of crazy. On Monday I was at work from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm, which is about 2 1/2 hours too long. However, the inspectors for the joint review were coming on Tuesday morning, so all the i's had to be dotted and the t's had to be crossed. Despite being at work for eleven hours, I still had to finish up a couple things on Tuesday morning, and subsequently woke up in a panic at 2:40 am.

I was back at work at 6:45 am, and the inspectors got there around 8:30. I managed to get everything I needed to finished, and the morning went swimmingly. It was in the afternoon that things started to get rocky. Things were looking grim for a while (none of which was entirely my fault, since it stemmed from stuff that happened before I worked at the company, but I still felt responsible), but in the end everything worked out. It was weird--after things started to get scary, I actually got more calm. It was kind of like, okay, the bad stuff is actually happening, and it's not really as bad as what I imagined in my head. This is a phenomenon that my parents should recognize from every single night-before-the-first-day-of-school I had growing up. Despite being pretty much a straight-A student through elementary and high school, I always managed to convince myself that I was going to flunk out on the very first day. Before we had any homework, or quizzes, or exams. Have I mentioned I have issues?

I finally left work at 4:20 on Tuesday afternoon, and headed down to Chicago for the Cubs game. Naturally, since it's been in the upper sixties or higher for the last two weeks, the night I had tickets it was 39 degrees at gametime. Delightful. Fortunately, Karen and I brought blankets, so we didn't suffer too much. It was actually a really good game, with the Cubs winning 3-1, and it lasted less than 2 1/2 hours, which was nice, given the cold. I was able to find a parking spot less than a block from the ballpark (hooray for going to the game with a Chicago resident who can provide me with a guest parking permit), and I made it home before 11 pm.

Things have definitely been looking up since the end of the joint review. For one thing, my eyelid stopped twitching. My boss called me into his office on Wednesday afternoon. Incidentally, no matter how well things are going at my job, there's something ominous about the words "I need to talk to you." Anyway, it turned out that due to all the hard work I've been putting in, my boss (and his boss, who is the director of operations) decided to get me an "appreciation gift." I almost fell off my chair. This never would have happened at my old job. So, it looks like I'm going to be getting a pair of Cubs tickets. Because, you know, eleven games this summer just wasn't going to be enough. It's totally unnecessary for them to do this, but I have to admit, it feels really, really good.

Last night we celebrated yet another birthday at People Night, this time for Tommy, who just turned three.



All of the kids were in full-on cute mode. This picture of Tommy's older sister Taylor just cracks me up. She's almost five, and quite precocious.



And, miracle of miracles, we got four children under the age of five to look at the camera at the same time.