Deadlines and Dinners

I made my deadline! Huzzah! Despite the fever earlier this week, I succeeded by Friday in making an entire distributed array of computers all join the same NT-2000 domain with just a few scant details. It does everything-- time synchronization, distributed name resolution, distributed NIS control, and every box in the array gets its unique Kerberos ticket and NT-4 key. Cool.

I'm sure there a million bugs in it.

I have the children all to myself this weekend. Omaha is out gallivanting with friends, blissfully-- that woman works herself far too hard for her own good. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't rain-- they could easily spend all day at the park if I let 'em (and they'll let me read a book, so long as I pack a book and a cell phone) and in the evening I can stun them with a movie. Right now they're watching the obscure Miyazaki animation Panda Go Panda, about a young orphan girl who is adopted by a panda family and all manner of hilarity ensues. Very cartoony, absolutely sweet, very positive on the values chart, all manner of parent-approved messages delivered with the most velvet of otoscopic implements.

Dinner was hamburgers packed with all manner of diced goodness, with an egg and some breadcrumbs for a binder. I also tried to make rutabega frites and learned an important lesson. Most root vegetables have more sugar than potatoes, so you have to oil them well. I tried Omaha's trick of putting paprika on them for a slight taste addition. A thin drip of oil carried the paprika off the flat baking sheet, where it fell onto the floor of the oven and immediately turned into something vaguely akin to tear gas. A white grogram of smoke hovered above my kitchen. I opened the windows and everyone retreated downstairs.

But they tasted good anyway.

I really don't know what I'm going to do with the kids, trapped in the house as we are. I'm really not going to be driving in this rain. I had a lot of yardwork to do, too, which the kids are always really quite helpful with-- pulling weeds, watering the plants (not that they need it now!), and stuff like that.

( A Friday Five of Ancient Days )

( The Current Friday Five. )

Oh, Great...

Yamaarashi-chan informs me that her neck hurts, she feels very tired, she's not at all hungry, and now I learn that she has a fever.

It's only 99.2 right now. But she has this... this node on the side of her neck. She's always had it-- her physician said it's no big deal-- but now it's prominent and she says it hurts when she moves.

Why does it always seem like I'm the only one dealing with her medical emergencies?

And now I know why, despite everything the local government is trying, it will never get my mercury thermometer until they pry it from my cold, dead hand. Unlike some alternatives, the damn thing doesn't need new batteries at ten freakin' PM at night!