stress levels are declining

The past few days have been very hectic, with two out-of-town guests arriving, a big dinner party Tuesday night, and a construction project in the yard that went terribly wrong last Friday.

The crew is here today, and they claim they will finish before they quit for the day. They have a lot of stone pavers to lay, and the sky is darkening. One hour into the project, last Friday, they tore up the electrical line which, we emphasized, is the one thing they must NOT do. It took until late yesterday to get that fixed, so that things could resume.

Also, work has been very busy. Just when I had thought I had put all projects to bed for two weeks, I got hit with a last-minute request from a client, that necessitated connecting their Access database with a MySQL database over the internet, and applying its data (customers and orders) to the Access tables. Naturally, the MySQL database was still under construction, as its developer was frantically applying last-minute changes, prior to going live TOMORROW!

Unfortunately, several design issues which affect my stuff were still in flux, up until 30 minutes ago. Yesterday, we were both working against his database at the same time, which was horrifying. He agreed to freeze his design at this point. I may have to do some work on this next week, at the beach, but I hope not too much.

My piece doesn't have to be ready until mid-August, so I have a little breathing space. Still, it was a shock to have this come up this week, just when I thought I could relax.

We leave for a week in Manzanita tomorrow morning. Then, we're back in Portland for a day or so, to take the guests to the airport, then we leave for a week at Log Cabin resort, where we last stayed about 10 years ago, when the boys were little.

Still much to do in the next 24 hours, but vacation is near.