Sunday, December 10, 2006

Giving myself a holiday gift - and it's not free time

First of all, in honor of the Fox News War On Christmas, I am substituting the word "holiday" wherever possible. Apologies in advance.

That said, I treated myself to an early holiday gift that just arrived this week - a particularly slick Woot deal (a 19" LCD with good specs for $105 after a $100 rebate). It looks spiffy so far. That was my big indulgence.

That and the possibility of getting a TiVo Series 3 for the family as the "house" present. TiVo remains the only gadget I've imposed on the house that my wife endorses completely, and David has learned to operate our Series 2 even though he can't read yet. He also knows how to operate the DVD player and takes care of all the tech details for his babysitters.

The last couple of days have been tough - Jane had a corporate muckety-muck visit sprung on her literally at the last second, and she's had to spend her last three days (including today, normally her day off) making sure all the stores on the visit are spic-and-span so as to suck up properly. It's total BS - if these higher-ups would rather see tidy counters than big sales numbers then they're being irresponsible to the shareholders and should all be canned. And my poor wife is completely screwed by this whim since she has to deal with it all, miss her weekend days off (her usual days off are Sunday and Monday, and she's stuck for both of them). David's been more irritated than me over the whole thing - and Jane's so frantic over it that she's saving the irritation for later.

The kicker is that work at my place has gotten busy to the point that I'm routinely working most evenings just to play catch-up. But I try to put it aside as best as I can once I finally arrive home each day until David goes to bed. It doesn't always work out that way, but I try. And so does Jane.

This is the downside of being 2-career parents. The only thing I can say is that at least it's all mine in my case.

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