March Madness

It’s been two weeks since mom passed; one week since the twins’ birthday, and one week of full-time employment at OSU. Bittersweet, to say the least.

It’s still weird to think that my mom is gone. The tears stopped after the funeral last week; but I don’t think I’m done mourning. I don’t know that I ever will be, truly. There was so much I was looking forward to sharing with her; to learning from her.

Dad purchased an airline ticket for Kyle, so that he could join us for the funeral mass. It was wonderful to see him again, and to introduce him to my (and his!) family. I know mom would have been delighted to meet him. The circumstances of his visit were painful, and he was only here for two nights, but I think he had an overall decent time, and seemed to truly enjoy meeting everyone. I mis-read his itinerary, so we missed his original flight home. I did not enjoy making the phone call to his mom to explain what had happened; but we got it squared away and he made it home only two hours later than originally scheduled.

The twins birthday party was small last week – just family – but they seemed to enjoy themselves. It gave them something on which to focus, which helped them bounce back to their usual selves. We scheduled a swimming party plus sleepover for the twins at a local hotel for the weekend after their birthday (which is where I am as I compose this), and they each invited one friend. We did the same thing last year, and it was a huge success: the kids have fun swimming, then we eat some junk food and watch television until bed time. No mess for Carina or I to clean up. Everyone wins!

My week at OSU has been a whirlwind of introductions to people and systems. There are three of us directly responsible for computing and technology support for the department. The boss is also new (six months) to his job, and is in charge of overall policy, high-level items, and systems infrastructure. We’re building a new facility on campus, so much of his time is occupied with plans and proposals for new networking equipment. The other fellow is largely in charge of the student labs. And I’m mostly responsible for faculty and grad student support. I’ll also eventually be handling the department website, but that’s a significantly lower priority.

I feel positive that I started the week with some moderate success. One of the professors is migrating away from some aged SGI machines to new GNU/Linux boxes. He was having some niggling NFS issues as a result of his transition, and I was able to nail those down for him. I’ll be helping him to migrate his remaining machines and services some time in the future.

I’m excited to be working at OSU. There’s a lot to do, obviously, but there are also a lot of fantastic benefits. Carina and I joined the “gym” at OSU, which gives us access to all the weight rooms, the pools, and the climbing wall! Even better, we can take the twins with us during “family hours” at no extra charge. We took Tyler to the climbing wall this morning, and spent about two hours there (Tayler was selling Girl Scout cookies with her troop). I’m really looking forward to improving my health.