can you hear the sleigh bells ring... already?

where did November go? i must have dreamed it away. can't believe it's December already! it's the office holiday party tomorrow night and i was just thinking to myself not long ago when they issued the invite... bah! it's still a month away! this is how you turn old and crusty and wonder where all your youth went.

Friday is my first holiday party at X* and next weekend is the one for edward's company... eee, so weird - it's our first mutual public function together since the wedding and we merged our lives in Toronto. feels mighty strange. hehe, did all of you married people feel this way, or is it just us and our funny lifestyle apart for so long?

work is still blah... was stressfull this week coz i'm preparing for a major project audit by the Ministry higher-ups. like i don't have enough to deal with as it is trying to get the next release out before Christmas. monday is going to be hell-on-fire for me, the interrogation is happening locked in a room for 5 hours and no escape route... ;-p yuck. okay, it's probably not as bad as it sounds, but when you have to try and explain a pragmatic delivery approach to a bunch of stuffy CIOs who have likely not delivered anything real in the last 15 years, it's a little frustrating to say the least. kinda like donald duck trying to converse with mickey mouse.

hope i get to relax this weekend - will try not to think too much about horrid monday coming up. i'm already sporting a couple extra "banners of youth" on my face due to recent stress levels. why can't i be burying my nose in some MIT textbooks instead of tackling the real world? (mini, i wish i were in your shoes, hahahaha...)

happy thanksgiving!

wow, how time flies... feels like i've not blogged in a while and i have no good excuse except that i've been meaningfully distracted. things have really picked up at work and the stress level with it. the project is going well, and i'm starting to really get entrenched - which is a good thing. but the work is never-ending as always... we just have too much to cover, and not enough resources to do it with. yeah yeah, what else is new, right?

it's thanksgiving over in the US, so happy holidays to all my friends over the border! i envy you guys the time off, feels like forever since we had a break for the Canadian thanksgiving back in October. oooh, Black Friday, i wanna go shopping already!!! drop your comments here and tell me all the good hauls you got... ;-)

this is not meant to be a work blog, but since a lot of you guys reading this know me from a previous work life or two... i'll go into a little detail here. i'm now managing a large software development project for a provincial government health system - replacing a legacy DOS system with a brand spanking new web-based version. the business need for it is critical, as this system supports the day-to-day operation of healthcare facilities across the province. no application, no clients get served.... everyone is watching this go-live with bated breath. to add to the fun, my deployment environment is changing as we speak, and the end-users are finding themselves in a restructured organization so we have to deal with merged groups across physical and logical lines come Jan 1. aaargh! 42 facilities are now becoming managed as 14 big ones, with merged staff, new executive directors and lots of people questioning how and where they're going to work come Day 1 of the new structure. this poses big issues for us too, in terms of who my project goes to for validation of business requirements and planning the deployment. nobody really wants to listen to us right now, because they're all not even sure what their job will be after the next few months.

no pressure, right? hahaha... it's scary, but it's good schtuff. the project challenges here run the gamut - resource issues, dwindling timelines, team dynamics, conflict galore, politically charged agendas, you name it, i can probably point it out. whew! but, with all the madness going on, i've caught glimpses of an eerie serenity about the whole thing. we've managed to get things moving and still accomplish work despite it all. and the team seems to like me. so far. (nyak nyak nyak... wait till i start cracking the whip!) it's a big team and that's part of the challenge, because there's 20 of them and only 1 of me. and we're growing. i'll be hiring or stealing another 4 or 5 developers before the end of the year. and maybe another BA or two.

anyways, that's what i've been dealing with this whole month, just stabilizing the project and ensuring we continue to meet milestones and deal with change as it happens. it's an exhausting job, but someone's gotta do it, and it might as well be me :-)

happy turkey day... i'll tell you guys more next time.

the radio is back on...

sorry for being MIA for so long... guess it's time to finally break radio silence. been absolutely covered up in work (a good thing), and catching up on sleep (another good thing)... but here comes the bad thing: the condo hunt is dwindling down to a miserable trickle of nothing. totally wasted our time with no results to show for all the house hunting we did. we've not found anything we wanted to make an offer for, the weather is getting to near freezing, so there's a dearth of new condos on the market, guess all the sellers are hibernating up in saskatoon or something. wow, you mean winter comes early here?

i'm getting disheartened, guess we're going to have to wait it out till spring. at least now we've gotten used to the commute, traffic's not REALLY that bad if you compare what others have to deal with. and edward drives so i can just loll around the passenger seat in a hazy half-conscious state every morning until we get there. we now find the commute survivable but i still can't wait to live downtown though!

oh well, we'll live. i want to make a good choice, not just an impulse buy so i think we're making the intelligent decision to hold out for now... keeping my fingers crossed till spring comes! in the meantime, there's lots to keep me busy in the office, and a big milestone come January, so i guess i know where i'll be spending my winter! i'm managing a pretty large development project right now (people who've worked with me before: it's almost on the scale of MARS functionality...) so there's a lot of pressure to meet development deadlines, and they keep adding team members i have to corrall. current count is at 18 and looks like the team will continue to grow as we pick up momentum. the work is interesting though, and the challenges stretch me leaps and bounds beyond my previous job... so june is a happy PM for now.

... there's supposed to be possible snow tomorrow, although i don't think it's really that cold enough. we had a hailstorm a couple weeks ago, but no real snow materialized after that. it's been really nice outside this week, but don't think the good weather is not going to last. why do i get the feeling it's a portent of frigid weather to follow? brrr....