The past couple weeks have been extremely hectic at home and at work.
At work, I'm working on a fast-paced 120-day project to evaluate an ERP suite to replace my company's core financial systems. Pretty important stuff. As one of key technical leads, my job at the moment is to see that the functional users who have been tasked with gathering requirements actually bring back requirements, not wish-list items or tasks. For the unfamiliar, a requirements states 'What' is needed and is traceable back to a regulation, contractual requirement, a business need, etc. If that 'requirements' is a 'How', then it is a task. If it can't be traced back to one of the items above, it is a wish. My job, therefore, is to be the requirements police as my boss states it. I actually prefer requirements bitch, but he doesn't feel others in the company will see the humor in that like I do.
At home, life has been filled with tutoring my son with his reading comprehension, attempting to fix our home computer, and dealing with a dead refrigerator.
Dash has been having trouble with his reading comprehension. I've talked to several tutors, but the only one that is taking students at this point is one I don't feel too comfortable with. There is only one quarter left to the school year. I've gone to an educational store and purchased several practice books for him. I also found a
book that was recommended by several educational websites on a technique to improve your child's reading comprehension. We're working through all this now. Dash is a very smart kid. I think his problem is he picks up on certain details and misses the main idea. He's a good 'think outside of the box' kind of guy, which will help him tremendously later in life. But in the 4th grade, the teachers want conventional thinkers.
Outlook Express has been misbehaving on our home computer. Something happened to cause an error about the Address book getting deleted. I originally thought it was a virus. I spent all last Sunday (about 6 hours!!) rebuilding the computer, which seemed to fix the issue. Then, Monday night, Dancer told me that the error has come back. With a little investigation on the internet, I saw that the possible cause is a patch from Microsoft. I've tried several things to fix the issue, but the problem remains. I'm not a happy camper!!
Tuesday night after failing to fix the computer (I did not rebuild it yet again), one of the kids mentions that the milk in the refrigerator is warm. Sure enough, it doesn't feel as cold as normal. I cranked up the setting, thinking that the kids have just been in there too much or left the door slightly ajar. Wednesday evening, it was still warm so I pulled the beast out from the wall and vacuumed the coils. That didn't do the trick, so Thursday Ed and I spent the evening shopping for a new refrigerator. Since we'll be gone next week, we decided to wait until today to order the new one. A friend loaned us a small, dorm-size refrigerator for milk and eggs. That'll get us through until next Saturday.
The kids are on Spring Break for the next week. We're going to go to DC and explore the museums and monuments. I'm excited. Dash and Dancer are also, but VBGirl is complaining that it isn't a beach. I plan on making major progress on Valpuri, which
I'm doing as a knit-along with a friend from Ravelry. Here's my starting photos:
Valpuri ribbing 
Valpuri swatch
