Exhale and inhale.

Crazy days in the life and times of phong.

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There's finally a Romano's Macaroni Grill in our area. Ok, so it's like in Lynnwood at the Alderwood Mall. Only a few dozen miles away from home. Hey, at least there's finally one in the "Seattle area".

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Funny, I always make "group appts" with my kids. It happens with haircuts (you know, my previously mentioned visits to Mrs. Scissorshands). This year, it also happened with our optometrist. According to the doctor's charts, I haven't had a change in my contact lenses for 5 years. My goodness, where does the time go? Anywho, at the group appt, my youngest decided that he's had enough of his glasses and wanted to move on to contact lenses. Aiyah! Since he was ready to take this big step from glasses to contacts, doctor introduced us to an alternative to conventional hard or soft lenses...a relatively new technology called "Corneal Refractive Therapy", where a special set of contact lenses are used on an overnight basis, and in the morning they're removed for the rest of the day. Supposedly, the cornea is shaped overnight to allow for 20-20 vision throughout the day. (I sure wished this was around when I was younger) (I'm scared of lasik, btw) Anywho again, we spent a few days investigating this "CRT" alternative and decided to go for it. In the end, I didn't want my child to go through the daily fun of wearing contacts (wind, dirt in the eyes, chance of them popping out in gym class, etc). This overnight thing seemed like a wonderful idea. It had better work.

As it turns out, the Paragon CRT program has been fantastic. He started on Friday night, and by Monday he could go to school (sans glasses) with near perfect vision. After 1 week, his right eye is 20-25 and his left eye is 20-50. Doctor is ordering a new pair, this time with a slightly higher power adjustment to the left contact to get that one to 20-20. Amazing. I'm really impressed.

BTW, the oldest decided to stick with glasses. But after watching his little brother go about his nightly ritual and subsequent glasses-less day, he's thinking of doing the same next year. (the oldest has always been less adventurous)

You don't want to know what these CRT contacts cost me. No, my insurance doesn't cover them.

Well, they're significantly less than orthodontia.

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I quietly passed my 4 year anniversary here at my current employer. Not sure if I'll make it to 5, considering how things have been going the past few months.

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On Halloween, we had just over 100 trick-or-treaters visiting the house. Slightly below average, but a pretty good turnout considering it was raining buckets that evening.

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This death march I've been on is very close to coming to closure. It's been quite a difficult road these past few weeks, sapping most of my strength and much of my remaining sanity.

As I've said before, work has been killing me. Family life at home has unfortunately suffered as well. My health has gone a bit downhill, but not irreversible. I am still looking for that "balance" in my life. Spare time these days has been infrequent.

This project that I've been working on is "this close" [fingers together] to completion. It's been very difficult dealing with the (I'm convinced) psychotic senior leadership based in Atlanta. To me, and to practically every person I work with, those folks in Atlanta are total idiots. Retarded. Common sense and logic do not apply to those people. I'm convinced that I have to find something else. Soon.

Bossman is equally frustrated. He has been getting squashed on a regular basis, and it's really wearing him down. The tiredness is clearly visible, and he's normally one of the most optimistic persons I know. The most recent setback has been the "loaning out" of 4 of his employees to work for an as-yet unamed manager based in Atlanta. Just another slap in the face.

One of those "loaned out" employees is me. I'm not very happy about it. I've now actively started looking for work in a couple of different divisions within the company. We'll see how it goes.

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I've actually started to include stuff on my LinkedIn page. Not desperate yet...just adding some additional facts and details. I hate to think that I might have to go look for another job.