Does Bethany Hall Sleep?

June 1, 2009

Wow!!! What a day!

Deadlines are killers when you are trying to balance family, work, school and a social life. For so long I have focused on work and school while letting the family and social life slip to the rear. Bad! Bad! Bad!

So, I have decided sleep is for the weak. Last night, I was working at my wonderful job and I do mean wonderful because it allows my brain to do what it loves, mapping, solving problems, and data management. I know I am a geek but a least I have fun and according to my husband, at times, enjoying being at work more than being at home. Don't let him fool you because he loves his job, too! He gets paid to take computers apart and put them back together. Life is good when two people do what they love for a living. Our kids think we save the World on a daily basis because we enjoy going to work. Yes, we are raising little geeks, too.

Oh well, back to why I was still at work at 2 am on a Monday morning. My boss had given me a whale of an assignment to finish before 8 am this morning. The Property Assessor's Office needed a webmap to reflect the sales data for all of Rutherford County from the beginning of time until now. We had been working on the project for several weeks and thought we had it nailed down and finished until Friday afternoon at 4 pm. I discovered an error in my data that made me go hmmmm. Barbara and I began to troubleshoot the data while Chris waited and watched us launch into a sea of database tables. He does at times get a little frustrated with me because once I start something I cannot put it away until I have finished it. So, he got bored with us and our conversation about what table goes where in Access 2007 and ArcGIS and he headed off to Liquid Smoke for some cold beverages.

After an eternity, I wandered over to LS to pick him up for dinner. To my surprise, I ran into another history graduate student and started up a conversation. Lydia and I began chatting about the history lecture that was to take place in the historic Rutherford Courthouse that evening. I could hear Chris groaning under his breath as I expressed interest in attending the lecture on America's Perception on Slavery and the South. Chris is not a history guy and does well to put up with my endless conversations on past events and lessons failed to be learned from the past by current generations. He was also hungry and was wanting to go to Best Buy and purchase a new DVR because ours had died during a power outage earlier in the week. After bribing him with the promise of cold pizza and a late dinner, he decided he could sit through another boring lecture since he had a couple of beers in him and it might not be so bad with a snack. Off we go with new plan back to the Courthouse with a new plan!

After riding upstairs in the elevator and rounding the corner to go into the break room, which is only paritioned off from the Rutherford County Courthouse's courtroom by a glass wall, everyone could see us taking stock of the fridge. Chris quickly discovered the cold pizza I promised him was gone and we were being a little loud. We retreated to the elevator and went upstairs to the balcony in order to listen to the remaining remarks of Dr. Spencer Crews. What a geeky way to spend and evening without children!

Oh well, Chris did get his new DVR and sat up most of the evening watching TV. While I saved created and troubleshoot property assessor data. It was so much fun!

So, if you are curious, no, I do not sleep and as the blog continues I hope to entertain and amuse you. Enjoy and remember, I'm probably awake or trying to convince a little person to go to sleep.