What a difference five months makes.

Which isn't to say that boston is exactly ooozing with the best weather ever: quite the contrary - it's raining and I can still see my breathe. But at least my nipples didn't freeze and fall off the moment I stepped out of the baggage claim area, like they did last January. Crappy weather, nonetheless.

This is the weekend of Andy's insanity, also known as the man is crazy enough to have four dogs in his house and think this is a good idea. We already had a crush on him. It may have just turned into love.

I hope he takes pictures.

Kris and I are here in Boston for his cousin's wedding. Mike P was Kris' best man at our wedding three years ago to the week. It'll be fun seeing Kris in a tux again, as part of the bridal (groomal? wedding?) party. He's so dashing when he's dressed like Bond James Bond.

My trip here is short. Since I'm not in the bridal-groomal-wedding party, I didn't have to be here in Boston early, so I didn't take the insane red-eye that Kris took. I hate red-eyes. Unlike Kris, I am unable to sleep well on planes, and red-eyes are merely on way tickets to migrainestonfieldville.

Though flying without Kris sucks, too. I figure if I'm going to die in a plane crash, I want Kris' hand in mine, and his shouting, "Well, it's been a wild ride, babe! And a good life! I love you!"

Not that I'd be shouting anything but "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Well, maybe I'd be quoting one of my favorite X-Factor quotes: "What a stupid way to die."

So, yeah. Bob and Lil should be here soon to pick me up. Boston, here I am again.

I'm leaving for boston in 45 minutes. Heather will be staying at our house for the weekend, up from Santa Barbara (she loves us, just can't stay away), possibly watching the dogs, maybe not. Andy said he may take them to his house and keep them, so heather may be off the hook. Maybe I should have asked he to water the gardens... eh.

My flight is at 7:00 am. What in heaven's name possessed me in my moment of ticket buying, I'll probably never know, but flight earlier than 10:00 am just do not work well for me.

Especially from SFO.

I figured for a 7:00 am flight, I'd want to be at the airport at 6:00 am, meaning I'd have to leave long term parking at 5:30 am, meaning I'd have to arrive at long term parking at 5:20 am, meaning I'd have to leave the house before 4:45 am, meaning I'd have to be awake by 4:30 am. Assuming I showered and packed and planned well the night before.

Planning well always means staying up until 1:30 am. I fell asleep around 1:30 am, and woke up at 4:30 am, actually made it out of bed at 4:35 am and was out of the house by 4:46 am. And there's where my planning fell apart.

My drive took about thirty minutes. Long term parking was easy to find and well signed, complete with a guy in a golf cart telling me where I could find a parking space on the second level. The shuttle was waiting at the bottom of the parking structure, so from parking to terminal was less than fifteen minutes. Checking in my bag and security took less than half an hour.

So, rather than arriving at the gate at 6:30 to walk straight onto the plane, sit down and pass out, I'm here in the terminal waiting, and hour and fifteen minutes early. Kris would be so proud of my early arrival time.

Me? I'm just tired.

My ratio of good pictures to bad pictures is about one to six. I need to have seven photos taken for one good one of me, and that's when I'm actually trying and smiling and stuff.

Mike didn't take seven photos of me. He took one. And I look retarded.

It's so bad, I, of course, had to share.

Well, it's all official and all. I have graduated and am now a Master Gardener.

I now receive a HUGE discount on gardening and farm care books. Guess where my paychecks are going now?

Oh, hi, Kris. They're going to the house. No, really. The house.

On occasion, I'll skim various job posting sites, looking to see the demand for people with my skill sets. I do this for several reasons: to see if I'm maintaining my skill sets, to check if others looking for the same people we're looking for, to know if I needed to find a job quickly I could. In the end, I glance at the various sites out of curiosity and little more.

I generally recall very few of the posts after I look at them. They mean little other than the casual glancing interest.

Every once in a while, however, I find one that just cracks me up. Today's job posting was for a Drupal developer to work on a hot hot hot start up with a group of dynamic people all striving to make this the biggest blah blah blah, the next myspace or flickr, or google or something. They lost me at "the next" part. Who wants to copy what someone else has done? Do something interesting.

I clicked through anyway, to see who these dynamic people at this hot hot start were. In my mind, web startups are full of programmers and designers and testers, people who can do, get things done and make progress. This company, however had a "Co-founder, Chairman, & Interim CEO," a "President & COO," a CTO, a "Co-Founder & Vice President of Business Development," a "Social Interaction Designer," and a "Consulting Designer" on the team page of their website. I read the descriptions, too. They went something like,

CEO: I tell you what to do

President: I also tell you what to do

CTO: I used to know what to do, but I don't any more. I just tell you what to do

VP: I'm trying to get us rich by begging for money. I tell you what to do.

Designer 1: I'm a Web 2.0 consultant. I just get paid. Oh, and tell you what to do.

Designer 2: I'm a developer. I'm drowning here. Help me. They keep telling me what to do.

I couldn't imagine taking on this job without like 50% of the equity of the company. Guaranteed the only person doing any work is the Drupal person they hire into the company, and it looks like a complete no win situation to me.

Thankfully, I managed to get a laugh out of the posting.