Work / Life Balance? What?

Ugh... This week has been crazy with work! There's a conference that pertains to me going on in Bangalore, India this week, but our travel budget has been cut, so I'm attending via con call from home. Unfortunately, when you're still in town, that means that work here doesn't stop. Needless to say, working 16+ hours a day gets old really quickly! Kara's a real sweetheart about the whole deal, but she's finding out very quickly how cranky I get after only 2 - 3 hours of sleep a night. LOL! At least I'm still state-side this week rather than being in India or Japan. That's gotta count for something, right?

Family Gathering

So... this weekend was Kara's first trip to Houston to meet the Cupitts. We stayed Friday night at Brandon and Beth's place and spent the first part of the morning playing with Will and Abby. Will is now known as Kara's "Itty Bitty Boyfriend". He's gonna be a lady killer someday!! On Saturday afternoon, we went over to Beth's new loft/office space in d-town H-town. It's a fantastic place!! Kara is in love. I'm gonna have to fight off the loft bug in her now... LOL!! Actually, we've talked for about the past year about going in on a loft or small apartment downtown. There's definitely still a possibility to make that a reality at some point.

Saturday evening, we went over to Sean and Amy's place and had dinner with all the kids. Then, we got to hang out with Stephen and Joshua. They are so cute!!! Some people in the family have dubbed Stephen as the "Felix Unger" of the family. He's very rule-dedicated and expects everything to be a very certain way. But he's the cutest Felix I can imagine. He ran around for part of the night with a bottle opener that plays the "Eyes of Texas" - Sean and I gave him a bottle cap that he used to complete the circuit. I'm sure he wore out the battery! Then, Joshua(aka Baby Peanut) has the biggest smile in the world! I swear he smiles from ear to ear!

Overall, I think the trip went very well. We didn't get to hang out with Mom and Dad at lunch because Kara started feeling ill and we had to get on home... but everything with the kids seems to have gone off very well!! YAY!

Long time - second blog

Hey guys! Sorry I didn't follow through on my promises with becoming a blog-aholic. However, I wanted to write one in here and let you all know what's going on in my life.

So... where to start? On Sunday, I'm going to Panama for a week and then to Brazil for a week - both for work, of course. I enjoy the travel, but MAN things always seem to get backed up here at home whenever I'm gone for that long. I'll meet in Brenham on Saturday to drop Luka off with him - that's a HUGE help to have Mom and Dad watch him while I'm out of town. I can't even imagine how much money I would have spent on doggie daycare!

One of my neighbors will be taking care of Koshka. Of course, there's not much to do with a cat who doesn't even use a litter box!

For those of you who know me pretty well, you'll know who Kara is. We've had an on-again, off-again relationship for almost 7 months. Well, it has been more off than on, but that's a different story... Kara's moving to Arkansas during my deployment overseas, so I'm a little bummed about that, but I think it'll be a good move for both her and me. The distance will either make the heart grow fonder, or will let us move on with our own lives.

First post - YAY!!

This is kind of a boring first post, but I'm just getting started on this, so cut me some slack. Last night we had an emergency software launch, so I was up at the office until close to 3 AM. Follow that up with a 7:30 AM conference call and a full day of work, and you end up with one tired guy!! Today, I got to have a meeting with State Rep Mark Strama and State Sen Kirk Watson. I pretty much unanimously disagree with their politics - particularly around social welfare - but I'm part of my employer's PAC and I wanted to make sure that my employer's interests are being well-represented. You see, the conventional logic is that "if my employer is happy, the employees are happy". I'm not 100% sure it works that way, but heck - we'll see.

Britten did the cutest thing this morning! I had her helping me pick out clothes for the day, and she picked out my jeans and one of my "western" shirts (my baby loves me for my pearl snaps), and then she goes "Daddy, do you have your cowboy hat?" I said, "Yeah, I do. Why?" Britten answered with "Well, you have to wear it because it's part of the outfit!!" I didn't have the heart to tell her that there was no way I was gonna wear a cowboy hat around inside all day!

Anyway, just thought that was cute, and in keeping with both of my sis-in-laws, I figured I couldn't go through a single post without mentioning something about the young-un.

Maybe when I get better at this, I'll graduate to posting pictures and stuff. For now, this is all you're gonna get. Mwah, hah, hah, hah!!!