Update for the Rhino Lovers

Just a general update for the Rhino lovers amongst you - you know who you are.

The Home Front

Had the 11th wedding anniversary with the HLDW last night ... a splendid time was had by all. The HLDW certainly appreciated the gift of the 2-hour massage (female masseuse - I checked) and the mani/pedi session. We had a great Mexican food dinner at a little hole in the wall that has been voted tops in Atlanta for oh, like a decade or something. Then we met up with my chef buddy and his wife - who happen to share our anniversary date - at another hole in the wall for drinks and listening to a band (blues). To top it off, as we were leaving, the HLDW noticed that there was one of those newpaper holder thingys outside the bar for the free weekly tabloid to which she contributes ... and the new issue had just been loaded that contained her new article. This delighted her to no end and was the perfect capper to a very nice day. You can find it here: http://www.thesundaypaper.com/More/Archives/tabid/98/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4154/Role-models.aspx

Some may scoff at 11 years, as most of my married friends around the same age are up to the late teens or early 20's or more, but this is from a Rhino that never thought he would get married, EVAR. So, I'm feeling pretty good about it - I am a man who loves his wife.

I was great to have a stress free day as the last 2 weeks have been unending hell as we are still dealing with the fallout from 18 months of unemployment/short-term employment. We have one major issue to resolve and I believe that this will be the final hurdle to get us back on the path to normality - but at this point I'm not sure that the cure won't be worse than the disease. We'll see. There were glimmers of hope on Friday and I'm hoping that Monday brings that to fruition.

The Work Front

The new gig is proceeding well. There are some challenges that I'm still adjusting to - amongst them are the time zone differences and not getting into a solid sleep schedule to cope. The biggest challenge though is the thing that I thought would be the easiest - working from home. Don't get me wrong, it is majorly SWEET that my commute is the 2 minutes it takes me to make my way from the bed to the office and that I can take a tea & cigar break pretty much whenever I want. The upside is the downside as well in that I'm HOME pretty much ALL DAY. The HLDW is beginning to realize just how much she enjoyed having me out of the house for 10 or so hours each day - and I reciprocate those feelings. I tried working some at the cigar shop a couple of times. Funny how things works, when unemployed I would visit the cigar shop during work hours and it would be fairly quiet - to the point where I'd take the occasional nap. However, now that I need to engage in conference calls as a key component of my work day, the couple of times I tried to work there seemed to coincide with visits of large gangs of apparently deaf loud talkers that require the volume of the news channel to be turned up to 11. Or, as on one visit, one of the owners that is a great friend but does not engage in a lot of unnecessary conversation during working hours felt the need to be the most gregarious and engaging man in the world. Over the weekend I found a huge coffee shop with free wifi up the street so I'm going to give that a try next week.

Well, that's where things stand for the moment ... lots more of course but most of it is the minutiae of daily life, but them there's the basics.

Hope that life is treating you well.

Regards,
Rhino