Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2003 > The Early July 2003 Edition
With seasonably hot and damp weather peppered with thunderstorms, summer has truly arrived in Indiana.
This is a four-day work week, and the Fourth of July falls on a Friday, bringing about a three-day weekend. Better, I actually don't have to work on Saturday, as I often do on similar weekends.
Speaking of work, I have been more occupied during this short week than I have in a long while. Two major software upgrades, two workstation installs, and a failed attempt to get a Win98 workstation to print to a remote deskjet printer.
One of the guys who runs Ars Technica will be in Indy on the evening of the third at a restaurant on Indy's Northwest side (BWW's at 2514 Lake Circle Drive, just off the westbound lane of 86th Street, west of Township Line Road near St. Vincent's hospital).
Unfortunately I can't go, much as I would like, because my town holds its fireworks display on the third. It does this that it may not compete with the display in nearby Summitville on the fourth.
However, I can and will go to InConjunction, the annual science-fiction convention at the Keystone Crossing in Indianapolis. Who-Net is running a video room there. That in itself would not get me to go, but the club is putting out the two hundredth issue of its newsletter. I designed and printed special mailing labels, and I figure that delivering them is a good enough excuse to blow thirty-five dollars and visit. Besides, I never been to a sci-fi convention before, leaving that sort of thing to my sister Tina the Trekkie.
InConjunction isn't the only party this summer. Indeed, there seems to be a summer party thing, and this year it has come to roost in my space.
This month is Mary Marriage Madness, in which my coworker gets hitched. The bridal shower is this coming Wednesday, and I already got my gift. The official wedding is on the twelfth, but the reception is two weeks later at some rural park near Albany. I will be there.
One week later comes the Company summer picnic. This year the northern branches host. The party is at Winona Lake near Warsaw. The area, which is ninety minutes from Fairmount, is very popular for Hoosier vacations; and, with its biotech industries, has not been hit as hard by the current recession as most of the state. The picnic itself promises to be interesting, because the Company has not had a summer picnic in a couple of years.
The dead tree was gone last Friday. Some company contracted by Padre came, cut down the tree, and reduced it to mulch. Only a flat stump remains. Its absence has already made it easier to mow the grass.
I also found a pink flag near the stump. Padre also found a surveyor to determine where the property line on my sister's yard lies.
With the tree gone, the next task is to remove the remaining pile of branches in the back.
The feds changed the definition of metropolitan Indianapolis to include the counties of Brown and Putnam. They also dropped Madison County and put it in its own metropolitan area. That in itself is absurd: a lot of people who live in Anderson and the southern half of the county work in Indianapolis due to lack of local jobs.