Terri and I have been married for 9 years today.

Apparently 9 years is either Willow or Pottery…  Which leaves me wondering who the hell thinks these things up.

I’ve got to say that they’ve been the happiest 9 years of my life.

Maybe not consistently, 24/7, laughing-with-glee happy…  We’ve had some bad times to go with the good…  But, through it all, I’ve always known that everything would be OK, because I knew Terri was there by my side.  She’s supported me through all kinds of shit, and just knowing that she’s there for me is a huge reassurance.

And when the bad times pass, we’re still together, and that’s a great joy.

It’s awesome to have someone I can rely on.  Someone I can talk to, share things with.  Someone I can joke with, and just be myself around.  Someone who isn’t going to judge me too harshly for the stupid things I do.

Happy Anniversary Terri.  I love you.

No Internet for over a day is very annoying.  Especially when all the games I want to play are loaded through Steam, and I didn’t put it in offline mode before the ‘net went down.

We went out shopping on Saturday afternoon.  Stopped at one store and had no trouble paying for a purchase with our credit cards…  Stopped at the next store, around 4:30ish, and couldn’t pay with a credit card because their Internet had gone down.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, because Charter has these problems.  It’ll drop for a few minutes or an hour here and there.  We just kind of ignore it for a while, and it pops back up.

But it didn’t pop back up on Saturday.  And it was still down all day Sunday.  I’m told that it was finally repaired sometime around 10:00 Sunday night.

Normally I really wouldn’t mind that much.  I’d be at work and busy with other things.  But this was a Sunday…  So I was at home all day, and would’ve much rather been playing video games.

I had a skill running out in EVE and I wanted to queue up something new.

I just re-subscribed to WoW, and wanted to play around in there.

And I’ve also got SPAZ, Retribution, Orcs Must Die, and Borderlands loaded up in Steam…  But I couldn’t play any of it.

Worse than that, however, was not being able to pull down news and information throughout the day.

I kept seeing something and wanting to do a bit of research on it.  Hit Wikipedia and look up something I’d heard, or check CNN to see what was going on.  Kept wanting to check my email and see if I’d gotten anything interesting or important.

Very annoying.

I guess I’m making up today, for the productivity of yesterday…

Overslept this morning.  Had a hell of a time getting out of bed.  It was dark out, and the room was cold, and the bed was warm…  So I just kept hitting snooze.  Then I realized what time it was, and rushed out the door.

Needed gas though, or I would’ve wound up stranded on the side of the road about halfway to work.

And then the tire pressure sensor came on, so I had to pull over and make sure nothing was horribly wrong.  I didn’t see anything obvious…  It was probably just the cold.  28°F according to the thermometer this morning.

So, I got to work a little bit on the late side.  And realized that I hadn’t shaved.

And it’s been one phone call after another this morning.  I haven’t even been able to snag 5 minutes to check the backups.

Long day today.

Woke up at 4:30, at work by 6:00, didn’t get done there until after 6:00, and didn’t make it home until about 7:15 tonight.

Got those QoS changes made.  And got some good work done before folks realized I was there.

Busy day.  Fixed a lot of stuff.  Then I got dragged into some meetings.

I’m tired, but at least I feel like I accomplished something today.

That’s a nice feeling.

6:00 AM, and I’m at work.  Not exactly my idea of how to start the day off right.

Normally, at this hour, my alarm clock would just be going off.  I’d be hitting the snooze button and pondering just how long I can stay in bed.  I wouldn’t actually be getting out of bed for another 15-20 minutes.  I wouldn’t be leaving for work for another hour or so.

But, here I am.  Mostly awake and at work, more or less ready to meet the day’s challenges.

We’ve got a quick change to the QoS policy on our ASA.  Nothing major at all.  Literally two lines of code.  But it’ll affect Internet connectivity…  Which means our VPNs will fall down…  So we can’t do it during normal business hours.

Which means, ultimately, that I’m here at 6:00 this morning.

While I’m really not a big fan of mornings in general, I can’t say I object too much to being here this early.  Nobody knows I’m here.  Nobody expects anyone in ISS to show up until roughly 8:00.  So I’ve got a couple of hours to work before my phone starts ringing.  I ought to be able to get a few things checked off my list in that time.

Unless I screw up the QoS change and have to spend those hours trying to repair the damage…

Dammit.  I feel so dirty…

I’m actually going to re-subscribe to WoW.  Again.

Terri’s been playing WoW again for a little while now.  She’s been leveling up a little gnomish rogue.  And I’ve been playing EVE, shooting internet spaceships and cruising around nullsec.

But I miss playing with Terri.  I miss wandering through a game together, being able to share the experience with her.  And she’s running into trouble with some quests…  Having a hard time getting some things done by herself…

Then Blizzard went and announced the new expansion – Mists of Pandaria.

I’ve thought the Pandaren were cool ever since I saw them in WarCraft 3.  Been waiting for them to show up in WoW for years.

And I thoroughly enjoyed my monk in EverQuest.  And again in Dark Age of Camelot.  I’ve been wanting a monk of some sort in WoW from the very start.

So this expansion seems like it was made for me.

But then they announced the annual pass…  A year of WoW, plus access to the next beta, and an in-game mount, and a copy of Diablo III.  How could I pass it up?

So, I canceled EVE last night.  And I’ll be subscribing to WoW and buying an annual pass just as soon as I get home tonight.