Today is my anniversary. As it happens, it’s my wife’s anniversary as well (I think she wanted to make it a date that was easy to remember). We’ve now been married for 16 years, which I think means she’s been married to me longer than all her other husbands combined. One thing’s for sure, we’ve left a long line of dead critters (and one mother) in our wake (cats, mostly – a couple of which I actually liked). At my current age and physical condition, it’s probably a toss-up as to whether I’ll croak before another animal goes.

I think I’ve got at least one more set of dogs in me physically, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle another round emotionally. I can’t imagine a life without varmints running around trying to trip me or expelling bodily fluids, solids, and other waste material for me to step in, but I hate it when they die, and they hardly ever have the decency to just wake up dead one day (which is what I hope to do – though not before I use up all my vacation time).

The wife is going to celebrate the occasion by working this weekend, while I’ll be celebrating by taking Monday off (I’m really not into this whole working on Mondays thing – especially in the summer).

Speaking of work, it appears that I’ll be changing jobs (though not companies or locations). All the official paperwork has yet to be signed (mostly because I don’t know when they’ll let me go, as this move leaves my already insufficiently staffed group even more short-handed and I think they may exepct me to finish up a few things which could be tough since my motivation has suddenly dissipated to near-zero), but it looks like I’ll be leaving the world of web application development and entering the world of database administration.

This means lots of on-call, nights and weekends, and…. And what the hell am I thinking? Oh well, I’m not afraid of hard work. I don’t fucking like it, but I’m not scared of it. I’d say I’m not scared of change (over the past 25 years, I’ve gone from Projectionist>Maintenance Helper>Refrigeration Mechanic>HVAC Mechanic>Web Administrator>Computer Consultant>Information System Assistant>Senior Programmer/Analyst and now DBA – and finished my BS and picked up an MS along the way. And I did a few different things in my first 28 years, too – most of which I’m a little vague on), but the truth is I hate change.

The only thing I hate more than change is standing still (at least work-wise – I’m pretty sedentary once I get home). So, hi-ho, we’ll see if this one carries me to retirement or not. I’m kind of running out of places to go.

Meanwhile, it looks like we’re in store for another beautiful day, weather-wise. The nice thing about all the nasty weather that came through the other day is that it put an end to the nauseatingly humid weather we’ve been having (at least for a while). It’s OK if all you have to do is sit outside, read, and jump in the pool when you feel warm, but any activity beyond that is just miserable.

I guess you get used to it if you live where it’s hot and humid all the time. You probably never get used to tornadoes, though, and I’m thankful they’re a rare occurrence around here (as I’ve said probably too many times before, I’ll happily take dealing with snow for four months a year over the threat of having my home pulverized by, as Les Nessman once said, “the godless tornadoes”).

In other news, debate is once again heating up as to what to do with the aging viaduct that splits the city of Syracuse in half. It’s a timeless tradition around here. Back in the early 1800s, they split it in half when they ran the Erie Canal through the middle. Though there wasn’t a hell of a lot to split up back then. It’s really more like they put the canal in and then people built shit on either side of it.

Then the railroads came, and they rain the tracks right through the streets. I used to do a lot of looking at microfilm of the old newspapers from the 19th century, and it seems the two most common ways to die of other than natural causes back then were to either get drunk and fall in one of the canals (besides the Erie, there was the Oswego which ran down from the port on Lake Ontario) or to get drunk and get hit by a train.

But then of course big government took over and created the nanny state and started regulating everything and putting a burden on corporations and they didn’t let the trains run down the street and they kind of filled in the canals.

Anyhow, back when I was a kid they decided to run Interstate 81 right through the middle of Syracuse – primarily through some of the poorest neighborhoods. Apparently it seemed like a good idea at the time, though nobody bothered to ask the people that lived there what they thought. Seeing as they were poor and, um, you know, “them people” I don’t think anybody cared.

So now, something like 45 years later, the sucker’s falling apart and they say they really need to do something about it. Like, soon. This time around, they’re asking what we the people think (before they go ahead and do whatever they want to do anyway). Proposals include a tunnel, an “urban boulevard” with through-traffic diverted around the city, and of course rebuilding the viaduct, which is too narrow and too curvy to meet modern safety standards.

A tunnel would be nifty, but would also cost a couple billion dollars (and they’d also need to dig a bigass trench to bury it in). My guess is they’ll just rebuild. They shouldn’t have put it where it is, but, hey it’s there now. It doesn’t help that there’s basically one exit in either direction that people use to go to work (seeing as the only jobs around here anymore are at SU or one of the three hospitals that are all more or less in the same place).

Whatever they do, it’ll be a mess for years, I predict. A mess that will no doubt coincide with the rumored move of my work location from the pastoral suburban office park we’re at now (with plenty of free parking, I might add) to a downtown location right in the middle (or slightly to the west) of all this mess (with zero free parking).

This is the point where I’ll be utilizing mass transit. It would be a hassle to get to where I work now, or I’d be doing it already. Once they move me downtown I’m all set. There’s free municipal parking down in the Village, and I can hop on a bus more or less across the street and let somebody else deal with traffic and snow and school buses while I read my Kindle until they drop me off a couple of blocks from work. And at $3 a day, it’s cheaper than gas (and way, way cheaper than monthly parking).

Of course, in the past five years, we were slated to move about five different times, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

Just ignore most of the lyrics on this one….