My beautiful wife left town yesterday with her good friend. They headed up to Las Vegas late in the afternoon to lend support to my friend Lang’s fiancée as she waits on his healing. Sounds like Lang’s taken a turn for the worse and that’s weighing on us all… Keep praying.

Yesterday was an interesting day. It marked the end of a nine year career in IT for ADE/KLA Tencor. It was the first time I’d lost a job. I’m guessing it won’t be the last. Offshoring could easily hit me again. It was sad to walk out of our building with my friend and former boss knowing that we’d never leave that parking lot again. And sad to think that there are some co-workers that I’ll likely not see again. I hope we all find work soon.

The comforting thing is that I know I’ll see the friends I made again over the years. My former boss happens to be one of my closest friends; it’ll be hard not to see him. Some folks I’ll be able to stay in touch with over IM or Facebook. Hooray for the webitron.

In a way, I was kinda spared yesterday from thinking too much about my predicament. With Martha furiously packing and trying to get ready for a sudden five-day trip, I didn’t have time to wallow or really even reflect. I did my best to help her out the door and then turned my attention to wrangling these two kids that keep hanging around here.

Speaking of kids… I think my daughter’s rash is either slowing down or starting to fade a bit. We discovered it Sunday morning while getting ready for church. She’s had a rash similar to it before and it turned into some crazy hot tub virus or something and she had to be treated w/ some scary antibiotics that kept doctor, pharmacist, and parents concerned for a while. Thankfully, she got seen rather quickly this time and has already got 3 doses of non-scary antibiotics in her. I’ll be praying that the spots are gone before Thursday.

This morning, Abby and I did some shopping while Joey was in preschool. It was strange to go shopping the day after I lost my job, but the vast majority of our merchandise was bought with gift cards of some sort. I picked up a new Dewalt drill that was going for a crazy sale price. I loved my previous drill, but the Makita battery packs are hard to find and expensive. The Home Depot trip was really only a time-killer until we could get into Costco. Abby was really well behaved and pulled off many smiles from strangers. If only that would work as currency… that’d come in handy.

With grocery shopping out of the way, we went to pick up Joey. We stopped to make a quick sea turtle in the wet sand outside his classroom. It’s amazing how quickly wet sand will claim a previously clean 2 year-old’s outfit.

I then raced through three chaotic projects at once… prepping the kids’ lunches, cleaning out the freezer, and putting the groceries away. Whew…

Then we made these:

Now… I shall nap.