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You know what rules?

For lunch, I took the dog for a ride to the car wash and, for the first time since I’ve owned it, washed the jeep. Then I swung through Taco Bell and ordered cinnamon twists for the dog. Stopped at the walking path near the house, ate lunch and took the dog for a walk.

Now I’m sitting on the front porch, temperature in the mid-60s, and coding. The dog is on her long leash next to me, watching the neighbor (who til this day still hasn’t said a word to me since he moved in nearly two years ago despite attempts at making conversation) fertilize his lawn. When Dena gets home I’ll fire up the grill and we’ll have hamburgers and potatoes. I even found time to clean the inside of the jeep. It looked like someone had been living in it for a few weeks.

Tomorrow promises to be another gorgeous day like today. Unfortunately that will be the end of the nice weather for a few days, but that’s okay. Spring is finally here and damn does it feel good.

Yet another Spring has arrived, bringing with it allergies worse than the year before. The first few years I blamed it on coincidence or sympathy symptoms of Dena’s allergies. Nope. I’ve got ‘em and they seem to be getting a little worse every year. I guess it’s time to admit it and start taking medicine before bed instead of waiting until midnight, not being able to sleep, and finally popping an antihistamine so I can get some rest.

At least I don’t have to worry about being fresh for work in the morning. That’s one benefit of self-employment. I can pick and choose my hours, for the most part. So far it’s working quite well. I typically work 9-5 downstairs in my “office” and then spend the evening on the couch working on various projects. I’m managing my deadlines quite nicely and still having time for some fun stuff as well.

Tomorrow night I’m heading out to see Andy Lester talk about crisis prevention in software development. It should be an interesting meeting, plus I’ve been wanting to meet Andy for a while now. I’ve read some of his work, mostly in Spidering Hacks, and he’s a fellow Chicagoland perl-monger.

Wednesday night I’ll be going to the Spotter Training held by the National Weather Service and the Aurora EMA. Storm Spotting and ham radio seem to go hand in hand. I’ve been meaning to make one of these classes for the past three years and this will be the first year that work hasn’t gotten in the way.

Last but not least it would be remiss of me not to mention that my return to writting has begun. This marks 35 semi-regular issues of Linux.Ars that have been published to date. We’ve adopted a bi-monthly publishing schedule for the column and I expect some good things to come out of it. It’s gotten me back into the habit of writing again. I’m ashamed to say that I let that skill slip quietly to the wayside when things got rocky at work and I had to limit my outside activities. That issue is now resolved and I have to say, like riding a bike, you may get rusty with a lack of practice but once you start riding again it all comes back do you.

I’m still getting used to working at home, for myself. It’s really nice to be able to set my own hours. I find myself working harder now than ever before but I’m also able to make the time to do quality things; taking walks, playing in the park with the dog, having lunch with Dena.

Time management has never been my strong suit but I’m definitely getting better at it. Time is money, especially now, so the better I manage my available time the more work I can do, the more hours I can bill, and the better the payout. It also means that I’ve been able to fit in time for other things that I’ve been struggling to make time for: writing.

I’m getting back into the writing groove. I’ve started carrying around my journal where I jot down thoughts, ideas, and observations that might be interesting. I also found two useful services tonight: The Writer’s Database, a submission tracker and market database, and The Writer’s Hat, an idea-generating exercise. I’ll going to my writers group this week — the first time in a year. God I’ve missed that.