I haven’t blogged in a few days. I hadn’t really felt like it. Last Friday night I received a registered letter from the state (is it just me or does no good news ever come by registered letter?) that informed by that I was losing my dweeb certification, oops, I mean Professional Engineer’s License because I had not passed an audit on my continuing education hours.

I was dumbfounded. I had sat through numerous seminars hearing about the poetry of subcooled reflux, the music of advanced feedforward control systems, and art of molecular sieve regeneration, all for the only purpose of grabbing the little CE certificates that they pass out at the end of the seminars. I had saved those certificates, and made copies just in case I lost the originals and scanned those and saved on two separate computers. Because you have to have those for the random audits the state performs. I was about the only person I knew that had not been audited yet so I knew it was coming and I WAS READY, BRING IT ON!

They did. I got a registered letter this past summer telling me that I was being audited and what I needed to do. So I put my stuff together, gathered up all my certificates and even included little notes on the certificates indicating what CE log entries they corresponded to. I sent it off to them and didn’t give it a second thought until last Friday.

Then Friday the shock. I don’t really understand why they didn’t take the stuff but I’ll deal with it. I couldn’t do anything right then because I had to take SuperPizzaBoy down to Southeast OK to meet up with Sweetie and her Mom, (SPB’s “Nana”).

Saturday, wasn’t a great day either. I’ll just leave it at that.

We drove back home Saturday night. Sunday morning, we had an issue with SuperPizzaBoy. Not a real big deal but he kind of escalated it by not taking responsibility for what he did. That didn’t help the outlook. Then the poor child said he wanted a friend to come over, we told him that we had a lot of stuff to do and that maybe he could help. Then he said that he wasn’t going to do “woman’s work.” That got everything going again!

So then I did my morning routine, used to be I made the coffee and opened up the paper. Now, the paper can wait, I read Baloney’s blog and then play her daily trivia quiz. Sunday she had a few kind words to say about me. Of course as self centered as I am that made my day. The other stuff is still there but things brightened up for me with her comments. We all like scratched behind the ears every now and then, right? Baloney is kind of like that I think. She just passes out electronic noogies left and right, brightening up everybody’s day so I’m beginning to think of her blog as a blog ministry.

She might need counseling in the area of appropriate photography in bathrooms, bathtubs, and dressing rooms, her love of “bad photos” and the use pictures of naked and practically naked people on the internet but we all have our challenges. Plus I’m still kind of confused by the slacks underneath dresses type fashion phase she went through but as Sweetie would tell me, those who live in glass houses…”

Anyway, her few words brightened up my day and I was able to even get through Dallas losing to the Redskins without breaking anything.

She had awarded me one of seven awards to other bloggers. So I get to proudly display the accompanying logo. I don’t really know 7 bloggers, so I am going to award one and hold the other six and dole them out as time goes by.

The rules of this award are:

1. The winner can (and should, really) put the logo on their blog.
2. The winner must link to the person from whom they received their award.
3. The winner must nominate at least 7 other blogs for an award.
4. The winner must place links to those blogs on their own blog.
5. The winner must leave a message on the blogs of the people they’ve nominated.

Drum roll please.

I make my one award to my niece Dana who is living and working down in Australia. She doesn’t post very much (hint to you Dana) but what she does say is very interesting to me. She is one of my top three nieces and the oldest as well as being one smart cookie. Dana and her two sisters, Mary, and Jillian are all smart as whips and are sweet as can be, most of the time, at least when they are around their dweeby uncle. Of course I’m prejudiced, but I’m also right.