Sneak Attack

I survived the week! It was an interesting one to say the least... Started out pretty rough, and I managed about 5 hours of overtime. Yes, I know - nothing in comparison to some people, but for me it was a big deal.

I had two strange meetings this week. First, there was a special "incentive" meeting put on by the CEO. Basically the newest project I'm working on is very important to the business, and so they sit about 30-40 of us working on it in a room and say look - if you can get this thing done early, we'll give you a 4 day paid trip to a resort up north. Interesting tactic.

Then, we had another larger company meeting. You know, the ones where the CEO says everything is great, we are making lots of money, keep up the good work, yadda yadda yadda. The unexpected part of this meeting, was when one of the presenters started talking about the project that I had been working on for the past year as a "major accomplishment of 2007." Now, not to get anyone thinking I'm all that - this project was the result of huge amount of man-hours from a TON of people. I was just a small piece of it. I liked to think of it as the tip of the iceberg. Because the part I worked on, is what the customer interacted with. It was what the business saw, and what was looked at as the result of this project. So I was then surprised to see actual screen shots of the part of the software that I created, thrown up for the entire audience to see. Pretty cool feeling...

Anyway, if that wasn't enough, I also had my yearly review today and subsequent yearly salary increase. Icing on the cake I guess... I've already spent a big chunk of it to purchase the indoor play set for Megan. I ordered it direct from the company, since they offered free shipping. Not sure when it will arrive, hopefully by the end of this month.

As for a Megan update, things are going well. It feels like we are making steady progress now. Some milestones this week:

• Consistently using the sign for "more"
• Identifying many items on flash cards, from animals to objects
• Responding to questions like "Megan, can you find the fish?" and "Bring Daddy the fish." (picking out the fish from a large grouping of flash cards)
• Responding to words or signs used once for the first time.

For example, knowing where her "pop" was when asked. Or just tonight, using the sign for "open" after seeing it only once. All great strides... we hope that all this will lead to that spark where her communication goes both ways.

I don't think I've mentioned before, but she is also very sick so we are dealing with that this week as well. Bad cold, lots of congestion, and being so stuffed up that her body throws up during naps because her airways get blocked. Andrea has had a rough week, but I think Megan is showing signs of getting better.