A few minutes after I posted my last entry, the lights blinked and then came right back on. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that Diane had just put a loaf of bread into the breadmaker — but since we’d just begun the cycle, we thought it would be OK to restart it. Which we did. But then when the lights blinked again, Diane decided that it would be safer to take the dough out, knead it by hand, and let it rise on its own, to be baked later. So she did, and then we left for the JCC.

When we returned about noon, all was well; Jeff said that the power had stayed on while we were gone, and he was finished with his homework. That was a good thing, because the lights started flickering again almost immediately. And then the winds really picked up, and we heard a very loud vibrating, buzzing noise. After a few minutes, it died down, and we went to shower.

The lights went out yet again right after I got out of the shower; this time, they stayed out. After a while, I called PG&E’s outage number to see if they knew anything; the system claimed that our outage had been reported at 9am. So I decided the odds were against the power returning any time soon, and we got in the car to go to California Pizza Kitchen for lunch (since they use a wood-burning stove, I thought there’d be a good chance we could actually get a hot meal there).

But as we backed out of the driveway, I noticed something funny about our roof. A small section at the peak had blown away (which explained the noise). There wasn’t anything I could do about the problem at the moment, so we continued on to lunch. The mall had power, food, and even covered parking, so that was probably a good decision.

When we returned, we still had no power. But the rain had stopped, and the wind had died down, which was good. I called the insurance company to see if they could recommend a roofer, but the 24-hour “Good Neighbor” service desk couldn’t. So I found an issue of Bay Area Consumers Checkbook which talked about roofers and tried to call a couple of the high-rated ones. Needless to say, I got answering machines.

Then there was a knock at the door; it was our next-door neighbor, telling us that she’d seen the shingles on our roof flapping in the wind earlier in the afternoon. We told her that we knew — but later, I figured out that she was talking about shingles other than the ones which had blown off. Oy!

A few hours later, power returned, and our moods brightened along with the lights. We still have a hole in the roof, but maybe we’ll get some more calls returned tomorrow (one roofer did call, and said that he could get a crew to us today if absolutely necessary, but that he’d have to charge us triple-time — he suggested waiting if water wasn’t pouring into the house, which it isn’t).

Jeff’s school starts up tomorrow, but Diane and I have the day off. Since we have to get up early to take him to the JCC, we’re pretty sure we’ll get our exercising in early in the day; after that, who knows?

Here it is, New Year’s Day 2006, and, as I look back, I think of all the things I was going to have accomplished by now.

I was going to learn Ruby (and Rails).

I was going to get my digital photographs consolidated onto one computer and remove all the duplicate copies that I’ve created as backups.

I was going to catch up on watching the shows on my TiVos.

I was going to catch up on reading Analog.

And those were just some of the projects for this vacation, let alone all of the plans I’d had throughout the year!

So as I look forward, what are my plans for this year?

The biggest thing I need to work on this year is focus; instead of having dozens of half-formed, tenth-executed plans, I need to concentrate on doing the important things well. This holds both at home and at work, but especially at work; 2005 was a much better year for me at work than 2004, but I still didn’t have the impact I would like to have had, and a lot of the reason is that I scattered my efforts instead of focusing them. The principles and tools in Getting Things Done helped me in the latter part of 2005, so I plan to continue to use them this year. (I’m not looking forward to dealing with the last two weeks of inbox buildup — I’ve taken a quick look, and there are hundreds of e-mails waiting for my attention, even if it’s only to hit the “delete” key.)

I still do want to learn Ruby and Rails; I even have a small project in mind at work which looks like it would be a good candidate for these tools.

I need to follow up on a piece of advice I got at the TechGen GDC program last month; I was there as an “observer”, which meant, among other things, that I worked with the other observers and the HR staff to help create feedback and advice for the attendees. And one of the HR guys pointed out that I should listen to some of the feedback and advice I was giving — that it was right on target for me. So this year, I intend to work on my “customer partnering”, and to seriously look at my strengths and weaknesses in the other IBM Leadership Competencies.

I also need to pay more attention to my strengths and successes and not spend time on what might have been — so I will mention a few things I did accomplish on this vacation (and there’s still time to accomplish more!):

I blogged daily; I may not keep up the pace in all of 2006, but writing is a useful thing to do, and writing in public forces me to, if nothing else, think about what I’m writing.

I read The Essential Drucker, which gave me much to think about in planning 2006.

I moved my old blog entries here, so that they won’t be lost (not that all of them were worth preserving).

I managed to get to the JCC at least every other day while not travelling, and so, despite the odd indulgence or two, I’m in reasonable shape heading out of the holidays.

I made a good dent in the Analog backlog (all that I have left is the current serial, Sun of Suns, whose last installment just arrived this week).

Diane and I finally watched an episode of Numb3rs, which we’d been TiVoing since its premier. And as soon as we’d finished watching that episode, I removed Numb3rs from the Season Pass list, which will save disk space for better shows in the future.

And there were more, but it’s time to stop writing and start doing before the power goes out; the JCC awaits.