Well, Mark has gone back to work -- he'll be gone for TWO weeks again. Glad he's healthy enough that he CAN work . . . but it sure would be nice if he were staying home anyway. It's just not great when he's gone that long.
As for me, I'm making progress of a sort. I talked the "powers that be" at the office into going with an annuity service so I will no longer have to be continually reminding the various campuses of renewal due dates for their foreign patent filings. Well - that was all I had in mind. But then John said we should let them deal with the U.S. patent maintenance fees, as well. Hey - that works for me!
So we signed the contract. Now we just need to send them all the detailed data on all those filings that they're going to be keeping up with. Hey, no problem, right? I thought our computer guy would be able to put out that data. But as it turns out - not exactly. He did produce an Excel spreadsheet containing all the information from my docket. Actually, way MORE than all of it. Instead of the several hundred foreign filings and a hundred or two U.S. patents that we actually have, the thing ended up with -- you ready for this? -- 3800+ lines instead! Sigh. So I spent today manually deleting all the entries that were NOT relevant listings. And now I'll be spending all the time I can spare filling in missing data before sending it over to the annuity service (and there are a LOT of blanks in that spreadsheet!).
But the bottom line is that once they HAVE all that info I'll have a lot more time for other work -- and I won't have to constantly worry about all those foreign renewals. Not to mention the fact that it will simplify the life of whoever ends up doing my job after me. (SURELY I'll get to retire some day!)
As for here at home, even as hot as it's been, Mark has really done a lot with our property. The place looks GREAT! He weed-eated all the fence lines and the driveway and the main canal down the side, then sprayed weed killer along all the edges and corners that aren't accessible to Duke. ;-D (You can't spray ANYTHING in his pasture -- Duke eats everything.)
We got 5 minutes of heavy rain this afternoon. Before it came down, Duke was dripping wet with sweat. And once he got even wetter with rain, he IMMEDIATELY went out and rolled in the mud. Yuk! So I hosed him down and cleaned him up -- and ended up just as wet and sweaty myself! But I'm tidied up and ready for bed now.
Hope it doesn't rain all weekend. Buddy and Lisa didn't make it over last weekend, so if it rains next weekend they're going to have a heck of a mess to clear up out there after 3 solid weeks! Not good. And come to think of it, I don't think I would drive that two hours out to Zoilo's either, if there's a chance it could be pouring down rain when I get there. Well - we'll just have to see how it goes, I guess.
In the meantime - time for bed.
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(Wonder if Wendy has a car yet?)
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