I feel in some ways as if my life with this new job resembles that recent Celine Dion song – the one where she sings about how “it’s all coming back to her now” (but without the sappy overtones). Because that’s what happens on a regular basis with all the coding I am doing – with each new little twist they throw at me for the main database I am building I have to scramble around in the Help files, and poke through the knowledge base, and even occasionally post frantic messages on the Microsoft newsgroups and then suddenly, I’ll find it – that one piece of information I forgot I knew, and all the rest comes flooding back into my head and what was driving me crazy is now easy as pie. There was a time, years ago, when I knew Microsoft Access backwards and forwards. I’m not sure I’ve remembered everything I’ve forgotten yet, but I think I’m almost there.

I may have my issues with the limitations of Microsoft Access, namely over the fact that what I can do in SQL is so much less than what I *need* to be able to do. But what it lacks in SQL it more than makes up for in VBA. And the more I go tweaking and twisting here and there, building in all the functionality they ask for, the more I remember just how very much I love VBA. You can do almost anything in VBA, if you put your mind to it (You can do almost anything in SQL too, if you have access to Advanced Transact SQL, which Access does not have, so forget I said anything about SQL at all).

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It’s still over 100 degrees outside and I am beginning to think that my tenative idea to have us go look at flagstone, and maybe even put in the path around the raised flower bed, might not be such a great idea for this weekend. Perhaps it would be better if we just stayed inside and did useful things there like hang curtains or non-useful but much more fun things like watch movies or drag out the bread machine and roast some garlic and spend the day eating homemade rolls until we are not fit to be around other people.