The past 5 or 6 weeks have been at least as crappy as I thought they'd be. Worked 40+ days straight averaging over 10 hours per day. This installation was a big of a pain as I thought it would be. Over that 40+ day stretch I've been home for about 4 days total, and those were spent working to catch up on paperwork and other business stuff. The machine installation went over the schedule by two weeks and I've had to scramble to reschedule everyone else. Getting farther and farther behind on the things I need to do at home.
But... even though the installation has gone poorly, the customer has treated us really well. Honestly, better than we had any right to expect, given the circumstances. Got to work from the start 'til today with a young guy from the US branch, who has been really great to work with and eager to learn. The programmer from the European factory has also been fantastic, fixing a boatload of software problems even though he's quite new to the job. It's not quite finished and I'm having to pull out of the project to take care of prior commitments that I could not reschedule, but thanks to their efforts things are definitely looking up. Hope to have it wrapped up by next Friday. In the end, people can make or break a project that is causing difficulties.
On top of that, in my absence the wife has been doing her best to deal with things back home, and our neighbor even took care of mowing the property. We owe him a favor for that one.
Oh, and there's a good chance I'll bump into an old friend and colleague next week, who will be in the same area as me for a day or two.