Resolutions

You know what sucks is great about blogging your resolutions? You don't forget them. They are there on the internet just waiting for you to be foolish enough to look at them and remember what a wretched failure at life you are.

That cloud got more done than me!

So let's review Jeremy's horrid, pathetic, and ultimately doomed attempt at not sucking it up in 2012. Last year, my goals were:

1. Read three Books.

I nailed this one to the friggin wall. Not the way I intended though. I intended to read the Pirates of Venus and a few other pulp novels. Instead I read 3 books (and a few billion articles) for my graduate class. I'm going count that as a win.

2. Post a picture or video or Josiah every week.

Yeah, not even close. I did 29 Son-day posts, that's 23 short of the 52 I'd have had to do. So, I can call this one just under half-failed. I'll blame grad school for this. Maybe if I counted FB stuff I might be closer.

3. Attain a blue belt.

Hahahahahahahhahahhahahahahahhahahahhaha. No. Not even close. Between doing 'dad-stuff', backing up Mo in her grad work, dealing with a demanding semester at work, and my own grad work, my attendance to martial arts classes dwindled to basically doing the fitness classes once a week.

4. Lose 30 pounds.

See the above, it parallels closely to this one. I lost 3 pounds. I lost a bunch in the first 6 months or so, then gained it all back in the last 6.

5. Learn sign languages.

Didn't figure I would. Totally didn't.

6. Reduce Posssessions.

This one is weird. I did take several loads to Goodwill, and that was good. I also gained a few things that are hard to itemize. Honestly, this whole minimalism thing is kinda tricky. It also wasn't a firm goal. I have no idea if the things I got rid of are more than the things I gained. It was vague when I wrote it a year ago and it is unmeasurable now. So...maybe? I don't know.

It's a good thing Santa doesn't deliver gifts based on completion of resolutions.

So....
In a grand display of hope vs. futility I give you my 2013 resolutions:

1. Get through the MBA program. 

I don't wanna be taking 1 class a semester for the next two years. By this time next year I want to have one class left to be done with it. That means two 8-week-courses per semester. It's going to suck a little.

2. Continue doing Son-day blog posts every other week. 

Same thing, but more reasonable to what I can apparently do.

3. Attend either a martial arts or fitness class once a week. 

At least. I'm not going to progress in belts or get much lasting fitness out of that, but it should keep my depression under control and help me actually achieve the other goals. If I belt up once this year, fantastic. Bonus points for me.

4. Reduce my books by half. 

I have a ton of books. I'm not really sure how many, the shelf by my desk has about 120 plus magazines. I have another shelf in the bed room and another at work. If I can reduce it down to one shelf, I'd be happy with with that. Especially with all the business books coming in from my courses. It's probably the biggest factor in going toward more minimalism.

5. Save 30k toward the house down payment. 

Mo and I are saving up for a down payment on a house. For our plans, we need between 50k and 60k. So far we have just over 20k. It's a good start. Based on the 2012 budget, we should be able to save another 13 to 15 in 2013. There's a few goofy wildcards coming up though, so I'm shooting for a pretty achievable 10k in savings this year.

Holiday Son-day

Whew! It feels like I haven't done a Son-day post since November 11th. What? it's a totally common feeling I get. You don't attach specific dates to your feelings? No, I don't think that's odd, you're odd.

The reason I haven't posted anything about Jojo lately is that there is nothing to report. Smooth sailing the whole way. Nothing new.

Ack, not the stare. Damn it, I'll talk!

Seriously, if you can look at Tim Roth's stare and not tell the truth, you are some kind of crazy. I swear, his whole face just burns into your soul or something.

I got through that horrid MBA class. I got an A. However, it was REALLY hard. My group really was not doing what they needed to do when they needed to do it. One guy was out of town the whole weekend, two guys hadn't done their portions, the French kid was just dead weight, it was a mess. I was at the clinic working with one or more of them every night until into the wee hours of the dawn for like 5 days straight. That's on top of doing my job which was not an easy week and included a few goofy meetings and clients.

Also, jojo got sick.

I picked him up after work Saturday and my Mom was telling me to take him to the ER. I got Mo, she checked him out and we went to the FirstMed urgent care. The guy there said it was an ear infection. The next day (Sunday) I was supposed to just work on the MBA project hard core and get it done (due Tuesday btw). Instead, Jojo was just a mess and had a high fever (102ish) so we went to the ER. That ate up the rest of the morning and early afternoon. I was keeping in touch with the group, keeping the French kid from messing anything up or pissing off the rest of the group, communicating what people needed between people, and otherwise trying to keep them moving in a productive direction while sitting in an ER and trying to keep my son from being too miserable. He finally passed out on top of me.

black and white communicates the bleakness of the situation. Look how pensive Mo looks.

Looooooooong story short: two ear infections and an upper respiratory infection. We spent the next few days giving him meds to reduce the fever and some antibiotics he probably didn't need. We also did some baths to help fight the fever. In a few days he was back to good.

We did (finally) get the group project done. It was hell on earth and one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever put my name on. I only needed like a 60 on the cursed thing to get a B in the course. My group mates needed closer to a 90 to do the same.

That water bottle is for scale.

Part of the assignment was a professional dress presentation (that means a suit is required). My group showed up in suits...except the French kid. his suit was in France, he was going back home in a week, he didn't feel getting a new suit was worthwhile. We were assigned the project 6 weeks ago, professional dress was mentioned 16 weeks ago, he could had it shipped, or told us and we could lend him a suit. Did I mention he was dead weight?

Dude. When you go home next week, think about just staying there.

But, we did well enough and at least the other guys passed the course. I don't know if the French kid did or not. I doubt it. I don't really care.

Jojo recovered just fine in a few days and went back to being his normal crazy-as-hell self. He's completely sick of using his little walking jeep and tried to turn everything into a pushing toy. He stands for long periods of time without support and yesterday stood next to me at my desk clapping. I figured he was applauding my awesome farmville-2 skills.

We had his birthday party on the 16th. It was fun and nice to see everyone. Then we did christmas presents at my place. While there, this happened:

He is all kinda of mobile now. Live in fear folks.

Christmas Rant...sorry

Okay. Seriously guys, you've just gotta let this go. It's just so pointless. I wasn't going to say anything but I just can't listen to it anymore. I want to. I want to just ignore the whining and the drama and the anger and the ignorance and the denial and the intolerance. I really, really, really, do.

I just can't.

Not everyone celebrates Christmas. Not everyone who celebrates Christmas celebrates Christmas for the same reasons or the same way. That is called diversity. It's a good thing. Nobody has a patent and exclusive rights to the variety of holidays and rituals observed in the month of December. When someone says something other than "Merry Christmas" during December it is not an insult to you, it does not ruin Christmas, and it in no way takes away from the value of your faith or religion. It's just a greeting.

Apparently, this is somehow an insult? Seriously?

Why do people have to say exactly what you say when they greet someone in December? Why is that so important to you? Why do you get so sad/angry/upset when an otherwise nice person tries to say "hello" to you with a fairly traditional and inclusive greeting? They don't know your faith. They don't know anything about you, so they err on the side of something open and inclusive that respects that you may not celebrate Christmas. They don't know. Why is that a bad thing?

Nobody is upset about this though. Why? Why is this okay?

I mean come on!

Are you really so well-off, so incredibly blessed, so amazingly disconnected from real hardship, real pain, REAL problems that this simple greeting is so insulting? There are people who do not know where there next meal is coming from. There are people who are being shot at right now. There are people who are trying to drink themselves up to the courage to kill themselves. There are people who should be studying for a final rather than rant-blogging.

"We haven't eaten in 3 days"

Do you have people in your life that love you? Have you eaten recently and do you know where your next meal is coming from? Do you have a roof over your head and three or more walls around you? Are you allowed to worship what you want with little or no chance of being killed/maimed/raped/beaten when you walk out of church?

If not, email me. I know people who can help. Many of them are local churches, charity groups, therapists, and outreach programs who may or may not greet you with "Happy Holidays". They can help. I hope the greeting thing isn't a deal-breaker to be nice to you.

If you do, then please, dear God, please, let it go. It's not important. We just celebrated a holiday dedicated to being thankful. Be thankful you can celebrate at all, do so in whatever way it is you want and let people greet you however they want. It doesn't hurt you. It doesn't take anything away from you. You don't have to like it and you can say whatever greeting you want right back.

And anyone who is insulted when you say this is a butt-head anyway.

My little burden

This post has nothing to do with Jojo. It's just about me, so if you are hoping for a cute little story and a picture of the best part of my day, it's not in this one. Go back a few or wait till Sunday.

I am prone to bouts of depression. I've tried counseling and all that stuff. It helped, but it still happens. I've come to believe it's a more than a little biochemical or biological or something like that.

Damn it Jim, I'm a mixed sci-fi reference, not a doctor.

Yeah, I know, I could have used a Doctor Who reference, I didn't. I'll get right on that.

The point is, there are things I do that keep my depression from acting up. I tried some prozac variation once. It calmed my anxiety and prevented me from feeling depressed...and everything else. I think medical science is just wonderful and we have medicine that is straight up saving people's lives better than ever. It was just more than I needed.

What works best for me is working-out. I train in martial arts and it fixes me in way I have a hard time describing. I am by no means a skilled martial artist. I may very well be one of the worst students. I'm okay with that, because being any kind of martial artist makes me a better at everything else. I'm a better psychologist, a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better person. The health benefits are nice too. When I work out, I get depressed less often and stay depressed for a shorter amount of time.

I haven't trained in almost two weeks.

There, happy?

Right now I am straight up grappling with depression and worry. It's not pleasant. Guilt, worry, fear, and depression are hitting me like waves. Worse, it's making my time with Jojo hard to enjoy. That sucks.

So what's the point of this blog?
"Feel bad for me, I'm sad, boohoo"? No. I need no pity. I'll be fine, this is temporary and more important I know I am stronger than my depression. It's just fighting me right now. I gave it a chance, it took it.

"I need to go to a martial arts class"? Well, yeah, obviously. But, that's not really the point.

The point is:

Everyone, every single damn person on this planet, since the beginning of time and until the end of our species, has and will have some personal burden to deal with. It may be some minor depression, or a learning disorder, or a physical handicap, or poverty, or whatever. But everyone has at least one.

You can give up and blame it for all your woes. You can use it as an excuse for your crappy attitude and bad behavior. Or, you can face it, figure it out, make a plan to overcome it, and then execute the plan.

Yeah, the plan might not work. That happens. It's called a setback. They do not excuse giving up and not making a new plan.

Not pictured: lots of setbacks.

Simply put, the point is: You will be burdened. You choose how to respond to it.

Overworked Son-day

This week I had 106 pages to read, a 5 page paper to write, a 20 chapter test to study for, and a 45 page group project to organize. Fortunately, Jojo is super helpful.

Even now he can...oybv960y9-b7 -9

...Reach the keyboard. Awesome. Helpful.

Yeah.

DST Son-day

I think I may be past the hump of "waytomuchgoingonkillmenow". I got the priority cases under control (for the moment). The independent study students are about done testing kids. My group project is moving forward. I'm still busy, but I'm past the 'over-busy' part. I think.

I have a sleep debt that is killing me. Last night I paid a bit of it off, but I don't expect to get out of the hole at least until after Christmas.

Yes, I know, I will count you at some point.

We had a TON of fun with Halloween this year. We took Jojo to haunt the zoo this year. It was SO BUSY! It was like the 3rd night of it and the line circled the entrance. There had to be like 1500-2000 people there. Some of the costumes were great. There was a Beetlejuice that was just flat-out impressive. Also, just before the entrance was Darth Vader next to a star trek officer. That was kinda awesome. There was also a lady who was just...well...her costume would be perfect at certain Halloween parties where kids are not welcome. Oy.

The booths were great. Sonic, Wal-Mart, and Dr. Pepper were impressive. I carried Jojo through most of it and the crowds were nuts, so not many pictures. We didn't collect candy this year because Jojo won't eat it and none of the rest of us need it.

"Guys, I'm 10 months old. You understand I don't care, right?"

We had fun, but next year are going to go a little later. That way the crowds will have a chance to disperse a little. We were planning on doing the Story Book Forest at Arcadia Lake, but we got tired and didn't.

Finally, we did get some photos done in his costumes. Sadly, the young lady who did the last two photos sets is no longer working at the studio we've been going to. The lady who did this set was fine, but just not as skilled. She also had a pretty intense energy that overwhelmed Jojo (and me). Rather than motivating Jojo's personality out, she just kinda filled the room with her own energy and Jojo wasn't nearly as expressive. I don't blame him. We needed the photographer to be at about a 4 to 6, she was rocking at an 11. Exhausting.

Still, I'm not disappointed. We got some good photos, not the quality I am spoiled to, but not bad at all. Here's a few of them. 

Revival Son-day

Okay folks, seriously.

Ihavebeensobusy. 4real.

Everyone tells me that this course is the hardest one in the MBA (almost certainly designed to weed out the ones who do not really want it and should not be here - and it works because about 1/3 of the class is gone now). They better not be lying cause wow.

I mean, the class is not actually that hard. None of the assignments (in and of themselves) are all that horrid. The trick is I was kinda busy before I started the program, so...now I'm just always busy. 200+ pages of reading a week is no big deal. A 9-page report and presentation is no big deal. Having a wife in a masters program, a 10-month old, a full-time job, AND then add the above. That starts to creep into sleeping time pretty quick. When a lightning storm kills power and you lose 5 hours or so of work on said report...now we are into big deal range.

Regardless, it hasn't all been bad and hard and what not.  My mom and I celebrated out birthday on the 3rd (mom) and 6th (me). We went to Dave and Busters. My parents like going to D&B and like collect tickets. However, spending those tickets seems to be the worst part because there is nothing in the reward area that my folks actually want. It's weird, but I totally get it and I'm pretty much the same way. However, my folks had like 20,000 tickets or something. So, it's kinda out of hand.

For perspective, the giant stuffed animals usually go for like 8 to 9 thousand tickets. So they could get one...or two. But all they had was these truly horrid looking gorillas and a banana...a smiling banana. That's not happening. On our way out, my dad noticed a really cute set of stuffed bears (polar and brown) that were really cute, but not in the store area and no price listed. So he asked and it was (*shockingly*) well within the number of tickets he had. So he got it for Jojo.

How big is this bear?

bed-sized.

We also got Jojo a pair of little plastic frisbees. He obsessed on them for some crazy reason. In short, a good time was had by all.

Tomorrow, we plan to go pumpkin picking and get photos done of Jojo in his Halloween costumes. I said costumes. We got two. We love Halloween. I'm looking forward to haunt the zoo more than I'm looking forward to his birthday or Christmas.

I'll post way more photos on FB, but these are the costumes we got:

I'm not jojo!

neither am I!

State Fair Son-day

Mo and I took Jojo to the state fair on Monday. It was kinda strange to think that the last time we went to the fair Mo was just entering her 3rd trimester and it would only be another few months before he was born.

Last year it was brutally hot and Mo ate like a hyena. It was fun to take pictures of her and whatever she was eating now. We also went on a very busy day and just moving around was difficult.

"nom nom nom kill you nom nom nom"

This year, we went on a Monday afternoon and the crowds were much more manageable and less intense. We could move around easily even with the stroller. The weather was fantastic. It was bright and sunny, but not oppressively warm. It was comfortable for all. We easily found places to sit and feed Jojo. Jojo was a joy during the whole thing. He looked around and smiled at people. When he got fussy it was mild and just because he was hungry.

My parents joined us shortly after we got there and hanging out with them was lots of fun. We had some food and got very full. My parents like to look at EVERYTHING. Mo and I are more for look while you walk and we often found ourselves stopping while my parents looked at something.

We finally bought something at the fair (other than food). We always mean to buy something to support the vendors and the fair, but never really find anything we are willing to buy. This year, mo found a cute little art box and had it customized with Jojo's name.

It has chalk and stuff inside and the back is a dry erase board.

The children's petting zoo was impressive. Normally it's common petting zoo animal (goats mostly), but this one had a deer, llamas, donkeys, and (of all things) a wallaby. Jojo is not really old enough to care and stared at things with his "I am not impressed" disdainful look.

So, your momma is a lama?

We did have some fun at the AGtropolis. Mo petted a baby chick (I like to imagine eating that same chick at chick-fil-a eventually). We also did a horrid thing to our son.

you can see the hate in his eyes.

Long-weekend Son-day

Mo is finally done with her three 7-11 shifts per week. It was a good idea on paper, and it got us to this point, but I am not sorry to see it go. She is back to doing just three 7-7 shifts.

We are going to start having my folks watch Jojo on Saturdays. That's cool, but it will be a transition. I am hopeful it works out well. But, we could not do it this weekend. My folks were busy. So Mo took a weekend off and I took a couple days off too. We had four whole days to spend together. We really did not know what to do.

We did a lot.

Mostly it was homework, sleeping, various and sundry chores and appointments. We did make time to spend with friends and family. We kept really busy and seemed to be driving all over town.

"One more word and I am turning this car around into oncoming traffic!"

We also took a trip to the Zoo with Jojo. We saw the elephant show. It was really fun. We even took the little guy to the children's zoo. He still can't walk and had no interest in the goats or other assorted petting zoo animals. The goats seemed mildly interested in him, but he just watched the other kids and adults. Mo wanted to let him play in the water a little but we really didn't bring water clothes, so this happened.

"I'm totally going to catch it this time, hold me still!"

Today we took him to the new doctor for a 9 month check up. He's healthy and doing fine. He's 30 inches or so and 20 pounds or so. He's big. The average height for a 1 year old is about 28-29 inches. The average weight is about 22 pounds.

Eventually, he will start using real words and not the near-constant and loud "babble-yelling".

iPad Son-day

I started my MBA program on Tuesday. The orientation was informative and useful. This year, tuition increased a good deal across the board, but the MBA program in particular. I figured it was just some random thing and I got to thank God I had an employee tuition discount.

So when we arrived at the orientation, all the students got a yellow envelop labelled "Do Not Open". This instruction was repeated throughout the orientation. Suspence was building, but I admit, I wasn't overly interested. I'm a bit jaded about such things.

"whatever"

Then, we were told there would be a drawing for an iPad 3. I raised an eyebrow at how generous that was and wondered who in this group would benefit so much from my tuition increase. We were told to open our envelops as the winning number was announced. I noted I had two slips in my envelop, each with the same number...and the same number as the person next to me. That's about when the guys in apple shirts walked in with boxes of iPads. Every student got one.

"haha, you should see your faces!"

This explains the tuition hike, but it's still a good deal. They included some basic accessories like a soft case and a discount at the campus apple store. They also bought an app called "notability" for us. With my tuition discount, it really is a great deal.

The iPad itself is fantastic. It's the wifi 16 gig version, but even with those limitations, remarkably useful. I wrote most of this blog on it. The iPad version of Blogger leaves much to be desired, especially in respect to pictures and video. 

Since then, the week has been pretty rough. Lots going on at work and school is more demanding (at least initially) than I suspected. It's not really hard, just very time consuming. For example, the readings due tomorrow are 305 pages, plus 3 assignments due later today (which are done already). Normally this work load would be very manageable, but with the increased load at the clinic, it is a challenge.

Jojo is doing great and very mobile. We had to get some baby-fencing to keep him at least modestly isolated. It slows him down more than stops him. Here's a video of him laughing.

It's exactly what I told you it would be.

Crawling Son-Day

Behold, the evolution of the crawl.

First, we have a sort of belly-pull. Turning is a belly spin. It's slow and inefficient, but forward movement rather than the rolling we've been doing.

At this point, he's mastered the belly-pull. It's faster and the turns are smoother, but it still requires a lot of energy.

Finally, we have an actual crawl. His belly is off the ground. Coordination and speed are still in the earliest stages, but mobility is definite.

For perspective, these videos range between 8/13/2 and 8/16/12.

3 days people.

3 friggin days.

Computer is back

I got my desk top back from apple this week. I also got the internal hard drive. I am going to get to take that to a data recovery services. Fortunately there are some in town. It will cost some money, but now that I have a working desktop computer, I'm not in much of a hurry. Whatever is still on there isn't going anywhere. I probably need to up my RAM. Not sure if that will actually ever happen.

Miss me?

Here are some observations I've made on the computer and data recovery issue.

1. This week I went to the funeral for the husband of one of my students. He was 32 and died from a heart attack. He was a great guy I didn't know well enough. He had a two year old and his wife is due with the second child in Sept. My data loss was instantly put in perspective, and it is effectively nothing. For those of you who do, prayer is appreciated.

2. While getting the machine set up again (installing dropbox, firefox, accessing websites and getting into my accounts, moving what data I have back onto the machine, etc.) I was reminded of all the stuff I have lost. It's a bunch.

3. There is something remarkably cathartic about having a completely empty machine. Much of what was on the old hard drive was junk I had collected over the years. I didn't delete it because I had no need to. I had a terabyte hard drive and I was only using about 250 gb. So much of it was pointless, meaningless junk I had no need (or even real desire) for. Much of it will not be missed. In many cases, I am glad it is gone.

4. I still want the photos and videos. There are numerous photos from Jojo's first month or two I don't have copies of other than on that hard drive. As useless and worthless so much of the information on that hard drive is, the only thing I really want is those photos, and I am willing to spent money and save useless crap to get them back.

Olympic Son-day

First, here is jojo being awesome.

Second. In case you've never met me, there is something you should know. It's obvious, but very, very, very important. Listen up, I'm not kidding here. It might save your life.

I.

Love.

The.

Olympics.

That is exactly what I mean. 

I don't know when I started to love them as much as I do. I don't remember not loving them. I don't care if it's Summer, Para, or Winter. I don't care what sport it is. I've watched Olympic Ice Dancing...and I will do it again. I honestly don't care that much if USA is even playing.

That thing Visa does where you can win tickets to the Olympics for the rest of your life? Yeah. That would be awesome. More awesome than I can deal with.

So, yeah, pretty much the TV will be on channel 4 for the next two weeks.

Why don't they air volleyball, gymnastics, fencing, taekwondo, swimming, track events, diving, cycling, equestrian, judo, shooting, wrestling, water polo, or weightlifting during lesser, non-Olympic years? However, you are never more than a few minutes from a bewilderingly boring golf game on every single station.

the most exciting moment of golf....ever. 

Spider Son-day

Spider-Jojo, Spider-Jojo

Does whatever a Jojo can

Fills a diaper, any size,

farts so hard that he flies

Look Out!

Here comes the Spider Jojo!

Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Jojo

Pre-crawl Son-day

Well, the drama of recovering data off my hard drive continues. If you ever fall into this situation and need Apple to replace your hard drive but give you the old one, here's some advice. They will tell you they can't do that. Ask to talk to the next person up the chain of command. They can do it, it just causes them some problems. Explain your situation and they will do the right thing.

We are corporate tech-support, not monsters. 

While the idea of losing about the first two months of photos of Jojo and a few other hard-to-replace or unable-to-replace files is absolutely killing me, I recognize it is just stuff. Stuff is not the end of the world. I still have faith and I can get the majority of it back. This really is the biggest stressor in my life right now and, honestly, that pretty much means I live a charmed life.

Jojo gave me a great "take some perspective moment" this afternoon. I put him down after he ate and look what he did.

Pretty cool right? Make a bunch of my "problems" seem a lot less important.

A Minimalism Plan

One of my goals for the year was to reduce my possessions. It was a vague goal and remains so. That's bothered me all year. More over, I've actually increased how much stuff is in the apartment due to Jojo's ever-changing needs.

I have a box of "stuff" I meant to get rid of, but have yet to do so for a few reasons. I put stuff I did not think I needed and then left it there. If I took it out of the box, then I'd keep it. If not, I'd get rid of it. At the moment, some of that stuff I had scanned into a computer I failed to back up so I am holding off to see if I can recover the data before getting rid of the original (and then backing up the data). When I know what I can recover from the old hard drive, grand. I'll do what I need to do with the box of stuff. 

The question is why I keep it. 

One thing I've learned about reducing possessions is that it will not happen without a plan. When Mo and I got married, our finances were horrid. We never had a budget, we barely knew when our bills were due or how we would pay them. We spent money when we had money, we both had credit cards, we both had huge debts, and we hadn't a clue how we were going to deal with any of it. Debt collectors called me every day. I was late on everything, when we could pay at all. We basically lived in financial stress. Eventually, we realized we didn't know what we were doing and blaming our lack of knowledge or our upbringing was pointless. We needed a plan. 

pictured: not the plan. 

So we made one. Now we have money, we have a budget, we have a plan. We actually have several, just in case. I don't remember what debt collection calls are like. I never lose sleep over our finances. If I am worried, I load up the budget, find out how we are doing and what the immediate plans are, then go back to bed. We are maintaining 4 different emergency funds (to cover our families) plus saving for a house and paying off the remainder of our debt - at the same time. Was it because it was such a good plan? Nope. Wasn't even a very good one. I'll happily tell you all about the various ways it wasn't as good as it should have been and how we had to change it over and over again. It was A plan, and that's all we needed.

Same thing with possessions. I own too much stuff and I want to get rid of it. I haven't made a plan and, oh look, I have even more stuff than when I started this year. Awesome. But how to make a plan to reduce things? My first instinct it to make a list or database of my possessions and then decide what needs to go. I tried that initially, didn't work. Cataloging everything I own is more of an undertaking than I think is reasonable or even productive. I'll spend more time cataloging than I will getting rid of stuff.

Being less specific is...kinda against my nature. But, in this case I think it is likely a better plan. One issue is I really haven't worked with Mo to discuss this reduction in possessions. I really have no idea why not, but I do know it's not going to happen without her support. In a marriage, getting anything done usually means working together.

"Okay, this time I will tank the boss and you spam heal."*

Once I know if, and how much, Mo is interested in reducing possessions, as well as getting a much clearer idea of what our end-goal will look like, making a real plan is likely to be easier.

*for those of you who get it, you're welcome. Those who don't...World of Warcraft is fun, you should try it some time.

it's like cocaine.

Recovery Son-day

Today is all about recovery in several ways. 

First, recovering from shock. We took Jojo to the doctor for a check up. He's fine. Sadly, we are losing our doctor. She got another job and won't be able to see us anymore. It's sad because she is just a wonderful doctor and her staff is great too. :(

But, Jojo is HUGE. He is in the 60th percentile for weight (18.17 lbs or so). Nothing special there really, average. But on length (when does it become height?) he is in the 99th percentile. Which I think means he is 99 times larger than other babies his age. 

Stormtrooper represents normal-sized baby

Seriously though, I'm glad he is doing well. I have no idea why he is getting so long/tall. We have a few people in our extended family who are tall (Mo and I are wee-folk). I think it is just a growth spurt. 

Second, my parents moved out of the apartment on Friday and we did more moving into the new apartment yesterday. For the most part we focused on the heavy stuff, in the hot July afternoon. As you can imagine, we were pretty exhausted by the end of it. That and sore. 

My folks new apartment is alright. It's near an apartment complex we used to live in. The area is not great, and neither is the apartment. They are old and in dire need of...well, rebuilding honestly. But, as a temporary place it will do. I think they wanted to get out of our place and get one of the storage units empty and work on getting into a nicer place near their schools. I'd like to see that happen, but next time, it's going to be a moving company. I'm too old for this. 

You own how many chairs? Why do you have a couch?

So I am resting and recovering today. I slept in, Jojo is being very nice to me and let me sleep a good bit. 

The next recovery is my hard drive. I normally do a fairly decent job of backing up data. At work, I always work of an external drive because I never trust work computers. I usually keep backups of just damn near everything on off-line or on-line backup. 

It's become so easy to backup data I really have no idea why lost data ever happens. It really shouldn't. Which is why I am so embarrassed that I simply never backed up my iMac. I know better, I failed to do better. 

Ah, crap. 

I'm in the process of trying to recover data. I bought an external backup drive, setting that up now. Got some software designed to recover data from crashed drives. Sadly, it's a bit more than the "quick start" can handle so I will be on the phone with support tomorrow. I chatted with them on Friday and they seemed hopeful. When I open disc utility, it recognizes a drive it there, but won't it won't mount. Apparently, that's better than many cases. So, hopeful. 

Funny stories: The "genius" (I hate that title) at the apple store told me he's been working there 2 years "helping" (I was there 2 hours and I didn't see one person 'helped' in the strictest sense - mostly they were told 'sorry') people with crashed hard drives and such. He made his first backup on his computer 2 weeks ago. 

One of my computer-literate buddies told me, after I told him about my crash, he checked his backup. It was a year old. 

The guy at Best Buy told me he consulted with one person who had over 100 GB in his trash can. He never emptied it. He just assumed it was gone when you put it in there. Another customer used his trash can as a desktop file. Just stored stuff in there. 

So, hilarious as it is, remember to set up your backup drives, don't be digital hoarders, and back up your data. 

Brave

Mo and I had a date last night. The last date we had was back in March when we went and saw John Carter (oy). This time we went to Joe's Crab Shack and then the Warren to see Brave.

Brave is a Disney/Pixar movie about a princess. So, yes, it is a princess movie. The good news is it's more like Mulan and less like Snow White. I enjoyed the movie completely. I don't think I've enjoyed a movie so much since How to Train your Dragon or Kung Fu Panda. Which makes me wonder if Pixar isn't taking a few notes from DreamWorks. (they should - just like DreamWorks takes notes from Pixar, and yes I would like to see DreamWorks and Pixar go Voltron and work on something together).

If you don't know what this is, you are sad.

I'm not going to get into the movie too deeply because I'd rather people go see it. But I do want to say a few things. The first is, the movie is gorgeous. I can't even tell you how visually stunning it is. The animation team deserves any and every award you can think of. I could have happily watched the movie on mute and been entertained.

The story is fine, it's nothing ground breaking. Honestly I don't ask movies to be groundbreaking. It's too easy to criticize "plot" since most people don't know what a plot really is. Plus they often say the plot is "used". Well of course it is familiar. If it was not we would not be able to identify with the story. I think they did a fine job with the story and I totally idenified. Yes, I teared up. Several times. Shut up.

The music was great, the comic relief was inspired, the voice acting was perfect. Seriously, loved this movie.

Sitting Son-day

Jojo is pretty amazing and it seems that everyday he figures some new little trick out. Sometimes he does something, and it's a total failure one day, then, the next day, boom! does it like a champ.

Sitting was one of those things. The other day Mo and I were letting him practice. He was flopping all over the place like LeBron James.

That's right, I make NBA references now too.

The next day, Mo practiced with him while I was at work. Apparently, there was an accident and Jojo fell back and hit his head on the floor. Mo was, of course, terrified. She's a neuro-trauma nurse and head injuries are kinda the thing they deal with.

An underwhelming injury.

He was quite fine. More over, the next day he was sitting by himself with little or no help for basically as long as he wanted to.



In other news, Mo and I are going to take advantage of my parents being in my apartment and go on a date. We're thinking just a normal dinner-and-movie date. Not sure where to eat or what movie to watch. I'm leaning toward Brave because it just looks awesome.

Jojo grew some hair!

I'm back.

After a hiatus of updating I am back. So much has been happening I just could not find the time to sit down and write it out.

First. My folks are in OK now. The move went well. WAY better than last time. Less stuff, better prepared, not as hot. U-haul was modestly less awful. Which puts them solidly back into "Yeah, I'll get my truck somewhere else"-Land and out of "If I have chance, I will crush your business"-Land. Getting the piano on the truck was hard. Thankfully some nice folks in CO helped out. Getting it off the truck was easy.

Since then, my folks have been living with us. It's been good. Free babysitting is nice, plus the help with feeding and diapers sure does not suck. We also got to watch the NBA finals together.

Go Thunder.

Yeah, I know, the Refs let the Heat win. Blah, blah, blah. Still a good season, still a good team. Still awesome.

Jojo has been awesome too. We got him a Thunder t-shirt.

I totally have Thunder-fever.

He started eating "solid" food (rice cereal) and got the hang of it like a boss. He's still messy, but he got the swallow and tongue action down pretty quick. He seems to enjoy it and it's cute.

Father's day was neat. We got my dad a light blue Thunder polo shirt (he can't wear T-shirts because he has a neck like a Sequoia). I was straight up jealous cause it was a cool shirt. I figured Mo would get Legos or something (the new Lord of the Rings series, for example). Nope, instead I got a shirt.

The most awesome shirt...EVER.