Time

A few years back I used to play world of Warcraft. Then I stopped playing. For about a week I had no idea what to do. I couldn't remember what I did with my time when I wasn't playing Warcraft.

Now, I am sitting here at my desk. I have no homework. Jo is hanging out with his grandma (she invited him over).

I have no idea what to do.

I'm not bored, and there is a plethora of things I could do. There always is. Anyone who says "there's nothing to do" has never been to a library and doesn't know that Project Gutenberg is a thing. There's plenty I can do. I own a house for heaven's sake. It's a 30 year old house, there is a ton to do. Most I can't afford, but there's stuff to do. But there is nothing I have to do. I can sit here and stare at the wall if I so please.

More to the point, I don't know what I want to do. I haven't had that luxury in so long I'm confused by the question. I can't even seem to generate options. I'm just sitting here like. "People sometimes choose what they do with their time?" These are of course strange people, wise enough to avoid grad school. I envy these people.

So, here's a picture of Jo. Mo sent me this picture before the MFT exam. Evidently, Jo was wishing me good luck.

I am a stupid person

Some people think I am a smart person. This flies right in the face of all available evidence. Let me show you the facts.

1. I am working on a second masters degree.
2. While my wife is working a masters degree.
3. While raising a 15 month old.

"Bwahahahahahahaha"

4. While working full-time
5. While my wife is working full-time.
6. While looking for a house.
7. With my parents.

Any one of those things is enough to stress a fella out and make him a little crazy. I'm doing all of them at the same time. Furthermore, I use italics a lot so you know it's really crazy.

The only rational conclusion is that I am a profoundly, unquestioningly, certifiably, stupid person. 

Thanks Fred, happy belated birthday btw.

Nasty Son-day

I have really enjoyed this human resources class. An 8-week course is a little intense and this was definitely intense, but it's been a good class. I learned so much. I'd really like to just blog about it all and really impress people, but that's not really what this blog is about.

stay on target...

 In addition to school being very busy, work has been interesting too. I changed how I do the editing process and it's MUCH faster now. An edit that used to take me 2 weeks to get through now takes like 2 hours. It frees me up to do my own evaluations and network with people on campus. We are even getting some help in our processes to try to lean the clinic up. It's intimidating because I know what I am doing is FAR from perfect and I'm sure I've made some procedural mistakes. I've also been horridly ignorant. I just hope my UCO colleagues are patient and forgiving. Facing these things can be a blow to my self-efficacy. So far, they've been amazing. But, that isn't really what this blog is about.

...stay on target...

Jo has been growing like a weed. He babbles non-stop and seems to figure something new out every couple of minutes. It's fun to watch.

This week Mo got sick and then Jo got sick. I got to clean up a lot of baby vomit. Then Pooka vomited and I got to clean up dog vomit. That's on top of the aforementioned school and work intensity. It's been super fun guys.

On the upside, Jo is much more cuddly when he is feeling bad. He's not much of a cuddler. He likes to run around and get into stuff. So, when he does cuddle, Mo and I try to get as much as we can. It's been nice but I think he's over the worst of if and going back to being crazy again.

CRAZY TIME!

Orange belt Son-day

Not much going on. Tomorrow starts the new semester and a new class, but other than that, not much to talk about. I really struggled to come up with something to post.

Jojo is a walking fool and has been since Christmas Eve. He walks vastly more than he crawls and gets into EVERYTHING. It's pretty nuts sometimes. No fear and boundless curiosity. He actually reached into my martial arts bag (which was on a chair) and dug out my belt.

Little known fact, Superman had an orange belt.

No idea how he got it out, but he can pretty much reach anything. I keep my trash can on top of a stack of boxes. The boxes of Christmas stuff actually. I need to take those out to the storage closet...but then where will I keep my trash can?

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.

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.

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!

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.