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.