Real life intrudes
For the first time that I can remember, since I started blogging that is, I’ve been busy enough that I’ve been disinterested in blogging. Real life has intruded, quite rudely, on my favorite self-indulgent habit.
Work has been busy, but that’s expected, as this is the time of year in higher-ed IT when you run fast to get things done that you can’t do during the regular parts of the academic year. Most folks think Summer is the “quiet” time, and that’s true if you only look at things like the number of people on campus. But for things like projects, improvements, purchasing new computers, moving all sorts of stuff around, and getting it all ready for the onslaught of the new school year? That’s what Summer, and particularly the first three weeks of August (after the Summer semester ends), is for. In addition to our usual stuff, we’ve had some extra chaos in the form of some construction & moves in our office space, plus a few new hires, as well as a maternity leave thrown in for good measure. Oh yeah, there’s also a major database (our student information system) conversion going on - thankfully my group has only been tangentially involved, but it’s still a 2+ year, multi-campus project coming into production. It’s all made for an atmosphere that is nice & ripe for stress, tension, and drama…
I’m also teaching a class for the first time, and I’ve got to finish getting things ready for that. There’s nothing like knowing you have to get your syllabus ready, along with making sure that everything is ready to go in the online course management system (it’s an online-only, distance learning course), to make me flash back to the days of doing homework & having projects of my own…
And then there’s the ongoing recovery from the chaos generated by the flood in our basement almost two weeks ago. Fortunately, things went very well with the cleanup (losses were limited mainly to particle-board type furniture & bookshelves, the carpeting, and a washing machine). The insurance company has been good to deal with thus far. The washer has been replaced, the carpeting has been ordered, a battery backup has been installed for the sump pump so that this won’t happen again, and we’ll probably hold off on the bookshelves until after we get the new carpeting.
We’ve also been watching the Olympics more than I thought we would. It helps that I’ve been recording them so that we can buzz through them to get to the good parts without having to deal with the dreck that NBC insists on subjecting us to. It’s been darned impressive & entertaining to watch the swimming events, especially - but certainly not only, as all the swimming events were good, both men and women - Michael Phelps’ quest to break Mark Spitz’ record by winning 8 gold medals in 8 events, which he did by setting 1 Olympic & 7 World records. The women’s gymnastics meet was also pretty good, and it was nice to see the Americans acquit themselves so well.
So, life’s been busy. It’s a reason, not an excuse. I’ll try to do better. I must find my muse…
-ghp
I don’t like storms
Or, at more accurately, I don’t like storms that cause power to go out, which knocks the power out in the middle of the night, which causes the sump pump to not work, which causes the basement to flood.
That I don’t like at all. Not one little bit.
Especially when you wake up to nice, squishy, wet carpeting in the basement at 7 in the morning.
Comparatively speaking, we got off a whole lot easier than a bunch of folks here in NW Indiana — and for that I thank God — but it’s made for a darned annoying, stressful, and inconvenient day. Fortunately, we were able to find a wonderful company to take care of the work of clean-up & drying things out (Garner, Inc. for those of you in this neck of the woods - they are good people, who do top-notch work at very reasonable prices…). They got here real early and did a great job of getting the water out, the carpet ripped out, the fans & dehumidifiers moved in & things drying out, so that we should be dry by the end of tomorrow (Tuesday) at the latest.
Fortunately, we weren’t without power for too long, so we didn’t get too much water built up (my parents, by comparison, ended up with about a foot of water standing in their basement! But at least they didn’t have any carpet, and also didn’t have as much stuff low to the ground as we do/did, after the flooding they had last year around this same time of year…). I’d guess that we ended up with no more than an inch or two, which probably didn’t get to too much more than the bottoms of stuff like cabinets, bookshelves, & some power strips (i.e., nothing too valuable that I’ve noticed yet…)
It’s amazing how much something like this, which to be honest is really quite minor, can throw the whole household into chaos. Do we really have such a tenuous grasp on normalcy? Scary…
I’m just thankful that the only damage was to stuff, not people, and that the damage was to stuff that thus far looks to be easily replaceable. I’m also very thankful that God has watched over us, kept us safe, and provided us with capable and qualified neighbors to give us the services that we need to get us through these difficult times.
-ghp
The title goes here
I can’t recall the last time I went over a week without posting an entry. Sometimes it gets away from you. I guess I have a decent excuse this time, in that it was last Monday evening that I got the call that my last surviving grandparent had died. As a result, the clan was summoned for a long weekend of funeral related activities, that for the Territorial Nuclear Family meant a Thursday - Sunday road-trip to the ancestral homeland in Metro Detroit.
I’m not going to go into a long, drawn-out, blow-by-blow recap, if only because it’ll bore y’all (’cause other folks’ families are never quite as entertaining as you might thing, even when they are dysfunctional…) & annoy me (’cause it was bad enough that I had to live through parts of it once…). Suffice it to say that there were good parts (it’s always good to meet up with bigsis!), and bad parts (extended family members & social situations that were frankly uncomfortable, physical and mental/emotional malaise, and a funeral service/eulogy that was stunningly stereotypically lightweight in its lack of theology — with the two “hymns” having been In the Garden & The Old Rugged Cross — and thus not terribly comforting as a result…). Layer all that on to the fact that I just don’t like to travel all that much, and you can easily see that it wasn’t the greatest of times for me.
But, it had to be done, and I was more than happy to have been there for my beloved mother. While my grandmother was, to put it lightly, the most difficult of the four grands, it still didn’t make it any easier for my mom to deal with the inevitable endgame. Over the past 14 years my parents have had to bury all four of their parents, including three in the past five, IIRC. Fold into that all of the traveling that they’ve had to do for medical appointments, home care, emergency-room trips, nursing home transitions, nursing home visits, etc… — well, this past decade-and-a-half has aged my parents well beyond the mere passage of time. I pray that the Lord now blesses them with a rejuvenation & removal of stress, that they might enjoy life on their own terms, without demands placed on them by other folks, really for the first time in their 51 years of marriage.
Anyhoo, that was the past week for me. This week, it’s catching up at work & getting ready for another trip to MI this weekend, albeit a planned one for the little woman’s family reunion and for her 20th high school reunion (can’t say I understand why she wants to go, but she does & I’ll do whatever I can to support her — ’cause if she’s odd enough to love me, then she obviously needs all the support she can get! 
).
-ghp
I lack discipline
I lack discipline.
It manifests in many ways, not the least of which is the recent paucity of postings. It’s also why I so look forward to time off from work, only to end up doing absolutely nothing of actual, you know, substance during that time. I’ll sleep. I’ll be horrifically slack. I’ll even be able to somewhat rationalize it in my mind while it’s going on, even as I know that I’m in the middle of an ultimately unjustifiable torpor.
I have books I want to read. Projects I want to complete, both on the computer and in “meatspace“. I have oodles of things that I want to write about. I have a course I’m teaching in the Fall that I need to prepare for (yeah, they’re letting me mold young minds…).
I don’t lack motivation. I know it all needs to get done. Well, I know what needs to get done, and I know what I want to get done, and I know the general timelines for both.
I just lack discipline.
More specifically, and importantly, I lack the discipline necessary to save myself the angst and last-minute stress that can be avoided by getting things done early (I never was the type to get projects & papers done weeks ahead of time and/or in little chunks of time & effort by starting them right when they were first assigned…). All too often I’ve done my some of my best work at the last minute/the night before — often enough to reinforce the bad habit, even though I intellectually know it’s not the best practice.
Heck, I don’t even have enough discipline to have good sleeping and eating habits. So I’m always tired & overweight.
Why unburden myself here? Eh, why not? If it’s a bad idea and/or the wrong thing, I can just blame it on the fact that I lack discipline…
-ghp
-
Analytics & Hosting
