This posts for you...

Well, after reading Erin's blog, I figured I must be one of the blogs she reads that posts infrequently. So, Erin, here's a post just for you!

I started re-reading the Getting Things Done book a couple of days ago. The book is structured so that he gives kind of an overview of the GTD philosophy, then he goes into the "coaching" phase where he walks you through the steps of implementing the GTD process. I remembered the introductory stuff being kind of dry and hard to chew through, but it seems more exciting to me this time around. Maybe it's because I'm more motivated this time around, I don't know. But I have high hopes that I can get myself more organized this time around.

Lori has had a rough day today. She attended an IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting with the school district about Megan. While there, they reported the results of Megan's latest round of testing, and the results were pretty disappointing. On the one hand, the school district is finally taking us seriously, and have accepted the diagnosis of Autism. That's great, in that we have a good chance of finally getting the services that we have been insisting that she needs. However, it's also quite scary, because they are taking us seriously. It brings back some of the fears that we have had for her for a couple of years. Normally I would have gone to the meeting with Lori, but Megan was sick, so we couldn't send her over to a friends house while we both went to the meeting. Lori is the most familiar with Megan's needs, so I came home from work early, and Lori went to the meeting. The disappointing thing about the meeting, is that because Megan will be attending the new school being built behind our house, the district doesn't quite know exactly what services they will be able to provide. So, the actual details of the IEP are still up in the air. We did get an agreement that those services will be specified before the school year starts. In the mean time, we have a lot of work to do to get her ready for kindergarten.

On a lighter note, I have a funny story. A few months ago, I got an MP3 player. I picked one that could play movies and display photos too. I brought it in to work, where my friend Evan promptly began to fiddle with it. He discovered some image file that we thought had something to do with the splash screen that displayed when the player was turned on. He replaced the image with something he threw together in the GIMP. But, we were wrong, and it didn't seem to have any effect at all. Over the course of the next couple of months, I forgot that we had done anything to that image at all. Anyway, today I was upgrading software so that I could take advantage of playlist support on the player, and when I connected the device to windows media player, this dialog appeared. I nearly fell out of my chair!

Sad little things that make us human...

I found this movie while browsing a time management site I hit every once in a while when I come to the realization that I really need to get more organized. This feeling usually comes to me when I run up against some deadline or another for something that I should have been working on but for some reason avoided. This has been a pattern throughout my life. In college, I could get away with it by pulling an all-nighter the night before my deadline and somehow pull it all together just in time. I was young then, and going all night without sleep didn't seem to affect me as much as it does now. I'd delude myself with the excuse "I work best to a deadline," but I wasn't really working to a deadline. That implies that I'd actually done more than just thought about the fact that I needed to do something.

Anyway, the movie is hilarious and sad all at the same time. Sad, because I have to admit that I am a champion procrastinator. I've been working at it for a VERY long time, I'd say since I was 10. The things zeFrank talks about in the video strike very close to home. I mean, I feel the time crunch because I'm up against a deadline, so I go browse a time management blog? Huh? I've found myself looking at mono spaced fonts for use in my text editors... Oh, an text editors? How many does one really need?!? I have at least 10 installed on my computers (not including notepad and word pad which come pre-installed on windows machines). I've even procrastinated going to bed, you can ask my wife. No, I don't mean that I stayed up way too late (though I do that too). I mean I'm completely exhausted. Ready for bed. All I have to do is get up off the couch, go brush my teeth, and crawl into bed. And I think "I'll just 'rest' my eyes for a few minutes." Then I wake up at 3:30 am, freezing because I don't have a blanket covering me. That's what I mean by procrastinating going to bed. Pretty sad.

OK, so why do I mention this? Well, I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling like I have to scramble every time some deadline rolls around. I'm keeping up, but I feel like I'm hanging on by my fingernails, and I'm not enjoying it. A year ago, I had Lori pick me up a book called Getting Things Done with the intention of applying it's process for keeping on top of tasks. I haven't used it. I keep putting it off because of the setup time that it will take. Well, no more. I hate posting somewhere and saying "I'm gonna do this." But if I don't, then I don't progress, there's no accountability (not that there's much on my personal blog site that is read infrequently by only one person that I know of). So, I am going to implement the "GTD" method. I also purchased a book off Amazon.com earlier this week about procrastination, called The Now Habit. I'll probably be talking quite a bit about both of these in my blog over the next few weeks (just a warning). Anyway, enjoy the movie. All seriousness aside, it is pretty funny.

NOTE: I had a movie embedded in this post, but apparently, shortly after I put the post up, the link broke. So, here's the wiki page on ZeFrank's page with the transcript of the video and a link to the video.

Strange thoughts

So, I was reading the latest post from my good friend Erin over at Everything Erin, and she mentioned that I had stepped in a deposit her dog had left on their lawn while I was at their house on Saturday. What struck me as odd at the time, was that Malcom's poop doesn't stink. No, seriously. It doesn't. You know the drill, you step in dog poop, and immediately, the smell assaults your senses, and you get all frustrated "ah crap, I just stepped in dog poop!" There was none of that. I walked around for a few minutes afterwards, and might not have noticed, except that one shoe seemed to be riding a little higher than the other, and then after putting the kids in teh van, I noticed some poop spots on the pavement. But, no smell. Strange, the things that strike you in the moment.

OK, enough talk of poop. Our valentines day was pretty low key. I teach on Wednesdays, and so we decided to celebrate it early. We went out to dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Azteca. It's a little pricey, but we tend to go there once every few months or so. Anyway, since we had already gone to dinner, we ended up staying home. That was a good thing, since Lori wasn't feeling good when I got home, and she ended up sleeping some 11 hours that night. I did stop in at Wal-Mart on my way home and picked up a bouquet of roses for Lori, and a few stuffed animals for the girls. I got a unicorn for Hailey, and she has hardly let it out of her sight since. Sierra has insisted on having her bear with her each night as she goes to bed. She sleeps with 2 bears now, "Hug Bear," which I had given her for valentines day last year, and the new bear, whose name escapes me at the moment. Anyway, I pretty much just stayed home, put the kids to bed, and played video games. Pretty relaxing for me, and hopefully for Lori too.

Weekend fun

So, this weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday, the campfire group went to the McNary wildlife refuge. I didn't catch how big the refuge is, but it is quite popular with bird watchers. There were a ton of ducks on the river while we were there, and a couple of times they all just took off. It looked like a scene from "The Birds." Pretty crazy. I didn't get to do the whole tour, because Megan was being a turkey and just wanted to sit in the car the whole time. We had a lot of people, more than we usually have for campfire activities (I mean, I was there, so that should tell you something, I've never been to one yet), and I think that along with the new surroundings were a little hard for her to deal with. Anyway, Lori and I took turns, one of us staying with Megan, the other joining the rest of the group for the tour. We took the DSLR camera, so we were kind of the official group photographers. Oh wow, I just realized that we never took a full group photo. Some photographer I am :)! We took well over 100 pictures though. It was a great time, and the kids had a blast. I'll probably post a few of the pictures once I get them all off the camera.

Sunday Megan did the funniest thing. She was having a hard time with church that day, and had been really grumpy with Lori. When they got to church, Lori said she was in trouble, so I made Megan sit on my lap until she calmed down. After a few minutes, she started telling me that I was in trouble. At first I thought she had just mixed up her words, as she does that from time to time. However, she then began saying that I needed to sit on her lap because I was in trouble. After I let her off my lap, she pushed her way on to the seat behind me and proceeded to order me to sit on her lap because I was in trouble. It took a little work, and it wasn't very comfortable, but I somehow arranged it so that I was sitting on her lap... well, sort of. I had my legs across hers, but I was still sitting on the seat of the chair next to me. She made me sit that way the rest of the meeting (about 30 minutes or so). It was pretty funny to hear her say "You're in trouble, sit on Megan's lap!" in a stern voice.

Finally, Lori was released from her calling as the nursery leader. She's pretty excited so that she can once again get involved in the adult activities in the church. She's had several people approach her and wonder if she's inactive. It's pretty funny. Of course, what did she end up doing the first day of freedom? She sat with Hailey in primary. Hailey is having a hard time adjusting to primary. Nursery was a blast. She got to play, eat snacks, and color. Pretty low key. Now she has to sit quietly and listen to a lesson. Pretty tough stuff. Fortunately, she didn't need to stay in their the whole time, and was actually able to go to join the the other adult ladies in their class.

Anyway, that was our weekend.

So much for good intentions

Well, I've failed so far at the "weekly post" thing. My last post was nearly 2 months ago. Right now I'm just sitting in my easy chair, waiting for Hero's to start. I don't watch much television, but I haven't missed an episode of this show. Like just about everyone else, Hiro is one of my favorite characters, his power has to be one of the coolest thing ever. But, I also like Peter. He's the unifying force, the one that believes there is something that they can do to help the world.

This weekend, we had a big birthday party for Evan (my best friend for some 14 years), and Ainsley (the daughter of a friend of ours). For Ainsley, we took all the kids (11 of them) to the local rollerskating rink. Megan (my autistic daughter) did well. The last time we went there, she flipped out. So many people, so much noise. It completely overstimulated her, and she spent pretty much the whole time hiding underneath my coat. I took her for a walk that time, just to give her a break. This time, though she still wouldn't go anywhere near the counter where they handed out the skates, she played happily anywhere else. Sierra started out holding tight to the wall, but after a short time she got a little braver and struck out on her own. By the time we left, she was skating very well on her own. Lori spent her time helping Hailey roll around the rink. It was hard work, and her back was sore the next day. Hailey was torn between having a great time, and being tired of trying to move with the skates on. Afterwards, we went to Evan's house for cake and presents. Evan got the 3D version of "Settlers of Catan" It was a blast to play. I took a ton of pictures with my new toy, a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera. I'll post some later. A good time was had by all.

First Post and Outsmarting my kids...

OK, so I started a blog on blogger some time ago, but never really got it off the ground. In fact, the first post was the last post. But, this weekend, I had a lot of time to think (4 day weekends will do that to ya, I guess). I had the idea that I wanted a blog setup that I could easily attach labels to so that later, I could track down posts based on topic. It struck me then, that I didn't know if blogger could do this already. I didn't see an easy way to do this in the original blogger software, so I decided to try out the blogger beta, and lo and behold, a label bar at the bottom of the composition window! So, once again, I will try to get in the habit of doing at least a weekly post to a blog.

Why a weekly post? Well, I've noticed that since I have left school, my writing skills have deteriorated somewhat. Over the past 5 or 6 years, I haven't had many opportunities to write. A white paper here, a power point presentation there (which I'd hardly call writing). It wasn't like when I was in school, where I could expect to write 3-4 papers each semester. So, in an attempt to get back what I have lost, I have decided I need to take more opportunities to write, and I think a Blog is a good way to get things started.

OK, so on to the fun stuff. Talking about my kids. This weekend, we had our first snow. Megan, my second child, was the first to notice the falling snow, and she was very excited! She couldn't wait to go outside and play, but that wasn't the main reason for her enthusiasm. No, for some reason, in her mind, she has equated snow with Christmas. She was sure that because it was snowing, that it was also Christmas. She asked a couple of times where Santa was, and where the presents were. It was sooo cute. Once Sierra noticed the snow, she had to be out in it. So we bundled up Sierra and Megan and sent them outside. I stayed in where it was warm. Between the two of them, they made a snowman all by themselves. I was very impressed, and that was enough to get me outside. I felt a little guilty for not going outside with them earlier and doing the parent thing (you know, take pictures of everything), so I went outside with no coat and in sandals to take a picture of their snowman. I'll post the pics later (when I've pulled them off the camera).

Speaking of Christmas, this time of year reminds me how smart my kids are. Sierra, in particular, is very hard to fool. Last year, as my wife and I were wrapping presents, she reminded me to take care to wrap the "Santa" gifts in a different wrapping paper than the ones we were giving. However, neither of us thought about the to/from labels. As we were opening presents on Christmas morning, Sierra pointed out that "Santa" had used the same labels as our family! Totally didn't expect that kind of reasoning from my 5 year old daughter... We had to think quickly and tried to play it off a bit. Well, she's getting an early start this year. My wife sat down with her on Sunday to make a list of what she'd like for Christmas. She wanted to send it to Santa. She brought the list to show me after they were done, and I pointed out that it was likely that Santa would only give her one or 2 things off the list, and that she might get other things from my wife and I. My daughter looked at me and said "How will Santa know what you got me?" Wow, caught me off guard there! I made up something about it being the same way he knows if a kid has been bad or good. I think she bought it, whew!