August 6, 2015

I got about four and a half hours of sleep last night so that was nice. I read a book before bed and falling asleep wasn't a problem but the dogs started howling early in the morning because Tanner had a vet appointment. I took advantage of my unwanted extra hours awake by working on the basement today. I mainly focused on my computer room but I also moved my bookshelf out of my bedroom, putting it in the computer room, and replaced it with a chest of drawers. I still need to rearrange things in my room but I haven't decided on that yet. I did a lot of cleaning and rearranging in the computer room but much like my room, I still need to figure out a layout. There's just so much crap. Progress has been made, though.

While I worked on that, I watched things. There were a couple DC animated movies, one about Superman and Supergirl fighting Brainiac and another where the Flash goes into an alternate timeline where the world is falling apart and Batman is actually Bruce Wayne's father because in this timeline Bruce was killed in the alley, his father became Batman, and it looked like his mother became the Joker. I also caught up on DVRed stuff.

Today I started trying to use the Shift key with my right hand instead of my left. My left hand is kind of always in pain and I thought one possible explanation might be from using my left pinky finger so much when I'm typing. I didn't realize how often I use the Shift key but before today it was exclusively with my left hand, and that really starts to add up when I type a bunch every day. So far it has been a very awkward adjustment. The muscle memory isn't there so I am still trying to figure out what fingers to use for the different keys when I shift my right hand over to capitalize a letter. I'll get there. Or I'll forget all about it and go back to using my left hand.

Tomorrow I am going to have brunch with my dad and sister. After that my focus will hopefully be on the basement again. Time is ticking, slowly but inevitably faster.

August 5, 2015

 Yesterday I watched an episode of Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O'Brien, a “show” where he has a guest on and they talk for about an hour. I'm a fan of it and the latest episode was with Erik Larson, the author of The Devil in the White City and other books. I want to read all of his books but have yet to read any. Someday. Anyway, Conan asked him what his process was like and he said that every day he wakes up early and writes a single page. Even if he gets to the end of the page and he is in the middle of a paragraph or the middle of a sentence or the middle of a thought, he stops. That way when he comes back the next day he will be able to start of being productive because he has to finish what he left unfinished the day before. If he had a moment of inspiration and wrote it all down at once, he would come back the next day and not have anything to write. I think I do that with things. I'll be really productive but I tap myself out and then get into a funk and feel like crap because I can't make myself do anything else. I like the single page a day approach.

I got full night of sleep last night, for the first time in awhile it seems, and it was great. The only reason I got out of bed was because the plumbers were coming and I had to babysit the dogs. Hopefully this is the last time the plumbers have to come. The bubbles in my toilet had them completely stumped. All previous attempts have failed and today they even walked around the backyard and on the roof trying to figure things out. Eventually they shoved a camera down the pipe and when they got out to the city pipe they found a blockage. The guess is that when the house was still being built one of the workers used the bathroom but because there was no other water being used in the house it didn't make it all the way to the city line. Nice. My fingers are crossed that the problem is solved now. It is interesting that in this process it was discovered that there was a pipe missing, even if it didn't necessarily have anything to do with the problem. We also learned that when the plumbing was first done for my toilet they didn't have the right blue prints so they ran the pipes to the opposite wall because that is where they thought the toilet would be. There are a couple cracked tiles between where they toilet is now and where the plumbers thought it was going to be and the leading theory is that the cracks are above where the floor was patched after the plumbers moved their pipes. And all of this is coming to light because someone used the toilet before they should have.

Tonight was Chipotle night and my burrito was really freaking good. It felt like it had been forever since I had eaten a burrito, even though it was only a week ago. I'm really looking forward to the second half tomorrow.

I didn't really accomplish much today but I did watch things. Starting with Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast. Since getting Netflix I will admit that the Tinker Bell movies have become a guilty pleasure. I generally go with the idea that if something makes you happy you shouldn't feel guilty about it but I don't know that I would go around advertising the fact that I have seen all of the Tinker Bell movies. But I have and I like them. And that includes the latest one, which made me happy up until the end because they it turns into a bit of a tear-jerker. I would have liked a happier ending.

I watched Wing Commander with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard, a movie that I don't think I even knew existed. It would probably have been okay if things had stayed that way because it was a pretty bad movie. I think even if I had seen it back when it originally came out I would have thought it was ridiculous. There are some movies that I saw when I was younger and I can now see that they are ridiculous, but I still like them because I can remember how good I thought they were when I was younger. That would not have been the case with this movie. It was just bad.

Next I watched War with Jet Li and Jason Statham. I have avoided watching it before because for some reason I thought I had already seen it. I think I may have seen a part here and there but I don't think I ever saw the whole thing. Maybe it was one I peeked in on at the theater. I don't know, but I liked it. There is a twist that I did not see coming and it was a good one. Not something ridiculous that feels like it was just added because the writer needed an excuse for something crazy happening.

I ended the night with the first two episodes of The Flash. I like it. It is a nice change from Arrow because there is more humor and at least so far it hasn't gotten too dark or soap opera-like. There are definitely underlying mysteries and potential drama because it is based on a comic book, but those haven't overwhelmed the show yet thankfully.

Tomorrow I want to start working on the basement. I've still got a lot of stuff from the move that I need to find a place for. It would be cool if I could get that done before work and school start again. I don't I will but making a dent in it would at least make me feel better.

August 4, 2015

I didn't really get to sleep in this morning because the dogs were being assholes. I took the opportunity to proofread my budget assignment, run on the elliptical, and take a shower. All before lunch. Not bad. After lunch I went with my mom to the education center so I could enroll for health insurance and she could get a new name badge. This is the first year we were eligible for health insurance (thank you, Obama) and originally I wasn't going to get it because the premiums for all of the options were more than I already pay. Then I found out that the board had voted and the district was going to cover the premium. So starting in October I'll be saving $250 a month and I am very much okay with that. While we were there I also took the opportunity to change my address, again, because apparently there was a typo last summer and I didn't realize it until this summer because I kept getting mail even with the typo. But that should all be resolved now.

After that we picked my sister up and we went to a couple different places to buy birdseed. It started to rain on the way and on the way back we actually had to pull into a parking lot because it was coming down so hard that it was difficult to see the road. It eventually cleared up enough that we were able to make it home.

I don't recall what I did before dinner but I think at some point I proofread my budget assignment again. And after dinner I had my mom proofread it, which was a wise choice because she caught a few things I had missed. I proofread it again a few hours later, changed a couple more things, and then I finally turned it in. I wanted to stop obsessing about it and put a nail in the summer semester. I am now free for almost two weeks. A mini summer vacation at last.

The rest of my night was spent finishing the second season of Arrow. I still like the show but I will admit I was getting a little tired of season two. Every single woman, except Felicity, and a few of the guys were repeatedly whiny bitches throughout the season. It was getting old. As were the flashbacks which were taking forever to get to the point. It was all beginning to feel like a soap opera, helped by all of the dramatic closeup shots of the actors staring slightly off camera. Not that I'm judging, but I'm glad I finished the season and I am hoping season three will take itself a little less seriously.

Now I am going to watch some of Conan because Ryan Reynolds is on and they're going to premiere the trailer for Deadpool. Yesterday they released a short trailer for the trailer and it was pretty good. It got me excited to see the actual trailer, which I have already seen because it was leaked after Comic-Con, but this will be the real thing, not a crappy cellphone video.

August 3, 2015

Another morning of waking up way too early and another day of feeling way too tired. I attempted a nap before lunch but it didn't seem to help. After lunch I went and got my haircut. I was glad that I remembered my haircut but I forgot my wallet. I even knew I didn't have it beforehand and came in the computer room to get it but by the time I made it here I had forgotten my reason for coming and ended up grabbing my water bottle instead. Brilliant. The lady who cuts my hair told me not to worry about it and to remind her next month and she would charge me twice. I didn't feel right about that, and I was avoiding my schoolwork, so I came home, got my wallet, and went back and paid. One less thing on my conscious.

The only schoolwork I finished this afternoon was yet another edit to the group website. Another person commented on it and mentioned that the social media links opened in the same window, taking you away from the site. I hadn't even thought about that so I went back in and switched the code so now the links open in a new tab. And I had to switch the code on every freaking page, but I did it.

I ended up falling asleep in my chair for a little while before dinner. I was resting my head and my hand and I woke up to that hand being completely asleep because it had been above my heart the whole time and all the blood drained out of it.

After dinner I finally worked on my budget assignment. And just before 12:30AM I finished my budget assignment. At least mostly. I still need to go back and proofread everything and make sure I did my math right. But then I'll be done. I should be able to submit it tomorrow and then I will be completely done with class. I also did the course evaluations today, so yeah, completely done. That gives me almost two whole weeks off until the Fall semester begins. And if the textbooks are any indication, in the future the Fall semester will probably be referred to as the one that kicked my ass.

Now I'm going to watch another episode of Arrow and call it a night. I will be sleeping in tomorrow and it is going to be great.

August 2, 2015

My hands have been freezing for a couple hours now. It is quite annoying.

I actually woke up on time this morning, thanks to setting my collect to the correct time last night. I let the dogs out, fed them, and then came back downstairs to work on homework. I made the final edits to the group website, changing the name of a couple links on each page and adding a couple links to each page. After uploading it to the school server I wrote responses to the last two classmates who reviewed our site. At one point while working on those responses I was trying to write 'centered' but wrote 'sentered' instead. I took that as a sign that maybe I was a little sleep deprived. Four hours of sleep has that effect. So after I finished the responses, reading them a few times, and posting them, I crawled under my desk and took a nap.

Last night I hooked my laptop up to my TV because I needed two screens, one of them being more in my line of sight because my laptop was off to the side. The HDMI cable I had was long and it hung down in front of my desk. Flash-forward to this afternoon, Tanner was in my room and ended up going under my desk and came out the other side with the cable resting against his chest. He probably wasn't even aware of it but then he decided to run forward. I managed to grab the side that was connected to my laptop and although the cable came out, it doesn't appear to have caused any harm to my laptop. On the other end, the TV was almost knocked off its precarious perch and the cable was bent at a 45-degree angle. Initially I thought the TV port was broken but when I pulled the cable out, the cable was bent, not the TV. It too appears to be fine. The cable was broken, which sucks, but it was only three dollars and it could have been way worse.

This afternoon and up until ten o'clock this evening, I worked on my budget assignment. I'm getting closer. I'm down to the last question, contemplating the long-term ramifications of my decisions and answering how I could retain the confidence of my staff and community. Then I have the final essay where I talk about my thought process behind the assignment, what materials I used, and tying it into what I learned this semester. The last bit will be the hardest. It's like a comprehensive final. I hated those. I think I can finish it tomorrow. At least the rough draft.

I took a break after dinner to look at the final report for the group website. I made some big formatting changes, mostly because the leader of the report copied and pasted the usability testing results that one of the other groups performed on our site into the report (instead of doing our own) and it was formatted into a weird two-column table. I fixed that. I also added in a couple more responses to usability issues and suggestions given by other groups. I then took a few minutes to write and submit the group evaluation. I gave myself an 'excellent' rating because I did the bulk of the work and gave everyone else a 'very good', which was the next step down, because they all did a very good job. It was kind of annoying doing all the coding, when the whole point of the class was to learn how to code, but in the end it was a lot easier that way and it was nice not really having to worry about the progress reports. It was a much better group experience than I have grown accustomed to so far in graduate school.

Last night when I let the dogs out for their final bathroom run for the night there was a big spider hanging down from the door frame right at head level. Thankfully when I opened the door tonight the spider was gone.

After I called it quits for the night with my schoolwork, I started watching Arrow. My self-control that past a couple of days, putting my schoolwork first, has been surprising. But I feel much better about myself than I did a few days ago. I think I'm going to finish the episode I'm watching and then go to bed. Or maybe after one more episode.

Tomorrow should be the last day I have to wake up early for the dogs. At least I think so. Or I'm just hoping so. I do need to get back on a more acceptable school year sleep schedule but I would like to enjoy a few more days of sleeping in. Taking naps during the day is kind of nice but it cuts into the time I could be working on schoolwork. Or avoiding schoolwork.

August 1, 2015

I set my alarm for eight o'clock this morning so I could get up and let the dogs out. I ended up staying in bed for another forty-five minutes. But it turns out at some point, maybe when I was setting my alarm, I set my clock forward an hour. So even though I slept for an extra forty-five minutes, I actually woke up fifteen minutes early. That was a very tricky concept for my groggy mind to come to terms with as I was standing upstairs and looking at three different clocks that disagreed with what I thought was true.

After the dogs were fed I came back downstairs and didn't really do much. I was still pretty tired so I ended up crawling under my desk and taking a short nap before lunch. I also spent most of my afternoon under my desk, laying there and listening to music, occasionally falling asleep. My motivation could not have been lower today. It was frustrating but I wasn't actually that frustrated because that requires motivation, which I didn't have. It was interesting.

I finally accomplished stuff tonight, long after dinner, when the sun was only a distant memory. I finished the budget part of the budget assignment, cutting $300,000 from the library's budget. When I was done with the personnel side of it I was able to add a little more money back into things I had cut earlier, like books, databases, and software. I then spent the next few hours working on the final report. I answered the first two questions, where we have to say why we cut a position (or created one in question two), what problems it solved, and what problems it may cause. Next I will need to explain how I got the numbers in my budget. Thankfully I have been keeping notes as I go so I actually know why I made specific cuts. I also have one or two more questions beyond that and then a three-page essay tying the assignment into what I have learned in the class this semester. That is going to be a pain.

I forgot to mention that my textbooks for the Fall semester arrived yesterday. All five of them. They are all thick and very dense. It is going to be a long semester.

Tomorrow there is some stuff I want to do for my web design class and I am going to try and prioritize that. Hopefully. There is a chance I could do that and finish the budget assignment but the budget assignment will probably get pushed back to Monday. We'll see.

July 31, 2015

Yep, didn't accomplish a thing today. Other than the occasional passing thought about schoolwork. That is mildly annoying. I really should have done something. I'm in the homestretch and I need to hit the gas so I can get to the finish line and maybe have a little more time off before the Fall semester starts.

My main motivational issue today was probably related to watching Arrow, which I did all day. I've made it up to episode ten of season two. The crossover with the Flash just happened, ending with the Flash gaining his powers. Or at least being involved in the catalyst that leads to his powers. Now I need to watch that show because the actor who plays the Flash is entertaining and it has me curious.

I potted my avocado tonight, moving it from the paper towel and sandwich bag into a more fitting vessel for a growing tree. Hopefully. We'll see how it goes but I won't get my hopes up.

Tomorrow, schoolwork. I am going to avoid watching any episode of Arrow until I at least make some sort of progress with my classes. My desire to finish my budget project this weekend is not looking good. I need to wrap up the website assignment so that might take precedence over the budget assignment, which isn't due until next weekend.