Hard to blog

I struggle to write at times like this.  Everything is going well, but there is so much “daily life” stuff going on, there is not much time to reflect on life, work on projects, plan for the future, or even harass Bryan and Lyle about the fact that they have not posted their weight for a long, long time.  I got up yesterday at the normal time (5:20 AM) and went through my normal work schedule, getting home at between 4:30 and 5:00 PM.  Then, in spite of my best intentions, I did not get to bed until well after 11:00 PM.  I am one of those guys that need, or at least likes to get, eight hours of sleep per night.  Less than that or even more than that kind of fouls me up.  I decided to try to reconstruct what I did last night to try and figure out if I can reorganize a little and get to bed earlier.

When I arrive home, I normally sit eat the Greek salad Lorena has waiting for me and talk to her for a half an hour or so before I start in on homeschool.  Last night, everyone was still at the YMCA working out and there had been a wreck (a police officer was killed close to the intersection of Ten-Ten Road and Old Stage Road), so they did not get home until over an hour after I arrived.  While I ate my salad I worked on converting my comic aggregation program so that it did 4×1 layouts instead of 2×2 layouts.  Kelly wants that because it is more like the professional comics do it.  The following is the result:

I finished that about when the family arrived.  When everyone got unloaded from the car, Lorena made dinner (awesome – Tilapia, spinach, and yams) while I read to the kids from the worldview book and The Gammage Cup for forty minutes or so while they worked on their comic strips.  After that we ate.  By the time we finished eating it was 7:30.  Then, I scanned in the comics Kelly had ready for me.  There were several and I had made some changes so it took me about forty minutes.  My buddy from work then called about some technical stuff we are doing at work.  That call and some associated work I did after the call took an hour.

Finally, I got to the homeschool corrections.  I was behind because of all the work that had been done in preparation for our weekend in Denton plus some extra work they did to get ahead for our upcoming trips.  That took me until 11:00 and I still did not get everything done.  I will have another similar night tonight and I expect even another one on Thursday.  I am glad I like this stuff.

Congratulations to Kelly.  Her new teacher has moved her up four levels in piano.  The teacher wanted to correct some basic technique things Kelly had never learned properly even though Kelly could play hard pieces.  Now that Kelly has been at it for about a year with the new teacher, she has been able to make the corrections and will move back to performing music with a much higher level of difficulty.  Everyone has worked hard and exhibited a lot of patience to get to this point and I think it was time well taken.

June 21, 2004 – Visiting Washington
June 22, 2004 – Making the decision to move