Today's ramblings will be all over the place. I'll try to keep them in some kind of order, but, really, you're kinda on your own... Sorry... :-)
Tuesday, after the staff meeting, I end up in a bout of phone tag surrounding a training I am to help out with on Wednesday. I have a tendency to speak before I think (I know, you may find that rather hard to believe), and before I knew it, I had basically upset to colleagues (at least, temporarily anyway). In a nut shell, one person (Person A) had asked the other (Person B) to help me out with the presentation on Wednesday. Person B said s/he was swamped, but would help out and had called me to pin down some details. Person A called to let me know that Person B was trying to back out and that I might be presenting on my own. Not a problem, except that Person B and I were under the impression that Person A was helping us and that there would be other helpers as well. Person A had scheduled a presentation at another school. With me so far?
Person A was upset because Person B was backing out a commitment, even though Person A had backed of the same commitment in order to present to a school. This hit me sideways. Not that people were rescheduling and/or backing out, but rather that the person who was not happy about the other person had already backed out of the whole thing. So, before I could stop myself, I told Person A, "I don't know how to say this without sounding ugly, but the commitment thing kinda goes two ways..." In summary, I had told Person A that s/he should not be too hard on Person B because Person A had done the very same thing.
In less than 5 minutes, Person B called me to ask what I had said to Person A. I explained a little about what happened, and it turned out that Person A ended up doing the presentation with me after all.
Wednesday - The presentation ROCKED! We were the perfect tag-team for teaching the group of folks about proper techniques for conducting video conferences, making them interactive, etc. Everyone had fun, and we got rave reviews on our evals! It also turns out that the school was happy about Person A cancelling because they wanted to move it to a more convenient time. Seems to be another case of "everything happens for a reason."
Thursday - Our Sharepoint server goes completely wiggy on us, and we aren't exactly sure why. I have to leave at 9:00am in order to present at a school at 10:00. I presented Virtual Field trips via Video to a group of High School teachers. They went bananas!! I think I have created a super-pilot school. Nearly every teacher had questions, had ideas, wanted to know when they could start doing the interactive video lessons. It was awesome!
Emily starts Kindergarten on Monday, so tonight was "orientation." She was very excited to learn all about her 'new school.' We talked with her teacher some, and hung out for a bit. I'm glad to see she is so excited about school! :-)
When I got home, I had a new PC Gamer magazine waiting for me. I love getting that magazine and seeing what cool new games are coming out. Before I could even open the clear plastic wrap, in the upper right corner, I read a headline about Clive Barker's new game. Several years ago, Clive Barker created a game for the computer called "Undying." One of the scariest games I have ever played. Excellent game! And, one of my Dad's all-time favorite games. When I saw the headline, my very first thought was that Dad would have loved to see a new Clive Barker game and he would be talking about to no end until its release date. Then , he would be the first in line to buy it, load it, and get sucked in to its scary world.
For some time - seconds, minutes, I don't honestly know - I just looked at the headline and thought about Dad. All the games we can't play together. All the games Dad would play and then tell me about - whether it was worth buying or even playing at all.
I usually keep myself pretty busy, so as to help not dwell on things, on his passing, so much. I think about Dad every day in one way or another (usually when someone needs help with a computer, only to find out an hour later they had 'forgotten' to tell me a key bit of info that would have helped at the start!). But sometimes, things stop me dead in my tracks, and I take time to think about him, and to miss him. As I have said before, we weren't "best friends" or anything like that so much as we were becoming buds - gaming guys. With DSL at Mom and Dad's house and DSL at ours, we were planning on doing some head-to-gaming. My brother has his car. A red Hyundai Elantra. Whenever I see one, I don't look for my brother to be driving it, I think of Dad. I don't write much about it because writing is my outlet. It's a catch-22... I like to write to get it al out, but when I write, I get it all out, which means all the thoughts and emotions come out, too. It's a hard place to go, and often, an even harder place to come back from....
On Friday, I am going to a school district to help run some wiring to connect laptops to the network. I have been so busy with things lately that I am 99% sure I will need to drive about 30 miles out of the way in order to pick some parts I will need. I knew better. I almost stopped and got them today, but I was so consumed with trying to find this little electronics place (never did find it) that after an hour of searching, I was ready to just head back to the office. Next time, I'll just go to Best Buy, which is where I had originally thought to go, but lost the idea in the midst of finding this other shop.... I either have ADD or CRS or some combination of the two.... CRADDS... LOL, I can tell you right now, there is NO WAY that I would go around saying "I have CRADDS." Sounds a bit too much like something else, and can you imagine trying to EXPLAIN it? I don't need that... No one does... :-)
The other night, Emily had fallen asleep on the couch. I put her in her bed. I went to bed and fell asleep - deep sleep. Evidently, the poor girl rolled over and fell out of the bed. She has a small cut on her head. Honestly, we're amazed she didn't have a concussion. Her bed is a LONG way down to the floor....
I can't tell if Tyler is excited about school or not. I don't think I was too excited about it at his age... Guess we'll see! :-)
A woman we know made me a cake. A Mountain Dew cake. She said she is going to tweak the recipe because you can't really tell its Mt. Dew... It is very moist and does have a bit of the Dew flavor, but she was hoping for more of a "WOW" factor. I'll gladly be the "kitchen tester" for that experiment! :-)
I pulled into the laundromat today so that I could buy a mini box of detergent for Shan's classroom door, and when I got out of the truck, I noticed some red fluid on the ground. Now, a friend/colleague of mine just had her truck taken to the shop after it spewed red fluid all over the place, so I was kinda freakin... After I bought the detergent, I pulled out, and drove a bit then stopped to see if maybe that red stuff had been there already. I voting yes. There was no fluid on the ground and my truck seemed pretty normal. I'm guessing the people there before me had not left long before I got there.... Well, that's the version I'm going with anyway! :-)
Phil Rizzuto passed away. I am only young enough to know him from his "Money Store" commercials. I never followed his baseball career or his broadcasting gig. Nevertheless, I was sorry to hear he had passed away...
My searching through "doubles" in my baseball card collection has paid off very well. Cards that I had assumed were duplicates turned out to be team set-completing additions to my collection! :-) It's also been fun looking at the photos on the cards. In the future (after I get my collection in the database and after I create a blog for Indians cards, I'll post a few samples. Some will make you laugh, some might make you cry (Is that REALLY a guy?)....
I love watching "Ace of Cakes" and "Trick My Truck!" Man, can those guys do some very cool things!! :-)
That about does it for me. I think I'm tapped out. The random thoughts in my head are no longer forming complete sentences - a sure sign that it's time to wrap it up and hit the sack....
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