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I started school yesterday. Again. This is the first time I have sat in a classroom with a bunch of students in over 9 years. It’s kinda weird now though. In my math class, there are only two other people my age, and one of them is the teacher. In my photography class, there are a few older guys but I think they are just taking the class for fun, not because they are students. Taking math during summer semester may be a little too much though. It has never been my strong subject and we are cramming a full semesters worth into 7 weeks. That wouldn’t be that bad if I wasn’t working full time and didn’t have kids to take care of in the evening. Who knows, maybe this way I’ll actually do my homework.

When I was in high school I had an art class where we were required to buy and use an India ink, Tombow roller ball pen for our pen and ink assignment. I liked those pens so much that I started using them for every class even though they cost like $1.85 each and only lasted a couple months. By the time I got married, I could only find one place that still carried them. It was way out of the way so when I would go get some, I would clean them out. One day, they went out of production and I was crushed, so crushed that I emailed the company to whine. They rounded up whatever they had left (like 6 pens of all colors) and sent them to me for free. That was like 3 years ago. I finally found a new pen that I like. It has a nice metal case and takes roller ball refills. I traded a video card for it. Well, I ran out of ink and couldn’t find any reference to what to refill it with. So I went to Office Max and busted open a package to try it out because there is no other way to see if it will work. Found it on the first try. It’s a Cross Gel Rolling Ball Refill Item 8523. Peace at last. I just hope they don’t discontinue these now.

We have finally done it. (by “we” I mean me and my wife) We now own both our cars outright. I was beginning to think that we would never actually be without a car payment. We made our last payment a few days ago and should be getting the title in the mail sometime in May. It’s funny, my dad would rather go pay cash for an older car that is going to need irregular and costly maintenance than have a car payment on a reliable newer car. Until now, I couldn’t quite understand his perspective. Now, I am hoping I can just save up enough money to go pay cash for a newer one that won’t need to be in the shop several times a year before my current cars get to that point. All I have to say about that is “Sure am glad my car is a Honda.”

Well, I’ve been contracting for two and a half weeks now. It’s funny, I haven’t really noticed any real difference in what I do here except that I don’t have to spend an hour a day managing my email from the OSG (my former department). Everyone still sends their requests to me for the website. I don’t mind, I get to do what I really like to do and don’t have to waste my time with harebrained ideas on how to force a square hole (the website) through a round hole (SCObiz). I have decided to go back to school too. I’m not exactly sure what I am going to get my degree in but I have a meeting with my adviser this week to talk about it. Who knows, I may even get a degree in a field I plan to work in. That would be a novel idea.

The other day I was thinking about running a marathon after I get in shape and I mentioned it to Jon. Somehow we ended up looking at a little local triathlon website and we decided that we are going to do one. A full triathlon is a three mile swim, 26 mile run, and 112 mile bike. This one will not be quite that long. I don’t want to have a heart attack on my first triathlon. I got laid off Friday. That was kind of a surprise. Apparently, my boss wanted to hire a DBA. Why? Who knows, our group doesn’t even have a database to administrate. Well, they wouldn’t give her an additional headcount so she laid me off to make room for the new guy. (Probably one of her little rag-head friends that needed a job) What a load of crap. Well, that’s OK. Now I am on contract for the marketing dept. doing the same thing I was before. But I also got some severance to add to the annual tax refund bank account growth spurt.