Catching Up II

There’s plenty of news to cover in order to bring everyoneup to date. We’ll start with the most important and then proceed in noparticular order.

Birth Announcement! Ashli gave birth to our son at 9:30 AMCentral on 10 August 2006. He weighed in at eight pounds and nine ounces. We’venamed him Daegan (pronounced DAY-gen). So far all he does is eat and sleep andwear out Ashli. We have some photos being developed as we “speak”, so I aim toadd them to my AIM Profile soon.

Hard drive crash. While attempting to uninstall/update thevirus scan software on Ashli’s computer, all of the data on it was somehowdeleted, warranting a reinstall of Windows XP. The list of casualties includeall of my saved e-mails from the last five years; all of my Terris-relatedfiles, including all of my maps, “One Lyre to Live” original documents,character notes, coding information (OGC should be happy), and Ashli’scharacter portraits (which I’d intended to add to the “OLtL” site someday); allof my saved college papers and my degree plans for both of the degrees I’mworking on; a collection of Army files related to my military career and/or myunit; and my Microsoft Money file containing the last five years worth of myfinancial data.

UPS. In July I attained seniority, received my Teamsters union card, and received a fifty centraise. I also became eligible for health benefits, which I may soon need sinceI keep finding new ways to injure myself at work. A couple of weeks ago apackage with protruding staples punctured the middle finger of my left hand; andthis week I somehow scraped my arm across a squared support pole so that itleft a long red sub-dermal abrasion on the outside of my left forearm, accompaniedby a brief swelling of the injured area to the approximate size of a golf ball.

National Guard. My unit attended Annual Training at VolkField Air National Guard Base in Wisconsin.This was one of the better “domestic” summer camps. I got to ride in a Chinookhelicopter, got trained on those four-wheeled ATVs, learned how to drive a 40passenger bus, and did a bunch of hooah Army training. Plus the pay was morethan I’d make in five weeks at UPS.

Prize Money. I received the first payment in July. Iimmediately put it to work paying off some credit card debt. Expecting thesecondpayment in September. I need to find more leads! Anybody want to jointhe Army National Guard?

School. I have only four more classes to take at South Suburban College in order tocomplete my AS in Business, but Daegan arrived at the same time as registrationwas going on, and in all the excitement I forgot to register for classes!However, I have also been enrolled at Governors State University for a yearthough I haven’t yet taken any courses there. My counselor at GSU warned methat if I didn’t take any this term I would be dropped, and with GSU’s laterstart date I was able to enroll in two courses. At GSU I’m pursuing what theycall a Board of Governors Bachelor of Arts degree – essentially a kind of “doit yourself” Liberal Arts degree that has no required coursework to takeoutside of the state’s general education requirements (which I’ve mostly filledat SSC already). My minor at GSU is Information Management, and the two coursesI’m talking will be supporting that.

Slipping

My main fear regarding journaling is that I would simply lose interest and that my online journal would go further and further out of date. Well, that has sort of happened now due to various things: Annual Training, the birth of my son, and a general lack of enthusiasm for bringing up to date something that may not even have an audience as far as I can tell. But since I've now started again with this entry, I find the idea of bringing my journal current with the events of the last couple of months not so distressing or monotonous, so perhaps I will work some more on it later today.