This life is very academic

So, it has been a while since I wrote anything down here. Well, that's what happens when your life suddenly turns into one of academic thinking and working. My pee-on status has been upped a little bit at school. Rather than only being one who is told what to do and maybe how and where to find what it is that one is supposed to do, I have now become the"go-to" pee-on. Now, I haven't officially been given the title or the plaque for my barren office, but I get asked all kinds of questions by my co-horters and sometimes even the professors. Apparently, what comes out of my mouth is something that makes sense to them or it is the answer that they want to hear. What I have determined is that since I keep regular office hours in my white-walled basement bat-cave, I am very easily found by anyone who wishes to access the information that can fall out of my mouth. The others tend to work elsewhere, either on campus or at home. Not that I have a problem with that, sometimes it would be nice to talk face to face with someone rather than through email.

I have taken on the task of understanding and creating databases. I had some experience with that last year when my dad and I (mostly my dad) worked on a gradebook program. Now I have two databases up and running for various information that I need to keep take of and make little reports for. This took so much time for me last week. I also felt like the biggest geek. I did take this geek percentage rating quiz like two weeks ago. I was 27.9% geek. For those that know me, it really should not be that surprising. So, given my new understood level of geekness, I was able to figure out and get the databases to what I wanted. Drawing from ones inner geek, can help out in a pinch. Kim took the geek test. She was called a poser and they didn't score her. She says she was being honest. I think she has a little bit more geek in her than she is willing to admit. Given that, she married a quarter geek. If we have any kids they will be at least 1/8th geek.

Well, today is Saturday and home game for the Cornhuskers. That means that after kickoff at 2:45, it is a perfect time to go grocery shopping.

I am Mr. Peabody and I am doing a great job of procrastinating.

Feeling kneedeep, but I should be over my head

Things are very much falling into the patterns of just bearly getting things done in time. I don't even feel like I hav etime to be doing this, but I would rather be writing this than revising a stupid paper for a stupid class. I have a really really pointless class called Science Writing. It is a complete waste of my time and engery and unfortunately it is a big part of time in classes. The premiss of the class was to help become a better writer through looking at the process of writing with a scientific basis. That sounds fine, but really the professor is focused on writing for the general public using a newspaper style of reporting. This very much plays down what I need in terms of writing for a educational research. It is very frustrating. This class will take up nothing but time and that is in very short supply at the moment. Aside from that class things are going very well.

I really like working on the research pieces that are being persued. This whole Wraparound Fidelity is very interesting to me. Taking a look at making sure what is said to be going on is actually going on. Holding people accountable for their actions is what it comes down to.

I also am now married. This is turning out to be a very good thing. Kim and I have had a few conversations about what are the differences and, really, are not too much. We had merged accounts and insurence companies prior. We just need to what on saying what we mean in ways that the other can really understand it, but I think that will always be the case. Communication is a piece that is always a "something we are working on." At least we are on the same page about working on it, so that we don't butt heads too often :). We do tend to find the humor in a lot of our miscommuncations, though. We did go to Target yesterday and to Peir 1. With all the gift cards and what not, we spent about $800, but ended up only paying $10 out of pockets. So, we have a new kitchen table and chairs, along with a wicker truck and assorted other pieces of decor. That was so much fun for me.

I am Mr. Peabody and I have a fudge bar colored TV room.

Workin' in a Coal Mine

I started an entery when I went to go get Kim, but by the time I got going on it Kim was there to pick me up. Here is the entery that was started:

Here I am in New Haven, CT. I spent an hour on the road to get t Omaha. That drive went a lot faster than it had seemed in the past. Probably since I was only driving to Omaha and not to Minneapolis. About half way there I realized that I forgot two things. One of which is easily fixable and the other I know is going to be an issue...possibily. I forgot to grab the extra key that I was going to give Kim. Not a big deal and I / we can easily go to a hardware store and have a new one made. The other thing that I forgot was my cell phone. It is sitting on the kitchen table right where I left it, charging. I put it there last night to make sure that it was charged for the trip. I just know that this is going to be an issue. It always becomes one. At least this time, she is not trying to get ahold of me, well right now anyway. I don't think... The Omaha airport was pretty easy to navigate and I already had the bording passes for my flights. I didn't know that one of the airlines didn't assign seats. I hadn't used Southwest since I was a freshman in college, and that was only once....at Thanksgiving...and I never flew on it again.

So, I am now back in Lincoln. The drive back was long, but we finished it relatively fast, 12 hours each day. Kim drove on Saturday and I drove on Sun. We finished unloading her stuff by 9:30 Sunday night. Monday was a lot of running around and getting things taken care of that need both of us like the banking and the car insurence. It didn't take all that long, but it was done.

Then the next day the real adventure began... I officially started my doctorial program. I thought being a teacher was enough to keep me busy, but this is insane. Basically this first year we (the four of us in the cohort) are just told to do things and report back. The level of expectations are very high, as one would think they should be. However, it doesn't really hit you until it is being pushed into your lap and on the floor around you. The group of us are getting along pretty well. I think a bit more stress and we will start to see each other's weaknesses come shining through. Right now, we have about 35 hours of work a week assigned to us. Really that means about 60 hours with all the research and library time and figuring out exactly what it is that they want us to do and making it look good. Next we get to add on 12 hours of class. So far things just have that "tettering on the edge" feel. I hope these classes don't push us toward the bottomless pit.

Things with Kim have been going through a bit of adjustment as she is getting used to not being in school and living with me again. We have had some talks about it and I am sure that we will continue to work with it. With her here, it feels like we are already married in a way. We were talking about it yesterday and it feels like "Oh, yeah, I guess we need to go have a ceremony, too" but it is more of an afterthought.

Also, I need to roast some coffee. Probably tomorrow morning....that sounds good...fresh roasted coffee...

I am Mr. Peabody and I am figuring out what the hell I am doing.

The reset button

I am here typing this entry at my apartment. After looking at my previous entries I thought, do I really need to say all that I have been saying. And the answer tat pops into my head is yes, but I guess I could maybe enter thoughts and observations with a little more frequency. I don't know. I was reading some other blogs and to me they seem so sinical that the point is lost on me as to what they are doing. I guess that is just where other people are at..making fun of others. Maybe as I get better about posting, I will get better about putting in witty quips.

Anyway, the goal today is to go and a Nebraska driver's licence. This is kind of a bigger deal for me than it probably should be. I have never had another driver's licence other than the one issued in my home state. I probably should have went to get one in Minnesota, but I just never really got around to it. When I first moved to MN, I had a good reason for not getting the licence. The home state needed to have proof of residencey and the drivers's licence was the way to go. With the proof of residencey, I was entitled to a little sum of money that the state gave out. Then it became a matter of laziness. There was always a reason not to go and do it. Grad school...I wasn't ready for the test....Now it has come to the point where I have moved to another state, but this time I actually setting up residence in the new state.

In a way, this is kind of like hitting a reset button on my life. I am actually in a state with no connections to my family. I am living in an apartment no with family conntections. I will be getting married soon and starting life as a husband. I feel like my life is starting over and being able to redefine itself. I don't feel like I have lost any of my ideals and my foundations though. I am not talking about my teaching and research ideals because I know that will change. I guess in a way that is the foundation that I have...that I will listen to the research. After look back over what I just wrote, I don't want to give the impression that I don't like my family. My family is very important to me and I would actually say that this whole breast cancer era has brought us closer together. I will have to think about that...what are my ideals and my foundations.

I am Mr. Peabody and I setting a new foundation.

The final boxes

The final boxes in the apartment have met the fine blade of the boxcutter and are no longer useable boxes. Also they are no longer cluttering up the apartment, which is a good thing. I was getting so tired of walking about them. Now it is just a matter of getting all the "little things" in their right place for the time being. I haven't unpacked a few things and a few other things will not be put anywhere in particular. This is part of an agreement with Kim. She wants to do all this painting and redecorating. She hasn't really even seen the place except in pictures. It got to the point that I could hear about it any more. I just wanted to hang up the phone everytime that it was brought up. She was also wanting to go out and buy everything together. As much as I love her, I don't see that as something that we can do. So then came the agreement. I would not unpack some stuff, not hang anything on the walls, and not buy any decorative type item unless it had some kind of absolute functionality that I needed (like a washer or a kitchen garbage can) and she would not keep talking about painting and redecorating.

Now, really, I have no problem with redecorating. If she were here right now, this would the perfect time to be doing it. My issue is that I feel like it was getting a little bit too out there and my time was getting eaten up by redecorating. She is coming here and the next day I start the whole reason that we moved down here (the PhD program). The whole perface of the program is that I will work my ass off and I will come out thinking very differently than I did when I started. My advisor has a reputation for working students really hard. The other students I talked to in March kind of laid out a schedule of working from 8-4:30 and then doing another 3 to 4 hours at home. That's no really including classes. I don't know what the expectations are for me for the first week, but I can't imagine they will be light, esp since I will be leaving in two weeks for a few days to get married. I guess what it comes down to is that I don't know how school is going to impact getting this apartment the way that Kim wants it. I guess I don't put as much stock into picking things out and making the place home-like. I trust her in what she desides, but I just wonder what my involvement is truely going to be in this process. I am really not looking for a way to get out of it, but it is hard to figure out the timing of it all when you don't know how much time a major things is going to take.

At least there aren't any boxes to trip over anymore. My next project is to get all of these tapes that I found before I moved on into mp3 format. That way I can eliminate one piece of my stereo equipment. I never thought that I would see the day when the cassette deck would become useless. I used that so much. I guess this means that no longer can I make mix tapes the way that I used to. Not that I have done that in a long time, but it is just weird to think that I used think there would be no way to mix cd's in the steam line fashion. Oh, how the times have changed. But I never thought that I would be able to play Super Nintendo for free on my computer and that is definately happening.

The tapes are old mixes that I did on the radio or as a practice when I thought I was going to be the next greatest DJ. They are a time stamp of an era of my life that has since gone by. There were also some out-takes and live takes from this band that I was in during the summer of '96. Those were the fun-lovin' days of college life. Mindless job, fun after-job, and lots of drinking.

I am Mr. Peabody and I am boxing up the past for better storage.

The new level of addiction...

Okay, so this is the situation. I have come to terms with my coffee additction. I did that in a paper that I wrote for a class while getting my teaching license. I have gone through all the steps of getting in over my head with this . From the social reinforcement (peer -pressure) to actually working in a coffee shop (pusher) to roasting the green coffee beans to the consumable goodness that they become (producer). I believe that I have reached another level to this maddness.

I had stopped roast coffee for Dunn Bros. (see links) back in Dec. It just felt like the time to move on. I was also in the process of filling out these applications for UNL. So, I was looking online for coffee shops in Lincoln this past winter and I discovered this whole group of people that roast coffee in their homes. Now, really this is nothing new. A friend of mine bought a personal roaster and she had been roasting for a while. I had looked into this as I thought about business opportunities, but they are quite expensive and, at the time, I was content with roasting for the store. I discovered using an air popcorn popper.

I purchased one through that lovely site called Ebay. Oh, the crap that I have spent my money on there, but that is a subject for another blog entery. It came yesterday and the sending address was from here in Lincoln which is good . I was too busy getting the wedding rings taken care of yesterday to actually use the new toy. So today was the big test drive. I grabbed some raw (green) beans from the kitchen that had made the trip from Minneapolis down here. This selection was the Kenya AA. I am not sure of the estate or farm that they came from, but I know that it paid off to teach a lesson on world econ using coffee, hence the free, raw beans from the Dunn Bros. I headed down into the basement.

The basement is a funny place. I had spent a little bit of time cleaning it up before the washer was put in so it isn't as dusty. I think I got all of the ciggarette butts, but regardless it still smells like stale smoke down there. The mom who lives downstairs smokes and with the central air exchanger down there, all of her old air gets put down there (It think that's how it works). I can get used to it fairly quickly. When the dryer goes it smells nice, though. I set up on the washer and dryer, since that was where most of the light was in my new concrete kitchen. I put the beans in, watched them spin around, and watched the smoke from the beans fill up my area. It smelled so good. Like the old days. The beans roasted a lot quicker than with the big machines that I used to working with, but the development looked good. A nice brown color with good plumping happening. I think next time I will wait a little bit longer for these beans to develop before turning off the heat. The center crease was still a bit white. It needed to mature some more into second crack. The sweet thing about the popcorn popper/roaster is that it has a toggle switch to turn on and off the heating element. It is really helpful to begin the cooling process, but I can see that I will have to work on other ways to continue the cooling.

Now, the moment of truth....The tasting of the brew. It was good and I could tell that that it needed to develop more. All in all, it was a good first time. Tasted better than the Starbuck's beans that I had to break down and buy during the wait.

Basically, I have gone from cooking up the caffine in a legitamate business to cooking it up in a seedy, stale-smoke smelling, turn-on-the-lights-by-pulling-the-sting-and-don't-mind-the-cobwebs basement. If I had to I could move it, so there is the potential to be portable. I could move the production to a motel room or a trailer park. Me and the meth labs.

I am Mr. Peabody and I am a caffine addict.

Settling in

I have found a nice coffee shop to write this latest entry. This is nice in a back in Minneapolis kind of way. I am able to drink coffee, be on line, and get out of place. The weather has been very hot and not to conducive to going out side and smoking one's pipe. I was driving around yesterday and the temp on one of the bank signs said that it was 104. I thought holy shit, I have gone to hell. Just then my air conditioning started acting funny, switching on and off. I guess I should be more grateful for being in the heartland and for what I am about to embark on. The moral is don't look a gift horse in the mouth or rather the gift bushel of corn.

The main pain that I have found with this whole moving thing is that I keep having to go out and buy those little things that used to be readily available to me. This is the first time that I have lived in a place that isn't owned by my family or some relation in that fashion. What that means is I have to constantly be writing down what I need and make do until I can go out get it. Really, it's not that hard to go out and get it. It just gets annoying always having to run out to Wal-mart, Target, or ShopKo. Maybe I am just being a little bit spoiled right now.

Tomorrow my washer comes, which is good because I have a little bit of laundry to do. I made the decision to buy a new washer rather than get a used one. This one wasn't that expensive and I know it will work for the time that I need it to.

So yesterday, my mom had her appointment to shave her head and to begin wearing her wig. She is on her third or four treatment of chemo for breast cancer, her hair is starting to fall out in clumps and she just wanted to get it all off. I haven't talked to her since the shaving happened, but now she has a natural hair cut like me, hee-hee. Anyway, her treatments are going well and she is feeling okay. She hasn't gotten sick or anything from the treatments, so I guess the anti-nausea pills are working the way that they are supposed to. She has just been taking things one day at a time.

For that matter, I should start applying that to my life. Things are good, even if I have to outside in godd-awful heat.

The move is done

Well, I have now moved to Lincoln. That was quite the ordeal. On the days leading up to the move and the moving day it's self, it was the hottest that it could have been. I got the truck on Friday morning and all seemed well. Then we started the packing process into the truck. That's when I realized that I still had a bit more to get organized. I never realized just how much little odd crap that I had and, well, that I still have. Packages of stickie notes, various baskets to put the packes of stickie notes in, and the wealth of pens and highlighters. I think the pens and highlighters turned up just to spite me. I can't tell you how many times over the years that I was looking for either. The next question is do they work to any degree.

At first the loading of the truck went really well and looked good. Then the time came to added the newly organized stuff and all the stuff that we had been using all week while my dad and brother were here. It seemed like we quickly ran out of space and needed to unload and reload the truck several times. Well, that didn't happen but it did get hotter and hotter as the day wore on. After what seemed like an eternity and endless boxs with things getting thrown in them. It seemed like we were close to being done. IT looked like there were going to be a few furtinure sacrifices to be made, but I was ok with that. When it comes down to it, none of the furniture was really mine to begin with. We went out to eat.

After eating, I dropped off my dad and my brother and headed over to my friend Heidi's parents house. I saw Heidi, Julie, and Doug one last time. I worked with Heidi and Julie for the past two years and we had started to play cards every other Friday night. Doug is Heidi's brother and will be moving into the house shortly. Goodbyes are funny things. I was hoping that I could say bye to Heidi's parents, but they had already gone to bed. Regaurdless, the goodbyes were said and I left the house.

I came back and found my dad and my brother had figured out how to get the rest of the furniture into the truck, so there would be none left behind. My dad left for the night. He was staying back in Minneapolis to finish up getting the house ready for Doug. My brother and I continued packing. This packing was more for the stuff that was still going to be left behind like family stuff and the like. We were wrapping and taping until about 2:30 am. Our plan to leave by 8:00 am was looking really early to me.

The morning came quickly. After some final loading, drugging of the cats, and a breakfast at Perkins, I was off. I was driving the truck and my brother was leaving later with my car. I wasn't sure if the truck had a speed restrictor on it, so that's why the early start. I quickly found out that there was no speed restriction on the truck. That made for a quicker trip that planned. I think I would have gone insane only being able to listen to the radio for eight to nine hours.

I got to the apartment and stepped outside. I think I melted a little bit. I began to unload what I could. My borther came in about 45 minutes later. It was a long night of unloading. There was a time when I thought that I wasn't going to make it. We finished at about 1:30 am. Next time I move, two words...Professional Movers.

More Packing...

Okay, so here I sit again today. I have been packing even more stuff. This house looks so weird with things in boxes and empty closets. I don't think I have even seen it so barren. I have been loving in my grandmothers old house for the past nine or so years. My brother lived here before me for a few years. The house was never really cleaned out or the old books put away or things like that. So to see all the cupboards with only the old style liner paper that needs to be held in place with a tack is weird looking.

I was going through some old letters that I had saved from when I first got here. That was so long ago it seems. I mean not just in terms of time, but in terms of where I thought my life was headed and what I my ideals were. The letters are a nice reminder of where I have come from and also in a way help me see what I can still work towards. Yes in those boxes of letters are the letters from past girlfriends. I look at them and I don't feel like "Oh, I want to get back together with that person." I look at those letters and think hey that's where I was. And, man, was I noncommittal. For the longest time, I was living by the montra that I was going to be a bachlor for life. Looking at the letters, lets me see the mistakes that I made and how I am not in that montra. I think of Kim and I see how good things can be and how we do really fit. It was that fit that I was looking for without even really knowing that I was looking for it. I am going to hold one to those two boxes. I think it may also help in the future with any kids that we might have.

I must admit though...I did like the long hair that I had. Except for the messy bathroom that it would contribute to, it was fun to have. But now the shaved head is a better move for me, as the hair slowly creeps back, I can't imagine how funny the length in the back would look with the thinning top. Well, my coffee is looking like it needs a refill and the gutters aren't going to clean themselves.

Starting this again...

I started a blog over on MSN Spaces. I don't know why it just didn't catch on with me over there, so I am trying it here. We'll see how this one works out. I think there was this feeling that I was being watched and that I had to remain very middle ground and not offend anyone. Not that I am really a person that goes out his way to offend others, but a feeling of oppression is a feeling of oppression. I also felt like I was mostly around 15 and 16 year olds. There were people who posted that were above the age of 21, but they seemed few and far between.

So anyway, here I am. What I need right now is a good cup of coffee. I normally don't get up this early, but I am in the middle of packing up my belongings and moving to Nebraska. Nebraska? you ask. Yes, Nebraska. I was accepted into a Doctorial Program at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. I really am excited to work towards this, but I mean, come on, Nebraska. I have been there a few times looking for an apartment and getting to know the city and the like. It is a typical smaller city, with a few coffee shops, malls, and other corperate growths. I think I will be able to handle it for three years. That's kind of the beauty of the program. They want you to finish and move on to other jobs, not hold on to you for cheap labor.

The other piece is the marriage coming up in less than a month. This is a good thing. Kim, the future wife, has been busy in CT finishing up her Master's of Health Seciences for being a Physician Assisstant. So, that has left me in charge of getting everything else in line from this ceremony. I think the invitations were the longest and hardest part of it all. I have much respect for those who stamp and do mass productions of hand made cards and stationarys and the like.

Well, it is about time for some coffee.