Evelyn Day 20

Hi. It’s Bob.

Today is 5 April 2023.

Yesterday I had some moments to reflect on a few things.

This last weekend reminded me of a song made popular by country artist Tim McGraw, with the primary theme being, “Always stay humble and kind”. No matter how good you might feel following a competition that you win, reflect on how you felt when you weren’t on the winning side. Empathy matters… walk a mile in someone else’s shoes… don’t be afraid to feel what others feel. In some competitions, there is this need for some participants to try and “get in someone’s head”. Remember this… if you think you need to get into someone’s head to win. you’ve already lost because you are admitting you aren’t as prepared as you should be. You’re telling folks, “I can’t do this in a straight-up competition. I need to perform an act of psychological sabotage”.

Always stay humble and kind.

In other reflections on the day, no one is above the law. The law was created for all, and no person, no matter how much money they have or how much influence they have is above the law. We are equal.

The last thing I would offer up as some grandfatherly advice… always chew your food. Don’t swallow chucks that are too big. It can lead to some unfortunate and very uncomfortable outcomes. Yesterday I had a rough day, and although I think I do a pretty good job chewing and swallowing, I had a little obstruction in my GI tract, and that wasn’t pleasant. I’ve been through it before, albeit 20 years ago, but I recognized it for what it was and took some steps to get a little relief throughout the day.

OK, that’s enough soap-box philosophy for now.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 19

Good morning. It is Tuesday, 4 April 2023, and Bubba is not feeling so hot. I haven’t felt this way in a number of years, and while I suspect I think I know what it is, time will have to let this little inconvenient moment work its way out.

Years ago, on 3 different occasions, I had some partial intestinal blockage. It always worked out, but I always went through a period of cramping and pain. It’s not a pleasant experience.

Might affect my ability to appreciate Taco Tuesday this evening.

Anyway, last night the UConn Huskies knocked off the San Diego State Aztecs in the NCAA Men’s Tournament. Not quite the blue-blood battle of the previous year when Kansas knocked off North Carolina, but some people enjoyed the game. For me, it was more of a distraction than anything else.

I need to keep moving around trying to get this situation to resolve itself.

I’m not going for the full blog post today. I hope you understand.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 18

Good morning! I hope this day finds you well. Today is 3 April 2023.

This past weekend I watched some sports. Friday we started the weekend with some women’s basketball, as Iowa defeated South Carolina, and LSU defeated Virginia Tech to reach yesterday’s championship game. LSU ended up winning the championship yesterday, defeating Iowa 102-85. It was an interesting game, with Iowa’s stat setting an NCAA record for scoring in the Final Four, and LSU having a sub come off the bench to shoot 5-5 from 3-point range in the first half to set up a 13-point lead.

It was interesting checking the comments section after the game. There was the usual fan banter, with folks complaining about the officiating (and some of it was justified), and a lot of focus on the different styles of play. Lots of the commentary was by misogynistic men complaining about women’s sports – I guess some of these guys didn’t have any athletic women around them growing up. Lisa and I were rooting for Iowa, as she matriculated from Iowa with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Iowa, and she grew up in a nearby community. Another nearby community is home to a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins with strong Iowa ties, so it seemed natural to pull for Iowa.

I grew up around it. My mom played Iowa 6-on-6 growing up in northwestern Iowa. My sister played basketball and volleyball, and my daughters played basketball as well. My wife was a pretty good high school volleyball player, so it comes pretty easy for me to be a fan of the women’s game. Some guys, though, like to dig deep into the sexist barrel for rude comments about women’s sports – and the one thing I get out of it is that these guys never had female friends that played sports, and they certainly never dated them. For the misogynist, they focus on the superficial side of it, more concerned with how the girls looked rather than how they played.

Some guys can be real jerks.

One sport that I can point to… golf. If a guy can watch men play golf, then they can watch and enjoy women’s golf at the same time. The power off the tee is different – yeah, guys drive the ball a little longer… but there are women on tour that drive the as long and certainly more accurately than most of the guys at the country club. Inside of 250 yards, it’s the same game. The sand traps are the same, the water hazards are the same, the putting surfaces are the same.

I watch women’s sports. I watch basketball, volleyball, soccer, and I’ve been known to watch a fast-pitch softball game every now and then.

If folks are brought up with an appreciation for both types of play, our kids will all be better off for it.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 15

Hi! It’s Grampa Bob. Hope you are well. It is 31 March 2023.

Good morning, Evie. Grampa looks forward to the next chance he gets to hold you.

It is the last day of March, and wow, this month seemed to come and go fast.

I have the last day of my four-day cloud solutions architecture class today. It’s going OK. Like any course delivery, I handled some things pretty well, and others could’ve gone a little better. I roll it all up, integrate it into the experience file, and keep moving forward.

Next week I have a semi-solo delivery. I have another instructor sitting my course, but that instructor is ramping up, preparing for a first delivery, so the day-to-day class responsibilities fall to me. Not a worry.

I’m thinking of shrimp tacos tonight.

What else is going on? There’s some stuff in the legal/political world. Someday you might look up “What happened on March 30th/March31st of 2023?”. It might have some historical significance. I think it does, but that’s not what we’re discussing today.

We’re here to discuss the great questions of the universe, such as, “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”, “Does that come with a senior discount?”, and also, “What is a manalishi, and do they only come in green?”.

So much to ponder.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 14

Good morning, and I wish you a happy Thursday. I’m sitting here, looking at the calendar, and March is almost over… tomorrow is 31 March 2023. Saturday will be April Fool’s Day, and there will be one thing for us to watch from a sports perspective.

In college basketball, the top teams in the country play in the NCAA tournament to close out the season. There are tournaments for men and women. Last year, the University of Kansas won the men’s tournament, and their reign will end on Monday night when a new champion is crowned (the way things look, I’m guessing the University of Connecticut will be cutting down the nets).

There is another pair of tournaments, however. The National Invitational Tournament invites men’s and women’s teams that were not selected for the NCAA, but have winning records. This year the Kansas women had a pretty good record, and even though they beat some pretty good teams, they were not good enough to get invited to the NCAA tournament. They did get invited to the NIT, however, and on Saturday they women’s basketball team from the University of Kansas will square off against Columbia for the NIT championship.

One member of the KU women’s team is a high school teammate of my daughter Gracie and a high school classmate of my son, Dane. That’s kind of cool.

So, fun is planned for Saturday.

Today I have a couple of lessons to deliver in my cloud solutions architecture class. Tonight, Lisa and I will relax a little bit and get caught up on a couple of favorite shows, Star Trek: Picard and Ted Lasso.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 13

It is Wednesday, 29 March 2023.

Good morning!

I hope you are having a good morning.

We’re about a week into spring, and there are signs of seasonal change. I look out into the front yard, and I can see the wild onions sprouting. This weekend I’m going to have to check some fluid levels in the mower and the tractor and get them fired up. I’ve got a battery jump-start unit charged up and ready to go. I probably need to run into town to pick up some regular gas and some diesel fuel for the work vehicles.

One of the first things we’ll do is get some water out for the young trees we planted last year. We’ll also take a look at spots to plant another tree or two in the coming weeks.

I’m staying busy. As I look at my schedule for the coming weeks, I keep wondering where I can slip in a few minutes to create some additional resources for use in class.

There are some things going on in the world, but I don’t know if commenting on them is a good thing or a bad thing. Let me just say this… bad things are less likely to happen if you accept people for who they are and support them on their journey to figure a few more things out. We’re all figuring stuff out. I’m almost 60, and I work at trying to figure out some things in my life every day. It’s ok to ask big questions… just understand that the answers to those questions aren’t just going to pop up like a light bulb that was just switched on.

Some answers will come pretty easily, some take more time. Some answers will make you smile, some will make you sad. All we can do is hope that the answers we receive had enough truth to them to keep us on the right course.

I’m going to get this wrapped up and look into making a little breakfast and a pot of coffee.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 12

It is Tuesday morning, 28 March 2023. I would love to be able to tell you that the news overnight was all rainbows and glitter, but that would not be the case. Some bad things happened in the world yesterday.

Where do I start?

Evelyn, honey, we’re all going to have choices to make in this life. Sometimes we want to make selfish choices, and we want to do what is right for ourselves in the moment. It happens, it’s our nature. There will be times, however, when choices can have a little more impact on others. If we have choices, and one of those choices helps more people than others, that’s probably the right way to go. In our lives, we’re also going to encounter powerful people that want more, and they will use their positions of power to convince people that they are the ones that deserve more.

I hope when I have those choices in front of me, I choose the path of most good. Sometimes I have chosen the wrong way to go, and I hope I now have the experience and awareness to make better choices as an adult than some of the choices I made when I was younger.

You were born good. I believe that. You have a purpose on this earth, and I hope you have every opportunity to improve your world. Your mom and dad are there to help, and gramma and I will be there for you as well.

Know that you are loved.

Grampa has to get ready for work now. You don’t have to worry about all of that stuff for a while, so you just keep sleeping and feeding, growing and stretching and making those neural connections.

I’m gonna go make a pot of coffee.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 11

Good morning! It is Monday, 27 March 2023.

Good morning to you, Evie. This weekend was kind of special, and you might need to look at some pictures to understand why.

My mother was born in August 1942. She is 80 years old. Yesterday she met her first great-grandchild. Your mom and dad got up early to drive the two-and-a-half hours to visit, and I am thankful they were able to do that. You also met my sister, your great-aunt.

It’s interesting to me, how a little part of us gets passed on to the next generation. I do a little genealogy research on a website, and I have added a new placeholder for you, your mom, and your dad. If my research is correct, we can trace our family back almost a thousand years. It likely has a mistake or two – the record of an 18th-century ancestor living to be 117 is likely a typographical error or a “Senior” passing landed to a “Junior” and people loving track of the generational y change.

Your roots go back to the beginning of time, as all of our roots do.

Someday I hope you can come sit with grampa, and I’ll be able to tell you a few stories about our family. There are a few tales worth telling, and many are about people you can see in pictures and you will never meet. Time is a constant that cannot be changed, and cannot be slowed down. You will grow up and grow older. You’ll learn to read and maybe some of the things I write down will make some sense, and much of it won’t until you get a little older.

This week I start off with a sort of “in-service day”. There are always things we can do to have a greater impact on our classroom environments and help our learners pick up a little more information.

I’m going to get going making some coffee and grabbing some breakfast.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 8

Y’know, if I’m going to start tracking my granddaughter’s days, I should try a different method: math and all that.

I use a website to calculate my days quickly – Rod Martin’s site has a “my days” calculator that’s quick and easy to use.

OK, back to the regular opening…

Good morning! It is 24 March 2023, and I’ve got a couple of meetings to attend to today, then I get to enjoy the company of a fair young lady who is but eight days old. I am a happy grampa.

After I spend an hour or two with Evey, I’ll stop and grab dinner for Lisa and me on the way home, and at this point in the day, I’m thinking a shrimp baja taco might be a good choice.

As I shared, I finished a three-day class the other day. Yesterday I received some follow-up feedback from my manager, and it was pretty positive. I have a love-hate relationship with feedback – the really positive stuff can inflate an ego, and the negative stuff can drag me down for weeks, but it is necessary to take a look at it, and I have to take everything with a grain of salt. The feedback can be very constructive, so I try to approach it from a “assume positive intent” perspective.

Today is going to be a good day. I’ve got a cup of coffee and a sesame bagel. Hard-boiled eggs in the fridge are on stand-by if I need a mid-morning snack. Low-carb ramen might be the answer to the lunch question.

I’m not quite sure what the weekend holds. I generally don’t blog on the weekends, as I try to stay focused on family and the tasks I need to attend to here. I probably ought to check the weather report to see if it’s going to be conducive to getting some work done outside.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.

Evelyn Day 7

Good morning! I hope you are well on this Thursday, the 23rd day of March 2023. Today marks one week since Evelyn arrived, and today is looking like a pretty good day.

I wrapped up a three-day course yesterday. I know that I sat the course when it first came out, but over the course of the last couple of years, I don’t think I ever had the opportunity to teach it. Our team went through a period of time when we would pick our classes out, and the three-day classes were often picked up first. I think by the time I got off my backside to pick my classes, all of the three-day classes were already picked up by other team members – and that’s just fine. We have some folks on the team that do a really good job with this content, and they should be delivering the majority of these classes. My perspective is that we ought to have some overlap with courses and skill sets so we’ve got options when someone should fall ill or have some other type of family emergency. We do a pretty good job with that side of the equation.

While I was in class the last few days, there were some meetings I missed. Fortunately, they were all recorded, so today I’ll be hitting the play button and getting caught up on the meetings I was unable to attend.

Tomorrow will be a good day. I get to spend a little time with my granddaughter while her mom runs a couple of errands. Yeah, I know she’s only a week old, but every moment is precious. The little ones are only this small for a short period of time, and the first year is going to fly by. Each day is so meaningful… the eighth day for her is still 12.5% of her life.

The dogs are all upset about a cat on tv. Some commercial for kitty litter.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.