It’s a Friday afternoon, and we’re doing a few labs here in Cambridge. I’ve got a while before I have to worry about a couple of business related activities, a check-in with my manager, and a flight back home to enjoy a Thanksgiving holiday break with family.

I’ve enjoyed my time here. Granted, I’ve spent most of my time in the evenings in my hotel room. I’m not a kid anymore, so going out in the evenings isn’t always a priority for me. When I’m delivering with another instructor, that’s a different situation, and I think a little decompression after class is often a good thing.

I’ll have a little time yet before I have to worry about getting my kit in order, rearranging my bags for optimal travel, making sure my travel pillow is in my backpack, and that some of my peripheral devices are tucked away safely into my hard side bag. Hopefully I’ll have enough time to grab a snack at the airport before my flight – considering I thought my flight was two hours earlier than it actually is, I don’t think that will be much of an issue.

We’ll have to just walk down that road… I’m not going to try and over-analyze anything. Right now I’m just looking forward to going with the flow and seeing where the next step takes me.

I wish you all the best, and I hope you have a safe weekend.

Peace y’all.

It’s Thursday night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and this old man is looking forward to one more good day in the company of the fine folks here attending my class.

(OK, so I found out some of the folks in class have actually read my blog… and that’s kind of cool.)

Had some things get a little “off” today in class, and I reached out to my teammates for some resolution. Found out there might be an issue with one of the templates we’re using to setup a lab, so we’re looking at the options available before us, an then we’ll get a fix applied. One of the labs has a virtual machine that’s a bit undersized for the task at hand, so I’ll talk with my folks tomorrow about implementing a remedy, swapping out the undersized VM with something with a few more horses under the hood.

Flying home tomorrow, looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night after I get home. A week at home with family is just what this old man needs. That, and some dedicated puppy time with Lucy and Freya. Bonnie gets home from Ohio State on Saturday, and I’m just fine with that.

Still have some work stuff to get done tonight, and it’s already after ten. Better get to it, and then shuffle my old droopy butt off to bed.

Peace y’all.

OK, it’s Wednesday night, and I’m one day closer to going home. Nothing against the beauty and history of Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I’m ready for another week at home.

I spoke with my wife and oldest daughter today. Bonnie is ready to come home as well, if only for Thanksgiving. She’ll get a little break before she has to head back to Ohio State, then a few weeks home soon to celebrate Christmas with family.

Class is going well. I’ve given a little thought to my class, my students, and my circumstances. It’s true that I am teaching at Harvard. I talked after class about the idea of that with a couple of students that were working on labs after I completed the lecture. They joked that they WORK at Harvard… they don’t GO to Harvard. Good people. Solid experience. Dedicated to their craft, and I appreciate that. These folks are asking good questions, and making me think about parts of my work that I haven’t thought about as much, and I appreciate the challenge. They are making me a better instructor, and I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

Tomorrow, we go back to Harvard Square to finish up the last couple of days in class, and that neighborhood has a couple of nice opportunities for me to pick up a souvenir for Bonnie.

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

Peace y’all.

It’s a Tuesday night, a late night, and to be honest, a bit of a rough day. Had a kid involved in a minor moving vehicle scrape, and then a minor revelation on top of it.

I’m a little under it on this matter. As a parent, you want to do everything in your power to support your kids. You want to give them emotional support. You want to counsel them as best you can about doing the right thing and making the right choices, as those choices don’t just affect the now, but will have a reverberation affect on every thing that happens in the future. Yeah, it’s a lifelong echo chamber, and it kind of sucks, but it’s also the truth. It’s the butterfly effect… the smallest decision you make along the way could affect some little thing in the future in the most unpredictable way.

I’m not expert on it, but I’ve experienced it. Little things, the tiny little moments in your life that you might deem dismissable in the moment could very well turn out to be moments of incredible impact sometime in the future.

I hope the butterflies in my kids’ lives are forgiving and merciful.

They’re good people.

Peace y’all.

It’s a Monday night in Cambridge, Mass, and I’m tired. The Chiefs are holding their own against the Los Angeles Chargers (it’s still weird as hell saying that) and the defense has actually shown up and represented than the vaunted Chiefs offense has most of the night.

The thing that has reared it’s ugly head more so than any other component of the game is how bad this field is. Poor traction, chunks flying up in the air as players try to cut and make “football” moves. I worry about the players getting hurt, and that worry pretty reasonable, as there have been more than a couple of players heading to the sideline with an injury due to the playing surface being so bad.

I’m guessing that the same folk that designed Trump’s foreign policy are the architects behind this turf fiasco in Mexico.

So, this stadium that the Chiefs and Chargers are playing in sits at 7,200 feet above sea level or so, or about 2,000 feet higher that the Broncos home, Mile High Stadium. I have to admit, I fully expected to see more shots of players sitting on the sideline hitting the oxygen mask hard. Haven’t seen it yet!

I’m going to kick it here, watch a little more football, and then hit the sack. But… I did get my blog entry in. Life is a series of minor victories.

Peace y’all.

It’s a brisk Sunday evening on the east coast, and I am sitting in my hotel room writing a blog entry while I watch the HBO series “The Watchmen”. I’ve got a delivery tomorrow with some fine folks here in the outskirts of Boston, and I’ve got a couple of small tasks to take care of before I head over to the delivery site tomorrow. No real biggies, just have to take a thumb drive down to one of the computers in the hotel’s business center and print out a couple of necessary documents.

I had a good travel day – any time you get upgraded on both legs of a long trip is a good day. My only real concern was making sure my luggage made the connection, and this time I was quite pleased to see that blue bag roll off the luggage chute at Boston Logan.

My ride from the airport to the hotel was quite uneventful. The only real problem I had today was trying to understand the guy that was delivering my food to the hotel from Cheesecake Factory. I’m a little nuts, but when I have a fridge in my hotel room, I’ll order from the Cheesecake Factory the first night so I can get my Low Carb Cheesecake slices squared away for most of the week. There are very few desserts I can enjoy on the road, so I grab some of that low carb cheesecake for a couple of nights later in the week.

I have fulfilled my pledge, so I’m going to call it a night.

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

Peace y’all.

It gets to a point where I type the “Day” followed by the number in the title, and I think I ought to go and double check just to see how far off I am in the actual number I ought to be putting in that slot.

It’s a Saturday night. Lisa and I went to 4:00 Mass at the St. Lawrence Center, then went downtown to put together a birthday present for an old buddy of mine from Salina. He told us “No Presents”… I’m usually a pretty high compliance guy, but not tonight.

My Jayhawks did not fare well on the football pitch today, so I’m not going to dwell on that too much and get all sad and dismayed. I kind of expected another week of disappointment. As much as I wish Les Miles and his coaching staff all the best in the world, the reality is it will take years to make the Kansas Jayhawks competitive in the conference when it comes to football.

But the women did well… women’s soccer advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament. The women’s volleyball team beat in-state and conference rival K-State. I’ll take those wins any day of the week.

Tomorrow I head back out on the road, as I head to Boston… technically, I’m going to Cambridge, but I look at the world through three-letter airport codes these days…. so I’m headed to Boston-Logan – BOS.

Then an Uber ride to the hotel.

Time to get my life squared away…

Peace y’all.

Good evening, one and all. It’s a Friday night here in rural Douglas County, and I’m pondering a lot of different things. Always lots of things on my mind right before I head back out. Thankfully, this will be a one week outing, then a break home with family for Thanksgiving.

It is the 15th day of November, and this is a day that will likely be referred to in a historical context. There were more impeachment hearings today. It was not a good day for Trump. The testimony from the two principal witnesses today was powerful.

Tonight, Lisa and I spent a little time together, enjoyed a little pizza, and watched the Kansas Jayhawks take on Monmouth. This was one of those major blowouts, a 55 point differential in a walk-over. I kind of felt sorry for the Monmouth team… until one of the Monmouth players lost his cool at the end of the game. Nothing too uncouth, but a lack of sportsmanship was demonstrated.

I’ve seen Kansas players do similar things in the past as well, so I’m not going to get too hung up on it.

Nothing much else to share tonight. I need to see if there’s pizza I need to get put away. I just broke the two hundred word threshold as well, so I’m satisfied in my pledge fulfillment. I need to go check a couple of statistics, and see where I’m at on the month. I missed an entry or two earlier in the month and I need to see how far off my goal I am.

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

Peace y’all.

It’s Thursday night in rural Douglas County. Lisa is a bit under it, and she has spent part of the evening napping in her recliner, and I am still studying prepping for my next certification exam.

I love what I do. It’s a tremendous honor to be a certified trainer for a good company with tremendous economic and cultural influence. Part of my internal battle is the perpetual paper chase… that chase after the next cert or the next version of the existing cert. I believe in certification, don’t get me wrong, and I’ve built my entire career around getting certified. I spend a great deal of my time helping other people get certified.

My issue is that I tend to get a little worked up about my exams. I don’t do a great job at reminding myself that the worst thing that could happen is that I take the exam again. The thing is, this is stuff I’ve been grandfathered into and I work with everyday. I’ll most likely pass the first time I take this exam with flying colors, but I still have a tremendous amount of anxiety over any certification exam. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s some weird personality disorder that makes me center so much of my identity on my professional self.

Maybe I need to decompress and detach a little more and a little better. I am not my job, I am not my career, I am not my certifications. I am a trainer, a father, a husband, a son, a brother, and a friend.

I guess I just need to get over myself a bit.

Peace y’all.

It’s a Wednesday night, a brisk full-moon night – ok, the full moon may have been last night, but it’s a big bright one that likes to look in my bedroom about 3:00 in the morning… so I notice it.

Lisa is zonked out in the recliner next to mine. We’ve been watching some news before heading off to bed, and it’s all about the first day of public hearings into impeachment of Trump. I’m trying to detach a little. I’ve been pretty clear on my position relative to Trump and his administration, and that’s all I really need to say on the matter.

I’ve been focused on studying for a new certification exam, and I hope t get that cranked out sooner rather than later.

Tomorrow I’ll have some calls and meetings, and some more studying. I’m setting a goal of taking that exam Friday morning,

Tonight I will sleep well. I’ve had a nice day, and I have a feeling my beloved will be inclined to get to bed sooner rather than later tonight.

Maybe there’s something sweet I can get into before I call it a night.

That’s all I’ve got for tonight.

Peace y’all.