My finance professor at Loyola offered us extra credit in our summer class if we’d submit a list of 100 goals to him.  Having a goal of earning an ‘A’ in the class (goal #58 on the list), I decided that if he was willing to take non-finance work as credit for finance, that I would take him up on the deal.  I’ve always been goal-driven, and in fact had written a list of goals of things I wanted to accomplish before I got married (goal list unfortunately long mislaid).  Since then, though, I’d focused on only 1 or 2 goals at a time, and hadn’t again jotted down a list of things to do.  What I discovered in performing the exercise that the act of generating 100 goals was insightful as to what kinds of things I’d like to do.  To get to 100, I had to brainstorm in all sorts of directions.  Goal #1: Read the Bible completely.  Other goals included things like run a marathon (scheduled for Oct 28), run a marathon in less than 4:15 (requiring a 9:43 per mile pace, not yet accomplishable by me for more than 1 mile at a time: hey, I’m slow, but I’ll finish), train a puppy as a seeing eye or other guide dog, help build a house for Habitat for Humanity, read ‘Moby Dick’ (read a few chapters while eating my sushi the other night), receive a patent, ….  [and the list goes on].  Nothing too controversial, though I did vow to get another tattoo.  (I thought about checking that one off while my family was out of town this weekend, but I opted to do more boring things like mow the lawn.)

 Note that I did achieve goal #58 (get an ‘A’).  Goal #76 (get another tattoo) is as yet still pending.

Did you know that:

– poison ivy rashes last 14-21 days?  (they’ll be coming to take me away, ha ha, long before that if this estimate is correct)

– the delay between contact with the ivy and onset of rash can be several days?  (Um, I now know that it can be at least 3)

– you can’t spread it on yourself by scratching?  (hallelujah!)

 I can now rest easy that the misery I’ve been experiencing more than a week now I can’t pass onto my children if they bump my leg.  That’s good.  And I can scratch with abandon…  ever seen a video of a bear rubbing up against a tree?  I may have to go mano-a-mano against the bear to get a good tree.

Work’s sicc’ed an investigator on me.  A guy in a 3-piece suit whose work consists of asking people from my past whether I’m a good guy or a bad guy.  Who apparently racks up a lot of miles on his car: hope he’s honest in his mileage estimates for his taxes.  But while he’s judging me by the company I keep, here’re a few job titles seen lately via connections on LinkedIn.  Note: these are actual job titles seen as my current connections add new people to their list of links:
* the CEO of a past company is now connected to an individual who bills themselves as ‘Sr VP- Wealth Management at [major financial company name]’: guess he’s doing well!

* a past boss is now connected to an individual who lists part of their title as ‘Web Designer at Playboy Enterprises Inc.’.  Perhaps he’s not doing as well as the CEO, but he may have some interesting stories to tell at parties.

Now, it turns out that the Playboy designer likely knew my ex-boss from a shared previous company.  But you have to dig to get that info.  LinkedIn just tells me, without digging, that this person has a new connection, and this is what they do. Nice eyebrow-raiser for the morning.

It’s Labor Day weekend, and my answer to the inevitable question tomorrow at work for what I’ve done will be “Blissfully nothing”.  That’s not technically true: I did a bit of work on Saturday and pushed out a deployment, and have some plans to do some light housework today, including making my second great dinner of the weekend, but compared to the usual race, this feels like ‘blissfully nothing’.  I’ve read that vacations of shorter than a week or two aren’t enough to recharge you, and maybe I don’t know what a fully battery recharge feels like, but I have to admit to feeling much more energized today than I have in a while. I’m reading Runner’s World and planning next year’s marathon; thinking up neat menus for dinner tonight; daydreaming about various craft projects; making a laundry list of fun and interesting projects to play with on maternity leave (some technology related; some not.  Maybe another post will have a running list of ideas…).  It’s a wake-up call to me that I’ve been running around half mentally asleep of late, just focused on work and how to solve that interesting bug or how to work off the pile of not so interesting bugs.  Don’t necessarily have answer as to how not to get into that state again, but a good first step is even recognizing that I’ve been in it.

Just a quick update, to make me feel that I haven’t abandoned my blog baby. As time challenged as I’ve been, I’ve been working very hard to not abandon my kid babies, my dog babies, the baby who’s kicking (hard!) inside of me. I’ll not compare my husband to a baby, but I’ve been trying to not neglect him, too.

The short and sweet update: since my last post/confessional, we’ve been to a wedding in Texas, been to a funeral in Frostburg, crammed in more hours working and fewer hours sleeping than I though possible for a pregnant woman, and unofficially dropped out of an MBA program.  I’ve crammed a ton of software development into wee hours of the morning, and thought I was going into labor in the mall, some eight to ten weeks early.  Tiny bit of stress going on around here.  Wish there were a great end in sight, and more musing going on at this site.  Keep mentioning to Jas as we talk about X or Y that there’s a blog post here and a blog post there.  Here a post, there a post, everywhere a post post….  But you’ll have to be stuck with Old McDonald singing in your head instead for a little while, as I’m going to sleep!

Keep thinking that the next improvement on my commute (beyond my own personal teleportation device) would be a scooter or motorcycle to get me to the train station. No more hopping in the car and going – just hop on my two-wheeler to get there. (Note that the straight bike isn’t a great option, ’cause I’m a chick who’d rather not get to work sweaty.)

New option to consider: the Wheelman, seen originally by me off of Hacked Gadgets with accompanying YouTube video. Clocks in at 16-19 miles per hour, with an hour and a half ridetime on a tank of oil and gas. Apparently my dress code for work would have to downgrade a bit, as would my belly.