In the heat of college football season and no TV!

So we didn't really ask the boy but my wife and I agreed to give up cable. We had a package that included about 6 million channels, our house phone, and digital internet through our local cable company. Very luxurious, hi-def, VS Sports, Speed Channel, our bill was also about $175 per month. When recently looking for ways to save many we came up with the radical (and possibly communist) idea of getting rid of cable. While I am slightly concerned that by eliminating cable I will miss the opportunity to see the latest products to purchase and I will be letting down the economy by eliminating the house phone and cable we will save about $120 per month ($1,440 per year).

So the gentlemen came on Wednesday and removed the box and frankly I didn't really miss TV until Saturday. I am a huge college football fan. I improvised but it isn't quite the same. Both Yahoo and ESPN have game center type features where you can find live scoring and updates (I am sure there are many others as well) and with a little effort there are many free radio stations available on the internet. I discovered googling team name, football, radio was pretty effective. I tried several different teams and was able to get a free live radio feed on all. Nebraska made me sign up for something (also free but tedious) but again I googled "Nebraska football radio" and spent about ten minutes signing up and I was in. I also discovered that Nebraska has an all online MBA program, but calculus is a prerequisite. Seriously, where are all these business people using calculus? I must be really low on the food chain because the subject is never even mentioned at my level. I am actually more intrigued with this which I also found last night.

A sloppy 17-3 win over South Dakota State ensued. In making our decision I really thought about it and half the time I don't really watch the games anyway, I mostly listen and half pay attention anyway. For $120 a month I'll improvise.

Family Friday

So not a lot of posts lately but I have four days left of school so I keep thinking in theory I will have more free time then. In a "circle of life" sort of way the boy also started preschool last week. He seems to be doing quite well with it, I got him playing some pre-school games in early August to ease the trepidation and that seemed to help a little. On the down side he seems to have developed a completely random stuttering problem in the last two weeks and my wife and I can't completely decide if it's an act or some sort of bizarre developmental snag, bear in mind he spoke perfectly clearly two weeks ago?

We have also developed our first legitimate mutual interest, sorry Little Einsteins, it was always an act for me. The boy and I both really get a kick out of comic books, so last night we read digital comic books online for a couple of hours. He's really starting to turn into quite an entertaining little boy.

Structure

As if my life doesn't have enough structure I am dabbling with the idea of adding a little structure to my blog. This will give me a different topic as a jumping off point perhaps sparking creativity. One example would be World Wide Wednesday for I find some mindless drivel from the web, like the mushroom song, or this.

We'll see, I am still mulling over topics but with school winding down I will have a ton more free time.

School

So I have finally come to a decision of sorts regarding advanced schooling. After finishing my bachelor's degree in September I will be taking at least a year off. I may not need or pursue an MBA degree at all, but I am definitely taking a break. After two and a half years of basically uninterrupted schooling, coupled with chasing a toddler, and a consistent effort to advance in my career has left me pretty tired.

As the boy gets older keeping up with him gets a little easier, and finishing school will free up a lot of time as well. I am glad I went back to school, and I enjoy my work so it's hard to articulate except to say that I am a bit tired and need a break. I am envisioning that after a year I will have a better idea of how content I am in my work and whether an MBA is necessary at all I will also have a pretty good perspective of how much I am enjoying and will miss my free time. For the moment I have nine weeks left of school and a paper to finish on the roles of human resources in the public and private sector.

More School versus More Fishing

So school is tedious, I really should have studied and stayed in school when I was 19. Try having a full time job (for which I am grateful), a preschooler, volunteer in the community, all while essentially being a full time student. Sometimes my life makes me a little tired. Anyway I have three more classes, one of which is half over and I will have my bachelor's degree in September. Then the big question that I still haven't decided conclusively is whether I should go back for the MBA. Really the three choices are go back to school immediately, take a year off (which worked out to ten years last time), or decide I'm happy with the B.S. and be done with it (does anyone else find it humorous that I will have a degree in B.S.)?

Going back for the MBA at Plymouth State may be useful professionally and I would like to have the knowledge if money and time were no object but money and time are objects and I only have so much of both. Conversely, what I really want to do is relax. Go to work, do the best I can, and when I come

home at the end of the day I want to veg out and watch mindless television, or go fishing. Spend more time working on my Texas rigging and less time thinking about public revenue sources and the privatization of services. Does that make me Tom Sawyer?

Really Texas rigging is an important life skill, because as you can see from the illustration by getting the hook entirely inside

the worm you won't get the hook stuck on stumps and rocks and things. An exposed hook might be a little easier to catch a fish but not if you keep getting the damned thing stuck in the weeds.

Big Day for Boston Sports

So Boston may be the sports city of the last decade with six titles in the last ten years, and today is a little glimpse of the wave that Beantown has been riding. The Bruins are at Philly but they are one win away from the Eastern Conference finals (somewhere they haven't been in a while). The Celtics are down early in the third game of their series against Cleveland but they have thus far proven that they are for real. As if that isn't enough the Sox take on the Yankees in the never ending rivalry of the century.

Just a short blog tonight as I have a significant amount of homework to do...and of course three sporting events to watch.

The Blog 2.0

Things a blog is unlikely to do for me;

1. make any money

2. make many friends

3. make me famous

4. combining 1 and 3, a blog is also unlikely to catapult me to a lucrative writing career after being "discovered."

Things that a blog is good for;

1. A constructive outlet to let one vent what's on their mind and a socially acceptable bit of self-centered vanity.

It's OK to blog, your's isn't likely to be any worse than mine.

So my wife and I live in a modest house in central New Hampshire (that's the state near the top right corner of the map, assuming you know how to hold the map). We have an almost three year-old son, affectionately referred to as "the boy." I am for the moment a full time student (four more classes) and a full time employee at a local bank. My greatest passion is my family (yes, really) eight years in the Army gave me a sincere appreciation for what really matters in life. I do have normal interest as well including politics, sports, and business (my major, B.S. in Business with an emphasis in Public Administration).

After I finish my bachelor's I am considering going straight into a master's degree at Plymouth State. Thinking about another two years of school makes me tired and Robinson Cano just pasted a home run to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead over the Orioles so maybe I should publish before I get to Debbie Downer.