Why so long between the talking?

As you might have guessed there was a reason why I haven't been blogging as much. Life got busy and a little more complicated. In Early December I was asked to fill a different church assignment. It requires that I spend more time away from my family than what I'd like. It's taken some getting time for me to get used to the idea.

And then we took a real long vacation to Utah. And then we got home and we were robbed. They stole all my tech. It was devastating really. The thing that I'm most ticked off about is that they stole my back up hard drive. We have photos of J because we published some of them on a website (http://gallery.me.com/mmaughan1). I've recorded some music, and we have some of that, but most of it is gone. There were some movies of J that we recorded with our camera, and they are gone. I'm stuck right now in the "back up everything in a thousand places" ideal. I don't know how long it's going to last, but I feel like it will last as long as my digital lifestyle continues.

I can't promise that there will be frequent posts these days. Right now as I'm typing the wife is saying, "So much clickity-clackity". So my yelling into the abyss that is the internet will have to stop for the moment. Remember to back up your files often.

Hard Loss

J and I watched some football today. He doesn't have a whole bunch of patience for football, because there's no Elmo, or Cookie. But today he must have been just tired enough from our trip that he just curled up on my lap and we watched football. It was one of my fatherly dreams come true.

The downside is that the U lost to BYU. That hurts because I've been saying for most of this season that the Y is complete crap, and now complete crap beat my team.

In other news, I"m watching Georgia v Georgia Tech and Notre Dame v Stanford. I'm torn about who I want to win in the Georgia game. I really don't like Georgia so I usually root for them to lose. But then again, if Georgia wins there is a strong argument that the SEC is so much better than the ACC. South Carolina, a terrible SEC team beats Clemson today who is going to play for an ACC title. And then Georgia beats Georgia Tech who is also going to play for the ACC title. The conclusion there is that the best of the ACC is not better than the worst of the SEC.

The only interest I have in the Notre Dame game is that I really don't like ND. There completely over rated EVERY YEAR, and they have some crazy deal that if they win 10 games they go to a BCS game. Considering who they play that is an extremely low bar.

Discipline

J is extremely good at diffusing a situation. Yesterday and today he really wanted to push the limits of what was acceptable. So he would walk over to some folded clothes and push them over, look over and smile. When asked if he wanted to go on 'time out' he would get an even broader grin and jump into another pile of folded clothes. I'd walk him over to time out and wait the appointed few minutes, during which J is getting louder and louder. When the time is over I start to walk over to him and he whips out his surprise face. I'm not sure if it's the surprise face anymore as it has become the, "This is what daddy looks like when he's angry" face. And I can't help but laugh. I mean, I really can't. J's head will shake just a little, like he's getting stern, and then he'll giggle and laugh when I break a small smile. I'M DOOMED!

Wireless has Drawbacks

You know you never notice how many times a wire has saved a piece of equipment until you take that wire away. I got a wireless mouse a little while ago, and I can't believe how many times it's dropped off of the desk. So far it's been able to take the beating, but I'm concerned that it won't take the abuse forever.

Do your TV shows say something about you?

For those of you who don't know my wife, she is an avid TV watcher. Picture in your mind the guy who you run into and get into a conversation about college football and in like 5 seconds you figure out that this guy has watched every single college football game in the history of college football. He knows every stat, every player, every coach. He can tell you interesting stories about the backup kicker for the championship team of 1975 (you know you know this guy). Translate that depth of knowledge into TV and you have my wife. The point of that is that she is the keeper of the shows that are watched in the house. I basically hate TV at this point. I'm not a huge fan of reality TV (I have my own reality that is hard enough to keep track of), and most drama's or comedies aren't really dramatic or funny.

As the keeper of the TV shows she tells me what would be interesting for me to watch and pay attention to. She knows that I can only keep track of maybe 3 stories and 2 of those need to be what's going on in her life as well as j's. She's recently recommended 3 shows that I need to announce that I like, and if you haven't seen any of these shows you should check out at least 3 of the first season's episodes on Hulu.com to see what I'm talking about. The shows are Dollhouse, Castle, and Glee.

Later I'll tell you why I like these shows because it might not be obvious, but last night I had a small epiphany. Hulu.com provides TV shows with limited commercials because the sponsers of commercials pay Hulu.com to provide the show. This is a great strategy if you're a marketer because you just need to figure out what shows your target audience is watching and then sponsor that show. My epiphany was when I decided to watch an extended minute and a half version of a NuvaRing commercial so I could watch Glee without any other commercial interruptions. As I was trying not to listen to 4 women talk about why they prefer an extended release hormone product that's placed in the downstairs I had a moment of clarity that I wasn't the target audience of Glee. And later that night as I was catching up on the Castle episodes that I'd missed and was being bombarded by commercials for Latisse (a drug that stimulates eye lashes to grow) I again asked myself if there were any heterosexual males in America that were watching this show. Oh, and don't get me started on why Latisse is the beginning of the end for the pharmaceutical industry. Or maybe we should go there because my feelings about products like Latisse are the reason that I really like Dollhouse.

So in front of all 3 people who read this blog I will declare that I like Glee because it's fun music with great writing and interesting, mostly clean plot lines. I like Castle because the back and forth dialogue is some of the sharpest I've seen in several years. And I like Dollhouse because the premise that if we were able to discover a way to truly understand and manipulate the mind we wouldn't cure disease we would find a way to make billions and ruin society, is a fresh take on apocolypse writing.

Excited About Poop

There were 2 different strategies about potty training in this house. The wife was adamant that we don't start potty training J until, I don't know, right before his senior prom. I was taking a slightly more aggressive strategy and have been asking about potty training since we brought him home from the hospital. Clearly there needed to be some common ground found.

J resolved this little dilemma for us by taking an increasingly large interest in the potty. At some point a couple of weeks ago we decided to start really talking to him about the potty and asking him if he needed to go. Before his bath I would ask him if he needed to go, and sit him on the potty even if he didn't gesture that he wanted to be there. About a week ago he gave us a major breakthrough, he peed in the potty. You would have thought that he had just discovered how to solve world hunger, because the praise that he got for managing that little trick was enormous. Since that moment he has successfully peed in the potty several times. We kept encouraging him to let us know if he needed to poop, but he wasn't quite sure how to get our attention when the poop snuck up on him. Close but no cigar.

Tonight was the breakthrough! We were playing in the tub and he started to get real animated about the potty. I was tired and thought, "You know, go ahead and pee in the tub. It's not that big a deal." But there was an emphatic look of 'get me to the potty quick' that prompted me to swing him out of the tub and onto the potty. And before I could determine if he was actually going to produce, or just laugh and try to pee on my face, there was a plop. I won't get any more graphic I guess, but it was freaking amazing!! Again the accolades came quickly and profusely. We gave high fives. We gave fist bumps. We sang songs and laughed. We've crossed a threshold in the potty training. He knows it's awesome to do his doody (pun intended), with the potty.

We're no where close to taking away the safety net of the diapers. We'll be going to pull-ups this week, and before you know it under-roo's.

Is the test over?

Several months ago I decided to try to take a new step for the advancement of my career. There are several areas of pharmacy that someone can become Bard Certified in and I decided that it would be a good thing for me to become Board Certified in Pharmacotherapy. This is the most general of the fields and that is both good and bad. The good is that there must be something that I remember from my days in pharmacy school and a residency. It was bad because as I studied the material I kept thinking, "I'm not sure I'm even a pharmacist anymore, because all of this seems like new material."

I had ample time to study really, but I don't think I took full advantage of the time. There always seemed like something else that needed to get done. Or some other crisis that needed to be dealt with. At 2 weeks before the exam I actually panicked. I talked with the wife, who is pregnant now with #2, and having major gall-bladder trouble, and told her that if I didn't spend every moment after work studying for this exam I might as well not take it at all. I wasn't sure that after the studying I would pass, but I was positive that if I went in cold it was going to be over before it began.

And so I studied. I listened to lectures, did practice exams, and looked over guidelines. I tried to budget my time on what others said was a large part of the exam. In one moment of self reflection my mind drifted momentarily and I wondered if I was passing the other tests of my life. Here I was at 10pm in a hospital office pouring over material that has very little practical application to my everyday work. My wife was asleep at home after dealing with J for 12 hours. She was literally sick and tired, and I wasn't around to provide comfort or support.

I wish I could say that there was a swelling of peace and comfort that I felt that I was doing the right thing. There wasn't. The only good news is that there wasn't a sinking feeling that I had my priorities all messed up. It was all just...blah.

On the day of the test I woke up and started to get J ready for the day. After a couple minutes I noticed that the wife wasn't in the house. I was confused, but j was hungry so I kept plugging along. I noticed that there was a text message on my phone, it said the wife was at the hospital with a friend, the wife had a gall-bladder attack after I went to bed. She got up quietly, called the friend, slipped out of the house quietly, and the friend drove her to the hospital. The wife didn't wake me up because she didn't want me up all night sitting in the ER before my test. I think she passed her test, but I didn't get the chance to pass mine.

I took the Board Certification, well rested and somewhat prepared. The wife and J are definitely more than I deserve, and everything I've ever dreamed about.