I’ve been pretty incommunicado lately.

Let me go ahead and warn you that this is going to be a very ramble-y blog post. I’ve got a lot to say and no coherent way to tie it all up, so this may be a James Joyce-ian stream of consciousness blog post. It will be far shorter than Ulysses, however.

"James Joyce is much tougher than Seuss..."

Nothing bad has happened. I have been EXTREMELY busy for the past few weeks, but nothing bad is going on in my life at all.

Quite the contrary.

I still have an amazing job.

My job gives me six free hours of tuition every semester. I have decided to start my second Master’s degree, a Master’s of Science in Library Media and Educational Technology. I am currently taking a May-term class. If you don’t know what that means, imagine a regular semester-long graduate class crammed into three weeks.

Lots of homework. Lots of late night reading. Lots and lots and lots of writing and typing out various reports.

I love it. Every second of it. But I won’t deny that it’s taking up a lot of my time.

Oh, and I’m doing another three-week class in June as soon as this one ends.

In other job news, I thought things might slow down a bit when the regular Spring semester ended. After all, campus is almost completely dead now. There can’t be that much to do, right?

Wrong. Somehow, I’m finding myself even busier at work than when campus had 15,000 people on it.

I’m okay with that. I LOVE MY JOB! If I wanted another tattoo, I would get one that said something to that effect. (Given that I have wanted to remove the small tattoo I currently possess and have wanted it gone for about four years now, it really wouldn’t make that much sense to get another one when I can just show my job-love here on my blog.)

"I went to get I Heart WKU... Got talked into this instead... This... this wasn't a good idea."

Part of my job-love is because I came from utter HELL before I landed here.

"I wasn't really set on fire at my last job... but I did have to pull several dozen knives out of my back daily."

Part of my job-love is that I absolutely adore WKU. This is my alma mater. To paraphrase my boss in referring to her alma mater, I love every single brick of this place. Sometime this fall, when campus is beautiful and I can take an afternoon off, I’ll take my camera and do a virtual tour here.

I’ve also had some joyous celebration, because my wife has just graduated! She walked the line about a week ago and is the proud recipient of a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Biology.

I’m not sure if other campus do this or allow it, but at WKU, many graduates decorate their mortar board. Tina’s was one of the best. And I’m not just being biased because she’s my wife. When the graduation was aired on WKU’s news channel, the camera crew selected her mortar board as the one to talk about live and on the air.

That is our mascot, Big Red. She doesn't have Grimace on her hat.

Of course, she made it with glitter, and glitter is the herpes of the craft world. In other words, once you get glitter, even if you think you’re clear, you really aren’t. Even our cat had glitter on him at one point during this craft process.

So that took up a little time.

There have been a lot of celebrations.

There has been a lot of laziness.

I went to the gym on Monday morning before work.

Yeah, that was pretty much the last time I went.

My weight has crept up.

Sometimes when I gain weight, I truly have to shrug and say, “I have no idea what happened!”

I can’t do that this time. I know EXACTLY why my weight has crept up. I’ve been eating too much and not moving enough.

Tina and I are about to start a little detox. We’re going to cut WAY back on processed foods for the next few days, and then, starting on Tuesday, we’re going to go a week without processed foods. Not forever, just for a while. Just to jump start our motivation.

Babies are in our future. We want to start our family. I don’t want to be a fat dad. Tina doesn’t want to be one of those women who could be fat or could be pregnant. She wants to clearly be pregnant with no ambiguity. The good side of this is that Tina is very close to goal weight. She isn’t far off at all. In fact, I expect Tina to be at goal weight before we go run from Zombies on October 22nd. I won’t be, but I plan to be on my way.

So… that’s kinda why I haven’t had a weigh-in lately. I truly believe that if someone doesn’t weigh in at least two weeks in a row, it’s because they’ve gained weight.

Guilty.

Stay tuned. I want to turn this train around. I don’t want to merely say, “I’ve got this,” over and over and never do.

Actions speaker louder than words. Right?

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