As I wind down this class (we finished up our last exercise today -several class hours earlier than it was due- all that’s left is some discussion, and one more exam), I find that while I’m completely and utterly sick of living in a hotel, and can’t wait to see my family again, I’m actually […]

I somehow organized a minor “blow-off-steam” happy hour three weeks into a four week class last night by telling a few folks that I’d be at Independent Brewing Company’s taproom Friday afternoon to have a drink or two and dinner from whatever food truck was holding court. I ended up chatting with a couple of […]

As this post gets posted, I’ll be wrapping up my third week of this damned class. Yeah, I know it’s pretty much all I’ve been talking about, but this is the thing that’s been consuming my life for the entire month of August. I haven’t seen my family in two weeks. The recumbent stationary bike […]

I’m a little past half-way through this course. My team and I (the entire curriculum save the exams is group work, and I have a good team; a really good team) have mutually agreed that we’ve hit the wall. We’re getting pretty good at working the system now; we’re routinely finishing our relatively complex group […]

So yeah, still sick. Even worse than last time I posted something, though I do have some good meds for the symptoms. That said, it’s not been a terrible week, for being on the road. I even checked my work email thisThursday morning to clear out the automated cruft, and found that things are moving […]

It’s relatively bog-standard Wednesday evening; a week-and-a-half into my class, and the teams is starting to figure out the basic pattern and rules of engagement, getting along well, doing good work, and developing, at least in our case, weird conspiracy theories about how our grades are determined, and wondering about the oddly ever-present recurring value […]

It’s Sunday evening, and I’m back at my August home-away-from-home here in northeastern MD quickly making a trip to celebrate the kid’s birthday a few days early. Colleen went all-out putting together a Harry Potter-themed party, with floating candles hanging from the ceiling, turning the front door into Platform 9¾ picking out wands, sorting into […]

As I write this, I’ve spent a few hours studying for the first “Celebration of Knowledge” (I swear, I wanna hurt the person at the Department training organization who came up with that particular euphemism) scheduled for tomorrow morning, and am hitting consistent 100% scores on the practice tests that some kind soul put up […]

Another week, another pile o’ drama. Par for the course. Work has been ridiculously stressful, the weather’s been awful, kids have been extra twitchy lately, and the tension is bouncing back and forth amongst everyone in the tiny Parker household (including the cats who deign to stay) and everyone is on edge. Yay. I did […]

Today’s gonna be a better day, whether Bison razes my village or not. Kinda has to be. Monday was all the phone calls. All of them. Also, being told out of one side of management’s mouth that I need to disengage because of the class next month, but also need to get these two dozen […]