I haven’t typed anything in almost a week!  In part, it’s because it’s vacation and not much is going on.  Also, my chip finally arrived in force and I’ve been working long hours to complete it quickly.  Alas, I don’t have all that I need to complete this chip, so I’ll have to finish it after school has started.  This is not ideal.

New Years was fun.  We had some friends over and we played games until around 1AM.  My wife’s birthday (on New Year’s) was simple and low-key – just the way she likes it.

Tomorrow, I have my Elementary Technology test.  Because I’ve been so embroiled in this chip project, I haven’t studied a bit for the test.  I’m going to carve out a significant part of today to do that.  After tomorrow’s test, I can return to the chip.

Monday starts a big change in my life – student teaching.  For the next three months, I will teach/observe five days a week, and then four evenings a week, I’ll attend classes.  From when I wake up until I fall asleep, I have maybe three hours of “slack time” to take care of things and to be with my family (7-8AM, 3:30-4:30PM, 10-11PM).  It’s not a lot of time and I’m concerned that my family won’t be taken care of in the manner they need.  On Friday evenings, I’ll either have band or lifegroup, which then leaves Saturday and half of Sunday to do any homework.  I’m going to be one busy person!  I hope I have the stamina for all this.  Somewhere in all of this, I also have to write-up four major items towards getting my degree (called ‘TPA’s’) and I have to prepare for my taxes, which is a pretty big deal this year because I was involved with a start-up, I had my own business, and now I’m a student/teacher.  All have tax items associated with each category.  And because I’ve been working on this chip and doing my year-end finances (and in theory, studying), I wasn’t able to put together all the tax stuff.  I estimate that it will take three full weekends to complete and another weekend to go over things with my tax person.  That works out to a third of my available weekends!  I only have eight weekends to do all my homework and four TPAs.  Yikes!