When Holly left town with Jack for a full month I thought I would catch up on some sleep, maybe rest up for the coming semester, etc. What happened instead was that I developed some sort of sleeping problem that I cannot seem to shake.
I've had trouble sleeping before in my life, but usually it lasts for a few days, maybe a week at most where I can't get to sleep until really late at night, but I can always manage to wake up just fine the next morning for the most part.
This time around I not only can't fall asleep, but I also can't wake up, and when I do sleep, even if I don't wake up during the night, the sleep is not restful to even the slightest degree. I spend the rest of the day wishing for naps and wishing I didn't have to be to work so early in the mornings.
The most unfortunate part of the whole situation is that I feel terrible about the lack of sleep because I want to be helping with Jack during the night since Holly had to do it all on her own for a whole month. Luckily, Jack is starting to learn to sleep through the night a little better, but sometimes he still wakes up and I try to help if I can.
What I wish for most is that I could solve this problem and get into a pattern of healthy sleep that would allow me to function at a much higher level.
About two weeks ago a small note was attached to the clipboard next to our front door which explained that Wymount was planning on replacing all of the carpet in apartments within our quad. At first I told myself that I didn't want them to come and then I convinced myself it would be okay since Holly and Jack were out of town as long as the process did not require me to disassemble my crib and treadmill that are in a back bedroom. Both of them had to be put together inside of the room because they were too big to fit through the door.
It took a few back and forth phone calls with Wymount to organize the best possible day, which turned out to be yesterday. I had to work all day because Roxy is gone for the week, so I was out of the apartment by 8:00am and after work went over to Shyla and Russell's house for dinner and games, so I did not return home until 10:30pm.
From the discussions with Wymount I was lead to believe that because I had emptied the entire apartment onto the balcony or into closets so the only thing on the carpet when I left was the bed, couch, crib, and treadmill that the crew would have more than enough time to finish the entire apartment in one day because I would be gone and nothing would be in their way.
Clearly I was mistaken.
When I got home late last night I arrived to an apartment with every single light on in the house. Added to that as I got to the top of the stairs I noticed that both the front door and balcony door had been left wide open and unlocked whenever the crew had left for the day. Walking inside I noticed new carpet in the living room, nursery, and living room closet, but no carpet, not even the old carpet, in the bedroom or storage closet/office. The floor had been stripped down entirely to the concrete base.
Furthermore, my bed was piled in a corner of the living room on its end with several pieces of furniture I had put on the balcony piled up to the ceiling in front of it (I still don't know how that happened) and my couch had been put on end in the kitchen with other things piled behind, effectively blocking me from reaching any food, dishes, or cleaning supplies.
By this time I was livid. I really needed to be able to move things back into the apartment from the balcony when I got home because I had certain things that needed to be done the next day. But no, it gets worse. While inspecting the mess I noticed at least four or five used razor blades littering the carpet throughout the apartment. If Jack were home and not in California he easily could have discovered one of those and sliced his hands up something fierce.
Wait for it... it gets even better.
After taking everything in I decided it might be worth it to try and find somewhere else to sleep for the night. I didn't have the energy or the time really to move furniture to somewhere else to make room for the bed or to empty the kitchen so I could get to my food. So, I tried calling Shyla and Russell back, but I'm pretty sure they went to bed immediately after I left. Shawn Saunders was unreachable as well, and all my friends in the ward are out of town on internships.
So, I tried getting online, but wait, my computer had dead batteries. No big deal right? Just plug it in and see what I can do. Yeah... there isn't a single outlet in my apartment that works right now. None, nada, zilch. The only electricity that works is the overhead lighting. No air conditioner, no microwave (even if I had been able to reach it), and I'm willing to bet I'm going to need to check the refrigerator for spoiled food because it likely lost power for about 24 hours as well.
All in all, a nightmare. I wound up pulling a few blankets from the top of our closet and sleeping in a corner of the nursery, and this morning at 8:00am I went over to the Wymount office before work and after listing off my complaints told them that if the power and carpet were not fixed before I get home today they will be giving me a credit for my July rent when it comes due in one week.
I don't know if they got the message or not, but they said it would be fixed by 5:00pm when I get home. We'll see if that is really the case, and if not I might have to pull a Dad or something, we'll see.
Shortly after arriving at work this morning I got a phone call from Holly. Apparently the toilet had started flooding the bathroom for what appears to be no really apparent reason. Luckily I had the scooter at work, and that meant I could get home rather quickly.
I made it home in about five minutes, sent Holly and Jack on a run to the store to get Jack some diapers because he was almost out, and then set to work figuring out how to fix the predicament the bathroom was currently in. I put in a call to the maintenance folks at Wymount and about ten minutes later a guy showed up to make sure the toilet drain was clear. It didn't take him very long, but he had the unfortunate news of letting me know that the cleanup of the water was basically up to me because they didn't have a crew available today.
That meant that I got to throw down all of our towels and then pick them up, wring them out in the bathtub and repeat the process over and over until the almost 1 inch of water filling the bathroom floor was gone. It took a little while, but I got it all taken care of (luckily the water was just clean water). The biggest problem is a rather largely sized wet spot in the hallway between the bathroom, bedrooms, and living room. I got out our box fan and put it to work, and then had to come back to the office because nobody else was in yet.
Holly told me a bit later that Wymount finally sent some guys over with a carpet vacuum to suck out most of the water and leave an industrial fan to help speed along the drying process. It may dry faster, but I'm sure that noisy fan isn't making Jack all that happy.
I haven't posted about this development for a week or so because I am quite irate about the very thought of it. Here at BYU the campus cable package is severely lacking, as in so lacking it probably should never be referred to as an actual cable package, but the one thing it did have was ESPN to provide sports coverage whenever I wanted it.
The entire time I've been in married student housing I've settled for this knowing that as long as I could get highlights and news from ESPN I could consider myself lucky and move along with life.
Then not long ago I got the following message from BYU:
With the industry changes in television from an analog to a digital signal, changes are being made to our Campus Television service. A new contract for digital content has been negotiated and will take effect May 1, 2009.
The CBS College Sports network will be added to the line-up. The network carries Mountain West Conference athletic events and will allow students and employees to access additional BYU games from campus locations.
All other currently offered channels will continue to be available with the exception of ESPN. The cost of the ESPN package alone is now more than all of our other content combined, and this expense could not be justified. ESPN will no longer be provided as part of our television content beginning May 1st.
Yep, my ESPN channel disappears in two days. I'm not happy about it, not happy at all. Sure, a lot of the stuff can be found on the ESPN website, but most of the video coverage cannot, especially not my favorite one, Top 10 Plays of each day.
Sometimes BYU is run by unintelligent people. Sometimes.
There is only one day left of class following today. I can't tell you how happy that makes me because this semester has not gone at all like it was supposed to. I was planning on having a nice schedule that let me have some time at home and a workload that was not too demanding so that I could help with Jack when he was so small.
Did any of that happen? No, it most certainly did not.
As it turns out, my grades should be fine, mostly in the B or B+ range with one or two that might sneak up into the A- or flat out A range. The only one I think I have a solid A in is my computing project class, but who knows, Russell is a tricky one and he may flunk me just for kicks or something. Now that would be funny.
All I want is to make it through finals, get my grades and take a break. This summer should be nice and relaxing because I am not taking any classes, I am not working horrible jobs, and I get to work at least 15 hours a week from home, which is so much better than sitting in a quiet office all day. Not to mention, Roxy will be here for the summer this year, and that is going to be fun.
This semester was so disappointing I can't really put it into words. The spring and summer breaks can't get here fast enough, even if they are only 36 hours away.
Yep, I did it. I deactivated my Facebook account a couple of days ago because the concept behind that site has officially becoming boring to me. There is never anything all that exciting going on with Facebook except for the poorly designed layout changes from time to time, and the site has grown far to big for its britches if you ask me.
It was one thing when Facebook was only available to university students. At that point it held a certain mysterious appeal for me, knowing that a bunch of hormone induced teenagers wouldn't be cluttering my wall space with their absurd speech patterns was quite comforting to say the least.
Then Facebook sold out. They opened the doors to everyone and their MySpace crew, and things went downhill fast. Then was the introduction of "applications" and I knew my time was growing short.
I hung on for a while longer, knowing that my wife enjoys seeing the activities of my friends almost more than I do from time to time, but in the end, it was a waste of my time, a waste of society's time, and overall a waste of time in general.
I've got so many things on my plate right now that I'm looking for ways to simplify, adjust, and come to grips with the most important things to occupy my attention. Watching constant "someone saw someone and it made that someone so happy the other someone wanted to smile at someone" statuses is the epitome of inane in my mind. Thanks, but no thanks.
Ask yourself this: If Facebook has grown to the point where you are now considered a rebel to not be on Facebook, don't you think that tells you something about the world nowadays?
What is up with this new development by way of Twitter? I'm really starting to like this website, but for the past three days anytime I try to log on and post an update all I get is,
We're sorry, Twitter is currently overloading, come back later.
I have three jobs (although one of them will be done in a few weeks) that take up a lot of my time.
I have a full load of classes at school, some of which are taking far more work that I had anticipated and are leaving me behind on other school projects that I should be ahead on.
My CHum 489R project? Let's not even go there.
I need to spend more time with Holly and Jack and can't seem to make it work.
I hate the cold, and the dreariness associated with it.
I'm tired all the time.
This complaint has been brought to you by an angry writer.
I'm sure some may have noticed my lack of posting here in February after a somewhat stellar January where I averaged close to a post per day. I think it has something to do with the funk that I'm currently in. School isn't as good as I had hoped it would be this semester as things are not turning out very close at all to my expectations.
The lack of sunshine is also difficult for me as I've mentioned before. I don't do well with "gloomy" types of days and the incessant cloudiness and half-hearted snowfall just gets on my nerves. Either snow and be done with it, or go the hell away so I can ride my scooter again. Stop with the "maybe I'll snow, maybe I'll not snow" shenanigans. It just pisses me off.
In other news I have a cold, a bad one, and I'm tired of dealing with it.
In even more news, I finally got my bronze medal for speed games on Conquer Club.
It seems I have lost my cell phone and after looking everywhere both at home and on campus where it might have been from my activities on Thursday I haven't been able to find it. So, if any of the normal readers of my blog here need to get in touch with me (Mom, Dad, Joelle, Julie, Shelley, etc, etc) you will need to either send me an email (calebflanagan@otissito.com) or call Holly's phone after 5:00 in the evenings when I get home from school/work. If you are on Facebook, you can send me a message there if you want as well. I have it set to notify me via email whenever someone does.
I have no clue if I will find it or when I will be able to get a replacement.
I go through this same situation every single semester. The first couple of days there is nothing of consequence to do because everyone is still adding and dropping classes, shuffling their schedules, and learning about the course syllabus. The next couple of days you start to learn some stuff, but the teachers don't really assign much in the way of homework just in case half the class changes from one day to the next. It really isn't until after the add/drop deadline about 12 days into the semester that things really start to settle down.
That is when crunch time hits. You finally have to start paying attention to the assignments that are due and the things the professors say in class.
Crunch time was today as I started looking ahead to the things I need to get done in the next 10-14 days and planning out how I was going to make it happen with a little baby boy at home that I need to help take care of each evening after I return from campus.
I've been very diligent so far this semester in staying on top of my reading assignments and doing things a day or two early, perhaps more diligent than I have ever been before, but despite all of that, I still feel like there is some sort of impending pressure that is going to be piled onto my shoulders at any moment, most likely when I least expect it.
This is an older post from another blog that I wanted to transfer over here because I'm changing the focus of the other blog.
It's no secret that in this day and age some of the great things from days of old are disappearing one small piece at a time. Surrounded by technological advances, and a new website to become a member of each day when we wake up, it seems to me that inter-personal relationships are becoming entirely dependent on some sort of technology to be maintained. To a certain extent this isn't such a bad situation, especially when it makes it far easier to communicate in a rapid fashion, but in other ways it seems to take away some of the connection you get when being someone's friend.
Nowadays a large portion of my friendships are conducted online as a member of Facebook or one of the various other social networking websites. There are friends on Facebook of mine that I haven't been in the physical presence of for several years on some cases, even when I live in a relatively close vicinity. There are days when I find this helpful because I'm sure some of them I wouldn't have a clue about if social networking sites were not available, but part of me longs to have something a little more tangible.
I'm one of those people who has multiple email addresses for various things, one for work, one for registrations, and one for personal contact. The interesting thing about this is that for some reason I have this innate dislike for the impersonal nature of using email for casual personal correspondence. I have this feeling that sometimes things from the "old world" so to speak should be retained. This is where the lost art of handwritten letter writing comes into play.
Remember back in elementary school when your 4th grade teacher told the entire class that you would each be getting a pen pal from some faraway country? I do, and I remember it being a pretty exciting thing to share letters from someone across the globe. I remember when as a class we would take time and each write a letter to another 4th grade student and put them all into one large envelope to be shipped out the next day. We were always really excited to show up to class a few weeks later and have our teacher reveal a return envelope full of letters for us.
Part of me longs for a return to the days when going to the mailbox meant something each day. It could be a letter from a friend, a postcard from a relative, or some other exciting news from what seemed like an incredible distances when only nine years old. I'd love to get more than some inane credit card offers, mailers, or magazine subscription offers when I go to check the mail. It would be great to get something worth actually reading on occasion.
If I could find a way to get the people around me to write letters once again, and not just type the words out on a keyboard each time I would think it a small moral victory. Until then however, I think I'll have to cope with getting everything in some form of digitized text.
After Holly had Jack on Monday of last week we had to make up our final exams and get things finished for the semester. I took my last final on Saturday afternoon and was officially finished with schoolwork I needed to do until the next semester starts.
The only problem with this is that now I have found myself in sort of a state of limbo with not much to do until school starts again. Sure, I do have Jack to occupy some time, but he sleeps most of the time and can't really go on adventures with me because the doctors don't want him outside in the cold. I could start building a new website, but I have to keep my slate free for when class starts so I don't have too much to do. I could load up on Conquer Club activities, but I'm phasing myself out of that stuff so that I only have a handful of games and nothing else.
It has left me with a bunch of small things I'd like to do but nothing I really want to motivate myself to do. Christmas will be fun with all of the presents and fun things to do, but other than that I don't really have a lot to fill my time with.
Perhaps I'll unwrap something on Thursday that will help.
Some days I'm pretty sure I'll never get down the intricacies of PHP or Javascript, and other days it makes a little more sense. One of these days I'm hoping some kind of switch is going to click inside my head and I'll finally grasp what exactly I'm supposed to be doing without looking it up seven times at each step along the road.
I think what frustrates me the most is when I can identify that I have a problem, perhaps even narrow the problem down to a specific portion of code, but then no matter how many things I switch around, double-check, or re-work it just refuses to work. If I can figure things out the right way the first time, I'm good to go, but unfortunately that rarely, if ever, happens to me.
The biggest problem I have right now is the worry that I'll get a job doing this type of stuff, and then show up the first day and not be able to keep up, do things properly, or even know what is going on. That is a scary concept to be worried about with just over 12 months to go before school is finished.
You know what I really dislike? I really dislike knowing that I had the opportunity to get a lot of really good work done, and then realizing I sat around and let it all slip by me without actually getting anything truly done. I hate it when I do that, especially when I am now sitting here at work realizing if I had taken the opportunity yesterday I wouldn't have to pack a few extra things into today.
Life is great, ain't it?
I don't mean to say that I really have tons of stuff to do outside of attend my classes and so a few readings here and there, but I would have been able to do more personal projects if I hadn't slacked yesterday.
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