I've only got about two more weeks left of actual classes at CSU, then it's finals week. Actually one of finals will be on the last day of class...and the other two will be on the same day...so most of finals week will be, uh, something other than finals. :-)
After this semester, I'll be able to finally switch my major to Computer Science. I'm a little disappointed that it sounds like it'll take me at least one extra semester longer to finish the degree program than I originally estimated. Also, I discovered that I'm not eligible for work-study money because Kate and I make too much - I'll need to go into Student Employment and inform them that I'll be cutting my work hours by half, which will drop our annual wages by quite a bit. In the meantime, I'm gathering information on as many scholarships as I can. I've registered with Scholarships.com, FastWeb, and College Answer, as well as the CSU Scholarship program. I have close to three hundred potential scholarship programs that I need to weed through and send applications and essays to.
Heh. There go my weekends. ;-)
Not that I have a lot of time on my hands in any case. I'm more or less finished with the bulk of my major class-work except for finals. I figured that at this point, I'd have a bit of time to breath and relax. No such luck! My work in Systems Admin at the library has been kicking into high gear. We have no less than five major projects in the works right now and I'm involved at least in part in all of them. I think my boss is trying to squeeze all the productivity he can out of me before I have to drop the position in August. :-)
Ah, well, I guess that's life. I keep telling myself that it'll all be worth it in the long run.
Thanks for reading. Hope you're having a great day (or night)!
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Happy Easter!
It's Easter time!
Always a time of celebration and joy ... a time of renewed hope and faith.
It's also Kate and my sixth month anniversary.
Hard to believe that it's "only" been six months - and at the same time, it's hard to imagine that a half year has gone by. It seems like Kate and I have been together forever - neither of us can real clearly remember what life was like when we weren't married and together.
We would like very much to thank our family (especially our parents) and friends who have given us support toward our marriage. And, of course, to God for bringing us together and creating us for each other.
So I ask that you take this day to remember the gifts that we've been given. Life may not always be easy, but never forget that we don't have to go it alone. :-)
Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful Easter holiday!
And don't forget to smile! ;-)
God Bless you all!
Always a time of celebration and joy ... a time of renewed hope and faith.
It's also Kate and my sixth month anniversary.
Hard to believe that it's "only" been six months - and at the same time, it's hard to imagine that a half year has gone by. It seems like Kate and I have been together forever - neither of us can real clearly remember what life was like when we weren't married and together. We would like very much to thank our family (especially our parents) and friends who have given us support toward our marriage. And, of course, to God for bringing us together and creating us for each other.
So I ask that you take this day to remember the gifts that we've been given. Life may not always be easy, but never forget that we don't have to go it alone. :-)
Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful Easter holiday!
And don't forget to smile! ;-)
God Bless you all!
Friday, April 07, 2006
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Random Plugs
Okay, I promised something more upbeat so here we go.
A number of our friends (both near and far) have added new little ones to their growing families. Sadly, most of them don't have online photos or the like that we who don't yet have kids can enjoy. What's up with that?!? ;-)
Two sets of Kate's college friends from Gustavus had little ones:
- Beth and Jeff welcomed Caroline into the world (the day after our wedding in fact)! They don't have any online pictures so I'll have to scan in a few that I've taken and post them for you viewers.
- Gina and Dave brought Zachery to join us on earth. They do have a website with high quality pictures and even video shorts! Click here to have a look!
Our friend from the library Debbie and her husband Rick now have a cute kid named Jason. No website for him either, but I do have some pictures online that I took when they visited us for dinner a little while back. Click here to see 'em.
My friends Rob and Chantel in Chicago (formerly here in Fort Collins) have a friendly young man named Robin. Rob put up a webpage for the kid but hasn't updated it in quite a while. Get with the program, man! ;-)
There's also our local friends Arne and Jennie who are already up to two little ones (though they're both getting bigger every day)! Again, I'll have to get my own pics up of those two.
And, of course, there's my own niece who turned 3 last month. You can see all sorts of pictures of her on my sister's webpage here.
What else can I talk about?
Did you all know that I maintain another blog just of recipes?
I wonder if my friend Heidi in Boston has updated her design webpage?
My brother in law Heath has his own personal training business. Check out the webpage!
One of my weekend crew Skip is an amateur photographer - although his work is far from amateur. See some of it here. Mind you, his favorite subject is beautiful women.
One of the young men who used to work here at the library's computer lab decided he needed to travel across Asia. Ben recounts his exploits here.
Kate and I were just talking about this. We again promote Lopiano's Catering for any event here in northern Colorado. :-)
Okay, that oughtta do it for now. Maybe next time I'll actually post something about what's going on in my life. :-)
As always, thanks for reading.
A number of our friends (both near and far) have added new little ones to their growing families. Sadly, most of them don't have online photos or the like that we who don't yet have kids can enjoy. What's up with that?!? ;-)
Two sets of Kate's college friends from Gustavus had little ones:
- Beth and Jeff welcomed Caroline into the world (the day after our wedding in fact)! They don't have any online pictures so I'll have to scan in a few that I've taken and post them for you viewers.
- Gina and Dave brought Zachery to join us on earth. They do have a website with high quality pictures and even video shorts! Click here to have a look!
Our friend from the library Debbie and her husband Rick now have a cute kid named Jason. No website for him either, but I do have some pictures online that I took when they visited us for dinner a little while back. Click here to see 'em.
My friends Rob and Chantel in Chicago (formerly here in Fort Collins) have a friendly young man named Robin. Rob put up a webpage for the kid but hasn't updated it in quite a while. Get with the program, man! ;-)
There's also our local friends Arne and Jennie who are already up to two little ones (though they're both getting bigger every day)! Again, I'll have to get my own pics up of those two.
And, of course, there's my own niece who turned 3 last month. You can see all sorts of pictures of her on my sister's webpage here.
What else can I talk about?
Did you all know that I maintain another blog just of recipes?
I wonder if my friend Heidi in Boston has updated her design webpage?
My brother in law Heath has his own personal training business. Check out the webpage!
One of my weekend crew Skip is an amateur photographer - although his work is far from amateur. See some of it here. Mind you, his favorite subject is beautiful women.
One of the young men who used to work here at the library's computer lab decided he needed to travel across Asia. Ben recounts his exploits here.
Kate and I were just talking about this. We again promote Lopiano's Catering for any event here in northern Colorado. :-)
Okay, that oughtta do it for now. Maybe next time I'll actually post something about what's going on in my life. :-)
As always, thanks for reading.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Thoughts of Last Weekend
For those of you who hadn't heard, Kate's uncle Barry passed away of cancer last Monday. She and her sister Emily (along with Emily's husband Jason) drove up to Bozeman, Montana to attend the services. They were gone from Thursday through Saturday last week.
I offered to go with them...you know, to provide emotional support for Kate...but we talked about it and we decided that with three exams and a paper coming up shortly, I couldn't really afford to miss two days of classes. So I stayed behind.
It sounds like it was an emotional couple of days. Kate seems to be doing better now; we talked a while about what she was feeling. Her uncle Barry wasn't what I'd call old, only in his mid-fifties. It made us both realize that we both have a number of relatives who are in the same age group. It's scary to think of any of them (especially our parents) as mortal beings that we may not have around forever. You get used to having these people here on Earth with you, even if you don't always stay in touch, and it's jarring to realize that they won't always be there.
We should always try to make time to stay in touch. Even just a phone call or an e-mail might be worthwhile. Because, well, you never know, you know?
On another note...
Although Kate was only away for three days and two nights, I felt her absence. I hadn't realized how accustomed I had become to always having her around, especially in the evening. The house was so quiet at night that it was almost depressing. Even the cats were little help. Chiral didn't want to play with Rune; she just slept most of the days on Kate's side of the bed.
It's the little things that surprised me. Example - Kate has gotten into the habit of getting up early with me and making a breakfast-to-go for me every morning. She says that she does it for selfish reasons - mostly to keep herself from oversleeping. But I really appreciate it and the two mornings that I had to fend for myself were rattling. I was almost late for work Saturday morning and class Friday morning because I hadn't thought to allocate a few extra minutes to prep some breakfast for myself.
I also found I wasn't very motivated to do anything. Granted, I'd been suffering that for most of the previous week, but it was particularly hard to make myself work through my routine while Kate was away. I got up Friday morning and wondered, "Why should I bother shaving? Kate's probably the only one who would notice." But I forced myself to do it anyway, if only because my scruffy-faced look is rather comical. Also, I knew that I should do some housecleaning because I had people coming over Saturday night, but I couldn't make myself do it. I blew off most of it Thursday night and it wasn't until something like 7pm Friday night that I finally pushed myself into doing basic vacuuming, dusting, and so forth. It was like a part of me wanted to drift back into the slovenly bachelor I used to be.
Thankfully, Kate did return (albeit drained and with a bit of cold) and everything's getting back to normal. It's not like she tells me what to do or even constantly expects me to do things; it's just that when she's around, I honestly want to do the right things. I want to have a clean house for us to live in. I want to make myself presentable and pleasing to her. I want to do all the things a husband should do ... because I love her that much.
Love is such a great motivator.
So I guess the point I'm getting at with this post is that this last weekend really made me think about how much I need to appreciate the people who are in my life - my wife, my parents, my sister and her family, my new in-laws, my family in Iowa and Thailand, my friends both near and far. We're only given a certain amount of time on this Earth and only our Creator truly knows how long that time will be. We have to remember to make the most of what we have because, like the saying goes, life's too short.
Well, I guess that's what I felt like sharing today. Thanks for reading and I promise to have a more upbeat post within a day or so.
God Bless!
I offered to go with them...you know, to provide emotional support for Kate...but we talked about it and we decided that with three exams and a paper coming up shortly, I couldn't really afford to miss two days of classes. So I stayed behind.
It sounds like it was an emotional couple of days. Kate seems to be doing better now; we talked a while about what she was feeling. Her uncle Barry wasn't what I'd call old, only in his mid-fifties. It made us both realize that we both have a number of relatives who are in the same age group. It's scary to think of any of them (especially our parents) as mortal beings that we may not have around forever. You get used to having these people here on Earth with you, even if you don't always stay in touch, and it's jarring to realize that they won't always be there.
We should always try to make time to stay in touch. Even just a phone call or an e-mail might be worthwhile. Because, well, you never know, you know?
On another note...
Although Kate was only away for three days and two nights, I felt her absence. I hadn't realized how accustomed I had become to always having her around, especially in the evening. The house was so quiet at night that it was almost depressing. Even the cats were little help. Chiral didn't want to play with Rune; she just slept most of the days on Kate's side of the bed.
It's the little things that surprised me. Example - Kate has gotten into the habit of getting up early with me and making a breakfast-to-go for me every morning. She says that she does it for selfish reasons - mostly to keep herself from oversleeping. But I really appreciate it and the two mornings that I had to fend for myself were rattling. I was almost late for work Saturday morning and class Friday morning because I hadn't thought to allocate a few extra minutes to prep some breakfast for myself.
I also found I wasn't very motivated to do anything. Granted, I'd been suffering that for most of the previous week, but it was particularly hard to make myself work through my routine while Kate was away. I got up Friday morning and wondered, "Why should I bother shaving? Kate's probably the only one who would notice." But I forced myself to do it anyway, if only because my scruffy-faced look is rather comical. Also, I knew that I should do some housecleaning because I had people coming over Saturday night, but I couldn't make myself do it. I blew off most of it Thursday night and it wasn't until something like 7pm Friday night that I finally pushed myself into doing basic vacuuming, dusting, and so forth. It was like a part of me wanted to drift back into the slovenly bachelor I used to be.
Thankfully, Kate did return (albeit drained and with a bit of cold) and everything's getting back to normal. It's not like she tells me what to do or even constantly expects me to do things; it's just that when she's around, I honestly want to do the right things. I want to have a clean house for us to live in. I want to make myself presentable and pleasing to her. I want to do all the things a husband should do ... because I love her that much.
Love is such a great motivator.
So I guess the point I'm getting at with this post is that this last weekend really made me think about how much I need to appreciate the people who are in my life - my wife, my parents, my sister and her family, my new in-laws, my family in Iowa and Thailand, my friends both near and far. We're only given a certain amount of time on this Earth and only our Creator truly knows how long that time will be. We have to remember to make the most of what we have because, like the saying goes, life's too short.
Well, I guess that's what I felt like sharing today. Thanks for reading and I promise to have a more upbeat post within a day or so.
God Bless!
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