Swinging on the swings with Elliott. She was sitting on my lap, facing my direction, as swung us on the swing back and forth. The entire time she was smiling and when her cold chubby cheeks brushed up against mine, some dad love feelings ran through my body.
Eating a kick ass lunch. My wife whipped up a delicious Vietnamese dish with bean sprouts and pickled cucumbers and fermented tofu.
Therapy Session
Vented about on call the past week. I shared the handful of times that I was paged out of bed at 03:30 AM and the operational issues that lasted until 10:00 pm on the evenings and being tied to the computer.
Shared the sense of betrayal I felt at work. How someone who I thought was in my corner, rooting for me, actually no longer advocates for me after I declined their “opportunity” to lead a project.
Declining the project that “sets me back for a promotion” allows me to bring my best self to work. Although one could argue that me not accepting the “opportunity” to lead a project (that would’ve easily tacked on additional 5-10 hours per week) sets me back for my promotion, I did it so maintain a balance between my professional and personal life, which quite frankly is what I am all about: living a balanced life, not one where I am endlessly pursuing the next thing.
Realized that I need to build a stronger community of supporters. Take away from this sense of betrayal is that I need to widen my network of supporters and not to put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.
Random
Cool Quotes
“Academia is ripe for pursuing ideas on the lunacy fringe”.
Graduate School
Skipping Java and Spring (for now) and jumping into Distributed System lectures. I almost always follow the curriculum in the order prescribed by the syllabus. But I’ve decided to skip (for now) some video lectures on Java and Spring… and this makes me a little bit anxious. Honestly, I find the Java and Spring lectures a bit boring (to be fair, I might actually enjoy them once I start watching the lectures). Right now, I’m interested in learning more about the fundamentals and theories of constructing distributed systems so I’ll jump to those videos.
Music
Dusted off and played the ukulele for Jess and Elliott. I feel like I abandoned the ukulele after picking up the guitar. And strumming my beautiful Soprano ukulele yesterday reminded me that the instrumental has its own vibe and own personality, the strings sounding much more … bright.
Family
Fell asleep at 06:30 pm. I normally fall asleep between 08:30 and 09:30, on both weekdays and weekends. But yesterday I was shattered after my sleep was interrupted several times throughout the night, the most notable when Jess had a coughing fit at around 03:00 AM, at which point I was pretty much unable to fall back asleep.
Slept in the same bed as Elliott and Jess last night. This was pretty sweet actually. Although I woke up multiple times throughout the night, I loved having Elliott and Jess in the same bed since I’ve been sleeping alone — well, with the dogs — for the last six months or so.
Wrapped a baby net around stair railings. Installing the net (my sister’s idea) prevents little Elliott from slipping through the rails. Although I do not think her head could possibly squeeze through, the net gives Jess piece of mind and that’s important since she’s the one watching her throughout the day.
