New Year’s Resolution – Stop Being So Post Lazy

Yeah yeah…I totally slacked on the month of December. It has been very busy AND every time I think to post, I can’t really come up with anything of substance…o well. Well to recap, here is what I did in the month of December. Get ready for a long ass post people.

  1. Work
  2. Christmas shop
  3. Crafting(whole post coming on that soon)
  4. Photography
  5. Marathon trip to Charleston and back
  6. Christmas
  7. Running
  8. Be lazy on vacation

Exciting huh? Work was work. It was very busy in the last few weeks. On the 12th, Dr. G. decided since the economy is going down the shitter and schools are having to cut budgets more than ever, they shouldn’t have to cut costs on technology. So being on that day, SAS Curriculum Pathways is now free to all educators in the US. Take that how you want. I am still split. First off, it is great for teachers and students. We hear of so many teachers that want to use our stuff but can’t get the higher powers to fork over the cash (and it was cheap my friends). Selling to school systems and departments of education is hard…this eliminates that need. Also on that front, if you are a sales person who has the choice of selling some million dollar SAS solution or our product, which are you going to pick for your commision? Alas, the sales hell of the education practice for years. Now I am glad we can reach out to more people. It also makes me feel better from a development side of the product. For years, we get the shit end of the stick because we make no money…but how are developers, testers, graphic designers, curriculum specialists,etc. supposed to make money? We don’t sell the stuff! We just make an awarding winning products…our bad. But to get back to why this affects my blogging abilities, when he annouced this on the 12th, we were told the 11th. So when people started emailing and calling, we had no easy(or legal) way to get these people their free account. Our license agreements had always been on paper and drafted that way, our accounts were tied to the contracts system at SAS, AND we had no mechanism to do this on a mass level. So that next week, we were prompted to create a tool do this for the short term. Let me rephrase, we needed to create a brand new tool to interface with customers and create an interface to funnel all these requests to our 1 customer service rep during the week before Christmas which was filled with all kinds of end of year meetings and parties…o and then all the developers were on vacation for 3 days. But I got to step up and help out 🙂 That is the silver lining to that cloud. To sum up, I was really busy…so there.

To elaborate a little more on my christmas gifts/crafting, every year I always want to make something as gifts for people…and I am not normal at this. I feel I need to find something truly unique and creative to wow the socks off people. This year was freezer paper stencils. As noted above, I will be making a nice big tutorial post later about this new love. Basic idea, I stenciled shirts, place mats, and tote-bags until I now have a callus on my thumb from the exacto knife. If you are super curious, google it. You can find really neat things people have done…but don’t get your hopes up…I can’t work magic. Anyway, that took over my life for a couple of weeks. I would come home and stencil, eat, and then go to bed. Enough said…I neglected you internet.

As for photography, this has taken up a lot of physical time but a lot of mental. Some friends and I have started a little photography club with a weekly assignment. We have taken a break over the holidays because we are all so busy, but we had a few weeks and man it takes a lot of thinking. I ended up cheating a little and stealing some Mahone kids for one week (even though Kevin is in the group too). The theme was funny. K and I went over to their house a couple of weeks ago and the kids got some cattails from the local creek and let the fun ensue. They beat them until it looked like it snowed all over the lawn. It was so cute. Here are the pics. Anyway, I am sure I will have more fun to post later with our contests.

Now for a little more fun. On the 21st, we were invited to Charleston for a suprise party for Joe and Ella’s (Mann cousins) 35th wedding anniversary. Problem was, we were supposed to have Christmas with the other Mann clan on Sunday. Kevin, I, and the in-laws discussed it and decided that Joe and Ella are such wonderful people that we just couldn’t miss it. So on Saturday morning we drove down to Charleston, partied that night, and got up and drove back early Sunday morning. Now hats off to Kevin for driving and to my wonderful inlaws for paying for the rooms. Anyway, the party was a lot of fun and a lot of the Mann clan made it down. Ella was so suprised! Joe gave a great speech about them and how they got married in her living room while we was on a 2 day break in the Army. He started to choke up saying that she never got a wedding reception, so he wanted to do it now. 🙂 So sweet. Joe and Ella are the couple we stayed with in Charleston before our cruise. I don’t know if I know of a more loving and generous couple than those 2. When we stayed with them, they did EVERYTHING for us. Took us sight seeing, dinner, drove us to and from the boat, made us breakfast. I am truly blessed to have inherited them as my family. Anyway, here are some pictures from the event.

We did Christmas with mine and K’s families. It was Christmas, not a whole lot to add…but we DID get grandmama to play Wii bowling. Great success!

Mann Christmas
Good Christmas

Jen, Nancy and I ran the Jingle Bell Run in downtown Raleigh at the beginning of December. I didn’t do horrible but it wasn’t my best….we will leave it at that.

And lastly, we have been on vacation for the past week and I have just been plain lazy. I have done some stuff, but I have done a lot of sitting on the couch and it is FANTASTIC. No shame here. Anyway, hope the month of December was good for you…I am just ready for a nice boring week a work.

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