First Day of School for Johnnie

This morning is a big morning. HUGE. It's his first day back at school and he himself was so excited he was up at 6:15 AM. Before I was. I gave him some of the newer clothes I had already purchased. Except one thing. His shoes were falling apart. DRAT! And his new Adidas shoes aren't here yet. They come today. Oh well, I guess he wears his old Vans for today. Anyway we back to our old school routine, which is to say breakfast from McDonald's and then pack his lunch and then get him going. School doesn't start until 8:15 for him, which is 10 minutes later, but we went early anyway. Today the parents are finally allowed back in the yard and I remember when I used to drop Johnnie off at TK when he would line up before his teacher walked everyone in to class.  Or line up outside his classroom door. That seemed so long ago. Before the pandemic. No lining up for kindergarten obviously and not for 1st Grade either. So this was almost like a first. I posted a pic of Johnnie by the line-up cone and it did have a huge feeling of familiarity going into the yard again in the morning. And then I had to hustle home because I had already asked to go later for the Management Committee meeting first thing. That was at 8 AM. I was on at 8:30 AM. And so I got myself into 'game mode'. I did finish my presentation yesterday and caught up on sleep this morning so I was good to go. I had a lot to present this morning, capped by the IS Audit presentations and all the steps I was taking. All in all, the general tone was that yes they found stuff but that my team could do all those really. Eloisa did mention how disappointed she was that some of the findings included having to keep hardware and software up to date. And earlier than that, when I was presenting the IS service survey, 25% responded that there hardware was just adequate or below adequate. All pointing to a focus area that I need to keep our organization hardware more up to date. On the one hand I'm trying to save money. On the other hand, can't be skimping too much that users think we're giving them crap hardware. Such is my balancing act. Anyway, I felt that Eloisa's comments were fair. There's no way I SHOULD have let my switches get to end-of-life. Those are the things I left up to Justin back in the day and since he has been gone 4 years now, it is definitely no longer an excuse today. Anyway all in all it was still a positive meeting I thought and the best part was that it was done before 10 AM and when it was done I was good to go for the rest of the day. Heavy lift of the week all done!

And so with that I chilled the remainder of the day away. I deserved it after all. I worked my tail off the last 2 days. Drifting off to a nap this afternoon seemed effortless. And in the blink of an eye it seemed, it was already time to pick up Johnnie. No picking him up early today too. We're paying for STAR to watch him after school until at least 5 PM and I waited until 5 PM to pick him up to be sure. When he did he was very excited about his day, about seeing his new classmates, and reuniting with his old classmates and familiar faces. I mean when we walked in this morning the lady at the gate gave him a big old hug and knew who he was already. And of course she had to say hi to Ms Marlen. And Ms Jennifer from STAR gave me a wave when I picked up Johnnie. He definitely had an agenda for tonight. A list such as it were. He wanted to watch BAD GUYS (a movie he saw on the plane), he wanted to have dinner then ice cream from McDonald's, and then he wanted to relax in the hot tub. OK then. My agenda was to look in his bag and see any homework he needed to do and to look for first-day-of-school stuff. For dinner I made him tofu and got some chicken wings from Ralphs. And he put those away like quick. I made myself shrimp and veggies over shiratake noodles. And then realized I was behind 11,000+ steps pace. I mean I do have to get to that now don't I? Especially after making 15,000+ steps yesterday and 124 active minutes while not doing anything for most of the morning. I couldn't get my heart rate up today though, at least not as easily as yesterday. And that's ok. As it were, we did have dinner and then walked to McDonald's afterwards to get his ice cream sundae with M&Ms. Am I concerned he is ingesting this much sugar? I'm concerning he's bouncing off walls LOL. And then he finished watching Bad Guys, while I caught up on my emails. By the time he was done with the movie it was already 8:15 PM. And so I convinced him it was already way late to go to the hot tub. He had to be in bed in a half hour after all and if we're being honest, I too felt tired enough to knock off early. Which was exactly what I did. All in all a good day. A good first day of school for Johnnie, a good meeting day for me. I can cruise the rest of the week!