Beginnings

Th first day began as pretty much every other Monday. My spouses alarm went off at 6:15, my daughters went off at seven.  I had set mine to seven, but I was already up, partially because my wife was making noise in the bathroom, but mostly due to wanting to get started.  My wife left for her school, all dressed in medical scrubs, I drove my daughter to her school, dressed in whatever first graders wear these days, and came back home.  This is, by the way, pretty typical.  Except for the coming home part. Normally I would continue driving for another hour to get to work.

At this time I did..... Nothing.  Well, nothing too constructive.  I had toast.  I petted the cat.  I read some  articles and email. And the. I dragged out my list.

The list is the stuff I would like to do during my sabbatical.  And that's what it is:   A big line of items, haphazardly grouped together under a number of categories, roughly broken into clean the house, food, get in shape, and learn something.  I figure if I'm hitting a couple of things in there every day I'm doing good.

So first thing.  Clean the house.  Not a lot to go on there.  But the house needs it.  I'm a pack rat, much like a lot of the rest of the human race.  I relish my creature comforts, I like my toys, but there is a lot of buildup.  We moved about 6 years ago because our old place was getting too small (it was), but it also gave us space to spread out.  I could put the books on real shelves instead of boxes.  I could put those knickknack son display, and I could get more stuff.

And traveling a lot also added to this.  Since I didn't have to see the clutter every day, it didn't bother me as much.  Just in the last three months when I was working in the DFW area did I really start to pay attention.  Fifteen years of toys, hardware, books, and other assorted stuff added up to a lot of things sitting around.  I needed to get organized.

I'm not going to try to do the entire house all at once.  One room at a time will be good, since I don't want to get burnt out from my burnout solution.  So I chose a room to start with: the office.

My office is a 12 by 12 room, with some nice French doors on one side, a bathroom just around the corner, windows on two walls, a window seat, and clutter from floor to ceiling. 

And from the other view

There's stuff on the floor, on the window seat, in the windows, on the shelves, and on the desk.  So first thing was to remove everything.  Fortunately I had some space in the dining room.  Everything went in there but the desk and the books.  And now to put it back.

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But first a break.  Health coverage is one of those things you need to worry about.  When your working for a company they shoulder a lot of the cost.  Even when you complain about the payments you need to do, they cover a lot.  I needed to look into this. So I made a quick call (ok, the call was quick, but the on hold time was about twenty minutes) to the HR of the firm I had just left.  I needed to learn about COBRA, and what my options are.

Basically COBRA is a program by which you can continue the coverage you had at work, though you have to pay all of it.  In fact, the government requires this.  But they didn't say they had to give the coverage away, so you will have to shoulder the entire cost yourself.  For a family of three this would come out to around $1600 a month.  Ouch. But not unexpected, nor my only option.  I also have the opportunity to get coverage on the open market, and for quit a bit cheaper.  I'll explore that option a bit more this week.  You have 60 days to decide on COBRA coverage, as well as some other timings for normal health care.  

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Lunch, and read the news.  I like an early lunch and a light breakfast, but that's just personal preference.  And after that, time to put the office back to rights.  I figure I have three or four hours before I need to pick up my daughter and my wife gets home, at which point I'll get in trouble for messing up the house.