The year is half over, and here’s my June 2017 wrap-up:

• To start the month off, I shaved my beard off completely clean. Thus, I revealed to the world my baby face, and was asked by a couple of people to never do it again.
• June 8 was my birthday. I turned 41. Honestly, just another day in my book although we took the kids to Worlds of Fun (season passes are great) and I had a funnel cake. I felt sick awardwards, but it was so worth it.
• I “ran” over the distance of a 5k after work one Friday. My work happens to be located at a small airport, and the distance around the tarmac is a little over a 5k. It was hot, brutal, and quite the challenge. I should note my “run” is more of a jog/walk/jog/walk until I get it done. I took a nap afterwards. I was beat.
• The girls and I went to a daddy-daughter dance at a nearby community center. I always wanted to do that when I lived in Lawrence but never did. I’m glad I finally made the time.
• Date night with the woman was watching Wonder Woman at the theatre. It was a good night, and a great movie.
• With some of my birthday cash, I purchased a mic stand and a pop filter for some possible podcasting and/or screencasting experiments. We’ll see how that goes.
• Decided to go ahead and join the gym I was trialing. It’s a nice gym that suits my needs. Although, my weight loss has totally flattened. That’s expected, even if it’s difficult to keep pushing so hard when there’s no weight losses at the moment. Still, I am getting stronger and I feel very good. I have found that it’s important to keep exercise in my life or I just don’t function well in all the other aspects. Now I just need to keep it up and not falter like I typically do when I plateau.
• Lastly, one of my kids was baptized. It’s interesting to see how children treat faith and spirituality versus adults. There’s a lot of lessons to be learned from the younger generation; maybe adults could learn to treat others with more dignity and respect even if we don’t share the same beliefs.

Author’s note: The May and June wrap-ups were written in July because life was crazy the last few months; now to get back on schedule!

May was an active month. Here’s the wrap-up:

• Transitioned my youngest from a crib to a toddler bed. It might not sound like much, but knowing that you’ll never be in this phase again as a dad is a little sad.
• Went on a camping trip with some friends from Lawrence at Clinton Lake in Douglas County, Kansas. We had a great time; we’ll do it again in the fall.
• Had not one, but two date nights with the wife in May. One of them was our regularly planned monthly date, but then my parents took all the kids for the weekend a week later. We hadn’t been away from the children together for three years before that night. We went to Worlds of Fun and rode a bunch of big-kid rides.
• Started a 30-day trial at a local gym. Since I’m on a health kick (again) this year, I wanted to start throwing resistance training into the mix. It’s been a long time (more than a year), and getting back to a routine wasn’t easy by a long shot. Since starting on April 1, I am down 16 lbs. and feeling better than I have in a long time.

On to June!

March did not go well.

I didn’t take a month off of television. I didn’t really do the training for work that I wanted to do, and I did very little 5k training. In fact, I didn’t even run the 5k.

Yeah, March was a total wash. Maybe it’s because I announced by plans and intentions. There seems to be some compelling evidence announcing your plans makes you less likely to finish them. Oh my, that does sound like me.

The wrap-up:

• Had another date night with the wife. We went to see the movie Logan at the AMC not far from where we live. We did the dine-in thing at this theater like we did at Alamo Drafthouse in February. The dine-in experience at AMC wasn’t bad, but not as good of an experience as at Alamo Drafthouse. The movie was pretty amazing. Logan is the most violent (read: comic-book like) superhero movie I’ve ever seen.
• Got a little depressed for a couple of weeks. Weather? Work? Dealing with the feelings that some people in this world are turds? I don’t know what the deal was, but I ended up needing a break.
• Took a vacation, which was really just me getting some honey-dos done and hanging with my family. It was good.

April will be busy, but I’m not going to say anything this time. Let’s just say I’m doing some things currently, and a wrap-up will follow at the end of the month.

Two months in, where to begin?

Sadly, I’ve been pretty consumed with my day job this month. I haven’t been as active in my extracurricular activities, but there’s still a few things to report on.

The wrap-up:

• Had a date night with the wife. We went to see the movie Split at the Alamo Drafthouse. The whole experience was good.
• Began training for a 5k I will participate in on April 1.
• Attended the DevFest KC conference.
• Broke my social media fast. As a friend of mine commented, “So, your relationship with social media is pretty complicated, isn’t it?”
• Read the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.
• Wrote three blog posts.
• Assisted a friend, who I’ve been mentoring about web development, get her first website online.

March has a few more things lined up. I plan on taking a month away from television. I’m going to do some specialized studying on my own about something for work, and I’ll continue my 5k training. I also plan on taking a vacation week toward the end of the month, and hopefully — weather permitting — get some camping in.

Oh yeah, and I need to get my taxes done. It’s time to pay the man!

January has turned out to be a nice productive month for me. It was so good, I’m excited to see what happens as the year progresses.

The wrap-up:

• Took the family to Sea Life Kansas City
• Completed a two-day water fast
• Quit social media (although my writing still automatically posts to it; I’m simply not visiting)
• Published three blog posts
• Started working on a small application to graphically show our debt progress
• Give a presentation at the KC Drupal User Group Meetup about Drupal Console
• Began converting one of my Drupal 7 modules to a Drupal 8 version
• Filled my activity rings for nine consecutive days

Apple activity rings

Overall, an excellent month even if most of the activity came toward the latter half of it. Now to see what can happen in February!