An Update on my Projects

Yesterday I realized that I had not blogged about all my projects since my 2009 blog post A Personal State of the Union.  Time for an update!

Of course, in November 2009 nine Smiley was a year old and Gallant was not yet around.

 

Now Smiley is in kindergarten, and Gallant will start preschool a few days each week in a month or two, when his toilet-training success stabilizes.

(I am very much looking forward to finally having a few hours each week with no child in the house!  Then some of my projects can receive a lot more time.)

 

Scriptural Concept Studies

Not much change here.  The P'nei Adonai website is gone.  I have successfully moved the essays to my own website.  That required a bit of formatting effort, and a few of the essays now look nicer.

But the heart of the project has remained on standby.  I know that God wants me to write more about the scriptural understanding of some concepts.  This can start as simply as extracting the relevant parts from many of my old sermons from P'nei Adonai.

I also need to edit the existing essays to add scholarly footnotes and citations.

But God has not told me that this project is urgent, so I have been devoting my time to things that directly help my family.

Appropriate Masculinity Essays

I have spent a lot of time during the past 18 months studying what it means to be appropriately masculine.  I want advice about this topic to be part of what I give to my two boys.  It is important enough to me as a parent that I am writing essays about it.  Not only might the essays help other people, but if (Heaven forbid) something happens to me then this part of my legacy will somewhat endure.

The hobbies part of website now has four essays that discuss confidence, connecting, maturity, and flirting.  Another three essays are incomplete but should be ready before the year is done.

I also want to compile the blog posts about why I love my wife as one page.  That series is not yet done!

Investment Essays

I keep having conversations with people about how I do investing.  So I have put together five essays in the hobbies part of my website that explain my methods for investment picking, investment timing, dividend investing, sector investing, and charitable giving.

Elementary School Volunteering

Now that Smiley is in kindergarten, I have been spending about three hours each week volunteering at his school.  I help in his classroom doing various things, as well as with the fourth and fifth grade classrooms doing math.

My hobbies page now has a great list of math games, movement games, and tag variants as resources for anyone doing those in elementary schools.

Role-Playing Game

My role-playing game has grown and matured.  It is now named Nine Powers.

My current typing projects are converting the old Caves of Chaos adventure (from module B2 Keep on the Borderlands) for my wife to play during the evening.

Other Games

Not much progress here.  I still have a bunch of old board games that need to be put online, but it has not happened.

Math Teaching

My Math 20 notes have changed from PDF slideshows to web pages.  The math department overhauled the Math 25 class during the past few years.  I am waiting for that dust to settle before fixing up my old Math 25 workbook as web pages instead of a rich text format document.

Two Fantasy Novels

I still have not published my two fantasy novels, Windsong and The Sandy Isles.  But I did go through them carefully, fixing typos as I changed them to web pages.

Self-publishing as e-books can't be that hard.  But I have not yet prioritized it.

Other Writing

All of my worthy old poetry is now on my website.  None of the stories are yet.

Recipes

All of my recipes are now on my website.  Smiley and Gallant eat the tropical teff pancakes almost every morning.

Martial Arts

A project that does not involve my website!  I have shifted from Tai Chi to Gracie Ju-jitsu.  That was a lot of fun in 2013.  Unfortunately, my math teaching schedule prevents me from attending classes during this Winter term.

Swing Dancing

Another project that does not involve my website!  For the past few years my wife and I have done little swing dancing, despite that being her favorite kind of exercise.  First it was Gallant being so little.  Then the local swing dance group took a hiatus.  But now we are going to a monthy dance with TrackTown Swing and a weekly dance with UO Swing Night.