the eternal student

So What's Next for Dr. Perkins?

So what do I do with myself now that have my nights and weekends back. Here a few things I have in mind.

-Give Lynn some more personal development time.

Lynn has sacrificed big time the last year in order to let me finish my PhD will working full time. After working a full day at work I would come home, eat, play with the kids and help put them to bed, and then work until midnight or so. I think I stayed up all night a total of 12 days over the past 3 months. Over the past 7 years I have probably spent an equivalent of 2 months with no sleep. This means Lynn covered alot of time for me with the kids. It's time to give that time back to her. A couple ways to do this:

---1)Today Lynn is out riding a horse all day with her aunt Donna at Sucker Creek in Oregon. She should be doing this alot more. The boys and I went to The Birds Of Prey Sanctuary which is about 5 miles down the road from us. The boys loved seeing live Peregrine Falcons (pronounced 'fulcons'), a California Candor, owls, and many rare birds. Quite an awesome place and a place we will go to it more often.

Chech out the size of the bird egg next to Isaac.

----2)As you've seen from Lynn's Blog, we will be getting a goldendoodle in May. She's waited a long time for a dog and deserves it.

---3)Get Lynn into some local art classes.

Focus on getting debt free and limiting our lifestyle.
This is a tough one, but one that we are getting more and more passionate about. We've been going through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace
and it is quite eye-opening how weak our financial position is. We hope to use the equity from selling our house in Atlanta to pay off my student loan. From there we need to pay off the second mortgage-we did an 80/20- on our house. Looking back, we bought too much house too soon because we got emotionally attached to the house. But it is a Perfect Perkins house and Lynn needed a house to get excited about in order to move from the South to the West. So, we'll have to work a little harder to get our mortgage back down to 25-30% of our income.

By the way, if you've never heard Dave Ramsey, I suggest you find him online or on your AM radio and listen to a Friday show. Friday is when people call in and tell about how they became debt free. These are ordinary American changing their habits and doing awesome things. It's extremely motivating and emotional once you get the idea of where Dave's heart is.

-As part of getting debt free and using our house to full advantage. We are thinking about house an international student from Boise State. We'll see what happens.

Get back in Shape.
The past year I have limited my mountain biking, skiing, camping, and hiking in order to focus on my PhD. Now that I'm done, the time has come to get out and enjoy Idaho. It's hard to describe how much Idaho has sunk into my brans and psyche. I love this place and learning about land and nature. Simplicity can happen out here.

We've been doing The Maker's Diet and it has been great. Really tough going through the Detox stage but much easier than other diets we've done. I definitely feel a difference not having preservatives and other stuff in my system. The hardest part has been giving up cereal, but I have grown quite fond of chicken sausage in the morning. Apparently we get to go back to some form of cereal in the future. I find I have more energy in the morning and my head is much clearer. Lynn has not been sick in two weeks and she has more energy! We agreed to do a detox once a year because we've noticed some significant changes in our bodies. Lynn has given up her daily vente-no-water- Chai at Starbucks and has lost 6 pounds in a week. Plus, we've saved some money.

Start devouring books
I love reading and look forward to doing it guilt free again.
Currently I'm reading Better Off by Eric Brende. So far it's been a great honest look at what technology we can and can't live without. An MIT graduate student studying technology and society lives 18 months with some Amish type folks. No preaching or global warming feel good fuzziness--just a really good story so far.

So, the blogs of the future will probably focus around finances and trying to get debt-free, focusing on home-life and Lynn, what I'm reading, and the Idaho I'm in love with.

Posted by andyp at April 15, 2007 12:10 AM | TrackBack