Wow, this week has gone by quickly. I thought that I would be studying every day for 8 hours. Life just happens. My wife and son have been sick all week. My son went to the hospital on Wednesday. He has had trouble with his lungs since birth. At one point his hands had turned blue. He doesn`t get enough O^2 sometimes and he gets that way. We have him on steroids with a nebulizer and liquid by mouth. This is so that his bronchus will relax and he can breath. He has thrown up several times along with my wife and her sickness. At night I don`t get much sleep due to the up and down helping him with medication. My wife also had a list of things for me to do this week. I have gotten them done but it seems as if one thing after another has gone wrong. I lost a credit card on Sunday and called every where I had been on Monday and found it. I installed a new medicine cabinet in the bathroom only to find one of the corners of the mirror was cracked after I got it up. I fixed two drains with new hardware but had to make repeated trips to home depot. Lost my lock before Wednesday swim. Found it last night in the closet after worrying during my swim someone would steal my wallet. It just seems that I was put in this place to tell me again that it is not how smart you are, or how well you prepare, the PhD has nothing to do with academics and everything to do with politics, chance, determination, and God being on your side.

I started OCL today. It is like being in the fourth grade and learning about pi again. You know the relational value of the circumference of a circle to its diameter...Not the sixteenth star in a constellation, or an electron or orbital with one unit of angular momentum about an internuclear axis. You get the picture. I have all the feelings of why am I learning this and the confusion of is this the right thing to learn among many meanings. This is exactly my point.

As I sit here in the dark I am thinking about the sample lecture I will give tomorrow to teach ISP 121. I really need the money. I will have another life changing experience in August. We have several bills that are mounting. I am heading into my 3rd year without a raise. The thought of a 10k bill this year when we are stretched so thin paycheck to paycheck really kind of scares me. I like my work but need to figure out how to pay for my PhD among all these other pressures. If I pass the test in April, how will I even pay for a single class without becoming a part-time professor. This has to happen tomorrow. Boy I can feel my mind thrashing. How will I get any more studying done tonight?

I have been asked out to Qualcomm`s lab with our new rev. `A` phones. My research into fast voice-over-IP push-to-talk is heating up. I wonder if I will have to travel during teaching, testing, etc. Should I quit just so that I can study and PhD? This kind of research is something I always wanted to do. It is exactly what I would be doing the PhD for. PhD or not I am already doing the work of a PhD. I am teaching and doing research. Why do I put myself through this? I will continue. Let`s hope the money does not become an issue.