the pieces of my life

For about five minutes at the beginning of the school year, I regretted not following my former manager’s advice and applying to business school myself. After all, how tough was it? Adam was busy cutting out cards and drawing things. I could do Crimson Greetings. I could excel at Crimson Greetings. But the minute the school year started, that thought fled from my mind. Believe it or not, I actually read a couple of the cases that I thought were the more interesting ones. But over all, I just can’t get passionate like Adam can about making those numbers flow. As I read the cases, all I thought was, “These could be crafted much better. Arg, how can they have missed that comma there?” The feeling was validated when Adam was picking out his classes for next year. This boy agonized. He debated. He spent five—yes, five—hours merely making up a draft. So many wonderful courses to choose from, and he could only take a max of six (although he wisely decided that five was probably more advisable in the fall, given that we’ll have our hands rather full). And he can only rank his classes and then hope he gets his all of his first choice classes (it’s a complex system that sounds almost like a football draft). So I took a look at the list, wondering at the world of excitement that HBS has to offer. Do you know how many classes I thought looked interesting to take? Exactly one. That’s it. And can you guess what that class was? “Power and Influence.” A class, I might add, that seems to hold little interest to Adam. He’s much more interested in “Negotiating Complex Deals.” Which pretty much sums us both up right there. Although, I will confess, that neither one of us had any interest in “The Moral Leader,” which is probably why we get along so well.

Every now and then I’ll check my referral logs and see a new Web site is linking to me. If you have a link to my site, drop me an e-mail (I don’t check my logs very often) and I’ll add you to my links!

At 6:43 p.m. last night, Adam finished his final final of his first year at HBS. By 7:03, he was poking around the living room, where I was happily reading my first trashy book of the summer (what is it about summer that makes me crave mindless reads? Thank goodness that the library is well stocked with them. I wasn’t about to pay $22 for The Devil Wears Prada, which is, I’ll admit, kind of fun). He sat down, stood up, walked upstairs, came back down, went into the kitchen, came back out, sat down, got back up, before he finally announced, “I’m bored.” This is Day .025 of his first day of no assignments. Sigh. It could be a long summer.

I’ve been MIA. Sorry! Chalk it up to still getting over this bad cold, and really, not much happening. I’m pretty much sleepwalking through the days as I hack my way through the night with this cough. Wendy (whose son is now five weeks old) passed along her man-sized pillow (well, if your man happens to be unusually short—it’s probably about four feet long) to help support my belly and back while I sleep (we also got some adorable little outfits that her son has already outgrown). I think it’s been somewhat of a help, although I think Adam is beginning to resent this thing that has quite literally come between us. Anyway, priority one is to get better for this jam-packed weekend. Friday night is the Newport Ball, Saturday a work function (which is also black tie), and Sunday, out-of-town guests. I’d pay good money at this point for a decent night’s sleep to just get fully healthy again.