These are some videos I have watched recently that help explain someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder

8:13pm – Today has been a great day, so far! I took Coco to the bakery for a stupid, little event that Melanie put together. She called it a “Tea Pawty.” I had to pay $20, but I really believe in what she’s doing and want to support her little business.

I then went to Walmart and bought some things for my new bike. I was not able to get alan wrenches though so that I can adjust the handlebars so that Coco can ride along in the carrying case I bought for him. Peter recommends that I just go to a bike shop and have them do it. I’m not sure what the difference is, because either way, it will cost $10 or so.

8:50pm — Today was another fairly productive day at work, especially. There is one team, the Telecom Services team, that has never really been active users of SharePoint. Well, they came up with a proposed challenge for me to utilize Nintex to solve their manual processes of creating alerts when certain calendar events are about to become due. I was able to make substantial headway on this last night to the point where I could do some preliminary testing with the site owner himself.

Coco’s hair has been steadily growing in more and more each day. He is still exhibiting some behaviors that I’d like to see eliminated, like pulling on the leash and getting overly excited about seeing other dogs, especially when they are in close proximity.

I think about Austin every day now. I can’t help it. Sara is a huge obstacle, though. Her demands and restrictions are ridiculous. I used to think that she didn’t realize that she is not promoting what’s “in the child’s best interest” (the state’s guiding principle for determining custody evaluations) by preventing and limiting our son from having access to his father. But, I realize now, it’s much worse, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if limiting Austin’s access to me is damaging to HIM! This confirms my fear that I expressed to the custody evaluators when they asked me what I was afraid of if Sara had sole physical custody. Without even thinking, I told Diana Tharalson, “I’m afraid she won’t love him.’

11:13pm

Today was a good, productive day! I got a lot accomplished at work. We are getting ready to start rolling out MS Teams starting next week. I’m getting to know this older guy, Randy, who is the IT trainer at LTCG. He is actually surprising me, somewhat. I assumed that just because he was old, that was not technically savvy, and that he doesn’t take much initiative. But, since last week, Randy has started perking up. I was really worried about this training going smoothly, but, I think it’s going to be just fine. There might be some stumbling, but, I’m sure out end goal will be reached. I’m not so much worried about teaching people how to use the chat, calling, and meetings features, which is the first phase of our training. I’m more worried about the collaboration/file sharing section. There is going to be confusion about SharePoint Online and OneDrive as well as our SharePoint on prem.

11:07pm — The case of the murder of George Floyd trial in Minneapolis, finally ending today with the jury finding the guy guilty of everything.

This was another good, productive day at work. We took Coco to a different dog park today. It was nice, but very, very small. We then went to an Indian restaurant that was pretty expensive. While I was having dinner, I got a text from Sara saying that tonight would not work for the call.

9:15pm — This has been such a productive and fun day! I was able to successfully fix MBA’s SharePoint search service problem. I did not expect it to be so easy. Matt Anderson, seemed to be very happy. After that, I went to Kohl’s to return the Samsonite laptop bag that I bought from Amazon and realized was too much for me as well as the laptop charger that didn’t work. It was also great to hang out a little bit with Jon, my new roomie! When I got home, I was able to have some lunch, get a quick workout in, and then Coco and I went over to Axel’s birthday party. That was definitely the highlight of the day!

9:24pm — Today was a pretty good, and productive day! I actually got my COVID-19 vaccine (1st dose) done today at Walgreens. I was originally slated to get the Johnson & Johnson 1 dose version, but the FDA “paused” it because people were getting blood clots. I was actually driving to the Walgreens to get it when the call came in telling me I had to reschedule. So, they called me again later in the afternoon and told me I could come in and get the Pfizer vaccine instead, which, I did at 6:30. I then got a long-overdue haircut, and was able to call Austin before 8:30. He told me that he usually has two separate soccer practices on Tuesday’s. But today, he didn’t go to practice. He also told me that school ends at 2, and that he comes home first to change and then goes to practice.

10:21pm — Today was a pretty good day, actually, plain, but good. Here are some highlights:

1) Made good points at a Teams leadership meeting regarding whether our service desk is going to be ready for calls from users. This prompted a big discussion. Even though ServiceNow is not my domain, the thought did come to my mind

2)

9:00pm — I actually had a pretty decent little talk with Austin on Tuesday night. It’s still often a struggle to have any kind of meaningful conversations with him since I now know for sure he’s under a gag order, (i.e. forbidden to discuss certain things with me, like where he’s playing soccer, not allowed to send me pictures, etc.)

In any event, I was at the gym and started asking him about church because this is Holy Week. He told me their church was not having Good Friday services in person this week, only online but they ARE having regular services on Easter. I asked him if he ever invites his friends to church and he said no, he only ever goes with his family. I got the chance to mention to him that I was about his age when a friend started inviting me to church that eventually led me to become a Christian. I just told him to think about it. — I was, of course, referring to Brad Erickson, who at the age of 15ish, started taking an interest in me as a seeking, non-Christian.

I asked him what they usually do for Easter and he said they usually do Easter egg hunts and that he still gets Easter baskets. I pretty much ended the call telling him I was going to send him an Easter basket, which, I bought on Amazon today.