9:46pm — It’s been weighing so heavy on me recently knowing that my son is being raised by a narcissistic mother. I believe that he is becoming more and more invisible in her eyes, if not even going to become the scapegoat. I see the pictures of her with her new little girl, who she seems to idolize much more than anyone else. This little girl will become Sara’s favorite, the middle two boys will be invisible, and Austin, because he is an outsider and still bears the last name of the person she hates the most (i.e. ME), he will become the one she blames everything that goes wrong in the family on.

8:47pm — Just had a pretty decent workout. Work has been slowing down a little bit, sooner than I expected with our Teams rollout. Our engagement with CDW is almost due to expire. It’s been a great experience so far! I have really learned a lot!

Now, I’m working with Christine to revamp the LTCG intranet using SharePoint Online.

This past Memorial Day, we were in New York City. It was short, but we sure did see a whole lot (and WALKED a whole lot!!) Spent a couple nights in a Doubletree hotel close to Times Square. I saw the spot (again) where I proposed to Sara, along with several other places that brought back a lot of memories.

11:29pm — This was a pretty normal, average day. Pretty rainy, so I just stayed put at home. I did get a little bit of a workout in and attempted to take Coco with me on a bike ride, but the carrier keeps falling off. I’m still having trouble getting it stay on the bike. Very frustrating.

Another thing that has been extremely frustrating has been finding ways to keep in touch with my son. I do have a few ideas like writing to him once a month, sending him packages, which should include several pictures, which, I’d have to figure out how to arrange.

• Austin Calll — regarding the autographs, he said, “you don’t need to put so much work into it” I would say, “Because of the restrictions being placed on me, I’m trying to do the best I can to connect with you.”

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!