And you thought I forgot

Reviving the old blog.
Its been over a year and a half since I posted anything.  I have some great excuses for that.  Did you know I have two kids now? I am also completely finished with school.  Finally got that second piece of paper.  Following up on my last post I did technically start my last class in Jan 2014.  I failed to mention that I still needed to complete a comprehensive exam in lieu of a thesis.  I am now finally able to admit publicly that it took me two tries, so I did not graduate until Spring of 2015 (exam is offered once a semester).  The way my department runs the exam is to to create a pool of problems from every class offered in your specialty, including all those undergrad classes you had half a decade ago and are jam packed with trick questions.  They randomly pull 10 problems from this pool (and like all good engineering problems, they are usually multi part) and then you are given two hours to complete 7 of them.  My school is quite generous. This is how they manage the fact that you haven't actually taken all the classes in your specialty. The department does show a little magnanimity by allowing you to bring both a pencil AND an eraser to complete the exam.  They also allow a calculator.
So, after off of who would want to take a break?  I mean really, all that wasted time to sit quietly with your thoughts?  I've heard my thoughts and unless I am drunk they do not seem especially interesting. That means I jumped right into new major projects.  The new house is chock full of fun projects.
After we bought it in 2013 (holy cow I have been slack in posting) the first thing we did was gut the kitchen.  Full removal, including a wall.  After replacing it with new kitchen, minus the wall, we had a baby then moved in.  I am not exaggerating the brevity of that time table.  The new baby was born, the plumbers finished a few days later, the baby came home, then we moved to the new house that weekend.  A lot happened in that week.
Now that school is done I have started the next big project.  The new house came with a mostly broken swimming pool. The repair process has evolved into a full back yard remodel.  Currently the yard is completely cleared, the pool is partially repaired (with a whole bunch of extra rework to make it more functional), and the concrete forms are laid out for the new patio.
Please don't mistake my involvement in this work.  I have hired almost all of it out.
I have managed to complete some small projects. For example I did finally hang that very expensive piece of paper on the wall.