The "I Can't Stop Being a Project Manager", edition.

Good morning!  How was the weekend?  Ours was pretty nice, actually. Yes, I was a project manager when I worked. I actually managed project managers. The City spent a lot of money training me on project management.  I ended up applying project management principles to my life. Project management is just common sense planning. How does this work?  Well let's take my upcoming trip. I started creating a plan. I defined a scope and had a loose work breakdown structure (wbs)....a timeline of when tasks needed to be done. Like getting documentation from the doctor for travel. I've done risk management,  time management and of course cost management. Determine my budget while understanding I needed to purchase tickets, rent a car and stay at the hotel. Plus how much money I should take. I've done project communications, risk assessment and procurement. We need to purchase a portable cart/dolly to move my kidney.  

Now I don't plan everything.  I can be and am usually spontaneous, but some things require planning. Like there was little to no planning to go see The Avengers Saturday afternoon. I've come to the Marvel world late, but better late than never. Brian has been patient about answering my questions. Or the swimming. We just say, let's go swimming!  I did plan to get an additional swimming suit. I'm in the  water almost seven days a week now. I can see the swimming suits falling apart. 

On the dialysis front I have some interesting news. I belong to a home hemodialysis group on Facebook. We were having a discussion about travel. The moderator contacted me and asked if I would record our upcoming trip to visit Shawn. The footage would be edited and used by the Medical Education Institue (MEI) to show that travel is quite possible while on dialysis, specifically home hemodialysis.  I asked Brian and he agreed. We are 1 of 3 dialysis patients recording our travels.  I know one patient is recording traveling via RV. The MEI is providing us with a GoPro camera, with a data card and a chest harness. We will record our trip and return the unedited data card and we get to keep the camera!  Heh. A GoPro camera wasn't on our list, but well, here we go. 

The camera arrived Friday. The thing is tiny!  Brian has already started learning it and has started using it.  I want to script out some of the steps we will need to do.  Think of it more a list, or like my project management work breakdown structure (wbs). Lol. Always a PM angle. Anyway recording things like us looking for the portable cart, getting the machine into its travel case, getting this 100 pound thing to the car and then having the car unloaded at the airport. Also packing supplies. And the of course the set up of the machine and doing the dialysis at the hotel. The whole thing is exciting and scary at the same time!!  And on a side note, I checked and found out that there is a HHD center in Champaign if I have issues. Nice to have backup!  

Finally, I am loosely planning 2 more trips for the summer. I will visit some friends in California. This will be a road trip. This involves a different travel case, a rolling case. And my friend insisted I stay with her. I told her I'd be bringing my kidney.  She said she expected no less. <3.  So the planning has started for this. And finally Shawn, Brian and I will be going to Seattle near the end of the summer. That planning will start a little later. See. Like at my job. I'm juggling multiple projects!   Lol. 

Well it's almost time to go swimming. We do deep water fitness at the rec center and do some of the routines at our pool, in addition to swimming laps. I am such a water baby!!! Have a great day.