Done with my MBA, now I've got some free time

After a long 2-1/2 years, I've completed my MBA at the Foster School of Business. On Sunday evening I turned in my last final exam, though Monday morning, I immediately left on a work trip to Oakland. The change in my life is finally sinking in and I'm looking forward to the freedom.

There will be fewer posts and tweets about studying at Starbucks on Saturday mornings, though I'll probably still be hanging out there while my kids are at swim practice. I'm really looking forward to putting back some things in my life that the MBA program pushed aside.

• Eating dinner with my family - the kids have been quite excited about this one, though we've yet to be able to do it. Family time is important, and I forwent a lot of it for the MBA. On the downside, they're so often at swim practice so, we might get to eat together, but it will be late.
  
• Cooking dinner for my family and friends - I really enjoy cooking and with evening classes, I haven't been able to cook for a long time. I've been clipping recipes for a while without trying them out, so I'm ready to get going on this one.
  
• Cocktails - I enjoy making cocktails, but I'm a lightweight. With all the late classes and early weekends, I've not been able to enjoy many cocktails. I recently purchased some bakon vodka which I'm excited to try out (Bloody Mary's for Easter Brunch) and a mojarita, a blend of a mojito and a margarita.
  
• Putting physical activities back into life - while I was focusing on the mental part of my life, I let the physical part slip. I've not really ran since I started the MBA program. I'd really like to get back in shape and increase my endurance. It will help with the outdoor activities I'd like to do too.
  
• Recreational reading - I picked up The Road by Cormac Macarthy and Contagious by Scott Sigler when I was at the library yesterday. It will be nice to read for fun and to read non-business texts. With this weekends swim meet, I've got plenty of time to do that.
  
• Adding outdoor activities - I really enjoy hiking, camping and snowshoeing. I've missed our rather weak winter here in the Pacific Northwest, but spring time is coming. With no more weekend study groups, I'll be able to get out with some Meetup groups and take advantage of the Mountaineers membership my wife got me for my birthday. Its probably time to get my snowshoes off the floor in my office and put them away until next season.
  
• Geeky tech stuff - I've got some computers that need new power supplies and new hard disks, it will be nice to be able to take care of them. I'm planning on learning more about php and play with the newly created secure areas on my home webserver (and figure out what its actually good for). I'll continue to learn more about Linux; this completion of school is timed perfectly with the release of Ubuntu Lucid 10.04b1. Expect to see some posts about my experiences with that!
  
• Blogging - I'm looking forward to having more time to blog. Sure, I've been doing the micro-blogging thing on Twitter, but I enjoy sharing my thoughts and experiences. Maybe I'll migrate to Wordpress and fix my template, because Heather so hates my current template. For any of you that might have done that, how did it work out?

The MBA program was a great learning experience and also a great networking experience. Sure I learned all kinds of great things about economics and finance, but the best lesson was that the problems that plague my industry also plague everybody else. Making ice cream has a lot more in common with airplanes, software and coffee than you'd think!