Opportunity costs and Finding time for blogging

So it's been a while since my last post. Those who follow Heather's blog probably know a lot of things that have happened to us recently, but here is a different perspective. For those who don't, I'll give a little summary. The past few months have been busy for me. That's mainly the reason I have not written in a while. As you know I have been going to school at the University of Oregon. My classwork has kept me busy, though I should be busier than I am. Having such a wonderful family is such a great blessing but can also be a curse as well. It is hard not to try to finish all of my homework on campus quickly and not take that extra hour of studying that I can probably get by without but should really take so I can speed home and spend some time with Heather and Nathan. I did get by without taking too many of those extra hours but not as well as I would have liked. I'm going to try harder this semester to get some extra studying in.

In the middle of October I was in a bike accident and was taken to the ER. I was on a shared pedestrian/bike path and was coming down from a bridge when a pedestrian jumped in front of me. As I applied my brakes I steered to the left and went off the path to avoid hitting her. The combination that I was coming to a hard stop and the fact that my road bike is not really designed to go off the pavement led to me going over my handle bars and landing on my face. Other than the fact that I had a concussion and that the inside of my lips was split open the only other damage that I or my bike had was a few scrapes on my nose(If you really want the see pictures of me a couple of days after check out Heather's blog http://ryanandheatherbartron.blogspot.com/2009/10/ouch.html).
I had to get 5 stitches and my lip was REALLY swollen for a while afterwards. The stitches inside my mouth were very annoying and limited what I could eat and I was very glad when they finally were gone.

Shortly after that my funding for school was increased by the Economics department and I found out last week that it has been extended through the rest of the year. Last semester I was a grader for a upper division class but this semester I am a discussion section leader for Intro to Macroeconomics. My responsibilities include giving quizzes, reviewing questions for the next week and answer any questions students may have from the class lectures. The sections meet each Friday, so for the most part all of my work will be on done on Fridays with some prep work earlier in the week.

Christmas and Thanksgiving as well as my birthday and New year's were all spent with my in-laws in Washington. I am thankful that they are close enough that we can spend time with them but wish that my family was closer. Here are some pictures from our time with them.


I made apple pie


Nathan's Thanksgiving meal


Nathan's first kiss


Celebrating my 27th birhtday with my two favorite things Nathan and cheesecake


Opening presents


All dressed up on Christmas


Family pictures on New Year's


The reason I have a hard time spending too much time studying

One of the basic thing that is taught in economics is the concept of opportunity cost. Everything we do has a cost, even if it is just the cost of not being able to do something else. For instance, I could take time to write a blog at the expense of studying or playing with Nathan or what ever else I might have done during that time. The opportunity cost of this blog post was probably a nap and now that Nathan just woke up from his nap I have to go and skype my family, or in other words my cost of writing this blog just increase and although ha certain brother-in-law of mine may wish that I proof read this as a student of economics he should understand if I don't. Thanks for reading and if you read this far that tells you a little about your opportunity cost.