A lack of judgement

 

On my part.

 

Led to this.

 

We’re in San Diego.

 

I thought it would be a fun way to end the year if we went birding.  We ended our summer trip with 450 species.  Since then, we’ve squeaked up to 458.  We’ve pretty much exhausted the species in the Rio Grande Valley where we live, so I looked around the country (there’s an app for that) to see who has the most birds we haven’t seen yet this year.  Southern California.  Southern California has plenty.  We should be able to get to 475 species.  That’s our new target.  475.  So this trip is all about birding.

 

Except it’s not.  A few days ago, comfortable in the knowledge that the end of our two-year Continuing Professional Education (CPE) reporting cycle was still a year away, I noticed I was getting a lot of advertisement emails about continuing education classes.  I took a look, and sure enough, the reporting cycle ends in 2017, not 2018.  Oops.  It ends in a month!  Time to add up all the courses I’ve taken over the last two years and see how I measure up against the 80 hour requirement.  An all-day seminar in 2016.  Another in 2017.  That’s all I can find.  16 hours satisfied of an 80 hour requirement.  Oh well.  No problem.  I don’t have to arrange to go anywhere to get my classes.  I can take them online.  Well actually, there is one problem with that.  When you show up and sit through a class, that’s all you have to do is sit through a class.  When the class is over, you get credit for being there.  CPE on demand is different.  There are no attendance checks, but there is a test at the end you have to pass to get credit for the course.  That makes all my online CPE more demanding than attending classes in person.  I have to pay a lot of attention, and actually learn something because I have to be able to pass a test at the end.

 

So anyway, we’re going to have to mix in some CPE with our birding efforts.  I’ve done some every day since I realized my mistake.  When we get home from this trip I’ll have two weeks left to finish my education.  I can’t afford to leave it all until we get home and find out I’m overloaded and doing classes on Christmas Day.  I’ll need to keep after it during this trip to make sure the amount remaining is manageable

 

We have a countdown for how many birds we need to see to get to 475 (17.  We’ve seen 458 as of today).  We’ll need a countdown for how many hours remain on the 2017 CPE requirement (49.  I’ve completed 31 as of today).