Family Time

So here’s another personal post.  This morning is my first official day of summer break.  That means spending a lot more time with my family, and hoo-boy(!) do I have a big family!  I work very hard through the school year and consequently I spend a lot of time thinking about other people’s kids and not my own.  Summer gives me the chance to see what’s happened in my family’s life over the past 9.25 months.  Each year brings me new enlightenment.

About 7 years ago I found myself without a job for five months.  It was pretty hard on us financially.  Though Geneva and I only had two kids then, she had to go to work and I took care of the house [I'm using the term loosely].  So I got to spend a lot of time with my two older boys.  I cooked breakfast almost every day.  I’m not much of a cook but I can make toast, eggs, sausage, and sometimes gravy.  It felt good to perform that function for my family.

Each year when my summer break rolls around I find myself starting out by keeping the kids while my wife heads out.  Sounds good–she’s been watching them for nine months, surely she could use a few hours off.   This morning was hers for the leaving.  I decided to make breakfast.

What I realize year after year is that I miss a lot by not keeping the kids by myself.  Such as…do you have any idea how much kids eat???  Holy Fritos!  I started by scrambling 6 eggs and frying 6 sausages, and I knew one of them wasn’t even going to eat!  That disappeared before I could even fix myself a plate.  So I made two four more eggs and another sausage.  Did I mention the loaf of bread they ate?  Plus almost a gallon of apple juice.  It’s like I’m going to have to raid the Hillshire Farms guy if I want breakfast again tomorrow.

Well, I hope this has been an eye opening experience for you.  I know I’ve learned something.  And I hope that one of you readers will develop a way to make food out of dirt and styrofoam peanuts.  (Hmmm, maybe tomorrow we’ll have popcorn for breakfast…)

Phoenix equals awesome

So you can find a lot of up-to-date blogs regarding real-time data streaming from the Martian Phoenix lander 100 million miles away right now. Just trying to get the hang of blogging, I don’t yet have the experience to play with the big boys.

What I find amazing about this is that for the first time in humanity we can watch a landing in this fashion. This is one of the coolest things our technology has ever brought us. To carry satellite signals with full narration to be broadcast across the world and re-distributed throughout the intertoobs without dissemination regardless of who acquires that information.
An event like this really draws all of us together as a planet. As though WE are doing something otherwise impossible unilaterally. As I’m typing this, the science channel just showed the reaction in the control center in Tucson from the touchdown. Too, too cool.

Insight into age

So I did something today I never thought would happen…I forgot my anniversary. I’ve watched sit-coms all my life in which this happened and wondered what idiot could forget something so monumentally important. My wife was most forgiving and *swears* that she also didn’t forget–though for some reason didn’t bother to remind me.

I’m going to hang this on my age and not some underlying mental condition. It’s been a busy week! )

Salutations

So this is my new blog. It’ll be about mostly innocuous things such as music, video, astronomy, and teaching. Maybe even some mention of my family and friends. Much of this will be serious, because when I write that’s what I write about when writing to myself. I will do all I can to interject some humor into my ramblings so that maybe some visitors might care to return sometime to see if I added anything they might find interesting.

A cautionary to you–my efforts are designed to be therapeutic toward many aspects of my life. This means that you’ll have to suffer the bad with the good. Many of my feelings are never mentioned to my students and it’s taken a lot of courage to get me to this point.

I think the toughest part in all this to you will be the sheer amount of words that seem to keep typing themselves after my point is made. Comes from a college teacher I once had with no ability to see between the lines. Now it’s hard to write as i wish without the constant question of “who am i writing to?” Guess I’ll go with the philosophy of MST3K and say that “the right people will get it.”

So i’ll have to make it palattable for human consumption but writing far more than i should (adversiely causing many of you to find more interesting blogs). Then comes the final deconstruction of my blog and all the efforts it has taken to create it–even this great opening piece.

I appreciate my readers. This will be a content-driven blog with some great picks and video links and funny comment left in the ‘funny-weekly-comments section’ Warning: I have no scruples with quoting people you know and don’t know. That means if something you said ranks in the Dumb Quote of the Week, you should feel honored. However, if you’re afraid someone might read it and discover you are not the brilliant jewel in God’s eye spouting infinite truths then with some private negotition i will choose whether the quote is relevant or simply malicious and will do the right thing.

Now comes the hard part, Why would i create a blog? Blogs are for college kids who want to feel connected and want to express that they have something to say–even if it’s from the comfort of the desk in their room. I guess i’m the same way. I occassionally have some serious issues that i would like to talk about and perhaps even seek out advice. It’s like having some overwhelming feeling by forces outside your control that you cannot fight. If this sounds too melancholy, then you have to understand many of my posts will be like this.

To complicate this more, I’ll do much of my writing at night when i no longer feel the adrenaline of performance and can instead focus on my mental state. It can be a dark place. Maybe i need to invent a safe-word i can use to make you aware of “sensitive material ahead!” I’ll try that on the next one.