Being April

There have been several things that I have wanted to blog about lately and instead of giving you 5 different blogs, I'm going to give you one long one... again... sorry. Bookshelves and Mischief: Bookshelves are kinda my stash places. When I have something that I don't know what to do with, and I don't want the kids to get into it, I just put it on the shelf assuming that I'll go find a place for it later... sometimes I do, most times I don't. Right now on my bookshelves there are books, binders, and notebooks... those things are supposed to be there... and there are also a stapler, a three hole punch, tape, pipe cleaners, an RC helicopter, a darth vader mask, a nativity set, a car bank, printer ink, some felt, mystery cables, crayons, essential oils, a harmonica, sun glasses, keys, cassette tapes, stamps, diaper rash cream, a bulb syringe (nose sucker as I like to call it), diapers, wipes, a hand strengthener thingy, a weather predicting thingy, emp...

Silence… The skies are a light gray, although there is no wind. We wait… the heavy breathing a persistent reminder that something is wrong. Still nothing… I hear a strong intake of air. My head was still down looking into the small screen. I don’t look at him, but I know some strong words are coming my way. Two weeks earlier I had been sent to a small forward operating base in the northeast mountains of Afghanistan to train some Soldiers how to fly the Raven, a small unmanned aircraft system. Their unit had done the right things before they deployed to send some Soldiers to the operator’s course. Once the Soldiers got into country, however, they received an older system that did not have the same control station. The training with them went smoothly, no air vehicles lost or damaged. At the end of their training, their senior operator asked me to fly a real mission with him; I agreed. We decide to set up our system underneath an unused guard tower at the edge of ...

I'm reading a book for my class called "Boys Adrift" by Leonard Sax. I'm getting close to the end of the book, and as I've been reading I've been fearing for my sons a bit. This book is all about how more and more recently boys tend to lose motivation and are content to live with their parent's until they're 30, playing video games and doing little else. It talked about how the education system has been changing in recent years and how in many cases it tends to disengage boys from school. Lots of smart boys just stop caring about school and call it "stupid" and just stop trying while instead they put more and more effort into video games. Of course, these trends don't apply to all boys, but it seems to be happening more and more. Girls are starting to fall into this pattern too, but not nearly to the extent that boys are. He tried to guess as to some of the reasons why this might be. There is a whole chapter just about how c...

This morning I was in a little bit of a bad mood. I can't even remember why now, but it was nothing important, I was just grumpy. I got up early to go to my history class, and enjoyed it. I had to leave class a little bit early so I could drive down to the high school. I've been going to the high school every Friday just to observe and help out if needed. When I arrived there today I found the classroom dark and locked, not only that, but there were tons of people in the hallways all in professional dress. I found out later that there was a debate competition there today, and most of the students didn't even bother to come to school if they weren't participating. That annoyed me a little, because I had left my class early to be there, only to discover that they didn't even hold class today. That put me right back in the bad mood I had been in before class. During the next two hours I tried to spend some time with the kids and Dean and just be happy but...