Graduate school is exhausting...

... and I haven't started any classes yet.

Now I know why I took a break in 2010.  It wasn't just because my mother died in January of that year.  It wasn't just that my employer revised benefits.  Nor was it the other family health concerns that I have chosen not to write about.  And not just concern for my son, either, making sure that his needs were being met.

Supporting each other

In the last post, I wrote a little bit about our falling in love.  It's frustrating, that so many of the fairy tales and stories that we read, hear, see on television, etc..., so many stories just stop and handwave "happily ever after."  Because I know that the story continues.  That happiness may continue, but it's not a constant.  Nothing is.  Just because you've found someone, does not mean that everything else will suddenly go right.

Finding Brian was the *start*of something right.  But that didn't mean things were perfect, or that all troubles had ended.  I was only in my first semester of engineering school, at one of the top schools in the country.  I'd like to move on to the second semester for next post... but I don't want to sugar-coat college life.  I struggled with a lot of things, things that I think are not unique to me.

I was living in South Bend when the movie Rudy came out.  Everybody loves a happy ending.  But it is an unfortunate fact of life, that everyone has to choose what is most important to them.  In the things that mattered the most to me, engineering and a career that lived my dream, graduating from college was a triumphant success.

In other things that mattered to me... choosing engineering, and those academic pursuits, had a price.

Solar weather

There has been a LOT of solar activity this past week.  Growing up, it FELT as though I had almost no connection to the space program whatsoever... but the reality was rather different.  For starters, Dad has quipped that the refrain of this song described one of his jobs:

Interlude: Glee "On My Way" reaction post

Last week's episode of Glee was... intense.  Several dark storylines, and inspiring Regionals performances.

I tried writing a couple of "It gets better" posts on my old blog.  I'm not sure they're all that good.  Truthfully, I have experienced some AMAZING things in my life, at all stages.  Snapshots of some of the GOOD things that I will eventually talk about,  following the text.  There's just a little -- well, a lot -- of angst to get through first.

Globalization and the Global Village

In elementary school, one of the things I wished for was to have lived in a small town.  (I have to admit, the year that we did just that, I discovered I didn't like it.)  Looking back, I believe what I truly was yearning for was the concept of the village.  This is much the same "village" in the oft-quoted proverb "It takes a village to raise a child." (See here for a discussion of the phrase's origins.)

I have heard that proverb used in many contexts.  Ever since Hillary Clinton used it as the title of her book, I have heard some Conservatives mock the phrase.  Which confuses me, considering how traditional the concept  is.  I've also heard many people talk about how, when they were children, it didn't matter how fast they ran home - the gossip of their mischief would reach their mother's ears faster than their legs could carry them.

Look, I'm still around

As promised, here's some of the songs that help me to feel better.

Giving Arts a Chance: Senior year

We moved again, the summer between my junior and senior years.  My father's contract was not renewed, so he spent the summer looking for a new job.

I missed a lot of the job search.  My aunt & uncle in Oceanside, California were preparing to move, and needed someone to house-sit for a few weeks.  So for the price of a plane ticket, I spent the summer with them.


He found another job in South Bend.

Endless winters when the dreams would freeze

The summer between 8th grade and high school, was the summer I went to Florida.  I wasn't sure it would actually happen.  Truthfully, living in Nebraska, where the oceans were multiple days drive away?  We didn't travel that far, and I had never seen an ocean before.  Florida and California both seemed like exotic locations.

But I had an aunt & uncle living there.  They had a 3-year-old, and another on the way.  I could buy a round-trip ticket, and be their au pair for the summer.  Eight weeks, and I only got yelled at once.  (I don't count my cousin, she was only three.)  It seemed like heaven.

A bright spot in a dark night

Last post, I wrote a little bit about spending my junior year of high school in a new school, hundreds of miles away from my friends.  That was the first time in a decade that I wasn't taking any sort of music class at school.  But when I said I made the mistake of giving up music, that wasn't completely accurate.  I made the mistake of stopping playing in the band, and otherwise not studying music in school.

What I did do, was sing with the choir at church.  It was all right.  Much of the repertoire was in Latin.  I remember a woman joining us, she seemed embarrassed when they asked what part she sang -- her answer was "Bass."

And then there was another woman, who sometimes in the winter months came to practice wearing a sweatshirt that said NASA.  I commented on it one evening.  Some time later, she brought in 2-3 large photo-prints of the space shuttle, the launchpad at night, a day launch, and perhaps a third.  And she gave them to me.  That one little gift, meant a lot to me.  It gave me hope again.

The very few people who read our teenage work of fan-fiction will be surprised to know, her name was Mrs. Charon.  My jaw about hit the floor, we had named a planet "Charon" in the story written before I moved.

October Anti-bullying

October is National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month.  I know the month is almost over, but I couldn't let it pass without writing about this.  I wrote a few posts on my old blog last year, as we were dealing with bullying at my son's preschool.  Can you believe it?  Bullying a 3-year-old?  I still can't.  Fortunately, the preschool recognized the problem, and worked to stop it.

Engineering and Compost

Just in case anyone reading my previous blog post Got worms? wonders what composting and gardening has to do with engineering, here's the deal.

The National Academy of Engineering has developed a list of 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century.

One of the challenges on the National Academy of Engineering's list, is Manage the Nitrogen Cycle.