Lest We Forget How Far We've Yet to Go

Here are two links to the sites of two of my most favorite people:

Tomorrow is The Anniversary, which seems a strange way to refer to it, anniversaries generally being good things. Certainly there isn’t anything much to celebrate, which is what we usually do with anniversaries, unless you want to celebrate our continued survival, though with hurricane season only half over and a flood control system held together with duct tape, spit, and desperate hope, that feels a bit premature yet.


Those messages were just too important to delete at first. Too loaded with emotion and fear and horror to simply erase by pressing a button. Then they represented something that I knew I should remember and think about because a person and a city that I love were so devastated.

Update

Hey, thanks for the good wishes. Things are going well. I won't say much more about teaching, in the light of this blog being a public entity. I think my students would rather choke on loose pieces of granola while doing a headstand rather than google me to see what they could find, but still...better to be on the safe side.

Dominic has another flight this week. Also, Offutt has gone to 60 day deployments! This is such great news for us, as deployments were scheduled for 90 days before. My mind is much, much relieved by this recent turn of events. 90 seemed so terribly hard, and while 60 will be no cake walk, it will be better.

Not much else to say now. I've felt a little quiet lately.

Summon the Firing Squad

Well, this is it. Tomorrow at 8:30 I'll be standing in front of eighteen eighteen year-olds. Because I'll be their teacher.

Let's do this.

Earn My Flight Pay?

I don't get it...After a year of moves, more advanced flight academics, a stint as a secretary's secretary, and more academics, I am finally going to fly tomorrow. That's right, a full year has passed since my last flight. Time flies when apparently you're not doing your job. I'm a little nervous, but luckily my first flight won't involve air refueling(I don't want to throw up). Two planes that close just seems wrong! Now that I'm starting my flights I hope to be done with training soon. Maybe a couple of months. At this point I have been in training status for over two years! I mean how much training do you need to fly a plane. It only cost like thirty something million dollars. Chump change...to the Gov at least. Anyways I've got more mission prep to do, but just wanted to let everyone in on the big news!

Oh yeah, Kate is really busy and working hard at the university. Tomorrow she's putting in some serious hours including a mock workshop. She's been working 9-5 and no one in this house is used to that! I know that sounds horrible, but it's so true. I have to run, Later!

Pajamas and Tuna Fish

So, there's been much sitting around in my pajamas and eating tuna fish sandwiches these past two weeks, which is why I haven't been writing here much. I mean, I know how interesting and glamorous pajamas and tuna fish are, which is why I deprived you of their salacious details. I'm cruel that way.

Today, itself, has been rather slow--we've had a slow drizzling rain going on since morning--and yet today has also been special. For today, besides being permeated by, yes, pajamas-wearing and tuna fish-eating, is my last day of vacation. Tomorrow I start my workshop for my TA position. I'm having heart palpitations just thinking about it.

I'm not sure I'm entirely prepared for my first day of workshop tomorrow. My plan is to a) show up on time, b) remember to bring a pen and some paper, and c) not look too stupid. I think I've got a and b under wraps; it's c I worry about. Like I told my friend, Dale, professor at Loyola and general college teacher-extraordinaire, I worry that I'll say the wrong thing and be chased through the hallowed halls of UNO by angry English professors bearing torches, and then they'll stone me to death, perhaps on the football field or maybe just outside the student union. I worry that they'll figure out I still (still!) sometimes confuse adjectives and adverbs, and I'm not always a hundred percent sure I use commas correctly a hundred percent of the time (though I've got to be at 99%, at least; I swear! Don't stone me.) I know I won't be teaching the mechanics of grammar, but nonetheless, I worry, I worry, I worry.

But I'm also excited. Really, really excited. Like I told Dominic, professional EWO for the United States Air Force and husband-extraordinaire, I feel like I'm finally headed in a professional direction, like I'm no longer a bum. Hooray! Hooray for living up to my potential! Finally! After two long post-college years of fiddling my fingers, dabbling in graduate classes, and catching dinners on fire! Also, I think I'll like teaching. Really, I think I will. So, I guess all the swinging back and forth between excitement and abject terror is what's giving me these heart palpitations.

I hope I don't mess this up. If you don't hear from me in a while you might want to contact Dominic. The torch-wielding English professors may have gotten me...with their stones.