My Bucket List

We all have a bucket list someplace--that list of things we want to do before we kick the bucket. Of course, actually accomplishing anything on that  list takes some doing, so I'm going to try and outline how I intend to fulfill the goal as well as the goal itself.

Here goes:

Earn my doctorate - I am almost done with my masters degree. I have found three different Ph.D or Ed.D programs which I would qualify to enter. As soon as I can, I am applying to them.

Get professionally published - I am already published as a coauthor in a peer-reviewed journal. I need to work on becoming a lead author now. I might be able to develop a paper or two out of my masters' thesis.

Publish a work of fiction - I just need to take time out and write. Plant my butt in the chair and put words on the screen. I have a great idea that just needs to be written out. Maybe I'll delegate two hours a week to this project.

Travel abroad - I have always wanted to travel to another country and get to know the people as they really are--not stick to the tourist traps. Sandy and I talked about this a few weeks ago and she suggested I look into a short-term missions trip with our church. We send teams to Ecuador several times a year. I can plan ahead on this one: save up money, brush up on my Spanish, and maybe even learn some useful skills that will make me an asset to the team. If it works out, I may even do it more than once. And as a bonus, I can pack my binoculars and at night knock off some Southern Hemisphere deep sky objects! For more leisurely travel, down the road we'd like to take a Caribbean cruise. Jamaica is definitely a favored destination, and now that the embargo is lifted Cuba would be interesting to visit as well.

Get the Man Cave in order the way I'd like it - This one is easy: an hour a night at minimum, just putting things where I want them to be. Once the back patio is clear I can move a few things back there where I can use them more effectively (my exercise bike and weight bench, for example) and clear even more room in the garage. There are shelves and workbench space I cannot utilize efficiently the way things are now, and having those shelves available will make putting things away easier. The gaming table/train table idea is still very much in the works, especially now that I know what size I need for my table surface.

Start martial arts again - As soon as I lose another 60 pounds there is a Brazilian jiujitsu studio near my home that is calling my name. This particular style suits my build and will allow me to protect my head and my eye in a way many other styles won't. And rank advancement is fairly quick (although not ridiculously so). I am waiting to lose the weight because my joints remind me daily that I am 46 and not 26 anymore, and I don't want to risk further injury.

Complete a Spartan race - The Spartan Sprint is 3-5 miles with obstacles, and is designed so that 95% of the general population can complete it. I can already run about 3 miles even as I am right now. With some effort, I could knock this one off next year. Keep working on it, and I can do the more difficult races as well (it will also help me get to the martial arts goal too).

Attend a bachelor party - I don't know if this will ever happen. I never got one before I was married--all of my male friends were either out of town or not interested. And somehow I figure I'm missing out. It doesn't help that every opportunity I've had to attend one in the past 11 years has somehow ended up with me not going. The question is, how can I possibly pull this off? When my son wants a bachelor party, how the heck am I going to put one on for him if I don't know what to expect myself?

Now, can I pull all this off? Everything on here except for the travel and the bachelor party I could pull off or at least start in the next year. Ecuador I can do in two years. Having goals is nice, but without some kind of plan to reach them all they are is dreams.

Let's be about it!

Breakthrough

I won't put too fine a point on it, but the past nine months have been pure hell.

I knew I would be losing my father someday, but the suddenness with which he was taken from us has hit me pretty hard. I have tried to keep a stiff upper lip and stay busy, because I know that as badly as I am hurting there are people close to me who are hurting even more. I needed to stay strong for them.

But you can only stay strong for so long.

I am not a huge believer in the supernatural. I certainly believe in God in the conventional sense--if you've been reading what I've written here the past couple of years I hope that's evident. I won't rule out something supernatural, but only if all possible natural explanations have been exhausted. And I certainly don't use supernatural forces as a cop-out: "The Devil made me do it" only results in the Infernal One getting credit for lots of work he didn't do. Lazy bastard. One in every project team...

Here I am digressing again.

My daughter started transitional kindergarten today. This is a huge milestone for her. She's now staying at school for a full school day, five days a week. And she's starting to learn to read. Her homework consists of a bag of five books given to us every Monday. We are to read one of the books to her every night.

Morgan absolutely insisted that I read her book to her tonight. Not Mommy, and not a friend of ours who is staying with us who absolutely adores Morgan. It had to be Daddy. And it had to be this book:

Just for some background: my father grew up in and around the Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico and claimed to have Navajo ancestry himself. He would often share a lot of the old stories with me when I was growing up. As a very young child I was also very sickly and at times my survival was in serious doubt. My father always encouraged me to make the most of myself in spite of these handicaps, and never allowed me to hide behind them.

So with that in mind, my daughter hands me a book about a Navajo grandfather talking to his grandson about the difficulties the boy, who was born sickly and blind, had early in childhood. More to the point, he talks about how the boy was able to overcome these liabilities and to move beyond the 'dark mountains' in his life.

Boom. There was Dad talking to me, through a story which contained a lot of familiar elements and the persistence of a not-quite-five-year-old girl who was the apple of her Grandpa's eye and certainly is the apple of mine.

I made it through the story, but I am not at all ashamed to admit I was in tears by the end. My son and daughter both gave me a very big hug at the end. It felt good to get some emotions out, even if it did seem unseemly and embarrassing at first. For the first time in nine months, I felt like I could properly grieve!

If this whole setup didn't have my dad's fingerprints on it, then I am hard-pressed to find any set of coincidences or random occurrences that could have lined up so precisely.

I feel as though a huge burden has been lifted. There are still a lot more tears where these came from, but also a lot more to do. And now I feel as though one doesn't have to exclude the other. I finished the night with a nice hard workout. I needed it.

Walk in beauty, Dad. Walk in beauty!

A Moment of Affirmation, or Tooting My Own Horn

"For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." - Romans 12:3

"It ain't bragging if you can do it!" - Muhammad Ali

The first quote listed here is, as I've discussed before, one of the most abused quotes I've encountered in my churchgoing life. The center part of the verse--that one should not think more highly of himself than he ought to think--gets emphasis over the rest of the verse, in which Paul emphasizes his own humility and notes that everyone has strengths and limitations and the key to wisdom is to be aware of them.

I remember my grandmother (may God rest her soul!) admonishing both my mother and me not to start 'putting on airs' or thinking too highly of ourselves--"something's going to happen to put you in your place!" she'd always say. Maybe she was just trying to teach us both something about the dangers of pride, but oftentimes (especially with my mother) she would use it to 'teach her her place'. This is a woman who, when my mother expressed an interest in high school biology and signed up for the class, promptly pulled her out of the class and enrolled her in typing instead. "If you want to learn biology, I'll buy a chicken and you can stay home and cut it up!" she said. Ah, the 1950's...that golden age where women stayed in the kitchen, blacks stayed at the back of the bus, gays stayed in the closet, and anyone at the far right of the bell curve stayed quiet for their own safety...

My mother was never one to 'know her place'. She knew her responsibilities, yes, and she was an outstanding mother to my brothers and me. Not perfect, but nobody is. She pursued her love of science through one of the few avenues open to working-class women when she was younger and earned a nursing degree. She was an excellent nurse for more than 20 years, when workplace injuries took their toll and she had to leave the profession she loved. So what did she do? She sold insurance, stepping cold into a profession that was in the 1980's dominated by men and consistently led her office in policy sales. I remember visiting that office. It made the set of Mad Men look positively feminist in its outlook! She dealt with a lot, and came out on top. But she was never one to brag. Maybe that was because of my grandmother. So I'll do the bragging for her here.

My parents both came from humble backgrounds and both became very respected individuals in their professions. They had nothing handed to them; they worked their asses off. And it showed. My brother as well started with nothing and has done very, very well for himself. I am proud of my family!

And maybe that rubbed off on me too. It seems to be a family trait, fighting our way up from the bottom. That makes me proud, too.

Unlike my parents and my brother, I nerfed myself starting out. I started college in 1987 and through a combination of mismanaged relationships and involvement with an extremely fundamentalist church, lost focus. I interpreted Romans 12:3 (as so many people do) as meaning not to take any pride in myself or my accomplishments. Some people actually go to the opposite extreme and either take pride in their failures or refuse to even try anything at all. 'Know your place!' This isn't what Paul was saying, and it's not what Scripture ever intended. Paul also admonished slaves (which for his time was the majority of what we would call the blue-collar workforce today) to get their freedom if they had a chance. And it certainly isn't what Christ meant to communicate. He said "I came that you may have life and that abundantly," not "I came that you may beat yourself into the ground with false guilt."

I ended up leaving college not with the degree I wanted, but with the only one I could earn a reasonable GPA in within four years. But I didn't quit. After a year or two of working dead-end jobs, I found something I enjoyed that I could do with that degree. And a little bit later I found a job that not only took advantage of that skill set, but allowed me the opportunity to pursue my first love in the sciences once again. Granted, it was from a different direction than I had anticipated--public health had never really entered my radar screen as an undergraduate--but it was one that has been immensely satisfying to me and has allowed me to do some good in the world.

From the moment I stepped off the podium with my BA on June 15, 1991, I was plotting my return to the sciences. I tried to launch a second bachelor's degree in chemistry, but that proved to be untenable. So I took what I had and parlayed it into alternate opportunities--first a job handling radioactive waste, then a number of tutoring jobs after hours when I ended up in retail sales, and finally as a lab technician at a state university campus. That job would have been satisfying to me in 1993, but it was not to be. The position was cut due to budget cutbacks, and I found myself looking for something else.

So I took my history degree, responded to an ad on my then-girlfriend's dorm bulletin board, and three months later I was a paralegal. I had the further good fortune to end up working with some of the elite operators in San Diego's legal community at the time, who provided me with backup when one employer stiffed me on my wages as well as some very nice letters of reference which led to the job I have today.

That job led me back to the sciences. Even starting out as a file clerk the extra college courses in chemistry and math were useful around the office, and I quickly learned about the field of quality assurance. Intrigued, I took a few courses at the local community college and decided QA was what I was looking for all along.

It would be nice to say that I went from there and got my Masters degree straight out, but it didn't happen that way. A broken engagement followed by a serious car accident slowed my plans down considerably. By the time I was able to get back in the game, I met someone who was very skeptical of my plans at first but has since become my greatest champion, without whom I could accomplish nothing.

I managed to talk her around to restarting my Masters degree again. It wasn't easy, and I know she's been frustrated a lot of the time by the demands it has made on me, but we're almost there! Along the way we've adopted two very special children. Parenthood takes its toll on anyone, but parenting special-needs kids is a challenge in a class by itself.

To top that off, just before I was ready to finish the first draft of my thesis I had a severe concussion that disrupted my research. Sandy's mom got very ill; my father passed away suddenly; then Sandy's mom passed away shortly afterward; and then my mother moved away to live with my brother because she couldn't live on her own.

There were times I lost hope. That I was ready to quit because it seemed as though the universe itself was acting against me. My grandmother was right: something had happened to put me down to size. Tall Poppy Syndrome was in action. But then I remembered something else I once read: fate is what happens when you don't fight for your destiny! My father kept his eyes on the prize the whole time he was getting shot at in the jungles of Southeast Asia; what has happened to me that could possibly compare to that?

I have my father's Bible in a display case at home, turned to a very weather-worn page showing Psalm 23. The cover is also worn where he held it for long periods of time. A librarian friend of mine tells me I could probably get the cover restored, but I won't. Just the condition of that one page and the cover tells me volumes about what he was experiencing. His faith got him through something much, much worse than I am ever likely to experience. Was mine insufficient when faced with, what is in the end, the usual challenges of life?

That was what Paul was talking about in Romans 12:3! He was talking about not becoming full of yourself, not denying yourself confidence in your abilities. Paul himself could list some exhaustive credentials. So can I: check out my LinkedIn page sometime. What he's saying is that God gives us all gifts, and not to regard our gifts as better than anyone else's.

Another friend of mine who is not shy about her own abilities (or quite frankly about showing up the incompetence of others) paid me a very high compliment when she said I should just embrace what I've done and stop putting myself down. Others have said that too, but sometimes you have to be in a place in life where you finally listen.

That place was the past three months for me. Taking advantage of available funds for training at work, I earned a Six Sigma Green Belt certification. It's not an easy test, and because of accounting restrictions I could not give myself as much time as I wanted to prepare. I had to prep for this very tough exam in less than two months, while squeezing in the rest of life. For the first time I was afraid of failing.

Well, I didn't...

I passed the test. Under more difficult circumstances than I would have imagined. Maybe my friend was right. Maybe I am that good after all!

So now it's time to start owning it. And more to the point, to start proving it. My father sadly is no longer around to see me finish my thesis. But my mother is, and I want to give her that. And then I want to move on to the bigger goals. Not because I'm better than anyone else, but because I am exactly as good as I am. No more, and certainly no less.

After all, it ain't bragging if you can do it.

Koyaanisqatsi

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time for war, and a time for peace."
--Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (ESV)

I've been pretty silent online over the past couple of weeks, only commenting here and there on things and keeping up with certain obligations. Partly that was due to a major certification test I had last Saturday, but mostly because my life had gotten out of balance.

I spent a lot of time online, far more than is really healthy. While I value my online friendships deeply, at the end of the day it's the friends and family I have in meatspace who matter most. I see that I was using my online activity to escape my own grief that I've been feeling over the past six months. I've lost my father, my mother-in-law, my favorite aunt, and I may not have my mother much longer either. Almost all of the senior generation of my family is gone in the space of a year. My response has mostly been to keep a stiff upper-lip and carry on, because my family needed me. Sandy's losing her mom was particularly devastating for her, and the children have no frame of reference at all. Neither did I at Alex's age when I lost my brother John. I'm still dealing with that 37 years later, and my kids have lost so much more in so short a time.

Some people go to alcohol or drugs to escape reality. I went to the Net. And I buried myself there in that semi-reality state. Social media is a great tool to get in touch with people--I've met nearly my entire high school graduating class via Facebook or LinkedIn, and several people from college and fandom as well. But it's a very poor tool for interacting with people.

Only about 10% of our communication is verbal. The rest is all non-verbal: facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, spacing, etc. Online we lose all of the non-verbal communication that makes human interaction so rich for most of us. Most people recognize that and are able to take it into account.

For me the situation is different. I do not have the same ability to read social cues as other people. I can fake it for a while but it is an act, and an imperfect one at that. Putting me online is like putting a fish in water: those factors that are a hindrance to me in the real world don't exist there. So for me it's very very easy for the line to become blurred. And that's exactly what happened about two weeks ago.

I violated the trust of someone who is more dear to me than almost anyone else. It was well-intentioned, but if the road to Hell is paved with good intentions then I'm in charge of the Infernal Highway Department. The point is that I treated my online interactions with a good deal more intimacy and confidence than was really appropriate at the moment. For that I apologize. I saw the need to step back and reassess matters.

The title of this post comes from a 1982 film by the same name. It's a Hopi word meaning 'life out of balance' or 'a state of life that calls for another way of living'. I was first exposed to the film in college but at the time I didn't have the life experience to truly understand what the filmmaker was communicating. I mostly fell in love with Philip Glass' outstanding soundtrack. About a month ago I found the movie free on demand through my cable company and watched it two nights in a row. It's not for everyone's tastes, but it does make you think.

One sequence in particular sticks out for me: a series of pictures of large cities from space, compared to pictures of printed circuit boards. Unfortunately I can't find a legal clip of that sequence to attach here, but here's a link to a similar sequence by another artist that gets the point across:

If cities are microchips, then we're all just electrons completing the circuit. It's interesting to note that space allocation on a circuit board is often referred to as 'real estate'. Unfortunately the Net makes that even more true than it was in 1982. Life out of balance, indeed.

When you start thinking of people as electrons, it's easy to dismiss their feelings. Electrons are defined as probability functions--we can only determine where one is likely to be at any given time due to  Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In a sense that's true of the people we meet online: can we really be sure of who or where they are, or even if they exist? Is what they tell us true?

Relationships online are built entirely on trust, which is what makes them so vulnerable. And I violated that trust. I let my perspective get out of balance.

So I spent a lot of time offline these past couple of weeks refocusing. I played with my kids, and my new puppy. I cried a lot, and I talked a lot, and while I'm not 100% back together (and probably won't ever be again) I think I see things more clearly now.

I'm sure my father was talking to me through that movie, delivering a warning. He was a big fan of Native American culture (and actually carried some Native ancestry--as do I--though not enough to really matter for anything beyond family pride). And he was an even bigger fan of living in the real world and keeping things in balance. He always tried to warn me when I was going off the rails.

So while I'm not going offline completely, I am going to place a more firm emphasis on the relationships I have with people I've met in person, either past or present. I have some new friends who have been extraordinarily good to me, and some old friends who have returned to my life after many years. I have a mother whom I will be talking with a lot more, and a brother and sister-in-law who have become closer over the past few years. Most of all, I have a wonderful wife and two great kids who need me in meatspace. Cyber-friends, I'm not abandoning you completely, but you are going to have to take a back seat while I breathe a little and find my balance again.

That said, I'm ending my self-imposed social media blackout today. A time to mourn, and a time to dance...

What's In A Name?

As you may have noticed, my blog has a new name, reflecting my current direction in life. After all, unless I do something so extraordinary that the state of Kentucky confers its highest honor upon me, I will probably never be a colonel (at least, outside of a cosplay or fandom context). And except for changing planes in Louisville once, I have never had any association with that great state, so it's unlikely to happen.

I can, however, be a professor. As of this fall, if all goes well, I will be. Concurrent with my Masters degree I am completing a Community College Teaching Certificate. I have been approved for a teaching internship and have only to be placed with a local community college and teach one course under supervision. Achievement unlocked!

It was always my goal to teach, and eventually I do want to teach at the college level full-time. In about 10 years I will be eligible to retire from my current employment. The economy being what it is, I don't want to be dependent upon my retirement benefits alone. So, I will take a page from my father's book and move on to something that I know I will enjoy and which will allow me to have a comfortable existence in my closer-than-I-would-like-to-admit old age.

Part of the application process is to get letters of recommendation from previous faculty. I always feel nervous about asking. I've asked three of my instructors and have gotten one positive response (I'm not sure of the others said no or just haven't seen the message yet). I don't like asking anyone for anything--I try not to impose upon others and when I do ask I feel embarrassed forever afterward. And yet to get to where I want to go, I need to ask, and keep asking.

So now among my many other plans this summer, it looks like I will be drawing up a lesson plan for whatever class I intend to teach (I'd like to teach basic statistics but there are any number of business classes I could teach as well).

And more to the point, I need to take the advice of a coworker of mine many years ago: in order to be accepted in a role, you have to put yourself out there in that role. Which is what I'm doing right now. I'm taking a minor step leading towards many more significant steps in the relatively near future.

Wish me luck! I'm going to need it!

Romancing Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria is one of the more intriguing figures of history. Very few women in antiquity have had their voices carry forward to us in the 21st century CE but of those she was probably the most 'modern' in outlook. She was an independent and very powerful thinker, a standard very few people of either gender could reach either then or now. It's exactly what got her into trouble, too.

Hypatia was killed, and the library of Alexandria (or what was left of it after six previous burnings) was burned for the last time, by a group of fanatics who were intimidated by her scholarship. Christian scholars accused her for centuries of paganism and witchcraft; secularists hold her up as a model of free thought against an oppressive church. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. She had both Christian and pagan students in her academy, and was an advisor to the Christian governor of Alexandria. The local bishop, jealous of her influence, stirred up a known troublemaker to get rid of someone he saw as a political threat. It's not that different from what happens today, except murder, arson, and probable sexual assault (usually) don't play into the picture.

At the risk of being overly sentimental, Hypatia has always been the personification of the sciences to me. Science is a thing of beauty, demanding of one's time and resources to get the best possible return. And for me personally, like Hypatia herself science has been notoriously unapproachable.

That liability was exposed when I took my first real science classes in college and found out that I needed serious math to go forward. I probably could have done better if I had remained focused and not lost sight of my goal. Hanging out with Fundamentalists and pursuing a woman who was probably about as receptive as Hypatia herself would have been to my attention didn't help my cause. Everyone would have been happier had I stayed the course: the woman I was chasing would have had some peace; the Fundamentalists would have found themselves a more tractable recruit; and I would have a physics degree. I realized my mistake, but too late to correct in time to get a science degree. So I settled for a degree in history and made a promise to myself that I would find a way to get back to my metaphorical true love.

24 years later...

I'm now on the verge of a return, thanks in no small part to my actual true love, Sandy, who met me along the way and has been very patient these past few years with my angst and the time I've spent finding my way back. I've never lost touch with the sciences, being an amateur astronomer in my spare time and courtesy of some professional certifications a quality engineer by profession. I also managed to pick up enough science units to do a lot of science-related work over the years. But it don't mean a thing unless I have those magic initials after my name.

Now it's time. Three challenges remain ahead of me.

First, I need to finish my Masters thesis. I'm about halfway done with the first draft. The events of the past year slowed me down significantly but I'm ready to get back in the game. I spent the weekend cleaning my office in the garage partly so I could find my notes.

Second, I need to retake the GRE. I took it 20 years ago and my scores were high enough to qualify me for Mensa (which at the time accepted GRE scores as qualifying). But the test has changed significantly since then. Time to review, review, review!

Third, and most daunting, is the subject that killed me in college:

Ordinary differential equations. The Ivan Drago to my Rocky Balboa. I passed the course, but I took a beating doing so and was forced into retirement.

Fortunately I saved my textbook and the student solutions manual, and I had a calculus review a few years ago that I did well on. I even have my old calculus book, which was so novel in the late 1980's that it actually contained 'computer problems'. It may as well be engraved on stone tablets now, but the principles are still sound as they were in the 1600's when Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz unleashed them on the world.

So guess what I'm doing this summer? That's right...in between work and taking care of my family, I am going to review, review, review!

And sometime next year, I will finally be on speaking terms with Hypatia again...

A Time To Rise

It was the year of fire... the year of destruction... the year we took back what was ours. It was the year of rebirth... the year of great sadness... the year of pain... and the year of joy. It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed. The year is 2015. The place: my life!!!

Give up???  HELL NO!!!!

My father never, ever tolerated giving up. Even as he was dying he fought to the very end, like the warrior he was all his life. I never got a chance to be that kind of warrior, but I can be one nonetheless.

I feel as though I have absorbed some of his toughness. The day before my father died, a rather clueless coworker who shall remain nameless demanded I send some files to her. Mind you, these weren't particularly mission-critical; they could have waited (especially since it was a weekend!) This coworker brushed off that I had mentioned that my father was dying and I had other things on my mind than meeting minutes. So, I sent the minutes. Not because this individual wanted them, but because I knew that's what my father would have done: completed the mission. I did it for him!

Last year wasn't all tragedy and disappointment. I got to see my son advance in Scouting and my daughter start preschool. Sandy and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary (although our renewal of vows didn't take place as planned for obvious reasons). And I made significantly more progress towards my Masters degree. All I have to do is finish my thesis and it's done!

But the big newsmaker started last September. I made the commitment to have bariatric surgery. 12 weeks of orientation and dieting to get down to the optimal weight for surgery ensued. It has not been easy, but on February 11th everything changed. (warning: semi-graphic picture)

I had a vertical sleeve gastrectomy and I have so far lost 65 pounds since last September and 25 pounds since surgery. I go to the gym or work out on my own every day now. In another week I'll start lifting weights again. And by next year I will run the Spartan race!

I am also aiming to have my thesis finally finished this summer, so I can move on to the next phase: getting my doctorate. It will be a tough, long haul, but I will finish the race that I have started, just as I promised my father. I would like to get my Ph.D in Computational and Data Sciences from Chapman University, which is local to me and will accommodate the schedule of a busy professional with two little kids at home. I've spoken to them and my odds are pretty good there, but if that doesn't work I have other options as well.


My assertiveness is paying off as well. Thanks to a longstanding need and to a coming management realignment I will be returning to my old posting in Import Operations, but this time as their quality manager. In naval terms I have moved on from being XO of an aircraft carrier to the captain of an Aegis-class cruiser. There are challenges to be met there, which I am looking forward to greatly! I miss my old comrades and want to do all I can to help them out!

There's still a lot to be done. There are still bills to be paid, a lot of weight yet to lose before I reach my goal, and little people who are growing up way too fast. And Sandy needs my support more than ever before. But now I feel much more empowered to meet all those challenges. Despite all that's happened, things are looking up, and I will rise from the flames!

A Year of Hell

Forgive me father, for I have sinned...it has been 561 days since my last confession...

The past year has been very, very bad. It started with a car accident about a year ago. Fortunately Alex and I were okay, but my vehicle was totalled. I was not looking forward to another car payment, and my streak of nearly 14 years without a car accident was erased. Thankfully the accident was not my fault!

Not too long after that, my mother-in-law was hospitalized. At first we thought she just had a bad cold, but it developed into something far, far worse. She went into the hospital in March, and never left. We lost her just before Christmas. In the meantime, the hospital stay, and trying to settle her affairs at her old home while we attempted to find a new one for her dominated our year--to the exclusion of other things that I now very much regret.

Still, I may have been able to handle that loss (and more importantly help Sandy through it better) had I not had a loss of my own:

Just before Thanksgiving, I lost my father very suddenly to a very severe case of pneumonia. He went from being in tremendously good health for a 74-year-old man to beyond the Rim in a matter of a week. He was my example in all things in life, and I miss him tremendously. It hurts me even to write this, but it must be written.

With my father gone, my mother was left alone. While I would have gladly sacrificed everything to help her, I was reminded by the rest of the family that I still have two very young children to take into consideration. My mother moved shortly after Christmas to live with my brother and his wife in Iowa; their kids are all grown and can provide additional help if needed. I understand the rationale, and we still speak very frequently, but the loss still is there. Christmas 2014 was the last Christmas I will ever celebrate in the home I grew up in. My mother had no choice but to sell.

And all through this there was still life to be lived. There was baseball and Cub Scouts and homework (both mine and the kids!) to take care of, along with the usual pressures of work. The stress took its toll on me unfortunately, and all the progress I had made in the past year towards weight loss was wiped out and then some.

But did I give up? Hell NO!!!! My next post will describe what's happening now.

In the meantime, I am very, very thankful that even as bad as last year was we did have a family reunion last May. Almost all of Clan Condrey was able to attend and as far as I am concerned it was the highlight of the year!

So, folks, that's why I've been so quiet on here in the past year or so. But I need to write, and this is the best place to do it. More coming soon!