Where to begin? What have I been up to lately?

Summer still has a few weeks left for me, even though it doesn't fully seem like summer. For the past two weeks it has been 50 degrees and rainy. I think the highest so far has been about 75 degrees. In town, the big snowhill is still there--even though it is muddy and dirty, you can still see the snow. So that means it has not gotten super hot to melt it all. Weird that I always hated the heat but I miss it still. Must be a changing of the seasons thing.

I am still working on my thesis. It is taking me forever because I am procrastinating and I am conscious of my procrastination. Amy pushes me to get a few pages a day. I try. It is just hard-I have to have two books open as I work through it, Tennyson's In Memoriam and Kubler-Ross' On Grief and Grieving. Have to cite where Tennyson felt the stages of grief and what that psychologist Kubler-Ross says about it. Cumbersome. And with Madison right with me all day, it is hard to get far when she needs attention, wants to play, wants juice, needs to go potty, needs a piece of her favorite cotto salami, etc. I have until the end of October and I need to concentrate on it. And I honestly think that all this mental exercise over death and grieving has brought me down a little bit. Hard to switch gears from talking about depression over the loss of a loved one and then be playful to the wife and kids. If anything, I have internally appreciated them even more. Something hovers over it in my brain though.

Can you see why I read a lot of comic books and watch sci-fi? Kind of an escape.

Amy has just received her Associates Degree! She did it all online through an affiliate of University of Phoenix online. Now she will move into her last half of her Bachelors Degree. I am so proud of her. Business finance.

Then we have been thinking about other states. Nome is nice. But not being on the road system has been tough. I signed my year contract already so I will be here at least one more year. Maybe two. Who knows? Point is that we are open for pretty much anything. We are definitely adventurous and we have talked about this. I need to do some thinking. Where to go? All I ask for is a high school English teaching job. I can start filling out all those troublesome applications nationwide and then get an appropriate state license once we find a district. Amy has many marketable skills now in finance and banking. We are open to explore and discover.

I mean, I have already done it--twice now. Up and moved to Seattle and lived there for six years. 1999-2005. Moved to Nome to try it out. We may stay; we may not. But we are not going to pigeonhole ourselves into a corner. I think this is also the main reason we have never bought a house. A house means permanence. I think deep down that Amy and I are against that. She moved around even more as a kid, with stints in Virginia and elsewhere. She even lived a year or so in Germany.

I have a new school year approaching. New volleyball season. New everything. School will be new because they are implementing the new curriculum, from which there WAS NO bloody curriculum. I get to do a lot of new stuff for the sophomores. Get to do some Shakespeare. Hope the kids are ready. It excites the hell out of me! Volleyball will be cool this year because of the new gym and practicing in it. I get to walk to the gym, for one thing! And we will have two nets up for practice, so we can separate and stay together at the same time, what I have always wanted in the program.

Madison will start a pre-school type of environment at the Kawerak daycare. This will be good for her.

Hopefully, Morgan will get in quick to the charter school. She is ninth on the waiting list-they take a lot of family that have already been a part of the school and native population first. She needs the challenge.

I have been enjoying lying low this summer. I'm a hermit anyway. My folks will tell you that I spent a lot of time in my room reading and listening to music. Lot of reading. I like alone time (and alone time can also be defined as family time). I like being holed in to the apartment. Sure there are times I want to get out but I like being cooped up with these three girls of mine. And when I go out, I take them with me-that's how much I love them.

Life in all its wonder is beautiful. There is a great big world out there. While I like being hermited up with my family, I don't care where it is, so long as I am with my family.