It's the most innovative video I have seen on YouTube. It has the most meaning, and it has great production values.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Website: I posted 50 photos from our cruise in February. It was on the Grand Princess out of Galveston. The pictures were mostly taken by Gene. Can you spot micro Schnauzer? She's been all over the US, Canada, Mexico, and Central America! Check out the photo album in the coumn to the right. --->

Home: We decided to hire a lawn service last fall after our townhouse move fell through. Yesterday we chose a company to mow and edge the grass, and they’re probably going to do some quarterly maintenance as well including weeding and trimming. Mowing will take place once every 10 days.

Also, Gene ordered a DVR from our satellite company yesterday, which frees up one of our satellite boxes for use in my office.

Our taxes are finished and, as predicted, our refunds are larger this year. Unfortunately the increased refunds are due to our townhouse fiasco. On the positive side, the funds we get back from Uncle Sam will be enough to pay for our trip to Japan during Christmas of 2007. That means all we have to save for now is the trip to Hawaii with Mom and Dad in February of 2008 (yeah, we plan waaaayyyy ahead for vacations).

Work: Lately, school has been a little frustrating for me. I’m on the budget committee and we are dealing with the usual cuts in funding even though we are taking more students next year which should have driven more money to our school. I don’t know when the state legislature is going to step up to the plate and dedicate more funding to public education. We are the 47^th state in terms of per student education funding – and we have a 1.9 billion dollar surplus projected. Someone needs to kick the entire legislature in the ass!

Other than money issues, things are going okay. Spring is upon us and this is the beginning of a very busy time of year – my least favorite. This is when I often start to have muscle spasms in my back as school pressures increase and fatigue sets in. Hopefully I can avoid a third yearly recurrence of this problem. I am occasionally doing my back stretching exercises as taught to me by my therapist last year; though occasional will probably not be enough. I must be more disciplined about regular stretching if I’m hoping to avoid the debilitating spasms of the past.

Travel: It’s a big part of our life in the last two years. Gene and I have been to 14 different countries lately, and that doesn’t count places like Puerto Rico since it’s part of the USA.

We had no plans for a summer vacation this year until this past week. I had expressed interest in a short trip somewhere in the US, but Gene kept saying he wasn’t interested. So, last week I decided to take a leap on my own and schedule a vacation for just myself. For my airfare I used my American Airlines voucher which I received after our Dallas flight was canceled last Christmas. I’m going to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC for a week this summer. I’ll be leaving just a few days after school is over and I’ll return home just one week later. I had to keep the vacation cheap since I’m paying for it with my tax refund and an honorarium I received from Seattle University (the result of supervising a student teacher). I’m staying at Extended Stay America motels so I’ll have my own kitchen and can therefore save money by cooking my own breakfast and dinner.

It’s my hope to experience a lot of museums and historic sites during my trip. Of course I’ll visit Independence Hall in Philly, but also the new Constitution Museum, Valley Forge, and the Philadelphia Art of Museum. In Washington DC I expect to see the new Museum of the American Indian, as well as Mount Vernon, the Air and Space Museum expansion at Dulles, the new Botanical Garden, National Cathedral, and the US Museum of the Holocaust.

Finally, after our Christmas 2006 vacation my wheeled bag returned home with a couple large rips in it (due no doubt to the apes that work in luggage handling). So I purchased a new roll aboard bag on the Internet, along with a new carry on briefcase. They arrived via UPS this week, so I’m feeling set for not only my summer vacation, but our more immediate cruise to Mexico which is just four weeks away.

Family: Gene has found a breeder in Oregon and he talked with them about the purchase of a new Schnauzer puppy. He expects to fill out the application this weekend. The dog would be ready to bring home in July. I’m sure Amy will love having a new sister. We will need to think of a name. Gene teases me about naming her Petunia, which is an absolutely vile name for a dog! Though we have agreed the new dog is “Gene’s Dog” (Amy was a gift to me when I graduated from Seattle U) I still reserve the right to veto ridiculous names in order to save the new puppy from merciless teasing by her Schnauzer peers.

Recreation: I'm deeply engaged in building my England and Ireland vacation video. Though the trip took place in the summer of 2005, I'm just now getting around to editing the video. I suspect just this first part will be about one hour long. But I will still have a video upcoming about Germany, Belgium, and Holland.

Last of all, I signed up for an Advanced Open Water Scuba course. It’s a three day class which includes five “adventure” dives: a deep dive to 100 feet, a navigation dive using only an underwater map and a compass, a night dive in Elliott Bay, a boat/reef dive in Puget Sound, as well as a local fish identification dive. Including the dive I’m doing in Cabo San Lucas, this series of class dives will bring my dive total up to 18 by this spring, and 14 of those dives will have taken place in just the December 2006 to April 2007 period!

I guess all is going well.