Well, the students were back in force! It is so nice to have the energy back in the school. Certainly, some of that energy needs better direction, but I love being a part of it.

That said, I am certainly low on energy after today. The first day always hits me the hardest as it takes a little while to get back into the rhythm and routine. These first couple of days also involve me talking a bit too much. I'm looking forward to building the routines that let the students get more chances to interact.

There are going to be some challenges this year, but I still feel quite optimistic about it.

I had a great time at today's Open House, but it made for a long day. Even though I still have more to prepare online for my classes, I'm ready for my students tomorrow. With that said, I need to get to bed so I can get enough sleep. 

Today's readings were all about the final victory of Christ over sin and death. The First Reading and Gospel make it clear that this only comes to pass due to Mary's role as His mother. Of all the people whom He came in contact during His time on Earth, no one else was closer to Him, nor had a stronger relationship.

Catholics are often accused of "worshiping" Mary. While it is true that we hold her in the highest regard, it is as a person, not a god. Mary's relationship with her son is one that we, as humans, can understand. This makes her more relatable to us, and thus approachable when we are dealing with problems in our lives. Besides, it's usually a good idea to be on good terms with our friends' mothers.

The new animated Star Trek series had several strikes against it before I ever saw it, but it ended up winning me over. I'm not a fan of animated shows that target adults, nor do I care for embarrassment-based humor. Even though Lower Decks has both of those elements, it also had both heart and a commitment to the Star Trek franchise that made it satisfying to watch and a worthy addition to the catalog of Star Trek shows. 

I was little surprised by how short it was, but I was also grateful that the first season did not go much longer than its 10 half hour episodes. Despite being two-thirds the length of live Star Trek shows, each episode still felt complete. The season itself followed the episodic formula of the older shows rather than the serialized pattern that the newer series have taken. Each episode is packed full of references to the previous shows and movies, sometimes even referencing common memes that have been built around them.

However, what really makes the show work is that I came to care about the characters. The focus is on four junior officers, but even the other regularly reoccurring characters develop over the ten episodes. For that matter, I even started to care about the Cerritos itself--an unimportant starship that has to deal with the consequences and paperwork of the adventures of the more popular starships in the Federation.

I highly recommend it for Star Trek fans who are willing to laugh at their fandom.

It's been eleven years since Connor's birthday landed on a Friday. Interestingly, this was also the only Friday the 13th of the year (which is often the case for Fridays that fall on the 13th in August--and always the case for Fridays that fall on the 13th in May and June--its just the way our calendar works). The only odd occurrences of the day were the pop up storms in the afternoon. In fact, the downpour that hit in at our house in the early evening is the heaviest one that I remember us having here; it looked like a waterfall. 

Connor insisted on making his own birthday dinner and cake. Both of which were quite good. Actually, he's been cooking a lot of our dinners this week (grilling steak, making tacos, smoking a salmon he marinated, and frying chicken breasts). I'm glad that he has this interest in cooking; it's a talent and passion that he certainly does not get from me. 

While I am glad today is Friday (even if it was the 13th), I still have a lot to get done before school starts next Tuesday (not to mention the Open House on Monday). I should probably head to bed. As it is his birthday, even though school is just a few days away, I will let Connor keep playing his game.

I came home to find that the tree service our electrical association hired had already cut down the trees they had marked while we were on vacation. There are now a LOT of trees on the ground near our driveway. We lost more of our tree screen than I would have liked, but we at least still have some there.

Sadly, I need to call them again as they did not mark (and thus did not take down) quite a few of our trees that are still a line danger farther up the road. For that matter, there are many dead trees beyond our property that are a concern. Meanwhile, I have even more trees to take down on my property myself. 

Does anyone want some firewood?

While on our Michigan trip, I realized that I had waited too long to trim my facial hair, especially as the edges of my mustache kept curling into my mouth. I rarely let it grow out that far, but when I do, I understand the need for men with mustaches to twirl them as doing so helps keep them in place. Unfortunately, doing so gives me an even more villainous air (as if the goatee wasn't enough), and I even find myself thinking darker thoughts as I keep getting whiskers in my mouth.

Thus, for the safety of the universe, I turned away from that path of villainy, and trimmed down (too far, according to Janelle) my whiskers. While I was at it, I gave my hair a buzz. It was also misbehaving while we were on our trip. 

I made one big mistake. Since the clippers I used to trim my facial hair were right there in my hand and my safer nose-hair trimmers were oh-so-far-but-still-within-reach, I used the clippers to deal with a few errant nose hairs. Not only was the job unsatisfactory, but I managed to nip the inside of my left nostril in the process. It wasn't enough to draw blood, but the underside of the tip of my nose has been hurting for days now. It's so important to use the correct tool for the correct job.

The soreness has receded a bit, and the lesson has been learned. 

Sure, I stepped back into SoHi yesterday, but there is something different about showing up for required professional development. I may have been a little overly enthusiastic today; I was just so excited to be back. Frankly, there are a lot of reasons to be trepidatious about this coming school year--and there are a few areas that cause me concern--but overall, I'm really looking forward to this year.

It was great to get to mingle and work with this fantastic staff again. Although I am certainly going to miss some of our staff who left, it looks like we got some great new hires who will be excellent additions to our team. It looks like we will be building back, and even improving upon, our school culture that took such a hit at the beginning of the pandemic. 

I do have a few challenges that I need to overcome. The primary one is setting up my classroom. I'm really uncertain about what seating arrangement I'm going to use to maximize my available space and allowing for contact tracing while still allowing for group interaction and discussion. Following directly after that is searching for online resources for my classes, particularly my English 11 as we no longer have access to its online textbook. I might just resort to scanning in the selections I want to teach into PDFs like I did for the courses that I taught last year, but I would like to find something that is more interactive.

It was six years today that I had my first day of inservice at KPBSD, having just arrived on the peninsula the night before. So much has changed in such a short amount of time. Now, I'm starting my 7th year in the school district, my 5th year at SoHi, and my 24th year as an educator. It was good, but tiring, to be back. 

It was fitting that today I finally received permission to officially submit my dissertation for rubric review by my committee. This is primarily a formality as my committee members are in agreement that my dissertation is ready for the University Research Reviewer's examination. In fact, the first word in my methodologist's response to my latest draft was "Wow!" While this is not a Dinobot-worthy moment, it is really, really close. It felt so good to hit that submit button.

This is especially true as I officially report back to school tomorrow. I stopped by today to pick up my keys and get a chance to talk with a few people before we start our official work. Even though our district administration has made masking optional, and despite my original hopes that I would not have to wear a mask to school this year, as I consider my recent travels, the current lack of a vaccine for younger children, and the rising number of cases in our area, I will be wearing a mask despite being vaccinated.

Still, I'm looking forward to this upcoming school year. I really love what I do, and I hope to spread the love of my subjects to my students as well. I just need to readjust my body's schedule.

In today's first reading, Elijah is ready to give up and prays for death. Instead an angel comes to him twice with food which is enough to sustain Elijah for the rest of his journey. I'm heavily reminded of those Snickers commercials (and the subsequent memes) where grumpy or angry people are given a Snickers and are suddenly pleasant to be around. So many of us turn angry or bitter when our  basic needs are not met.

Paul warned the Ephesians about focusing on that anger and bitterness. Instead, he told them to become compassionate and forgiving. While anger might be the natural response, if we don't turn towards loving one another, our problems will only grow. 

Thus Jesus tells us in today's Gospel that having our needs in this world met will not satisfy us for long. Instead, we need to embrace Him--His Body, His Blood--fully. Only then will we feel satisfaction--when we release our desires to satisfy our hatred and instead embrace our loving God. 

We arrived back in Alaska late last night, going to bed after about 22 hours of being awake. Rather than drive back to Soldotna in the wee hours of the morning, we’ve spent the night with friends of ours. We should be home later today (after a stop by Costco).

I really do not enjoy commercial air travel, but I didn’t feel any ill effects on this return trip. Our flight from Chicago to Seattle had several spots of turbulence that reminded me of some of the jerkier rides at Cedar Point. That trip particularly took at toll on Trevor. Meanwhile, Rowen’s worst part was at the very end of our flight into Anchorage. He woke up as we were landing complaining that his teeth were bleeding (they weren’t) and took a while to calm down. Connor kept his AirPods in for takeoff and landings, and said that doing so made it so he did not have his normal ear aches.

The trip was over way too quickly, but I’m still glad to be on this side of the air travel. I was having nightmares about something happening with our flights that either separated our family or left us stranded at one of our layovers. It’s also nice to breathe the Alaskan air again.

Pack and Play: This is it--the end of our visit to Michigan. We intentionally chose to take it easy today before tomorrow's early morning start to our day of traveling. We made final visi

Most of our day was spent either preparing for, driving to, driving from, recovering from, or actually being at the Lake Michigan beach at Van Buren State Park. With all of the time and effort involved, several people were concerned that I did not go in the water. Instead, I stayed back in the shady section of the beach and watched as my family had fun in the waves.

I was often asked why I did not want to go in (and I had several reasons why), but I found it curious that I was asked so often. I had told people that I probably would not go in before we even left. I did not complain about being there, nor did I glower or pout. I did not pressure people to leave. Still, multiple people kept pressuring me to go into the water.

I should note that I was not the only one in our party not to enter the water. However, I also did not climb the dune or walk the beach while collecting rocks. I just sat watching most of our group enjoying the water, my sexy wife sunning herself, my granddaughter playing in the surf and sand, and my grandson sleeping in the shade.