As I have a bit more time on my hands for the first time in over eight years, I have decided to spend a bit more of it outside.  Otherwise we have all been spending too much of our time either watching TV or playing computer games (especially now that Connor has caught the video game addiction).  And so for the past few days, my boys and I have been taking walks around our neighborhood and finishing with a few shots with the basketball.  

Connor is riding his new, but already too small, bike.  He's still getting the hang of the pedals, and today was the first day that he made it up the first hill by himself (I still had to push him up the second hill).  The training wheels are still on, but he needs a bit more practice with the steering and pedaling before they should come off.  Rowen, meanwhile, is learning to stay to the side of the road and is able to run for quite a while.  It is cute to see him bend a bit and rest his hands on his knees when he gets a bit winded.  Trevor still likes to prove that he can beat all of us home.

My basketball skills have certainly atrophied, but my boys make me look like a pro star.  Connor can nearly get the ball up to the basket, Rowen just throws the ball randomly, and Trevor thinks hitting the post makes his shot a "close one."  Today, a neighbor child came over with his football as well, and so I found myself juggling a football and basketball as I seemed to be the boys' favorite target.

I have also liked our walks and time outside as I've been seeing more of my neighbors these past few days than I have almost the entire time that we have lived here.  I truly did not realize how much my extra work was isolating me from ... well ... everything.  It is clear that I need to get us all out even more often.

My shoulders are sore.

Growing up, I loved spending time hanging from trees, running obstacle courses in my yard, and jumping around playground equipment.  I climbed up the outside of spiral (actually helical, but what's in a name?) slides, dangled from the outside railings around my grandparents' deck, and used any narrow flat surface as a balance beam.  By the time I was in middle school, I felt that there wasn't anything that I couldn't do.  

Today, the closest that I get to the same feeling is when playing Assassin's Creed.  There is a middle-school portion of my brain that believes the actions of Altair, Ezio, Connor, and Edward are realistic, and that (with mild practice) I would be capable of doing the same things.

On Tuesday, I watched as my youngest child had similar thoughts while playing on various playground equipment at both Ella Sharp Park and the St. Mary's school parking lot.  Watching him play with enthusiasm (and still some caution in higher locations), filled me with nostalgia.  One set of monkey bars was built sturdily enough to hold my weight, so I dangled from them for a few moments, quickly coming to the realization that I could not even pull myself up half way to a chin up, let alone swing from one bar to the other.  In my mind, I remembered being able to pull myself up and flip over to the top of the bars.

It seemed so tantalizingly close, but instead I think I might have pulled something.

For the first time in over eight years, I will not be teaching a class at Baker College of Jackson in a fall semester.  With my wife's broadening schedule and some changes in my school schedule this year, it was not practical to teach an evening class, and due to lower student enrollment, they are not offering the Saturday classes that I used to teach.

It did not fully hit me until I sent the email declining a class this fall, but I have been at Baker for quite a while now.  I have been teaching classes there nearly every term since only two months after we moved to Jackson.  I have been teaching there since almost a year before Connor was born, let alone Rowen.  When I first started working there, George W. Bush was still President, Jennifer Granholm was in her first term as Governor of Michigan, we had not hit the "great recession," and the first iPhone had not yet been introduced.

I am concerned about how this will affect our overall finances, but I hope that I will see an improvement in my health during this reprieve.  Last year at this time, I was teaching two classes (although one was independent study).  The issue with teaching extra classes during the school year isn't just the class time, but the number of hours that I spend every week preparing for class and grading assignments.  During weeks when papers are due, I often lose the entire weekend.

One way or another, this fall is going to be different than any other fall semester than I've had at Lincoln.  I hope that it works out for the best.

I've been fighting a cold (or perhaps a flu since there are occasional spikes of fever) since Monday afternoon.  Today is the first day that I went without taking decongestant during the day--I still plan on taking some before I go to sleep.  I was able to keep my energy up during the days, as well as the evening open house on Wednesday, only by sleeping through most of the evening on both Tuesday and Thursday.  Finally, I am at a point where I can feel that the cold is nearing its end.

It's at this point in an illness where I usually get a sensation that I call a "cold euphoria."  Basically, despite the fact that I do not feel well, I feel great at the same time.  It usually is the strongest when I am not taking any kind of medication, so I know that medical side-effects are not the cause; however, I will not rule out the idea that it is a symptom of exhaustion.

I have never quite been able to explain the sensations I experience in a cold euphoria.  I feel tired, but the good kind of tired, like after having spent the day applying physical labor to a just cause.  My mind feels unburdened in that hazy way it feels when coming out of a pleasant day dream.  My body, though tired, notes changes in the air, both in temperature and tactile sensitivity.  Basically, I feel like I have come through some sort of trial in triumph and my mind and body are looking forward to a well-deserved rest.

This euphoria can last a few hours or a few days.  I never clearly remember when it starts or when it ends; I only notice it when I am in it.  When in one, I want little more than to wear comfortable clothes and just lay back either sleeping, reading, or playing a low-stress video game.

When I explain this to most people, I get the impression that they have not experienced anything similar.  I figure that they probably chalk it up to another one of my eccentricities.  Still, I wish more people could experience this feeling (without the use of drugs, I should add).

My sons are bouncing on the beds rather than sleeping in them.  For the most part, we did the same things today, yet they are full of energy and I just want to go to bed.  It's a bit worse today because we ate dinner rather late.  While eating seems to put me into a food-coma these days, my sons manage to find whatever bit of sugar that might be in the meal to exponentially increase their energy.

They have now created some sort of game that requires jumping from the bed (thankfully not the upper bunk) to the floor, climbing back up, and jumping again.  Oh, and laser noises are required too.

The thing is that I remember coming up with those games and having the energy to play them.  I created cosmic battles and fantastical quests; invisible armies and monstrous challenges awaited me.  A part of me is tempted to join them even though the rational portion of my brain knows that I would easily break the bed.  

They are climbing into bed after being properly chastised (especially after one of them made a rather loud thump upon hitting the ground).  They are protesting, but I know the protests are half-hearted.  Another irony of life is that they will be asleep in moments while I will be stuck with my thoughts for a while still.  

Thanks be to God!  When we returned from my sister's lake cottage today, we found lights on in our neighborhood.  On our last check, Consumer's Energy's website stated that our area's estimated restoration was 4pm on Thursday (a day and a half away).  I had tried to be optimistic, but my sister's experience in such matters had me thinking the worst.  Although I expected to find our house dark and to once again sleep without a fan, I prayed that we would have power on our return, however unworthy I might be of such favors.  Not only did we have power, but it had come back a mere twenty minutes before we returned home!

The storms last night terrified me as no others had done before.  Generally, I enjoy these demonstrations of nature's fury and awesome might, but when the storm woke me at about 2AM, I was filled with a strange fear.  It was when I went for my iPad to check on the radar (and blinded myself in the process) that the storm kicked up to a new level and I immediately set out to take my family to the basement.  A sick feeling washed over me as I realized that my earlier delay may have cost my family their lives had this been an actual tornado.  Again, it was only through God's grace that this storm which caused so much destruction was not more damaging.

I need to learn to be more thankful for what I have been given.  No real damage befell our house (nor the homes of our neighbors).  While we did not have power, my parents and my sister did, so we had places to go to both stay connected to the rest of the world as well have as have access to modern conveniences such as running water and electricity.  The local store had just received a fresh shipment of dry ice this morning (they are normally out right away during such outages).  Although expensive, the dry ice made it so all of our refrigerated and frozen food stayed in good condition.

And, of course, our power was back on tonight.  Sometimes it takes trials and tribulations (both large and small) to remind us of the true blessings that we have in our lives.

As the title suggests, I have three ideas for electrical companies.  I am not listing them in any particular order.

1. Legislation has already moved to allow people to sell energy (such as excess energy from solar panels or wind turbines) and more will probably be passed to let companies buy and sell more energy to regular people.  Most entrenched energy companies are spending a lot of money fighting this kind of legislation when they should be guiding it.  Legislators are fond of putting provisions on their bills, why not introduce provisions that allow the above buying and selling of energy as long as a certain percentage of the  income from such transfers must go to building and repairing infrastructure?  If the current companies are smart, they would keep that required percentage lower than what they currently set aside for such activities and then offer new companies their existing services to help meet the requirements.  Current companies would be competing on a more even footing than what some of the current legislation suggests, and would be able to make a profit by extending their infrastructure services to the new companies.  Sure, they would lose their virtual monopolies, but that seems to be the direction that legislation is heading anyway.  This would give them an edge in dealing with the future.

2. Rent solar panels (or wind turbines, natural gas generators, or fuel cells) to business and residential customers at a monthly fee that is slightly less than their current electrical bills.  This idea can turn subdivisions into power generators, providing energy closer to the source ( thus requiring less fuel to meet demand) AND making a larger percentage of the company's power generation come from renewable resources (well, not for the natural gas or maybe even the fuel cells), which is something that will probably also be legislated in the near future.

3. Create an off-shoot that sells more energy efficient appliances in return for recycling energy guzzlers.  They already do this to some degree, but if they do this on a larger scale, they can reduce energy consumption in high volume areas, cash in on government incentives, and hopefully make a profit on selling the appliances.

I'm not saying these are perfect ideas (nor are they fully developed), but I think that they would be steps in the right direction.