The end of an era

May 24, 2011. The day 18 years in the making. My daughter finally graduated from high school. In what could be classed as one of the poorest-coordinated ceremonies ever known to man, the ceremony is held on a Tuesday night, scheduled to begin at 8:30. At 8:50, the people are still coming in, but they start anyway. The speakers are brief, the diplomas are done...and then comes the scholarships. They could have just read the number of recipients and the total amount awarded, but NO...they read each and every scholarship awarded to each and every recipient, including college name, city and state. Keep in mind, this is a Tuesday night. We leave at 10:45 because we're just exhausted. At 11:45, my daughter pulls up outside. The ceremony went on until 11:20! Congratulations, LRSD, on your ability to screw up something as simple (and sacred?) as a high school graduation. God, what a bunch of morons.

Then I come to find out that my first born, who signed up with the Air Force just over a year ago, is coming home--permanently. No explanation as of yet, but since when does the USAF just "send people home" during war time? Especially those that are only one year into a six year enlistment?! Yeah, there's something rotten in the refrigerator. But we'll delve more into that later.

I told him years ago that his path couldn't be more parallel to mine...and damn, if that's not the truth! The difference--I had a work ethic, some pretty good job skills, a little motivation, and the desire to get a college degree. He has none of those. Call me an asshole for saying it, but as I always say, "It ain't mean if it's true." So, he's coming home next week, just under five years before his enlistment is due to end. What does one do then? Move back in with mommy, get a part-time job, and make another half-assed attempt at going to a community college to earn an associate's degree in something. Yeah...this has disaster written all over it. But I digress...

On another note, I did finally get that knee surgery I've been needing so desperately for so long. As it turns out, my patella groove (where it articulates with the femur and the tibia) has worn all of the cartilage off, and it's now a bone-on-bone articulation. The reason my knee would 'lock' when it sat stationary was because of this highly-painful condition. So, he went in and cleaned that up as best he could, repaired a couple of cartilage tears, and vacuumed out all of the 'trash' that had accumulated in the 20 years since my ACL/MCL repair in 1992. As it stands, I'll probably have to have the knee rebuilt (again) in 3-5 years...but at least I can hold out a bit longer before it comes to that. What a mess.

Hail from the storm on 4/19/11

Tornadoes, rain (LOTS of rain, floods...this has been the story this spring. More off all of these than we've had in a very, very long time. Spring isn't quite over yet, but perhaps all of the bad weather will be. I'm not ready for the 100º+ temps this summer, but at least we've made it to June without any extreme heat. And if that wasn't bad enough, we had a HAIL storm that knocked holes in the roof! Here's a picture of the hail--it's HUGE! And yes...we're getting the roof replaced. Thanks, Shelter Insurance!


With that said, I think I'm done for now. Summer is coming, and it's going to get hot. Wow. So, until next time...