Yes! Something to Do!

As you probably know, I have 3 (maybe 4 but I hope just 3) classes left till I get my Bachelor's degree. Last week I ordered two of those classes- text books should arrive today if they didn't get unduely delayed by yesterday's day off. They are both history classes. One class is called The American Family. Its a study of the family from the colonial times until now. Because America is such a melting pot of cultures we will be examining how those cultures influence today's family and how the family evolved. Interesting. The second class is Latin American History. That class is obviously about Latin America. I've never studied Latin America- I guess only briefly in Highschool. I remember having done a report on Colombia once in High School- Thats South America though, right? Eh. I guess its good I'm taking this class! The only thing I'm not interested in is Politics. I love Medieval History because although there were politics they were so much less complicated than American and modern politics. Latin America is quite in between the modern politics and the medieval politics- decidedly more complicated than a thousand years ago but maybe not quite as complicated as America. And I just realized I'm supposing that is true. From everything else that I know about world history I feel I'm making an educated guess but I very well may be totally wrong. I guess I'll let you know!

3rd times the charm

This is my third try at updating my blog. The previous two tries were greeted with a frozen computer and the subsequent loss of what I'd written. Because there isn't much to say, I didn't really care. And I still don't have much to say but I figured I'd see if I can finally get this sorta-not-updates post up. Matt has been working on getting in shape. His records at the moment are 36 situps in one minute (44 total) and 26 pushups in one minute (26 total). He has to get up to at least 35 pushups and 40 situps just to be ready for boot camp so he is working as hard as he can. Today he decided to set an alarm on his phone that rings every hour. When it rings he gets down and does 20 pushups. We are hoping that this will help improve his speed as well as his reps. Hopefuly it doesn't just tire him out. We'll see in a few days if this is helping or not. Matt did graduate on Saturday! He recieved his Associates degree from St Charles Community College. We are both so proud of him. It took him 7 semesters of working full time and doing as many classes as he could handle every semester and its finally done! I'll post some super hot pics of him in his robes in the next post. :)

DEP

Matt is now officially a member of the United States Air Force. He went to MEPS all day Monday and was poked, prodded, questioned, and sworn-in. He got a wake-up call around 4am and didn't get a break until 11. When he called I cried. Silly me. It was only one night away from him but I didn't like the idea of having no idea what he was doing. I guess I'll have to get used to that.

He signed up for several jobs and I guess they'll be assigning him to something relitively quickly. At least I hope. I heard that a lot of things in the military are 'hurry-up-and-wait' but I hope that this isn't one of them. It would be nice to get a paycheck. They placed him in the DEP (delayed enlistment program) where he'll stay until he ships out to boot camp.

The jobs that he chose all have to do with being a mechanical supervisor. First was helicopter, then tactical aircraft then something else. So the next thing that he has to be doing is getting in shape for boot camp. According to all the websites that I could find, he has to be able to do 45 push-ups and 50 sit-ups in one minute as well as a mile and a half run in 11:57. He is pumping the pushups and situps out fast but not fast enough yet. But he is working on them.

Yeah for Matt! I am so proud of him. And I can't wait to see him in his blues after training. He'll be buff and so hot. I'm sighing just thinking about it!

Mother's Day

So here is a funny mother's day story:

Last night we were crawling into bed around 10pm when I decided I'd remind Matt about Mothers day. (For all you moms/wives, you understand how amazing it is to actually have them remember on their own...) He sort of stopped breathing then said 'I know'. I took that to mean that he hadn't done anything. I said, "well, its only 10. Good night." It took him a moment to pick up what I meant and even then he still asked "Do you want me to go to the store right now?" I ignored his question and a moment later he was getting out of bed to go to walmart.

He told me later that the store was filled with men and teenagers- a lot more than on a normal day. It was quite amusing to have him leave at 10pm to buy me something.

So this morning I woke up to Emmaline talking in bed and sort of kicked at Matt. He didn't respond. Then I said "Emmaline's awake" and he didn't respond. So for a few minutes I laid there wondering if I'd have to get her myself and if there was going to be breakfast in bed or not...

After that, the day has been nice. I ended up nudging Matt enough that he remembered and I laid around in bed for a while while he made food. I got eggs and strawberries for breakfast. He bought me 9 roses that look like a marbled red, a beautiful card and some pansie seeds. On Tuesday he'll bring home a flower pot that he made in Ceramics and that'll be my final present that I can put the pansie seeds into. I'm looking forward to that because I have the perfect place to put it.

Verbal Pet Peeves

I'm an editor at heart. I correct people's pronounciation, grammar and even word choice regularly. I can't help it. Here is a list of some of my verbal pet peeves

1. Probly- the word is actually proBAbly

2. I could care less- the phrase is actually I couldN'T care less. If you could care less, we wouldn't be having this conversation now would we?

3. Samwich- the word is actually sanDwich. It is pronounced with the D.

4. Nother- although this word is actually in the dictionary to be used in the phrase 'a whole nother', its slang and should be 'other'. Try it and you'll sound so much more sophisticated.

I'll have to add to them as I think of more. It was surprisingly difficult to remember what they were. Before dictionaries were created language changed rapidly and from region to region because of trade, migration, colonization- etc. Since the invention of dictionaries the language has practically stayed the same for the past 200 years. Thats a feat we should be proud of. But the more slang enters our language and the more we let it stick around- the faster our language is going to change. If you thought it was hard to teach your kids all the tricks to reading and spelling, wait until slang takes over! Then your grandkids will be ripping out their hair trying to keep all their exceptions to the rules straight.

Anticipation

The anticipation is killing me. This is one of those circumstances that I know God is in control of everything but I don't have any clue what he has in store. Matt is (hopefully) going to do his physical and meet with a career counselor and actually swear in on Friday. This has yet to be scheduled because the Army has to release their claim on Matt (usually a 3 day process) and Matt's transcript is supposed to arrive (hopefully tomorrow). After that they can schedule the physical. We were told that there was no reason to expect a date other than Friday for his physical but there is always a chance that something will happen. Then, once he gets to MEPS (military entrance processing station I believe) he gets to find out if the job he wants is open. This is one of those Up to God things. If it is open and he gets the job right away, I'll consider ourselves highly blessed. If its closed and we have to wait an unknown period of time, we are going to be very frustrated while waiting for God's plan to actually get on a roll. So, its all up to God. If there is a glitch with processing before Friday and/or if the job is closed...it is all up to God. But the anticipation is killing me because this is one of those things that we can do no more than pray for. And I'm very much the sort of person that likes to have everything planned out- or at least some idea of what is going to happen in the next 5 years. All I know is that within the next 5 years we'll be somewhere doing something for the military. On a totally different note, I have been playing tetris on my computer. In this particular game getting to level 5 is pretty awesome. But I have to brag- I got to level 9 today and cleared 181 lines! The sad part is that I've been playing so much that I'll catch myself playing it in my head. I'll suddenly see a tetris piece and start trying to fit it into all these made up puzzles- sometimes its amusing and other times it creeps me out.