First week of summer vacation

This is my first time since I was a school student having the summer off. I must say it feels weird, but also good, like I'm a little kid again. Remember that feeling when the last day of school arrived and you had the whole summer ahead of you?

So here are some of the things I'm doing this summer:

Spending time with Aiyana, and as much of it as possible! We go on little outings around here, like for example Elizabeth park and West Hartford last week, which I'll post some pictures from.

We're also taking lots of college tours: Aiyana has already visited Washington DC colleges on her own, and Ed and I will also go with her again in July, when Sena's internship ends. 

Aiyana and I are also going to Boston to visit colleges in the next couple of weeks, and then we'll be going to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in mid July with Ed.

In August, we're taking family trip, all 4 of us, to Romania and Turkey. We'll be in Bucharest, and in the mountains and the seaside, and we're also visiting Istanbul.

Other than that, I'm still going to school for a few hours each day, working on my aerospace class, which I'll be teaching in September. And, Ed and I are working on building a wind tunnel, also for that class.

We all miss Sena a lot, but the one thing that makes it easier is that she seems happy there.

The slow return

As children, though we don't try, we are masters at The Joy of Being.

As we grow up, we lose that and we start trying. We try hard to achieve. We have goals that we think, once achieved, will bring us happiness. But that happiness is ever elusive. As soon as we achieve a goal, it slips away from us, and now we pin our happiness on a new goal or achievement.

Eventually, with time, we come to recognize that what we are looking for is what we once had, that simple joy of being, which is available to anyone at any moment, though it takes a certain state of being to be able to feel it.

Life is practice in cultivating that state of being.

One year ago today

One year ago today I went to the emergency room for my gallbladder. Although it all ended well, it was a really scary time, and it took over my whole summer. Today, I am so grateful to be here, feeling well and able to enjoy the many blessings (sorry for the cliche, but it's quite true) of every ordinary day.

School is almost over and I feel really good about how this year went. My first year full time teaching!!!

I am also excited about a grant I received recently from our school, to build a wind tunnel for my aerospace class next year. 

Ed is helping me build it, or should I say that he is building it, and I am helping him design it.

In other news, Sena is doing well, working in the Senate building in DC. I miss her and still worry a lot, but I'm also happy and proud of her.

Aiyana is going to visit her soon, and she'll also visit a couple of universities she's interested in at the same time.

The farm is going well due to our amazing farm manager, Dan, without whom there would be no farm right now.

I'm just about done reading War and Peace. It is truly amazing and even better than anything I ever heard about it. Hemingway said that to read the Russians is like opening a great treasure, and he is right. Opening a great treasure that will stay with you forever. That's been my experience with Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. I got a bunch more Tolstoy from the library to treat myself over the summer.

Thank you for reading my blog and for being interested. I am grateful to be here to share.

Peace