Three weeks of school...

have flown by. My son said the other day that his behavior has been great in school, and his teachers second that. He says it is because he doesn't want to get kicked out of the Math and Sciences Academy (MSA). The MSA is a special program that has limited space and elementary school students need to compete to get into. Last year my son expressed an interest and was accepted. His behavior/emotional issues can be extreme at times and we were told that if the pace was too fast or too stressful that he can move back to his other school. He said yesterday the reason he is trying so hard to behave in class is that he doesn't want to get kicked out. This is one of the first really big items he has really fought for.

I changed my work schedule in a big way to try and make other accommodation's for Brandon this year. My goal is to give him the very BEST environment for him to succeed this year. While we unfortunately need to be out the door at 5:45 am to be at day care by 6am, I am getting home by 3pm. This allows me to get him home to play with the other kids in the neighborhood, get dinner ready, get to practices, and just spend more time with him in the evenings. So far it has been a template for success. He has had a few blowups at home over homework and some other stuff, but none of it has been too bad. He is a great kid and he is doing better with his tantrums and stuff.

Soccer starts for Brandon this week. He gained quite a bit of weight over the summer, nearly 20 pounds. Soccer is going to be quite interesting this year.

Home stuff....We don't spend a lot of time at home, or at least we didn't until the change in schedule this year. Correspondingly, I haven't spent much time putting up pictures, looking at buying furniture, etc. I have furniture, it just never occurred to me that I could add other accessories or even replace some of what I have with some better or more functional items. My girlfriend and I were talking several weeks about about how she would like a pub/bar/counter height table. There are such things? So I started looking, and what do you know? There are! Being a tall person this is pretty appealing to me. I love the tall chairs and stools anyway, it just never crossed my mind that I could get this at home. I now have a counter height cherry wood table! It is dark and it makes me feel at home, stable, comfortable, at ease. I love to sit at my new table. I'm there now, watching the sun come up, sunlight dancing through the leaves, leaping off the early morning dew, squirrels racing at breakneck speeds, and sipping coffee. Which leads right in to the next item. I have new dishes. :-) Jade Moon from Target. They were on sale last week. They are dark on the outside but glazed aqua blue in the middle. They go great with my table and are just awesome to look at. To put this in perspective, I'm still using the plates and things I got as wedding presents in 1990. That is a lot of perspective right there. My son says it feels like we are eating in a sushi restaurant now. Sushi being one of OUR favorite things, he is right, it does. I have also been hanging pictures. I have a number of painting and photographs that I haven't put up because I didn't think I would be here for that long. So funny how way leads on to way, or sometimes doesn't. So here I am, and some of my pictures are now up. I'm playing with some of the photographs. I sent one to Sam's to make a poster out of it. 11x14 first. It turned out well. I had a frame for it, but the frame was broken (trivia: name the group, the album, and the year for an album name that mentions broken frames...of course that is enough for a google search right there). I'm also playing with some of my photographs, changing some to brush strokes and other special effects, and then getting prints of them. There are several online photo places you can send your pictures to and pickup prints locally. My favorite is SAMS. One hour pickup for up to 8x10, reasonable prices, and good quality thus far.

We had a great night last night over at Susan's with some friends. Brats, beer, and Battle of the Sexes game. We were supposed to go camping, but the weather looked like it would turn bad and we decided to cook out instead. Still a great time. Maybe camping and scuba diving next weekend in the outer banks. We'll see!

We're doing a Battle of the Sexes Meetin event at Lasertag on October 2nd! Come on out! We start coed indoor volleyball this week too. I still have a lot to learn at volleyball, but I have a lot of fun playing.

Nothing earth-shattering here, no deep thoughts, nothing to add to the four noble truths, the golden rule, or anything else, just life on a daily basis.

~Mike