Not as dramatic as a phoenix...

...but still a feeling of starting over again.

Oh September 1st... okay, I realize it's the 2nd now, but still, the beginning of a month. It's been a while. Deja vu, huh? August did certainly fly by. This would be the part of the blog when I would recap the previous time, which makes sense. I moved back to the Academy a few days after the last blog and I've been here since. The month has been one stream of RC training to CL training to the new shiny Bridge Program to classes starting on Monday. Phew! It's been a long haul, but there have been a lot of good things going on. RC Training was great since everyone already knew each other and we all knew things like what to do during check-in or where to gas the vans up - it was good to catch up on things and also to reflect on last year and where we go from there. (If you can't tell, I'm going to go through this rather quickly.) I'm so happy with who I got as CLs. They are both hard-working guys and I know they will help the first-year students fit in (which they have been doing already). CL Training definitely flew by (and it was good to know all of them right off the bat this year!).

This cohort of first-year students were the first Academy students ever to go through a two-week Bridge Program, as compared to just a one-week Adventure Week. Bridge Program included all the welcoming activities from Adventure Week, but the students also took part in review classes for math and chemistry, which included going to daily lectures. I honestly say that Bridge Program was a huge success. Students were saying that they feel better prepared academically and you can see that the students are already developing good sleep/study habits. As one of my CLs said, Adventure Week was a week of various activities all day (so people were exhausted at the end of the day) and then having classes and assignments was a culture shock. If anything, a good chunk of the feedback I've been hearing about Bridge Program (after taking away things we can't change like the weather) is that students want more prepping in fields like biology and composition.

Bridge Program was also nice because we (the RC staff) had the chance to catch up on things and not feel rushed/stressed all day long. Of course, now that we're in the actual school year, we're starting to take days off. My first day off was today and it did feel nice, since like I said earlier, it's been a long haul.

SO..... yeah. I have a good wing of guys: 10 first-years, the 2 second-year Community Leaders, and 2 other second-years and they have been meshing together well. My Seminar group seems good although I think they were getting distracted by too many things in my apartment the last time they were in here. We haven't had any formal meetings, but there are already many students interested in Math Team, Science Olympiad, and Robotics. I'm not sure if I said this before, but I'm picking up part of the mentoring of the Science Olympiad team, which competes in like 15 different events that range from biology testing to building a mousetrap car to science-based pictionary. A few students are bummed that I'm not mentoring the Improv Club, but I told them I would attend their shows and maybe some of their practices (and I know Kristina and Jerry will rock at it).

Now that the school year is going, I'm trying to play catch up in some fields, and odd jobs in others. One of my more productive things I accomplished today was adding the location of all the fire extinguishers to a series of floor maps of the building. I'm also trying to catch up with communicating with people back home. Flickr has definitely suffered, to say the least. I'm around a month behind and my August pictures have almost all been taken late at night in my apartment and there are a couple of "sorry these are so late" or "profile from the side" poses. I was thinking about it yesterday and today and since it's a new month, I'm not going to let things weigh me down and I'm going to work little bits at a time to get everything back on track (hence the blog entry).

The Steampunk Initiative has been at a standstill as of late. The Bridge Program schedule and various other schedules didn't lend itself to seeing Warehouse 13 but I was able to see "Merge with Caution" tonight (on Hulu after net cut). Now I just need to see Vendetta in the next week and I'll be set. I did try to repair my old headphones (Philips hp170) -

Random interjection - good grief, it's storming all of the sudden. The rain on my A/C unit sounded like hail so I was getting worried. Yesterday, the sky got really dark, and it was a bit of a wind storm before the regular storm and we literally had to put up "Do not go outside" signs on the doors.

Anyway, where was I? Right, the headphones. I was trying to repair those but unfortunately they got to the point of "fixing this would take a bunch of time since a number of wires are now snapped apart", but at least they served me well many years. (I'll probably include them in my shelves of stuff.) I was bummed for a while since they had a 10' cable whereas my iPod earbuds only go like 3 or 4 feet, which isn't conducive to watching stuff online while reclining in my chair. Fortunately, I rummaged through my bucket o' computer cables and found a 20' headphone cable extender that went with a mic headset or something.

Well, I should get some rest. Tomorrow includes a number of meetings and this first weekend is a shuttle weekend and I think I'll be on one of the longer bus rides. Oh, my current YouTube kick has been Frank Ticheli songs (American Elergy, Cajun Folk Songs, Joy, Earth Song) that are up by concertbandland who boasts to be the "resource to everything that is concert and symphonic band". There have been random videos, but it's mainly been a mix of Whose Line is it Anyway and old Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin stuff, so I might post one or two later.

I hope everyone is doing well and to those of you in Minnesota, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, etc, I hope you can excuse the absence and we can connect up again. Have a great night all!

~Me