Unforgettable Images

For some unknown reason yesterday, while I was in my A&P seminar I turned and looked out the window and saw a horrible thing. A giant ball of flame surrounded by black, billowing clouds of smoke filled my vision. It was obvious it was an explosion and in my mind I figured maybe a boiler at the Single Soldier's Club had exploded.  I found out a couple hours later that a C-17 Cargo plane that just taken off to practice for Saturday's Air Show had literally dropped out of the sky just two miles off the end of the runway and exploded on impact.  There were only four people on board (3 Air Nat'l Guardsmen, and 1 was active duty Air Force) and we're all thankful that it wasn't full of troops going up for a jump, but it's heartbreaking to have born witness to the explosion and know that there are four more families out there who've just lost loved ones.

All day today I keep replaying the image of that mushroom cloud in my mind.  I just can't seem to get it to go away.  The feeling in the pit of my stomach is the same as it was the day three months after my wedding when my husband called me from base telling me to turn on the news because someone had just flown a plane into the World Trade Center. Although the tragedies are not of the same scale, people lost their life in both and watching something like that happen, or even just seeing the end of it is sickening to my heart.  My heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the soldiers we've lost, whether in combat or training accidents. Either here or abroad. Peace be with you and ease to your hearts.

If anyone is interested in reading the local news story, here's the link: Cargo plane crash

Unit 4

The nice thing about family coming to visit after not seeing them for a year, is eventually they go home!  Last week my husband's parents, sister and her family were here from North Carolina. I needed time to rest from their vacation by the time they left!  I've seen more of this state during the time they were here than during the year I've lived here! We walked all over downtown, went to Ship Creek to see some salmon heading upriver to spawn, drove up to Hatcher's Pass, Summit Lake, and Independence Mine, they went to see Portage glacier while I had classes, and we had the unfortunate joy of going to the reindeer farm.  For those who don't know, the only difference between a reindeer and a caribou is domestication.  Here's a pic of my sister in law with her new friend!

Although it looks like she's holding it's antler, she isn't.  Something we learned while there was that when the antlers are in "velvet" they're super sensitive.  That's a fuzzy, blood vessel infused covering on their antlers and we were told that grabbing it would be like dropping a large brick on your toe...OUCH!! (By the way, I don't recommend trying to pet just any caribou or reindeer you may meet. These live on a farm, are raised around humans, and are not pregnant or in rut.) We had a great time, but I didn't spend nearly enough time studying.  This week is make up week.

It always amazes me how fast these terms go by. At this point I should be deep in the research phase for two separate papers and I'm still having problems with narrowing down my searches in the KU library.  It's frustrating to say the least. I did manage to snag a copy of the APA guidelines so I won't have to go in search every time I need to know how to cite something or how to format! It's just a shame that when it's time to do the serious writing, my brain wants to shut down...

My thoughts on online schooling...

Coming into my fourth term at Kaplan I am finding that online learning is almost ideal for me.  I say almost ideal because I still have some issues with time management, but the fact that I don't have to find someone to watch my kids and I don't have to take the time to drive to school works out for me perfectly.  The flexibility is ideal with four kids in the house (especially during their summer break from school). I find that I probably spend more time with my schoolwork now than I did when I went to traditional college and it's showing in that I've gone from having a GPA of around 2.5 to a 4.0!  Call it maturity or determination or whatever, it's working for me this time :)

I do think it would be nice to have a closer class community.  The anonymity of online classes makes it more difficult to connect with fellow students.  I have found that even connecting on a social networking site like Facebook hasn't helped, nor has connecting on AIM or exchanging emails.  This could possibly be because I don't care for chatting much whether it be online or on the phone. I'd much rather talk to someone face to face.  Maybe that's because I like to be able to read a person's body language as well as hear what they're saying to me.  It makes it so much easier to not have misunderstandings that way.

Here we go!

I can't believe I'm blogging again. My last blog post was in 2007. This blog is only for my College Comp II class so we'll see if it develops into anything beyond that. I always seem to run out of things to say or just figure that what I'm saying isn't important. Must be the gray weather we're having today, I'm feeling a bit melancholy and it seems to be coming out here. On this note, I'll stop for now.

I will say that I'm looking forward to developing some better writing skills and I'm excited to see where this class takes me!