Come what May

Wow.  It's the 10th of May already!  Larry has been in Quitman a month already!!  He's doing great!!  Cooking, working, fixing folks' transmissions, wearing ties to church, growing a beard.  :)  He's working in their store down there Tuesday through Saturday and he cooks for the rest of the guys on Mondays, when the store is closed.  He has made fried chicken, baked chicken, mac and cheese, veggies and cheese, grilled cheese sammiches (He likes cheese.  A LOT.), brownies, cake, salads, just all kinds of stuff.  I am SO proud of him!!  And really looking forward to having him cook for me!  ;)

I officially finished school last Friday night with our graduation.  Yay!!!  I held on to that 4.0 GPA so I got to graduate with honors.  Never did that before.  Now all I need to do is get a copy of my transcript from the college, turn it in to the base along with my training folder, do a little paperwork and I'll be converted out of the co-op program and I'll be a WG-08 out there.  I've been working in the fuel pit lately since that's the last thing that I need to get signed off on in my training folder.  I worked out there last night actually.  And we had a wiring issue in a Cannon plug and it was cool to troubleshoot and find the problem.  It was also pretty doggone cool to sit in the cockpit and turn external power on!  If you'd told me three years ago that I'd be sitting in the cockpit of an F-15 and pressing buttons and flipping switches to turn power on the plane, I would have looked at you all crazy.  Do whaaaa???  But I do and I have and I DID.  :D

Mama and Daddy sent me the sweetest graduation card this week and Daddy even drew an airplane with a little girl on top of it.  That's my favorite place to work on that F-15.  The backbone, as we call it, or the wings, I like being on them, too.  I LOVE to just stand up on top of that plane.  It's still a little surreal to me that they are LETTING ME DO THAT.

Last weekend, I tackled our bedroom closet and even though I wanted to make it an even half and half, it's 3/4 girl stuff and 1/4 man stuff.  Still needs work, obviously.  :)  But!  He has four drawers in the dresser so I think we are good.  I'm not cleaning out or organizing a thing this weekend!  I'm meeting some girls from Central tomorrow afternoon for little hen party of sorts.  I haven't seen them since we left in March.  I have met and become friends with so many wonderful, beautiful, strong women over the years.  It takes unbelievable strength to live that life and love that man despite all kinds of obstacles, that I believe with all of my heart that God handpicked us all for it.  He had to.  I'm proud to call these ladies my friends.  And we are going to cackle like a bunch of hens come tomorrow.  I've missed them.

And Sunday is Mother's Day.  Gonna go see my mama and the rest of my family.  I'm really looking forward to that, too.  I'm gonna make a Hawaiian pie.  I got the recipe from a guy I work with and he said since his wife started making it, he hasn't had a birthday cake since.  He just prefers this pie.  I found a pic of it online.  It's crushed pineapple, bananas, coconut, Cool Whip and sweetened condensed milk with lemon juice, all smashed into a graham cracker crumb and butter crust and topped with maraschino cherries and pecans.  I can't wait to try it!!

I kinda fell off the weight loss wagon in March with all that TC/Wilcox drama mess that Larry and I went through.  When I'm stressed, I eat.  And I eat badly.  But I dusted off my butt and climbed back on May 1st and I've lost nine of the eleven pounds I gained back.  One step forward and two steps back.  Story of my life.  I've been losing a pound a day so maybe all eleven will be gone in the morning.  Or, rather, later THIS morning.  :)

So there we are.  All caught up again.  Thank you for stopping by to read about my life!  I want to do something special for my 50,000th visitor.  Have a little giveaway or something.  We're at 49,200 now!  All you'd have to do is leave a comment.  Virtually painless, right??  We'll talk more about that later.

You can't beat a swap meet!

We went on a class field trip today!  Nope, we are not too old for that.  Apparently.  :)  Mr. Leland came up with the BEST idea for us to go to the Auto Fest and Swap Meet at the Perry fairgrounds today to look for old CB radios and just old radios in general.  It is our Communications class, after all.  Have I mentioned how awesome Mr. Leland is???

We had a blast!  We got there at noon and stayed until 2:30 or so.  I took lots of pictures!  There were old cars, old collectibles, old car parts and, oh yeah, funnel cakes.

Here are Christy and Tasha with their little boys, Jacob and Quick.

 Andy found the first CB radio!

And I found an old wooden Coke crate!

And this!  I want an old Coke machine cooler to use as a freezer for my back porch (when I get a back porch.)  This one was $850 as is.  It would've taken another $5,000 to restore it, I'm sure.  I joked that we're gonna have to get past the furloughs before we make a commitment like that.  Ha!

Here's Mr. Leland checking out the electrical stuff.  Of course.  :)  And Andy on the phone.  He's got a baby girl due any. minute.  Gotta stay connected!

We all loved this find!  Real, honest-to-God metal Tonka trucks.  Ahhhhh, those were the good old days.

I just loved this HUGE Gulf gas sign!

The cars were amazing!

And so were the sausages!  

I got mine with onions, peppers and lots of mustard.  Yum!!

We're everywhere!  We're everywhere!  :)

This car had a "Panty Dropper" sticker on the hood.  What the what?

We just had the best time!  The weather was perfect and the company was even better.  AND I got sunburned!  It felt great after all that cold wind we've had lately.  So I don't mind at all being a little pink.  It is my favorite color, after all.

Like a lion

It seems when I gave up Facebook for Lent, I also gave up blogging!  That was not intentional.  Larry and I have had quite the whirlwind month.  Lots of wind and crazy hair-blowing, that's for sure.  We are still on target but nothing ever happens fast enough, you know?  I'll just be glad to see this March GO.

I got out of my Antennas and Transmission Lines class with a 94.  I wasn't happy with that but it's still an A!  Seriously, though, that mess is hard.   

Yes.  Hard.  And mess.








We started our Microwaves and Radar class yesterday.  One more to go!  Fiber Optics and then I'm blowing that popsicle stand!  I will be finished with the electronics program!!  A little over three years to the date that I started.  It's been a long road but one that lead me to a job that I love.  I'm pretty crazy about that F-15, if y'all haven't heard.

It's actually spring and it's still cold.  I've been calling that blankety-blank groundhog a big fat liar cootie head for three days and NOW they're saying that he (that Southern gentleman, Punxsutawney Phil, is the one we go by) projected six more weeks of winter but they "misread his message".  Ya think??  Really, though, with the effects of global warming as severe as they are, can we really depend on what a rodent has to say?

Ami and Brian had a tree move in with them during that bad storm earlier this month.  Thank God only the house was damaged.  It could have been so much worse.  God had His hand on them that night!

So, yeah.  March has pretty much sucked.  Sunday is Easter and I am SO much looking forward to it!  I'm going to sunrise service for the first time in my life and I can't wait.  Then it's hamburgers, hot dogs and an egg hunt with the family.  

And then April will be here!!  Yay!!

Circuits, furloughs and diets, oh my!

I finished up my Advanced Circuit Analysis class and moved right on into Advanced Modulation last week.  Advanced Modulation is all about analog-to-digital circuits and digital-to-analog circuits.  I'll admit that I've had more than a little confusion with this new class than I did with the last but I'll get it.  Having a good teacher makes it easier and we do have a good teacher.  He's probably mid-to-late seventies but I can honestly say he's the coolest teacher I've ever had in my life.  He has LIVED and has lots of stories to tell and knowledge to share.  We adore him.

Yesterday we built a pulse amplitude modulation circuit.  A PAM.  This is mine.  It basically digitizes an analog sine wave.   

This is how the signal looks on the oscilloscope.  Yeah, I did that.  Totally cool stuff, yo. 

Complex circuit building can be stressful.  It helps to have a cool teacher.  It also helps to have footage of 70's Allman Brothers concerts playing while you're doing the tedious work of building said complex circuits.  :)






They told us at work a couple of weeks ago to prepare ourselves for the furloughs that are coming as a result of the sequester.  They really won't affect me, as I have been "furloughed" since New Year's Eve.  I went part time when I went back to school so I'm good.  I've heard so much griping and fussing about these furloughs and how "I'm gonna lose my house" and "I'm gonna lose my truck".  Dude.  If you are going to lose your house because you're losing ONE DAY A WEEK'S pay, you have TOO MUCH HOUSE.  So many of my coworkers have gotten so used to working 12-hour days and racking up all that overtime that they honestly don't know how they're going to get by on 32 hours a week.  I've been working at the base for a year come the 12th of this month and I can already tell you that there is a lot of fat that can be trimmed out there.  An ungodly amount of waste goes on out there and that includes supplies as well as manpower.  Call me a traitor, I don't care.  I'm just not your typical government employee.  I don't spend hours chit-chatting, leaning on my tool box and wasting time.  I do what I know how to do (which is becoming a LOT!) and what I don't know, I work with someone who does.  I work.  

I don't have much of a weight-loss update.  I've been teetering between 18 and 20 pounds for two weeks now!  I've hit my first plateau and since I've been doing this losing weight thing since my jeans were acid-washed and had zippers on the legs, I know that I have to bump up the exercise.  I lost these twenty pounds virtually with no exercise, unless you count climbing up on top of an F-15 and back down again fifteen times a day as exercise (and I do!).  I took my fitness leave one night last week and walked on the running track.  The nice, bouncy, rubber running track that's absolute heaven on your ankles and joints.  It just got dark on me too fast.  I cannot wait for the time to change and the days to get longer and warmer.  I will walk that track for days.

Things are rocking on pretty smoothly for me these days.  I go to school, go to work, go to sleep and then do it all again the next day.  Two more months until I graduate and things can get back to normal.  Whatever that is.  :)

Did somebody mention something about a radio??

Thought y'all might want to know that it's finished and it WORKS!

Here's proof.  :)

Radio Update!

  
I finished up the AM side of my radio today!  And guess what?  It works!!  We're going to take them outside Monday and tune them and then maybe it'll pick up an AM station.  

I know just the one I want to listen to.

Radioactive!

Well, at least noise came out of the speaker today.  :)

This is the radio I'm building in my Advanced Circuit Analysis class.  I thought I'd post a picture showing its progress from time to time so y'all can see what I'm doing. 

We're building the AM side first, then we'll build the FM part.  What we've done so far is solder in the battery bracket, the ON/OFF volume knob, the FM/AM switch, the speaker, the earphone jack and assorted resistors, capacitors, an integrated circuit and a couple of jumper wires.

Pretty dang cool if you ask me.  

What up, Buttercup?

So.  Last week I went back to school to take my specialized communications classes (advanced circuit stuff, radar, fiber optics) that were scheduled for 8:00 am - 12:30 pm.  I didn't know HOW on earth I was going to do that after working until midnight every night but I was going to try.  Well, in His usual fashion, the Lord worked that little problem out for me, too.  The five of us co-ops ended up in a class that starts at noon and gets us out of there in time for us to be at work at the base when we're supposed to be.  So, yeah, sleeping until 9:00 every morning is totally working for me.  :)

Working at night has been quite an adjustment for me.  It's different if you stay up past midnight at home doing stuff, which I do, a LOT, and working until midnight.  Very different.  Plus work is so slow, there's not much to do, and that makes for some very long nights.  But when there is something to do, sitting on top of an F-15 underneath a blanket of stars is pretty cool.

I changed my gym time to just before our supper break so I can go to the gym for an hour.  Uncle Sam gives us three hours a week (2 1/2 if you're part-time like I am right now while I'm in school) to go and DO something.  Go to the gym, walk on the track, bowl, whatever you want to do.  However, what 99% of the people out there want to do is just go home early.  I changed my gym time to when the gym is actually open so I can take advantage of it to help with this 40-pound thingy I've got going.  So far, so good.  I've lost 9 1/2 pounds!  The guys at work are absolutely killing me, though.  I LOVE the pizza from Pizza Depot (the pizza place on base).  There is something about that cheese they use.  OMG.  Anyway, they deliver and every night, somebody gets a pizza delivered!  So I'm sitting over there lookin' all pitiful eating my broccoli and cheese while they're inhaling greasy, salty, cheesy pizza.  Ain't fair.  But that's all right.  I've had that pizza before.  :)

Pretty much my schedule right now is go to school, go to work, go to sleep. But I'll be finished with the co-op in May and I'll only have five classes left to get my degree.  (And they're all online!  Yay!!)  And THEN, there'll be the next degree to start on.  I'm thinking aviation management sounds pretty good.  :)

2013

Wow.  Happy New Year!  If you're of the resolution-making kind, I hope one of yours is to be happy in this new year.  If you're not happy, please, please, please do something about it.  Life is so short and we're not guaranteed tomorrow.  Do what you can with what you have and make sure you laugh!

Cracker Barrel sho' let me down today!!  I have a New Year's tradition of going there and getting a to-go plate of the usual New Year's must-haves.  Black-eyed peas, collard greens, ham, not that I'm superstitious or anything.  I don't eat the peas for luck so much as I eat 'em 'cause I love 'em!  I don't look at things that happen to me as luck.  I look at them as blessings.  God-given blessings.  And He sure blessed me in 2012!  

Not only did Cracker Barrel take 45 minutes to put together my order (my super easy order of stuff they surely had to have plenty of today!!), but everything tasted like it had not even been seasoned.  I had to fix everything once I got home.  Grrrr.

And to add insult to injury, I was really looking forward to picking over their Christmas clearance and this is what they had left -- three li'l raggedy chipped ornaments and a sock monkey.  Guess what they DID have???  Easter stuff.  Yeah.  EASTER.

I go back to school on Monday and this time, I'll be going to school during the day and working in the evenings, the opposite of what I did before.  Not a big deal, though, and since I'm limited by the co-op agreement to the amount of hours I can work while I'm in school, I'll have a day off every week.  Most likely Fridays.  :) 

If you've been reading my blog for the past two years, you know how very hard it was for me to land this job at the base.  I met one obstacle after another until I was just about ready to give up on it.  This is where those blessings I mentioned come in.  Now I know I've been blessed since the day I was created, I was just too hardheaded to see the blessings for what they were.  For a long time, I felt like God had abandoned me and Larry, forgotten all about little old us, left us to fend for ourselves all alone.  Waaaaaah.  I was wrong.  Dead wrong.  He was with us the whole time.  I know you hear that all the time, but until you LIVE it, you don't believe it.

When I decided to just give this job thing over to Him, things started happening.  I quit worrying about it and I went on that interview, fully expecting to not be selected.  These jobs are so highly competitive.  So much so that they're saying my group is going to be the last co-ops selected for a while.  But I was selected!  In God's time, not mine.  When I began to LIVE that instead of just say it, stuff started falling into place.  It's been pretty awesome to watch.  Goosebumpy at times.

I believe 2013 is going to be pretty much the best year of my life.  Things are really happening!  And now I recognize my blessings every single day for what they are.  Even when everything doesn't go exactly my way, that's all right.  I know it's going God's way and I've learned to just keep watching to see what He does with it.

I hope you all have a wonderful 2013!  And I hope you ate your black-eyed peas today just because you love 'em!

Halfway through already??

I cannot believe it is November 16th and I've only written two posts this month!  Not that things are all that interesting in my life but some stuff has happened.  First of all, the election is over, my guy won but now there's all this talk of states wanting to secede from the union.  I think that's silly, childish and speaks of poor sports.  As I've said on Facebook, where's that "love it or leave it" attitude they gave us during the Bush years?  We bleeding hearts didn't threaten to abandon our country, we didn't suggest giving up and giving in.  We dug in and fought hard the next four years.  And, eventually, things turned our way.  I do still have my "He's NOT my president" t-shirt hanging in my closet if anybody wants it.  I'm just sayin'.

Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK.  This month has gone by so fast!  I think my family is going to attempt something we've never done before.  We're talking about drawing names for Christmas.  There are only ten of us and Baby Lizzie but we've always bought everybody a gift (or four).  This year, we want to try drawing names.  I'm on both sides of this fence.  One side is me wanting to get everybody something like I've always done and the other side is me not wanting to lug home a bunch of gifts and try to find homes for them in my tiny 1,000 square foot house.  It messes with the minimalist way I'm trying to live.  Besides, I would love to just enjoy the true meaning of Christmas the way it deserves to be enjoyed.  A baby in a manger and my family together, warm and happy.
 


Speaking of Baby Lizzie, she came to visit me Monday night!  And she brought along her mommy and daddy.  It was such a wonderful surprise!  I took this picture of her while she was getting her diaper changed.  For modesty's sake, the picture has been cropped.  :)  She's such a sweetheart.  Just like her mama.

I love the "power to the people!" stance she's taking.  Baby girl is sho' after Aunt Ninner's heart.  She doesn't even need to try, though.  She's already got it.





Today we had F-15 Wingman Day at work.  We enjoyed a picnic of smoked Boston butt, baked beans, cole slaw, potato salad, cake and drinks in one of the parks on base.  As soon as I left, and I mean AS SOON as I got off base, I got a speeding ticket.  In that 40 mph speed trap on Russell.  Ugh.  I was going 58.  Oh well.  Merry Christmas, City of Warner Robins!

Monday, I start a new job in a new building to continue my training.  I'm really excited and not at all nervous.  I don't know how long I'll be there until they move me around again but I'm going to soak up everything I can about that particular part of the F-15's stay at Robins.  I registered for school on Election Day and signed up for the five classes I need to graduate in May.  17 credit hours.  That's gonna be tough but I'm determined to get done in one semester.  

 

I took Tabbie Hoffman for his booster vaccinations today.  He is SO hilarious.  Every time we go to the vet, he does this with his blanky in the kennel.  He doesn't want anybody to see him and he sure doesn't want to see anybody!





 


Here he is trying to get back IN the kennel after we took him out to weigh him and take his temperature.  He weighs eight pounds now.

 I know this thing has a hole in it somewhere!

 Ahh, there it is.  But what is this lock nonsense??

He makes me laugh every single day.  He's so funny and he has become very talkative in the past week or so.  We have long conversations about stuff.  Today was the first time that a vet actually told me something's physically wrong with his right ear.  It has never looked right.  Ami noticed it right away the day I found him.  It's a little wonky.  Well, it's deformed, from birth.  And the sweet little vet I saw today who looked all of fifteen years old told me that the canal is extremely narrow, which explains the constant ear infection we've fought since July.  Gah.  He's missing an inside fold in his ear, too.  Poor baby. All we can do is keep it clean and flush it out once a week with an ear cleanser to keep bacteria and debris out.  He's an inside kitty and my house stays super clean so that shouldn't be a problem.  Unless he kicks litter up in it, oh my God, does he love to kick litter.

So that just about catches my life up to now.  I'm really looking forward to next week and my new job assignment, Thanksgiving and getting Mama and Daddy's Christmas tree decorated.

Maybe I'll get my tree up, too.

What I'm loving Wednesday!

Today, I'm loving that the college is offering the communications classes I needed to take at NIGHT so that I can take them!!  These are the specialized classes in the electronics program I'm in and back in April, they were not going to offer them to evening students spring semester.  So I considered driving to Macon a couple nights a week to take them at the college up there and I considered quitting my job and going to school during the day but what I actually DID about it was pray.  And guess what?  He totally worked it out for me!  I'm going to get to take the classes I need to get my degree after all.  I signed up for a psychology class online, too.  I have my second co-op interview at the base next month and we'll see how that goes.  This is my second shot, everybody else in my class is going for their third.  I was robbed of my first chance last December but I'm completely fine with it now and really was then, I was just frustrated.  It's ALL going to work out the exact way it's supposed to.

Yay!!  I'm very happy in my little life right now.  

I'm also loving these cool boots that Mama and Daddy gave me as an early Christmas present!  They're super cool but they are super warm, too!!  Here they are on my feet at the movies last Saturday night when I went to see Paranormal Activity 3.  I was too cozy to be scared.  :)

There are 10 types of people...

...those who understand binary and those who don't. 

This is what I'm learning in school. How to read binary, hexadecimal and octal numbers and convert them into each other.  I think I'm getting it!!  My instructor told us that once we get this down, Digital will be the easiest class we've had yet. I remember analyzing series/parallel circuits (HARD!!) and solving linear and quadratic equations (RIDICULOUS!!) so I'm really looking forward to an easy class!! 

This look easy to you? 

Binary

Hexadecimal

Octal

Yeah.  I'mma have to study.  :)

What I'm loving Wednesday!

I'm loving that God once again guided the hands of these good people to bring my mama through another successful heart procedure on Monday!

And I'm still loving this picture of a beautiful hibiscus that I found growing outside the hospital!  :)

I'm loving these two pictures Ami took of me last Saturday!

 I hadn't seen a maypop bloom since I was a little girl!

I was so tickled to find this one just growing wild beside that old dirt road.

I'm loving that I'm back in school now!

My first class was last night.  I'm in my last semester of the diploma part but I found out last night that they ARE going to offer the specialty classes at night starting in January so I'll be able to pick a specialty and get my degree after all, without having to transfer to another school!  Yay!!  I had to buy this lab from RadioShack for my class.  Didn't know that till last night either and the store here only had ONE!  Guess who got it today??  I'm taking Digital and Microprocessors this semester and when I look back to when I started in Direct Current sixteen months ago, I remember thinking, "I'll NEVER get to Digital!!"  But now I'm there!!  Yay!!!

Today I...

...finally got something at Aldi that I don't like.

Two skint-up toes

I went this morning to get a few things and when I opened the door to the refrigerated case to get a carton of eggs, the door opened on top of my foot.  Owwww!!  And I absolutely had on flip flops.  Y'all remember that if you go to the store in Warner Robins.  The door opens low and it has a sharp edge!

...cooked a pot of cabbage and ham and tried cooking brown rice in the crock pot.  Both turned out great!

I love brown rice but I don't like for it to be crunchy.

Three hours on high in the crock pot gets it just right!

...'bout decided to call Channel 13 on MGT.

When I started the electronics program at Middle Georgia Tech in April of last year, I was told that if I came to class, studied and maintained a 4.0 average, I was in the co-op program.  The golden job at Robins Air Force Base, where you work six months and go to school six months until you graduate.  We all were told that.  Guess what?  It wasn't true.  It was a hoAX, as my old buddy, Lewis Grizzard, used to say.  As soon as we were all eligible for the co-op (six months in, 4.0 average, blahblahblah) in December, my friend, Caitlin, and I (the only girls left in our class by then!) were accidentally left off the interview list so we didn't get our first shot until March.  The base interviewed 80 students and hired 11.  All guys.  Okay, so then we get our second shot, right?  We wait until after we finished up the linear electronics class in May and were told our interview would be in June.  Then it was pushed back until after the semester starts in September and TODAY, I get an email (well, I got it last week, I just didn't check my school email until today) telling us it's going to be the end of November.  I will finish and graduate in December.  I am almost done!!  And this illusive base job, that I'm not even sure that I ever wanted to begin with, is STILL a carrot danglin' in front of my face.

Why am I letting them do this to me??  I'm 'bout ready to call Lorra and let her come do a story and expose them for the fake they are.  They are still lying to students, still promising base jobs when there ARE NONE and are still enjoying record enrollment because they lyin'.  Still getting that HOPE Grant and Pell Grant money.  Still selling textbooks for $100 a piece.  It's infuriating.

I do not believe that things happen accidentally.  I believe that every rejection is God's protection so I'm not too very upset about this.  I see His Hand all in it.  He knows me, He knows my heart.  There are lots of places I can use my electronics education and do good.  Or not.  Maybe I won't ever use it.  But I know that I'll never think of the past sixteen months as a waste of my time.  I have learned so much about a field that previously, I knew absolutely nothing about and I've learned so much about myself, that I CAN do something besides finance.  And I CAN do trig!

I'm a techie!

Well, technically, I'm a National Technical Honor Society Inductee.  We had Honors Day at the college this morning and I was one of 37 new inductees into the NTHS.  They base this honor on how well you park in the student parking area.  Which is a feat, I tell ya.  It is so hard to park at that place!!

Naaaah, not really.

The NTHS chooses their inductees by their standard of personal conduct and record of scholastic achievement.  That means you gotta behave and study.  

I'm pretty honored and proud.  :)

 

 Here's my certificate!

Here's the loot they gave us! A NTHS keychain, pin and decal. They also gave us a letter of recommendation to go along with our resumes and an offer for cheap insurance with Geico, based on our new excellent status.  

If Geico knew some of the creative ways I park my car at that place, they would take my keys.

I'm glad I went today.  I'm all about experience right now, I want to experience every little thing I can, participate in as many activities that I can.  I don't know what the future will bring and I don't worry about that, I let Jesus worry about that.  I'm having fun and I'm learning stuff and I'm meeting some pretty incredible people.  And for now, that's a'plenty.

Yo, sound the bell, school's in, sucka

Yep, school's in. I went back last night. I found out Tuesday when I logged in to my online class that I'd have to have a projects code to set up the class. I didn't know that. So I had to go to the bookstore on the FIRST day of class yesterday and stand in line for an hour and 45 minutes to get an 18-digit code that cost me $75.  I always try to get a used book or borrow one mainly to save trees but it saves money, too, so I borrowed the book I needed for the class.  I didn't know anything about this code until I logged in.  That's how they get you.  Textbooks are so expensive and even when you borrow one, sometimes there's even more expense tied to it.  It is a racket, I tell ya! This computer class is the LAST online class I'll have to take and I am so glad.  I have to have this class to graduate so I figured I'd go ahead and take it now and get it behind me.  I'm used to taking two or three classes a quarter anyway.

I'm taking Solid State this quarter.  The third class in Electronics Fundamentals.  I've had Direct Current, Alternating Current and now Solid State.  I have a pretty cool teacher who's worked at Robins 27 years and his main job is testing government employees for recertifications.  He's never taught an electronics class so we're all gonna learn this together, I guess. 

I couldn't resist this title.  I dare ya to watch this video and not sing along.  I can't believe this song is 21 years old!  I sit in class with a bunch of young folks but I feel like I fit right in with them.  It's when I realize that songs from back in MY DAY are over 20 years old that I feel old.  Dang.

Stop.  Hammertime.

I'll keep on rollin' with the flow...

Okay, so y'all know I've been going to school at night for eight months now. I love it. I love my classes, love my instructors and I've made some really good friends. I've been having a ball learning all about electronics and how circuits work and why they work and why people even care that they work. It has been a lot of fun and I have learned so much!! I've been challenged in more ways than I ever thought I could be and I've learned so much about myself while I've been learning all about those circuits.

But I haven't been going to school at night for eight months because I was bored. I've been going to school for the opportunity to interview for a job at Robins Air Force Base in the electronics co-op that they have with Middle Georgia Tech.

My interview was supposed to be this quarter.

For some reason, though, my name and five other students' names were left off the original roster that was presented to the base and because the base has 108 interviews scheduled and only 20 slots to fill, they don't want to make room for six more interviews.

I've worked hard, maintained a 4.0 GPA, took classes at the college and online and continued to work full time at my job during the day. I've spent hours and hours on the weekends studying, reading, working freakin' algebra and trig until all hours of the night, gone to school when I was exhausted, gone to work when I was exhausted and slept so hard at night that I didn't even hear my alarm clock go off the next morning.

All to get me to this week when I was told that I'm just not going to get that shot this quarter. Just an "I'm sorry, I goofed" and a big fat "better luck next time". It was one of the directors of the program who screwed up and left us off the list and although he did try to fix it and get us an interview time, he wasn't able to. He assured me that I would be first on the list next quarter and that since I'll be further along in the program, my chances will be even better that I'll be chosen for the co-op. I'll have a second shot (or so they say now, stay tuned...) at the end of my 5th quarter. We only get two shots at these jobs.

Am I disappointed? Of course. But I'm also a little relieved. I do feel that my chances will be even better with another quarter under my belt and I'll have another three months to prepare for the interview. I believe that things happen for a reason so I have to believe that God is working on something here. I can't stand in His way if He's working. There's really not much I could do about it anyway so I'm trusting Him to work it out for me.

I've learned some things about electricity in the past eight months. It always follows the path of least resistance. I've never done that in my life. I've always gone down bumpy old dirt roads head first, knocking obstacles out of my way and barreling through to the other side. Electricity can keep doing what it does. And so will I.

TGIAF

Thank God it's almost Friday!!

I've had a pretty lonnnnnng week. I started back to school for fall quarter Tuesday night. I have AC (Alternating Current) class three nights a week now. I'm also taking a job skills class online that so far is a piece of red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and sprinkles on top. AC now?? I'm probably gonna have to study in there. It's all about magnets and magnetism and that's easy but there are SO many formulas to learn. It really is ridiculous how much everything to do with electronics deals with math. Good grief, Charlie Brown. I have a pretty good teacher, though. He's an engineer out at the base and he's pretty cool. He's extremely smart, too!! And at least I'm not the only girl in the class. There's another one. :) Our first test is Tuesday and our teacher told us we could use a 3x5 index card of notes to use on our tests. This girl is gonna write small!! Ha!!

Also on Tuesday night, somebody stole the AC units from behind the office where I work and we've had no air conditioning for two days. The cop told us there has been a lot of this happening lately and that they're stealing them for the copper inside. Like $30 worth of copper. Losers. We have been so hot!!! I hope they choke on the crack, um, hamburgers they buy with that $30. Grrrrr. We're supposed to get new units tomorrow.

Also this week, I've been working on a leak in my guest bathroom tub. It's doing the weirdest thing and if any of y'all have had this happen, please let me know what you did about it!! We have a self-enclosed fiberglass tub that would only leak when the tub was drained after I took a bath. It would not leak after a shower or if I filled the tub up and then let the water out. Just after I took a bath. I know, that's crazy talk. Don't even make no sense. But it's true!! Larry and I worked on troubleshooting it and I discovered a very small hairline crack at the base of the tub, where the water drains. I filled it full of epoxy and so far, it has not leaked again. I'm keeping my eye on it. And my foot OFF it. I kinda sorta know how it got cracked. Uh oh.

The Finished Product

Here's my circuit board all finished up and working!!
That little siren was the sweetest sound I've heard in a long time.

The first time I hooked it up to the battery, the lights came on but the siren didn't. A guy in my class realized what I had done wrong 'cause he'd done the same thing. I'd put one of the LED lights in backwards! It's hard to tell what's the right way to attach them. They're so small. So I desoldered it, flipped it around and tacked it back down, filled in one tiny little hole next to a lead and ran back up there, grabbed that battery and, hallelu-yer, the clouds parted, the sun came out, the siren came on and and the lights started flashing. It was a beautiful thing.

I had to leave it there for my teacher to officially grade (he said it looked great!) so I had to take this picture with my cell phone. That's why it's so crappy.

That was my last class for this quarter. I'm a free bird until September 28th!!

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UPDATE!!! I got my grade today, 9/17. I got a 98 on my board!! Woooo hoooooo!!!

My Soldering Final, Thus Far

This is my circuit board that I'm working on

in my soldering class.
September 13th, it will become my final.
It'll have a little speaker and an LED light
and the rest of the little components soldered to it.
We'll hook it up to a battery and magically,
the light will light up and the speaker will make a sound.
Maybe.

I think it looks like a little city, complete with water towers
that just scream for me to climb and spray paint
GINGER LOVES LARRY on.