New Renewabel Energy

Surprisingly my luck took a turn for the better, when in fact my luggage did show up at the rotunda; at least I had my cloths. Anyway I met Bruce right outside the gate and before I knew it we were on the road. Kim’s parent’s house is actually located in a city called Surprise a few miles west of Phoenix so it was only about a forty-five minute drive back to the house. Along the way we encountered little traffic as all the old ‘snowbirds’ (or old people who move down there for the winter, escaping the snow of the north) were well past their 2100 bed time, so we made some really good time pulling into the driveway around 0100 Mountain time. Bruce was just quick to show me my room and bed as I was to hit the sack. I was asleep even before my head hit the pillow.

By the time my body had stored up enough energy to roll out of bed around 0900 the whole fam (Bruce, Jen, Jacob and Brianna) were up, with the exception of Sheila who was still at the clinic at the time. I opened my door and proceeded into the kitchen in a sort of dead man shuffle complete with a bad case of bed head and BO (shower was next on the agenda).

That afternoon we drove into phoenix to pick mom up from the clinic where she had spent the night in some type of brain monitoring station. She looked much better than what I expected when we picked her up.

And so bringith the Brianna (Kim’s five year old sister). Now I consider myself to be a fairly energetic person. Being used to nineteen hour days on a fairly regular basis I can hold my own when sleep looks me in the face. “BUT” a new force was brewing just around the corner and I was soon to realize a new breed of energy entitled…………….. Brennergy. Brianna could teach us all a thing or two about never stopping. From the second the sun shines through the window of her hot pink room, onto her hot pink bed, over her hot pink pajamas and into her eyes, there is no stopping her. Never in my life have I known a five year old child with so much natural energy, put her next to any high school cheerleader and they could talk for hours. Humankinds only saving grace and defense angst the Brennergy is a merger of two of the most powerful forces known to man, the TV and Mickey Mouse. This top secret super weapon’s code name ,…..Project Disney……thanks Walt wherever you are, you saved my life, or maybe Brianna’s.

Brianna’s brother Jacob who (despite a few mental sicknesses) is a great kid. I can see a little bit of me in that boy. Extremely smart but hates school, loves playing games and working on the computer. He would be a prime test subject for a test regarding that paper I wrote about Video games and the future of learning. I bought along a couple of C++ books and lectures I downloaded off the net with me and introduced him to programming. After I taught him the basic syntax or typing of the language we made a couple of text based battle games and a bunch of math problem solvers. Jacob actually was one of the fastest learners I have ever lectured in regards to C++. Mark my words if he continues to work on programming Mr. Carmack over at ID studios is going to have some serious competition.

I spent most of the week before Kim arrived with Brianna and Jacob making sure they stayed out of trouble and shuttled Sheila around in the family Mini van (as the doctors say she cant drive yet). It was really great to spend some time with the future family in law in their own domain of Arizona.


In other news I had to turn down another summer job offer. This time from Freescale who makes the semiconductors for Motorola. I am really beginning to wonder if the NAVY can keep up with all of this money I could have had by now with Lockheed Martin or Boeing or Freescale.