After a long couple years, the graduation is over.  Today I graduated the University of Oklahoma putting a lot of stressful times away.  This is tough enough when you are 18 years old but when you are 43 and have a full family life and a full time job, it makes it even more of a challenge.  This day was supposed to be a huge moment and it was to a degree.  I feel like the whole event was under the influence of drugs.  I have not slept for more than three continuous hours in a week and the doctor gave me some itching medication for my poison ivy that really made me sleepy.

It was a good day though and I have a wonderful family that was there for me.  My beautiful wife Sunday shown in this photo has made so many sacrifices for me in our 20 years of marriage.  She sacrificed so much for me in getting this accomplishment done that I really do appreciate her.  She is testament to the Proverbs 31 woman spoken of in the Bible.  She is so incredible that words cannot express.

Now that I have this behind me, I can get back to life again.  The time involved in completing this goal has been amazing.  Our whole lives have been adjusted to make time for this.  God has been very good to us but has taken an unfortunate back seat to this goal.  It is time to put HIM first again and remember where my blessings come from.

I have been off work the last couple of days because I have poison ivy from cutting down some trees at my dad’s place.  Since I usually have to go to bed early because I have to be at work early, I usually miss out on the good storms.  Last night around 10:45 PM we had a storm come through with circulation near my house so we decided to go out for a drive and check it out.  I live in Del City, a suburb of Oklahoma City and the circulation was two miles to the Southwest of my house.  The tornado never did touch down but it was pretty exciting.  I made seven videos lasting more than an hour and I uploaded one of them onto Youtube so I could share it with you.

It starts out with me and my son Kevin standing in the front yard with the tornado sirens blowing and lots of lightning.  It sort of reminded me of the old days when I could do this all the time.  It seems like the only time we have storms around here is in the middle of the night or when I am at work in a building with no windows.  For this reason I miss about 90% of them that come through.  Every day I hear people complaining about all the rain and how they wish it would stop.  I cannot chime in with them because I rarely ever see it.  Anyway, as I have told you before, I just love severe weather and always have.

I took this photo of some mammatus clouds that were at the leading edge of the storm earlier.  At this time it looked as though the storm was going to miss us again.  Later the line reformed and came across giving us an exciting night.  I saw on the television advisory last night that their radar had detected over 1,000 lightning strikes in the last hour.  It was very interesting to watch.

Well I am going to try to go back to work tomorrow because I have already taken off two days.  I took off because of the poison ivy on the back of my legs gets really irritated by the pants rubbing against them.  At least at home I can wear shorts.  The rash seems to be getting better but the itching has not subsided and I only got two hours of sleep last night.  I had one and a half hours the night before and only one hour the night before that.  The itching makes it difficult to sleep.

The OU commencement is tomorrow night at 7:30 PM at the University of Oklahoma football stadium.  The smaller convocation will be on Saturday.  It should be a very exciting time.  This has been a long time coming and I am glad to have it over.  Now maybe we can get back to life again soon.  Well I just wanted to share our little storm we had last night because it was a welcome sight.  Do not get me wrong, I do not want anyone to get hurt or have their property damages but I do like to see storms when I can.  I still kick myself for not becoming a meteorologist.

Last weekend, I helped my dad cut down some trees in his yard and it was a big job.  While I was cutting them down, I was standing in poison ivy.  I am just now feeling the effects of it and itching real bad.  My wonderful wife just came back with some calamine lotion to help with the itching.  I am terrible at not scratching.  It is funny I tell my kids not to scratch while I have trouble restraining myself. 

Last weekend we also tore down two metal buildings in my dad’s backyard so he could have one larger building.  What a fun job though it was hard.  We used a 15 pound sledge hammer to beat the metal and pull the screws through the metal.  Those buildings were there for more than 40 years.  I cannot remember a time when they were not there.  It is strange seeing the open space. 

Well I thought I better check in here so people would know that I was still around.  I will try to make a point to post more often.

The past several weekends I had planned on working on my final thesis for school but something had come up over and over again.  Since my due date was this past Friday, April 17th I was running out of time.  I decided to take off work the rest of the week and work on it.  I worked all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as I finished it on Friday.  I turned it in and still have a little bit of natural anxiety as I await the grade.  I really hope that he does not turn it back to me to correct a second time.  I turned in my first draft on March 20th without even proof reading it once and my advisor had a ton of  suggestions on what I need to do to improve it.  I basically re-wrote the paper.  Now I wait, hoping he will give me a passing grade since this is the last lesson that I do as an OU student.

This passed weekend the local meteorologists promised 100% chance of rain with severe storms likely.  Friday night while we were sleeping we did receive a light rain that did not last very long.  We waited all weekend and finally got a very small storm last night.  The storm only lasted maybe ten minutes though it looked like it strengthened after i passed us.  I took  a few pictures as it passed us.

The photo above was looking to the Northwest after the storm had passed to the East.  The clouds depicted in this photo are called mammatus clouds.  Thes type of clouds usually look scary but they are not dangerous at all.  They look like this because there is sinking air and these type of storms are almost always at the back of the storm.  This storm looks far worse than it was as it only rained moderately for a few minutes.  I was disappointed because I really wanted to see some storms.  Later in the evening as this storm moved off to the Southeast it built up into a severe storm with lots of lightning.  For the life of me I do not understand why I never thought to take any pictures of the lightning until the storm was at a distance. 

The above photo was taken straight South as the storm was building over Cleveland county.  You may have noticed the low flat clouds in the fore ground that are completely separate from the storm.  These low clouds were associated with the cold front that came in after the storms went by.  Had I waited any longer to take these pictures, I would not have been able to get this lightning becuase these low clouds would have blocked my view.  I missed a grand opportunity last night because I was too busy pouting about what a dud the storm was .  Again, it was a much better stom after it passed us.  This morning we are on the back side of this low pressure with some hard North wind.

This spring has been cooler than normal as we have had one cold front after another.  It seems to get up to 80+ degrees just to be followed by a 30 degree drop the next day.  The trees started blooming two months ago and still have not completed.  The poor trees cannot finish because every time it gets cold, the trees stop their blooming process.  This has resulted in our allergy problems lasting longer than they should.  With the powerful winds we have been dealing with wild fires resulting in homes being burned.  About a week ago we had a wildfire that burned more than 100 homes on the East side of the metro area.

I took the photo above in Midwest City.  This is just one of the homes that was burned as the 40+ MPH wind carried the fire more than five miles.  I had a feeling as I got off work on that day when I looked out the front door of my work and saw smoke near Carl Albert high school.  I had no idea that it was that big of a fire at the time.  Hopefully the rain we received this weekend will help prevent any more fires.

Again, I have not been very active on my blog for a while because my school was approaching the end and it was my priority.  Whenever I am paying thousands of dollars for college, it only makes sense that I take it seriously .  Like I said before, if he says my paper is satisfactory then I am officially done.  I will graduate in less than a month.  Let’s just pray that it meets the requirements of my advisor.  I realize this post is more of a rambling news report but since I have not been on in a while, I thought I needed to keep you up to date.  Hopefully I will be able to keep the blog up to date now that I will have more time.

Since my vacation time has reached the use or lose point, I took off today on this first day of Spring.  The world is a better place today or at least I can pretend.  I sure wish my advisor would write me back and tell me that my paper is great as is and that no other work is needed.  I know… I can dream on this first day of Spring.  As I am watching television posting this message, Little House on the Prairie is coming on.  Now this is not a program that I would typically watch but it does have a strange nostalgia attached to it.  I remember going to visit my grandparents in New Mexico as a kid and my tough Grandpa Taylor would be watching this show.  It was so ironic that he would be watching this because I saw him as such a tough, strong guy.  He died in 1980 and I still miss him today.

Also my mom was always into Westerns and so seeing one reminds me of her.  My mom’s favorite place in the world was Tucson, Arizona.  She would love to go see “Old Tucson Studios” where many cowboy shows were made including several from John Wayne.  Since we always went there as a child, that was my first choice in bases when I joined the Air Force.  I filled out my “dream sheet” and selected Davis-Monthan AFB as my first choice and they gave it to me.  That was where my wife and I had our first home and where my oldest son was born.  The only negative thing about living in Arizona was that it was way too hot in the summer time.  I distinctively remember the absence of this euphoric Spring time feeling when I was there.  Spring was not distinctive because it never got cold.  Spring was almost a downer because it was a reminder of the 150+ days over 100 degrees that was coming.  When I was there, it was fall that I really loved because I knew cooler days were on the way.

Despite the heat, I have great memories of the desert Southwest from living there as well as childhood memories.  I still have many family members that live in Southern New Mexico in Deming, and Las Cruces.  It is rare that we have Springtime, a day off, and nothing pressing to do.  I may just go out and take some Springtime pictures today.  But first my wife and I are going to go to the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) for breakfast in Bricktown OKC.  We are going to spend time together and be thankful to God for making this such a wonderful day and blessing us so much.  My son is back home and life is great.  It would not do God justice to fail to give him credit for the blessings that we have been fortunate to enjoy.

As I post this, my television is being covered by the rumbling sound of jet engines from nearby Tinker AFB.  Even on my day off I can hear my work.  The Air Force has been part of my life for more than 20 years.  Actually if you count the time my dad worked at Tinker AFB as a child, I have been around the Air Force my entire life.  Our home is just about a mile and a half off the end of their northwest runway so we often have airplanes flying over our house that are so loud that we cannot even hear the television.  To many people that would be something to complain about.  To us it is just another blessing to see how God has blessed us with a stable job that we can live a decent life.  The Air Force has been and will continue to be a part of our lives.

A week ago we went to Ft. Sill to see my brother in law just to come home and find out that our other car would not start and had a strange sound coming from under the hood.  We had the car towed to the dealership and found that a pulley holding the timing belt on was bent allowing the belt to come off.  This resulted in valve damage so we lived without the car for a week.  Thankfully the dealership said that it was covered by the power train warrantee.  I think this deserves another “praise the Lord”.  We have neglected our lawn this spring thanks to being so overwhelmed with life so I have weeds growing out of control.  I think next weekend I will mow the lawn for the first time this year.  This week has been full of successes and that has been a great feeling.

Too often we like to share the negative things that happen to us with other people and never show the good things that happen.  This has been a great week and we are very grateful for the good fortunes that we experience.  Now we return to work this week with much less stress that we had this time last week at this time.  After I get this final paper turned in, I can get back to life again.  The last two years have been very busy and time has been a commodity that has been short.  It is a great feeling knowing that we can get back to normal very soon.

It is hard to find anything more pleasing than a nice morning sunrise when you do not have to go to work.  The beauty of my situation this morning is that it is the end of the year and I have some use or lose vacation time that I have to burn so I took this beautiful Friday off.  Although it is a crisp 32 degrees at this early hour it still is a pretty morning.  This time last year we were sitting in the dark for a week.  You may remember the horrible ice storm that knocked out the electricity to more than 250,000 in Oklahoma City while more than a million state wide.  You can look at the photos I took here.  The weather forecast is showing another ice storm coming in next week though most believe it will not compare to the monster we had last year. Most people sleep in on their day off but not me.  I love mornings and I always have.  I went out to breakfast at the Waffle House at 5:30 this morning as she was going to work.  She could not take the day off because in her Wing they were having a General come to their office.  She had to be involved in the protocol activities so I had to do without my beautiful wife this morning.  As a second choice I thought I would spend my morning watching the sun rise over Oklahoma City.  I took this photo among others around 7:00 AM.

Below is another photo of downtown.  As you can see the Sandridge Energy and the Chase Bank both have crosses on the buildings representing the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for us as we celebrate his birth on Christmas.  Now I sit here listening to 40 meters on ham radio while typing a blog post.  I wanted to get some pictures of the full moon but there were some clouds in the western sky.  I only have two more classes before I can graduate the University of Oklahoma.  I will start those on January 20, 2009 and I am very happy to have this journey almost complete.

This morning I found San Francisco 49′ers football star Jerry Rice and the Phoenix Suns star Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter.  That was pretty cool as well.  Now that we have the Oklahoma City Thunder I will have to temper my love for the Phoenix Suns.  As many of you know we use to live in Phoenix, Arizona while I was stationed at Luke AFB.  I also lived in Tucson, Arizona while stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB.  Those were some wonderful times of my life that I will never forget.  I lived in Phoenix during the great run of the Suns in 1993.  That is when I really became a fan of the NBA.

I had a very nice visit with my dad last night.  Many of you ham radio people may know him as W5QO, the trustee for the Del City Amateur Radio Club (DCARC).  It is hard to believe that experiment has lasted for six years.  It is hard to believe that in 2002 I was trying to kill time while my wife was spending time in the hospital visiting her mother has turned out to be a full blown ham radio club with an FCC license (W5DEL).  Though I had an amateur radio license since 1983 I was not very active because I could not afford the gear until my dad gave me a dual band mobile radio.  Now it is a whole different world where I have my own ham shack, President of the DCARC and a 70 foot tower in the back yard and all this since 2002. 

This year just does not feel much like Christmas with my 16 year old son gone.  He ran away on 26 Sep 08.  He is safe and staying with friends.  I spoke to him briefly on Yahoo Instant Messenger the other day.  We have decided to let him go and put faith in God that he will overcome and have a successful future.  Many have told me to file charges against the people that he is staying with but I think that would just make things worse.  My goal is to retain a relationship with him for the future and hope that he remains well.  Thank you for those that have offered their prayers of support.  We have decided to keep faith in God and enjoy life.  My other son got his driver’s license a couple days ago and we added him to our insurance.  Once I came too and realized that we really could afford the extra $100 per month premiums I was fine. I am happy for him as he just got a job at a local restaurant a couple weeks ago.  Despite everything I am very proud of both of my kids.  Once I graduate, I will have more time to do some hobbies that I have neglected for the last couple years.  I love taking pictures and talking on the radio.  Of course let’s not forget my big hobby of playing on the computer.  Thankfully today with amateur radio and photography joining with computers I can do all of them at the same time.

Again, it is a beautiful morning and I am off work too.  With no homework this weekend I am sure to have a nice weekend.  I only wish my wife could have taken off work.  That would have made it perfect.