What can I say?  Time off has been agreeing with me.

Since leaving my job in March, I have been doing an assortment of things that have been a blast.  Nothing to actually generate income yet but that will come in good time.

I am sitting on the balcony of the Omni hotel overlooking the Gulf of Mexico down in Corpus Christi.  I am here for a convention for school police personnel.  Back in April, I spent a couple of weeks working on a business plan with a company in Conroe around school safety and security work.  We applied for a grant through the state of Texas to help fund the plan but were denied.  The exercise was well worth the time invested because we crystallized the business plan and are now headed to the bank for financing.

Speaking of exercise, I have been going to ISOFitness for almost 3 months.  The draw to this place is that it is a 30 minute workout once a week.  My body was like a wet noodle when I left the first session and I hurt for 3 days.  Even though the workout has continued to be intense, the ongoing pain has been reduced to 1 or 2 days.  The exercises are short and intense with a personal trainer.  They work each muscle group to a breaking point and move to the next.  I started the program to get in shape for the work trip we are taking to Honduras at the end of this month.

In regard to Honduras, Jay and I are going a week ahead of the main group along with 7 others to get materials in place and prepare for the work we will be doing when the other 49 folks show up.  This is the largest group we have taken to this particular part of the country and we have big plans to complete 4 buildings, take food and medicine to many families and facilitate a vacation bible school for the local church.  Of the 58 folks that are going, half are adults and half are teenagers.  I am excited about getting to go on the advanced team with Jay.  The little bugger graduated from high school last week and will be headed off to Sam Houston State University in the fall.  Cyndie and I are partial empty nesters come September, meaning that the last two will still be coming home from college to wash clothes and fill up their gas tanks.

On the better half’s job front, she is still scheduled to be 1/2 time in her teaching role at Mitchell Intermediate.  This is not something that she is looking forward to.  We are still praying that there will be a reprieve and something will happen to allow her to work full time without having to be substituting for the other half day.

Jay sang the school song at his graduation ceremony last week.  He sat on the stage throughout the first portion of the program and then took his seat among the other graduates to walk up on stage.  After he got his diploma, he took a seat back up on stage until the end when he sang.  Because he had celebrity status for this event, we also got the royal treatment.  We received a gold parking pass which brought us right up next to the Woodlands Pavilion as well as 5 seats on the 3rd row center stage.  The pictures that I took are awesome.  They are posted on Cyndie’s xanga.