Re-integration by parts

My name is Bob, and I've been a bad blogger. (Hi, Bob.)

I've finished what the Air Force calls "reintegration time," a period of downtime in which I'm supposed to "reintegrate" with my normal life. Now that I'm "reintegrated," I returned to work yesterday to a mountain of obsolete emails--stuff that was relevant months ago but has since expired. My job yesterday was to sift through all that to find the correspondence that actually remains relevant. If you've ever returned to an office job after a time away, you know this process.

An additional task was to sort out my calendar for the next eight months. Ordinarily, an end-of-year task like that would be to sort out the next year, but I know one thing is both set and fluid at the same time (gotta love those quantum metaphors!)--my upcoming physics PhD program, which starts in the fall. I know that I'm starting that, but the course schedule is not yet set.

One item on my calendar--and one of the "parts" of my "re-integration by parts" (a bad but favorite math joke) is a much-needed trip to visit my godparents. It seems I only get to see them about once a year--a reality of living so far from them.

I'm still taking classes at United toward a Master of Theological Studies--in fact, I'm taking a heavier load in the spring semester than I have taken in past semesters, just so I have enough done that I can conceivably finish that degree part-time while I begin work on my physics PhD. Yes, I've already been called crazy for that call...