Update...

Well, yesterday I finally received some word on my new job. I've passed their internal background check and now I get to deal with the Office of Personnel and Management, sometime in the next week.

I am supposed to receive an email explaining the next step(s) and once this last portion is completed, I should receive my move-in date to my housing unit.

So...yeah!

Also, over the next few weeks, I will be going over the results from the various medical tests that I've had to undergo, hopefully with good news all around. I am thinking my inability to get more than a couple to a few hours of sleep a night is due to sleep apnea, which then triggers my frequent and painful headache episodes, among numerous other symptoms and issues that are causing me problems.  I am hopeful and expecting some form of treatment that will improve my quality of life, starting before the end of this month.

I am about to bid farewell to my current job, which comes to an end on Thursday afternoon. While extremely excited for the new job, the move out of California, and going to live on a reservation (I honestly cannot express the huge relief this will bring for me), there is a slight feeling of melancholy lingering. I have some very good co-workers, which is rare, and leaving them behind will be a permanent parting of ways. I love teaching and being a plank owner of this school site means I have a lot of good memories from here. However, I simply cannot wait to get to my new school site.  I promise to reveal more on that soon.

As I am working on a second Master of Arts degree, this one in military history, I am again back to researching and writing in preparation of a thesis. The topic centers on British preparation for WWI in tactical and technological innovations as influenced or not by the American Civil War. I have some very good books on this subject, but unfortunately they are not from academia, meaning they are useless to this project apart from their bibliographies. I've bought a few hundred dollars of books and then saw another two, last night, that are more than a hundred dollars each....ouch!  I'll have to wait on those until after the move is complete.

Anyhow, this present line of inquiry has inspired me to build the 28mm ACW army I mentioned in my last post. I've ordered a box of Union infantry and Zouaves from Perry Miniatures, as test units for painting strategies and assembly times. I intend to use the "dip" method a'la Army Painter, but we'll see just how far I can bring myself to not paint the detail.

Lastly, my 50th birthday is in three weeks. on the 27th. As I am lacking a significant other, I do not have anyone who is all that supportive of my birthdays, anymore. Last year was the first, in the last decade, where I did not pay for my own birthday dinner. My last birthday gift received was in 2010, from my last girlfriend, an expansion for Campaign Cartographer 3. So, it was a good present, well appreciated, she just turned out to be a complete nutter. <sigh> Thus, I end up buying myself something that I want or need. I have no idea what it will be, this year.