Hearing From a Former Student, Too Much Water and Seth Update

I have three topics for this blog entry, as the title of the blog suggests.

First, I got an email today from a former student of mine. When I taught sixth grade, for a couple of years I taught science, in addition to math. I had very little background in science, so I taught what I knew: space. I did a unit on the space program as well as a unit on astronomy. My kids really seemed to enjoy the units. One girl in particular really was especially motivated by the space unit. She emailed me this week. She is going to school at Florida Institute of Technology, with an interest to perhaps work at NASA, perhaps as an astronaut. She was telling me about the program she is in. She has recently been at Kennedy Space Center, where she was taken out to a launchpad, with a Space Shuttle sitting there all ready to launch (scheduled for November 14). I was very impressed. I love hearing from former students, but I particularly like to hear from this former student. This is a young lady who set her sights on working for NASA from the time she was young, perhaps even in sixth grade. She has worked very hard, in school, by attending space camps, and now in college, to meet her goal. I have every reason to believe she will meet that goal. I wish more students could be as goal-oriented and hard-working as this young lady. I am so proud of everything she has done and, whether she ends up working for NASA or not, I will continue to be very proud of her.

Item number two: I discovered a water main break. I was home sick from work Wednesday (I am already feeling 99% recovered) when I noticed that the ditch in front of the house was filled with water. Except when we get heavy rain, this almost never happens, and when it does it drains quickly. I saw that water was coming out of the culvert that crosses under the road fairly steadily. This bugged me and a few hours later I went outside and took a closer look. The ground was beyond saturated along the ditch and, when I checked the other end of the culvert, no water was entering from the other side. To make a long story short, I ended up calling the water department on a hunch and sure enough, the water main was leaking about fifteen feet further up the road. They ended up shutting off the water to the whole street, digging a huge hole and fixing the leak. When I mentioned to Cara (by cell phone as she was on her way home) what had happened, she was impressed. But not with my discovering the leak, but by the fact that I actually called the water district myself.

Update on Seth: Seth is in Vermont working at Sugarbush Ski Resort for the winter. He is making snow for the resort, working very hard, and living in a small apartment near Sugarbush. He sounds very happy and Cara and I are very proud of him. His girlfriend is in Europe and will be back right before Christmas, so the separation is tough on him, but in the long run, it should be strengthen the relationship. I know when Cara and I were first dating, I was in Belfast and she was in Fort Kent and, looking back, I think it helped to strengthen our relationship. Not that I would want to do that all over again.