Not so little Victoria, Class problems

When I got here Sunday afternoon I drove to some of our familiar haunts to see how much things have changed – and they have. At our house on 243 Goldenrod, the tree in the front yard looks like it had doubled in size and is not quite large. The hibiscus we planted by the curb has been cut back several times but is a sizable bush now. The grass looks worse than we were living there. I’ll bet it still bugs our old neighbor Otto.


I thought as I drove through the neighborhood that I would have to look up Steve Whiddon and Ray Hanks. The Lord took care of getting me in touch with Steve. I will have to look up Ray. There are others that I could try to find but those are the two that came immediately to my mind.

I stopped in at the mall yesterday to see if Niki’s Roma was still there – and it is so I got a spinach calzone to take back to the hotel room to eat. It was as good as I remembered. It was much bigger than I remembered and I could only eat half of it. Niki was not there but at least one of the workers looked very familiar to me.

This little town now has a Kohl’s and a huge Academy store. HEB is now in its huge uptown location. Most of the restaurants we used to go to are still in business as are nearly all of the stores where we regularly shopped. CiCI’s pizza is now a Mexican grill and Mr. Gatti’s is gone, but Olive Garden and Texas Roadhouse have come here and set up shop.

On the way to church I drove down Northside Road to Raab Road to see where we lived before we bought the house on Goldenrob and the doublewide we rented has been moved. The porch I built for us while we lived there is still attached to the house of the neighbor we gave it to when we moved out. Even the log home Mama and I looked at while we were home shopping here is now gone. It was in pretty poor shape at the time which is why Mama and I passed on it so I was not too surprised. (It makes me wonder about our quest for a log home.)

I passed by the house that the pastor and Wilma built and could see from the road that the rock work on the exterior of the house had been done – at least on the front and south side. Pastor told me he just finished it last week – after nine years; better late than never.

The class I am taking should carry an engineering designation. Yesterday I did over three hours of math exercises and today looks to be more of the same. Some time during the day we will work on the drilling rig platform simulator. I do not know if I am looking forward to that or not. It is certainly something I have never done before and am never likely to do, but I work with a group that earns its keep within our company from drilling and exploration so I will pick up all I can. Who knows?

It seems frustrating and unprofitable to spend so much time and effort in mastering calculations that I will never use outside of this classroom and for this test. But when I think about it, that is what much of my years of education were about; learning obscure facts, memorizing complicated calculations, mastering information of little practical value that was quickly forgotten after the final exam; all so I could prove I did it successfully.

Here I am again.