1) Over the past several days, I have not felt all that great. It has been a combination of decreased energy, apathy, lack of focus, and lower interest in things. Therefore I have been undergoing a bit of a reset. Getting back to basics, trying to figure out who I want to be and how I want to live, and digging into what makes other people healthy and happy. The interesting element about this reset is thus far, I am not discovering anything that is really all that new to me, but instead reaffirming past goals, ambitions, and direction. The oddity of all this is vacations are supposed to be therapeutic, but this one, while still great, seemed to has done the opposite to me. As the saying goes, I need a vacation from my vacation.
2) My kids attend public school, at least at the moment. The younger two are still in elementary and are on a year-round calendar, whereas the oldest is in middle school and is on a traditional calendar. The younger two will start school on July 29th which gives the oldest another month of summer vacation without his two brothers home with him. The different schedules only line up for July, spring break, and the end of December for a couple weeks. However, we are trying to get them into a public charter school in the City that I work in which is a K-12 school. Not only does it have far better scores than the public schools, the special education program is amazing.
3) Yesterday I took a moment to catch up on some filing work that has been piling up... literally. With that, I discovered several back issues of magazine publications that I read quite some time ago. I made me wonder what others do with magazines after they have finished reading them. Personally, there are a couple, such as Planning, that I will archive in a box on my bookshelf. Others, such as Government Technology, get put in the recycle bin.
4) About 5 years ago, the local state laws changed and it required that if schools are being built in your municipality, that whom ever the owner of the public road is (State or Municipality), that the owner is responsible for reimbursing the school district for any required road improvements associated with the construction or restoration of that school. This put a profound burden on smaller municipalities, so some restricted where schools can go, and specifically required them to be on State roads. A new bill is now being reviewed that prohibits such a regulation and requires that schools be permitted by right within all zoning districts. Since we are a fast growing municipality and in need of more schools, this is going to put a substantial burden on us in the future.
5) In the month of June, there was a notable precipitation deficit (only 0.7 inches total) that was causing drought conditions. However, the monthly average for July is 6 inches, which means that we will need a couple really good days of soaking rain to catch up. Personally, I have my mower deck set as high as it will go to help promote deep roots. I didn't mow last weekend and it is well past due, but it grows so much faster and has stayed so much greener than my neighbors lawns this summer.