Our house was hit by a tornado the day after Christmas 2015.  The enormity of the storm is astounding. Here is the before and after.  The roof is gone.  The structure is twisted.
We found a rental house and are moving in with donated items.  The outpouring from friends, family, community and strangers has been amazing.  We were very lucky to be safe and not in the house when it happened.

It has been a long time since I've updated this thing. I like to use it as a reminder of things that happen, mainly for myself, that I can access from anywhere.
In that line of thinking: We moved to DFW in November of 2014. Got officially at set up Nov 18. House hunting was crazy. It took forever to find a place.
I started for for Navigation Arts on September 29, 2014 from home in San Antonio. Nav arts got bought by EPAM recently. All and all it is interesting working from home.
Here is the kids first day of fifth grade:

Christmas and New Year's Eve 2012

Christmas and New Year's Eve 2012

I finally posted some pictures of the holidays.  I have more on another camera that will eventually get added along with some more from earlier in the year.

I was too amazed by the fireworks to take any pictures of them at the tower of the americas.  It was very close up and awesome.  Mom has some more pictures I will try to add to this album next time I'm over that way.

It was a great holiday!

Out of one kind of crazy and into another....

I work at Zachry full time now. I'm a System Analyst/ Programmer I. It's really awesome. I graduated May 12, 2012 with a BS in Math with a concentration in Math. I am going to start a master of science degree in computer science, software development in January. SOOOOOO Excited! The 7a to 7p , M-F schedule is looking a bit insane, but no more insane than living with extended family in a tiny house for 5 years was. The kids are in 2nd grade and still in a dual language program, although at a new school because we moved. We bought a house and moved to the other side of town, in town this time, in August 2012. Mom still lives out in the boonies. The crazy house is now dispersed. I miss Margie a lot. She died June 20, 2012. I'm glad we had all that time together all be it in a less than normal capacity. Pictures are in low supply these days. I generally suck in that department lately. I'll have to start taking more now that I realize how few I have. I literally took not a single thanksgiving picture. Woe is me. I don't have the memory to remember what the hell happened without pictures and dates and this blog. Christmas pictures will be copious.

Statistics makes me panic

So it is test time. Midterms are in full swing, for the first round at least, and it is currently 20 mins to my next test. I tend to have panic attacks related to statistics, so today has been less than pleasant. Thankfully, I have no intention of being a statistician. It is almost all over! :)

Thank you Blog

I have been writing in this thing for so long in one form or another that it just came in handy in straightening out some dates for me! Thank you Blog for your blogginess.
So to sum up since last post:
In school at UTSA, have a real graduation date of May 2012, for realsies this time.
My major is some administrators idea of a joke, Math Math.
Worked at Zachry industrial summer 2011 from june to august. That rocked!
The kids are still in a dual language program in school and their Spanish is now way better than mine. They are reading although they still aren't reading independently without prompting, but then again, most people don't.
I can't digest fructose, it makes me bleed internally. That explains just about everything bad from the last 10-15 years of illness.
Mark and I have been married 7 years.
Procrastination comes in many forms. I should be programming but instead I am blogging. Some things never change.

At the Beach

We went to the beach a few weeks ago and the kids had a great time in the water.  Its amazing how they are so unafraid of the ocean but are petrified of pools.

Can't sleep

I had a weird dream about this book, or at least a poem in it. Now I can't sleep, have gotten bored with Facebook, and don't have the mental capacity to do anything productive.
So instead I've uploaded pictures for the last 6 months of 2010 and eventually 2011 will populate as well.

I still need to learn more astronomy

My son built a really cute model solar system that I'll post eventually. I haven't posted any pictures in ages.
Since then we're gone a bit astronomy crazy, reading books, memorising planet names and places, discussing obrits and various types of astonomical bodies.

They're reading pretty well now so the learning curve is getting pretty steep. I think they'll like looking at the stars and planets, but I really have no idea how to read basic star charts.

School is going well again for me too.

I haven't written on here in forever. We went to disney land a while back to visit Danny. The pictures are over here.

I think my christmas pictures were a bit of a mess, although I haven't uploaded them.

The kids' birthday is coming up soon and that should be really cute. We're going to have a real party for the first time, so it should be really exciting.

Other than that I'm looking for summer work. It looks pretty slim right now, but that seems to be the way it always is this time of year.

A Strange Addiiction for 5 year olds

My kids are addicted to the Astronomy Picture of the Day and its pretty funny. They fight over a good view of this little computer Leo gave them. Its one of those 10 in minis. They also fight over screen positioning and talk over each other incessantly. It's soooo dorky cute. William wants to go through as quickly as possible while Angie wants to discuss how this fits in with her whole mythological world view. Can you wish upon the star in the picture? Can astronauts go there? Will that star, if wished upon, make her a princess? Are there aliens there digging that crater? This has always been one of my favorite sites, but I never ran to bed to stare at the night sky over it. I need to learn to use a telescope...

Hacked?

My Google account was hijacked today. Oddly, it was used to attempt to send a link to my sister's phone that failed.... I need to check my voice account. Weird, someone also used my voice account to call her. I don't remember calling her yesterday.

I blame this on the at&t hack too. I think they lost a lot of information. Like most fools I use the same password everywhere, or did, and my phone number was registered to my email address. Its entirely too coincidental that a couple of weeks after my cell phone gets hijacked, by email does as well. The IP address was from France. What a mess!

There was a trojan removed by Norton, then McAfee on this machine. That might be where its coming from. I don't usually leave the computer running overnight, but it was time to run the virus scan, and I'm sick of running it while working. It slows everything down and occasionally disables the lan card. Time for a new laptop.

Writing 200 words a uh yeah

A very irregular nap that was meant to last 2 hours lasted a bit over 5, leaving me to finish up a bit of work and try to meet my writing goal in the middle of the night. I think even ever awake Mark has gone to sleep. Everything downstairs is plastic wrapped because the ceiling was textured today and it leaves a very eerie feeling down here. It looks like something from American Psycho and the time of night fits too...

I realize its been more than a day since I wrote last, so I'll be at this writing goal for some time. I can't even say I've been writing on scraps of paper while out and about. This past week I've been traveling light because my purse has hit maximum load and I haven't cleaned it out. My library books are all due at different times and half of them are late now, which is why I haven't cleaned out my purse; I don't feel like sorting through it now, Agatha Christie is more fun. Logical, I know. I've finished They do it with Mirrors, so tomorrow after the paint is picked up I'll clean out my purse and have my waste paper stack and ipod to amuse me in waiting rooms again.

Daily Writing

A couple of years ago I joined a writing web site and never did much but poke around until a couple of days ago. After receiving an email inviting me to log in after such a long absence I clicked around again and found a challenge: write 200 words a day for a month. Improving my writing has been feeling impossible lately, so I'm going to take the challenge. I uploaded a short story and shared it for reviewing while I was there too. A friend of mine suggested a story exchange a couple of weeks ago and it was so much fun I thought why not see what people think of the finished product. There should be a link to the upload here, but I think you should be forced to fish around for it and join the site. If you do join and look me up, review the short story you find. Writing it was nearly as difficult as this has been. For whatever reason, when I want to write I can’t get anything sensible to come to mind. It took me a week to formulate that story and its so short and bland it’s silly. My creative juices have gelled up and need to thaw. I’m hoping this daily writing will help some. I sure hope so or whoever checks this site will be getting mighty bored with me.

Have I mentioned how much I love google today?

My blog migrated to blogger with blogger's migration tool automatically. It was so painless I feel like dancing. That was the easiest blog move by like 6 hours. Google services are always too good to be true. My google voice account makes me so happy I explain it to anyone who will listen. If you don't have one, apply for one now. They are the bestest. I have no idea how this shows up on my webpage now, but seeing as myspace doesn't load right and my last copyright date change was 2 or 3 years ago, I think its time I did some editing anyway. yippy!

In other news, we had some crazy cell phone trouble yesterday that ate up a bunch of time for all of us. We all got txt mgs from a credit union saying our txt accounts had been deactivated due to suspicious activity, then our cell phones all stopped working. When I looked up the bank, the phone number listed in the txt msg did not match, so I called the one google gave me. The bank's customer service rep told me that att had been hacked and client information had be stolen and used to fish for bank account numbers. She said I should call att and ask them the extent of the damage as she did not have that information but could confirm that many customers had been in to the bank to complain that the message had disabled their phones. When Sal called att they told him all our Sim cards were bad. When he went to the att store to get replacements, they said their was nothing wrong with them or the accounts and that the lack of service concurrently at different locations across the state was a coincidence. That's the worst cover story I've ever heard for poor security.

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the death of this blog

is emminent...
I'm going to apply for a job that will require this blog to be erased, or at least completly edited for content. A complete edit would erase almost everything I've ever written. It kind of creeps me out that being a responsible corporate adult requires me to erase so much, but I know I curse too much, whine too much, and admit to far too much instabilty. The world has become so connected that someone might actually read this nonsense. Who knows what conclusions can be drawn from so much babbling? Something tells me it will lead to nothing good. I'll have to comment it all out I guess. Then people would have to go to a great deal of trouble to look at source code to see that I curse and whine too much, or at least did. I've managed not to curse so far, and I guess I'll have to make a habit of it.
Selling out is complicated. There is only one thing I can't bring myself to do, and if I ever start, someone please come down to Texas and slap me. I can't be one of these ultra personally branded individuals who claims their religion as a positive attribute of their work. I'm not going to be an exorcist, so what difference do my religoius beliefs make on my work?

finishing christmas prep early is a different kind of torture

The presents are almost all wrapped. I don't have to do any last minute shopping. The tree was up by the 1st of December. I lost my camera and found sal's with a broken view screen still works. The video camera is even plugged in an charging. I guess I should bake. The kids are nagging my about every 2 hours about opening presents. It looked so barren under the tree without any. The anticipation is kind of fun though. Finishing everything early just leaves me feeling like I forgot something. Its unatural.

wow

life has a funny way of nearly killing me so that i might fight a little harder. i'm in a lot of pain and have been sitting for the last hour trying to decide if this is the worst pain i've ever been in, and decided its like 3rd maybe 4th. shingles suck, but this isn't the worst, so i guess i should be happy, or at least realize i can distract myself from having to feel every little burning nerve pain. that's what this blog has been; time to write and spill the pain out for the most part. i try to keep a little bit of a diary, but most of the time i just want to vent. i want to scream and carry on like a hysterical child, but i know i'll just be tired and feel shittier in the end, so here i am. ironically, last week i was complaining to my brother about writers block. i said something like good authentic writing only comes from oppression. i guess i don't need an oppressor when i do pretty well on my own. i've been kinda worried for months bc i expected things to turn out horrible when i tried to go back to college. college seems to translate to extreme illness and terrible clerical and postage luck for me. i had thought i might make it through healthy and smoothly if i started far enough in advance and remained calm. i'm not so sure if my terrible forboding was me manifesting this shit storm or just being in tune with what was coming so i'd be slightly less dissappointed. either way, this particular series of events was not something i expected, but its close enough for me to still giggle and say, but of course. as varujin mazmanian said to me many times at stevens, if i don't laugh, i'll cry.

Frustration

finding peace has been a lot like trying to see the center of my own back. i know its there. i can feel it if i really concentrate. i can touch it if i try really hard, but without some kind of reflective aid, i can't manage to do it.

meditation and prayer are wonderful, and i do find something calm for a moment, but as soon as i have to do anything, like stand up, i become entangled again. i've been told a lot lately that i take things too personally. i suppose that's the theme of the year for me: let it go. freely accept everything without judgment. now if i could just stop getting reflexively frustrated by every single thing i encounter, i might find a better habit lingering underneath. i know being a cynic is poisonous, but its also sooooo easy for me to take my frustration and assume the worst. kindness and hope require a slightly calmer base.

when we were younger a friend of mine found a capitalist mantra on a pen that i adopted and that carried me a long way. i think i need a new one. i've been looking for one for a while. i just don't know what exactly it is i'm looking for, which brings me back to the theme of the year, which seems to be the theme of religions in general.... lol

as for news that exists outside of drea's head, i added pictures to my 2009 collection. i didn't pick and choose, so there are a lot of them. you'll have to scroll down to the bottom to see the new ones.

First Day of School, From 2009

also, we're staying in san antonio. mark got a job down here. i'm still going to uta for spring. i'm staying in the dorm after all. the kids are going to stay with him. i'm praying for the extended miracle that this will be far less painful and difficult for everyone that it seems. i'm just hoping the stars align and the classes i need to graduate are all available.

First Day of School

Pre-K started out incredibly well after all. The head start administration for our area sent me a letter at the beginning of the month informing my that my kids were on the waiting list. Last week I got a letter informing me that I should report to the meet and greet and the first day of school with my kids. Then the teachers called and I finally believed that it was going to work out. Angie and William are in separate classes and seem totally comfortable with everything.

I took some pictures at home on our way out, but decided not to at school. A few of the other children in their classes have never gone to school before so they were a bit stressed out and crying. I didn't want to add to the chaos with flash photography. William reminded me a couple of times on the way in that I was to leave them there and go home, so needless to say my kids weren't crying. Angela woke up this morning jumping up and down and got dressed faster than she ever has before. I hope the enthusiasm lasts at least until Christmas, if not another 20 years or so.

The house is eerily empty and quiet now. I have time to go through the remains of our posessions and pack them up for our eventual move, but I think I'll find some way to procrastinate some more.....

admitted

today i checked my application status and found i've been admitted back into uta. i have to figure out where i'm going to live now, and its rather bleak looking. if mark gets a job in dfw and we move up there before january, i won't have to worry much. i'm going to apply for dorm housing just in case, but i'm going to put it off until my acceptance letter comes in the mail because there really isn't any hurry. living in the dorm is not appealing, but its super cheap, so it could be worse. i've paid a lot more for that torture before, so that's at least an improvement. in the mean time the kids are going to have to start school here in san antonio. their elementary school still won't answer the phone or return my calls, so i'm just going to have to go by tomorow to check on their registration. i should have made this decision last january and then i would be leaving in a couple of weeks and not having to fret for the next few months. oh well...

5th time's the charm?

I submitted my application to return to college once again last friday and the suspense is getting to me. I have this horrific luck with forms getting to where they need to be and so I've submitted really early this time. Everyone is being super supportive. Hopefully things will work out this time.

My health problems, it turns out, are very simple. I'm carbohydrate intolerant. The southbeach diet is the most common low carb diet out there, so that's what I should be doing. I tried a few months ago and had a lot of trouble adjusting to the blood sugar drop off that occurs when you don't eat at correct intervals. All that time I was vegan, it turns out I was still having problems because I ate so much rice and potatoe. I didn't even know people could be carbohydrate intolerant. Now I just have to learn to adjust my diet and not eat deep fried buttermilk biscuits like I did this morning....

I need to do school supply shopping for the kids, and make sure the school didn't screw up their registration. Pre-K here we come.

New Technology

Colored bubbles and spray on drugs are the amazing things I love today. I loved patches, but sprays seem so much cooler. As for colored bubbles, I have no words for how awesome that is.

A long time ago, a couple of people who like to request technology out of me as though I were Merlin, asked me for two things: a personal protection forcefield type bubble, and a patch to release medication. The forcefield is a long way off, but the term contact high just got a lot more literal with transdermal technologies spray system. Five minutes to absorption of allergy medicine? I don't have to wait and hour and forget I took it? wow

job searching

now the job search is going into overdrive. i've started getting everything in line to apply for federal jobs. as it turns out, they have the most thorough and inefficient means of accepting applications, which is interesting, but not surprising. its nice to know the screening process is so in depth since the pay is quite good and we all pay for the work. its sad that in this day and age you have to print tons of paper copies of your own records and send them in the mail to apply.

as for the rest of the plan for moving, we went from owning a bed, coffee table and desk, to owning a dining table and chairs as well. estate auctions are awesome. i just hope mark likes it. i think i'm going to keep it very minimal and buy either a couch or 2 lounge chairs and call it quits. i'm thinking of selling off all my books, but i don't really know how to go about it just yet, and they're mostly paperback anyway. giving everything away is much easier and feels better in so many ways, so maybe i'll give them to the library. at this point, the idea of moving them all again is nauseating.

i hope my kids will deal with this move well. its the first one they'll remember. they've been so catered to and spoiled since we've been living with extended family that just having me and mark is going to take some getting used to.

moving back

mark and i have decided to head back to dfw. we're both looking for work and places to live. i seem to be in some kind of hiring limbo where i'm too overqualified for a lot of stuff and too under qualified for a lot of stuff, leaving just about nothing i am qualified for. i'm planning to go back to school as soon as possible. this is going to seriously be difficult. mom wants me to go to nursing school. i'm starting to think that's not a half bad idea. i just have to find a way to eat while i do it. i'm debating taking down my blog and using my web space to post my resume, etc. we're considering using a resume/ application service.

as a side story, leo is so amazing at manifesting reality its silly. he thinks, i am so lucky, i just find goodness lying around, and then found a diamond in his carpet while cleaning it while moving out. i suppose i am as well. i think, moving back to dfw is going to be difficult and so far it's tedious as hell and exhausting. thankfully, i gave away all of our furniture, so we have very little to move.

summer time

I think I need some kind of summer plan. Alex asked me what we were planning for the summer while we chatted a month ago or so, and I just listed off our vacation plan for August. He pointed out that was like a week at most, and now I see his point. Right now we spend like 2 hrs a day learning to read, write, count and do developmental tasks like jump on one foot. The rest of the time I thought we'd spend outside, but the kids allergies go crazy every time we go out and so do mine and we all get sick. My ears have been ringing on and off all week and so I have no desire to fix the pool and sit out in the pollen more.

What should I do for the rest of the day? So far we watch way too much tv. I'm actually looking forward to new SpongeBob. This is not a functional plan for the next 2 months. I guess its time to schedule some craft time. Finger paints and glitter here we come...

Space

We've finally hit 70 gigs on this machine. With too many users on one hard drive, it was going to happen eventually. I've stopped all subcription downloads, compressed or deleted all temporary files, and emptied the recycle bin. I'm just glad I was the one using it when it maxed out and have time to clean it up. Sal would have flipped out. I think I am burning lunch though.... nope. Now there is enough space to last until I have time to remove programs I don't use anymore. I think I'm the only one who installs crap on here. I think I'm going to burn all the pictures of my kids on CD since I have them all up on google anyway. I have prints of the ones I like, for the most part. I guess I could do the same for the music, or just buy another hard drive. UGH. I spend most of my time here installing, updating or researching for someone else. The internet should be used to waste time and amuse myself to my own detriment.

I finally put pictures of my kids up, but my paranoid mother wants me to unlist them all, so that's something else to do. I think I'm going to set it to log in, so people can still see them without an invite, bc sending out invites is a pain.

This one is from the tower of the america's on their birthday.

From 2009

William and Angela are 4

Yay! I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do twin birthday parties. This year I got one big sheet cake for school with a theme William likes and a color I thought Angie would like. Turns out, Angie hated the color, so I got another cake with a theme and color she likes for tonight at home. Last year I got them each a small cake. Next year I think I'm going to do that again. I just didn't want a ton of left over cake at school and now I guess I know better. The party is in 20 mins and I'm sooo jazzed that its at school so I don't have to invite 30 4 year olds over to our home. Oh hell, i need batteries for the camera.......

valentines day

the kids are so excited about valentines day. they don't quite understand the distinction between holidays and birthdays, and i don't have any idea how to explain that in a manner that makes any sense. secular holidays seem like some kind of insanity or just an excuse to have a party with a theme that everyone knows. religious holidays require a religion. i guess i could look into one of those for some explination. being a pretty horrible catholic, i have no idea what the church says about saint valentine, or his day, but i can look it up... well, well, saint valentine was martyred for being christian in carthage around 400ad, and chaucer linked him to birds choosing mates in mid february in a poem and now we all give eachother chocolate in heart shapes.... yeah, that's sane.

FreeRice

FreeRice is the best waste of time i've found in a long time. i learn a few bizar words, realize i know a few bizar words, and force sponsors to donate food all at the same time....

Green Tea and Google can be scary

My tea tree is looking a little down because i over watered it, so a couple of leaves fell off. I went ahead and made a cup of tea from them and man was it awesome. I can't wait till its big enough to harvest in the spring. Only 18 months....

As for google, I just went ahead and started the facial recognition software for my web album, and honestly its freaking me out, but I can't seem to stop myself. One of my cousins writes about how google is evil and intusive which I can totally see, but I still love it. Personalized advertising based on my email content makes me giggle. Facial recognition software sorts my pictures so I can be lazy. So its intrusive. I guess its just a little hop leap and a jump to google facial recognition, google street view and google maps to easy online stalking....