Times they are a changin

so since my last post my world undergone some intense modification. It started when Cammack found out he wouldn't be staying at A&M for grad school. The concensus of the profs he works with was that for what he wants to do he has exhasted all resourses here so between that and funding its time for him to move on. Hes looking at Davis, some school in Turlock, CA, Virginia Tech, Michigan State, Clemson, and maybe a couple others i've forgotten. Clemson would be cool since its still in the dominica consortum and his major prof would be petter adler, a guy we met in dominica. Plus the collecting up there would be pretty sweet and its not too far from A&M relativly speaking. A&M without cammack is sort of hard to imagine since as you can probabily tell from how often he pops up in this blog is my partner in crime, comrade in arms, and the other 1/2 of woolley's robot/clone team. Seriously there arn't many people who will spend finals weekend looking for sailor suits for a stuffed Chihuahua instead of studying or that I can talk into wheeling me around Heep on the dolly. The 3 muskateers are already down to 2 and I guess in July itll be down to just me. I had been planning on that since he was orignially planning on leaving but then recently it looked like he would be staying in God's country. O well, well both be back here eventually. We decided a few years back we were going to live next door to eachother with a giant light sheet between the houses. Over time this has morphed into 3 different house/lightsheet set ups- 1 in east tx, 1 in the hill country, and 1 in west texas. All with minibars at the light sheets and air strips so we can fly to work (we both want to be profs at A&M) each day. yeah we are nerds but its so much fun.

Then later last week I realized that I was starting to forget my motto- Fly hard, Kill Swiftly, Make no Apologies. I don't have a bird right now so a lot of the new people this semester havn't been around for all the bird and hunting talk. It had been kinda easy to forget that I am who I am and that changing who I am isnt good. I love the chase as much if not more than the kill but when it comes down to it coming home with a bunny, squirrel, or whatever else at the end of the day is incredible. Nothing beats watching bird, dog, quarry, and human interact. Its sort of birdwatching on steroids., but at the same time I am not out flying my bird, I am hunting with a bird and thats that. No reason to justify it, it is what it is and I love what I do and I make no apologies for it. This holds true for the gun hunting that I do. I take pride in stalking game, I may not come home with tons, but its enough to feed me and my bird and have some fun in the process. When it starts getting to easy I change it up some- throwing knifes, rocks, etc, especially these days when I actually can put food on the table for myself and the dog and dont currently have a bird to feed. Now when food gets tight itll be a different story, a bunny is a bunny wheather it was shot, taloned, or knifed. Too many americans don't feel a connection to the land and I think part of it comes from never living off of it. I am proud to say that there has been more than a few weeks when all I ate was game be it deer I got from friends or stuff I had killed. At the time it was out of necessity but honestly deer steaks are pretty dang good.

Then on friday I found out dad may be moving to Huntsville, and not huntsville, tx like me, maria, and eddie all thought when were were first told. The funny thing about that is we were all told seperatly and all had the same reaction. He was offered a spot on another project and since the current project is almost done he might take it. They dont want to move eddie so mom would stay in allen until he graduated then move to alabama. Although I think eddie should move to Huntsville as it would drasticly improve his chances of going to ISEF, which as we all know is the most important part of a catanach's highschool carrer. At first I didnt think it would really matter if they moved or not, since I'm don't get home much these days anyway, but the more I think about it I realize how wierd it would be not to have my parents in Allen. At the same time though this new project would open up the possibility to moving back west, which I know they both want. And in the grand scheme of things i'll be heading north for my phd and so for 5 years will be far away even if they stay in tx. When I was a kid I though Huntsville, AL would be a really cool place. Our neighbors back in CA moved there when we were kids and since Mr. James, who worked with my dad, was really into space and galexys and so was I I figured we should move there too. Now though, im not so sure if Id like Alabama. Guess i should check out the hunting regs. Should be interesting to see what ends up happening.

Now that i've totally bored the few people that actually read this thing itll be back to the regularly scheduled programing- random slightly entertaining stories. Below is a picture of the muskateers in the sand dunes out in west Texas. I think thats my favorite picture of the 3 of us even though its totally washed out, its kinda a cool effect. Cammacks in the middle and Erics on the right (which means I'm on the left, shocking I know).