I am enrolled in the Summer quarter at The Evergreen State College in Olympia Wa.  My independent learning contract is called "Autobiographical Writing".  My professor is Nancy Parkes.  This blog is one of the activities I will be doing throughout the quarter as part of the program.  Other activities include reading the autobiographies of Fanny J.Crosby,  Corrie Ten Boom and a couple other books more ominous is size.

The main work product will be four finished works of autobiography.  My first piece will be about grandparents.  I'm calling it "Roots" and it is currently in rough draft.

The real challenge is that all this will be happening while I am doing the following:

• Make a road trip to SW Florida in July.  Pine Island is our destination.  I estimate the trip will take at most 6 days; maybe less, but I don't want to be in a hurry.
• buy a house in SW Florida - We are in touch with a realtor and have some prospect properties to look at when we get there. 
• move our stuff - Out of the old and into the shop.  We have been moving our personal stuff to the shop for the last couple weeks.  The essentials for setup will be in the van we drive down in July.  We are near exhausted, but have made great progress.  I think we have help coming to push us over the finish line this coming week of the 4th.
• setup house in the new house - Much of this will be handled by Anh while I'm working on the plane.  She and our friend Susan will be shopping for furniture.
• finish the airplane project I started some years ago - This will happen in Eugene Oregon beginning July 30.  I have rented a room to stay in for the month of August.  We expect to have it finished, painted, and inspected by the end of August.  If you would like to read more about the plane/project, here is a link.
• It was looking like Anh would need to make a trip to Hanoi in August, but I'm not so sure about that now.  If you are interested in reading about our Vietnam saga, here is a link.

Any of this would be a lot, but I hope to accomplish all this in the coming weeks of the Summer of 2012.  I will have to keep my laptop charged up and close to me so that I can get my writing done.  I do enjoy writing and hope to improve.  The nice part about autobiographical  writing is that you don't have to be creative.  The hard part is that much of my life is either a distant memory to me or completely forgotten, and conjuring them back takes work.