I didn't think it was gonna happen. I thought the Yeard was gonna come true. But no, after 166 days, yesterday, I shaved. Immediate thoughts:

1. That epic Dwarves of Erebor Under the Lonely Mountain look won't happen this Christmas season.

2. The Beard covered up a TON of progress.

What happened?

Yesterday's post came to mind. Specifically, that post about driving up in the old parking lot. I was a daily shaver in those days; well, I ran sideburns down the length of my ears, but that was it. That mountain of a man beard wasn't something I featured, though I totally could have pulled it off. I remember I was nodding at the nuns with a cigarette in my hand at St. Joseph's on the day I was born.

As I'm throttling down the road to my age 17 weight, I thought I'd set aside the beard. "Here, 2025, you can try it on." I piled it all together and threw it in a Hefty bag. It wasn't my oldest beard, that honor goes to an 8-monther, but the 'stache, yeah, that one was the BIGGEST of my life. Made Sam Elliot's voice crack. The thing completely covered my mouth, so much that I had to brush it to the side each day.

I don't know if I'll go back to my hair of those days: tapered on the sides and back—leave the bangs. The principal problem is that my bangs have left ME!

Plus, I kinda like my hair long. It's Flagstaff 2004; I can gather it together into a ponytail. The mirror still sets me back: he looks younger. It's funny how a fat face makes us look old and lethargic.

Well, my face, legs, and arms are thin: can we now get to this core? I've got 35+ pounds to hack off this frame! "Get all of this junk out." We'll drop in the new engine this autumn.

Within the cascading streams of Spotify, it's time for me to rumble off into the sunset to the Cornelius Brothers' Treat Her Like a Lady. (1970).

Yeah, you KNOW that title.

I don't know where exactly I am on the scale; I know what it feels like. Even that man in the mirror gives me an approving "Atta Boy!" Yet, I look forward to the long haul before me to drive into Bolton's senior parking lot again in that '79 Ford pickup. "Lemme pop in VH's 5150. Roll the window down—we're gonna ride!" Coming up on Sunday three weeks removed from that 204 weight, it's a sure bet I've broken below the 200 threshold.

200 is the new 300. I swear I will *never* be 200 again.

I ain't never lookin' back, and that's a fact
...
I've got pride, I'm takin' it for a ride
Bye-bye, bye-bye, my (Heavy), bye-bye

-Jo Dee Messina, Bye-Bye (1998)

I feel like it is time to get back into my workouts. I am gearing up a plan to maximize abilities/desires and minimize those things that tend to send a wrecking ball in the mix—I couldn't outrun that large herd of walkers, however!

I really miss my Spotify playlists! The one from The 35th Expedition was like having a friend as my traveling companion.

Of course, like 2019 and new wave 7E and its summer playlist companion, sometimes the good ones are just gone. Songs forever play in my head.

I uncovered a truth: eating your food in one meal is more satiating in a day than dividing that same meal into 3 sessions. I still have my butter coffee throughout the day, but when I eat 4 eggs and 3 burger patties for breakfast, I am full throughout the day into the evening. When I do 1 patty and 2 eggs for breakfast, another set for lunch, and then just a single patty for dinner, I am not satisfied. Twice this past week, I added a couple more eggs to close out my day.

I find that fascinating.

There's a relationship between eating and personal finances. While I have been tracking the whereabouts of every penny for 15 years on GnuCash, there are always strategies to implement. Mortgage and student loans notwithstanding, I have no debt. I pay cars off in cash, though financing is a temptress. "Have TODAY and pay for it in the years to come!"

I have been torched by credit cards, but I still gamble that I'll have the fiscal resources/discipline to pay them off each month. Now, I've done it for some time. In fact, my strategy is to make all purchases on credit cards and then track the cash equivalent via GnuCash to maximize the cash rewards. In the last year, I made $692 which in turn just pays back the card and frees up the allocated cash.

Nevertheless, I know I am playing with fire, or at least a tablesaw, and I already have a bloody stump of an arm. It's not worth the risk. Like Dad told me, don't get credit cards. Burned him, too. They play into our build to bet on ourselves. Thus, while it is a single card, starting today, we will stop its use and will close the account out.

I don't like our mortgage—OK, that's just me being nice, I HATE our mortgage. It is an area in whose purpose can be fulfilled for far less. Dave Ramsey suggests 25% of the monthly take-home be earmarked for it; mine is almost 41%. While we can afford it—we even have about 19% left over for savings, how much more can we do if it was optimized in location?

I have wanted to invest in a Roth IRA since I was 28. It was a regular suggestion by Howard Dayton and Steve Moore on Money Matters during my hills and pine; quiet I-40; westward morning commutes from Flagstaff to Williams, Arizona. I just don't think I could beat a pre-taxed investment.

I cannot control that I have lost 17 years of time; money never seemed to be enough in all of those years. But I suspect I have been misled by fleeting wants. And yes, I regret that I never put $50 in Apple back in 1997; it would be worth a cool $75,000 today. But, Mac was trash back then. It's like that $20 I threw toward Jackson Hewlitt stock back before its bankruptcy swiped that Andrew Jackson into the abyss. Single stocks are worse than slot machines...unless it's a nickel slot. You know, blisters.

Perhaps—appearances—I wanted to keep up with those dastardly Joneses. But an Instagram life features Insta-debt shackles. And you're not foolin' nobody with them photos! As for me, I want to be the unassuming millionaire who shops for treasure in Great Value food...and I've got the second part done!

Summary

As to what I classes I will teach for the 2024-2025 homeschool season, I apply the state of Tennessee high school requirements; meld in the UofM and UTK college requirements; and then put my own spin on things.

I have my misgivings because of the current state of academia is decidedly NOT about learning, but wearing soiled diapers. Students are to universities as folks are to Java games, YouTube activity et al consumed in today's libraries. Who reads anymore? Still, there is value in having the freedom of movement to pivot.

Background

It is funny how the folks down in vo-tech who ate paste as a kid made the genius play whereas all the "smart" kids taking Advanced Placement (like that matters) were dumber than a bag of hammers. But in my brethen's defense (and me!), that was the prevailing norm; we were told by our elders that was the play to be made. And having a college gateway made sense, finding the wheat factory workers at the chaff factory.

When they let anybody and everybody into college, chaff all around, my first degree lost its value. For Tennessee, I suppose this was kicked off in 2002 when the tax on the poor—err, the state lottery—came to town with the "Hope" scholarship. "Redistributing the wealth of the poor to the poor...brilliant!" Any time an agenda is pushed with utopian language, you know it's gotta be a bunch of mularkey.

And this leads me to examine things: is scarcity the only value of a college degree? Is today's UofM undergrad diploma worth $42,912 + financing + the lost 4 years of prime experience & wage earning? Perhaps, we ought to break it down by a program and see whom makes the cut.

Truly, there is nothing magical to a college diploma. It doesn't show that its holder can actually do anything beyond MAYBE acquiring passage beyond the human resources automated gatekeepers. As I get older, I ask, "Should we live in a world like that?"

My degrees do not impart special knowledge to me. Everything I know not from scars can be picked up in a book. Again, being directed which way to go is the kicker, and any book worth its salt does just that.

Does all of this sound like someone who once was working on his PhD. No, but it does sound like someone who kicked living on debt for a PhD to the curb for additional resources.

Application

OK, let's sweep all of those papers off the desk, what am I gonna teach this homeschool season?

Well, I wish I could teach more vocational classes! Imagine that: teaching to get a vocation! The fruit of liberal arts is about as overrated as the promise of playing professional foosball.

The other day, I dumped a wheelbarrow of cash for the kids' textbooks. In most cases, I bought the teacher's edition of each text plus only a single copy of the students to offset the expenses. I find value in Bob Jones University Press (BJU), so it is heavily featured.

There is no razzle-dazzle for my 5th grader as she's acquiring tools at Harbor Freight and Home Depot, so it is your basic run-through of Bible, Math, Science, History, and English.

I've come to loathe the term Social Studies—what does that even mean? It sounds as though I am behind a one-way mirror observing lunchtime interactions. Just call it Junk Drawer. Junk Drawer was a favorite class of mine in primary school. I pulled out of it a Psychology class I liked in high school. But, that World Geography could have been tossed out. How is that even a discipline? What, should there be an Adjective building on campus?

It reminds me of English at the University of Memphis. We had a technical writing class just for engineering students. Our ESL program had EDD's and there was some clammering for the program to be taken in by the teaching college.

As a business major, I took Business Communication with the business college, which was an English class for all intents and purposes. My take on that class: I once skipped class to go to the zoo by myself.

An element of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Think business, flight controller, etc., but it floats back to an English teacher who does not typically possess the keys to those kingdoms.

For my own contrast & comparison in graduate school, I took two web design courses, one hosted by the School of Journalism and the other one over in the MBA program. I didn't care about the actual nuts and bolts—that came easy—I wanted to understand the perspective and requirements of each discipline and then fold it into my linguistics studies.

If we strip out the useful programs out of an English department, does it just become a place of funzies, gushing about books we've read? Yeah, that just might NOT be worth that $42,912 + financing + the lost 4 years of prime experience & wage earning.

Is it possible to have a pragmatic education?

I don't know...the checkmarks are...dumb.

This is what I will be teaching 10th and 7th grader:

Fall 2024

Mondays & Wednesdays

• Systematic Theology
• Nutrition, Personal Finance, and Economics
• Spanish

Tuesdays & Thursdays

• Organizational Leadership
• History: the United States
• Geometry & Chemistry

Fridays

• The Vo-Tech Series: Electrical

Spring 2025

Mondays & Wednesdays

• Systematic Theology
• Foundations of Programming
• Spanish

Tuesdays & Thursdays

• Organizational Leadership
• Entrepreneurship
• Geometry & Chemistry

Fridays

• The Vo-Tech Series: Plumbing

Note: English is literature self-study along with a Writing Across the Curriculum approach.

Course Details

Systematic Theology

Text: Grudem's Systematic Theology

It's funny how the most important things are rarely taught. Instead, we had our daily commercials about SNES Donkey Kong and Crystal Pepsi on Channel One. As adults, what have we become? A daily life of Donkey Kongs and Crystal Pepsi colas. As Switchfoot sings, "We were meant to live for so much more. Have we lost ourselves?"

What of our character? Our legacy? What inheritance will I give?

Will my kids write twenty years after my death of how foundational it was to have me in their lives, that my voice remains in their heads?

Nutrition, Personal Finance, and Economics

Texts & Resources: The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey; GnuCash; Hegemony tabletop game; content inspired by The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes; carnivore videos of Dr. Ken Berry and Kelly Hogan. TBD.

A combo class that I've found to have a positive correlation! On their own, they are more of a workshop/seminar. Mastering this class fusion is critical for life success.

Organization Leadership

Texts: Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Goldratt's The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Willink's Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.

I see this as an ongoing class. There is a shortage of good leaders in this world and until we serve, we can save a lot of heartache by not following the bad ones.

The Vo-Tech Series

Text: TBD

This is my first foray of many into teaching DIY courses, putting very practical tools into my kids' hands, bringing down that car I built above so that its rubber meets the road.

History: United States

Text: U.S. History, Grade 11, 5e

More valuable than Geometry and Chemistry, there is value in understanding the past to put the present into historical context and understand.

English: Self-study & Writing Across the Curriculum

Text: Elements of Literature, Grade 10, 2e

I prefer a writing across the curriculum, writing not unto itself but purposefully.

There may be value in recognizing reoccurring themes in literature, though the why's slip through my fingers. Can you find them?

Literature is no different than those fake movie classes. Do we ask the question if we should study entertainment? What value is it for me to hand out a writing assignment on Creed's Weathered, an album I'd listened to in autumn 2002 as I drove home with my arm out the window on I-240 from work at Germantown Baptist to my place way over in north Midtown. On Fridays, it featured a Vanilla Coke and California Dill Lay's potato chips!

Frankly, I do not understand the value of giving the Creed experience more significance twenty years down the road. So it is with literature.

Checkmarks.

While this year, I am providing a literature book for self-study, as a cost-saving measure, this subject will likely be discontinued after the book is exhausted as the subject completely melts into other disciplines.

Geometry

Text: Geometry, Grade 10, 4e

We're finishing up the second half to just checkmark the req's with this one. Algebra II is coming soon. Outside of LxW, Geometry isn't featured in life. At the end of the day, a 5-gallon bucket has "5-gallon" on it...or you just know what it is...or it's a "Golly gee that's a bunch of water dripping from the ceiling—go get that vo-tech guy" bucket.

Chemistry

Text: Chemistry, Grade 11, 5e

Worse than Geometry. How many chemists do you know? The food scientists I worked with typically had a few letters behind their names, and I don't think they handed those out in high school to make that cheese powder addicting. The subject really is too specialized for secondary. But, some monkee a long time ago saw it, and required it. Monkees have been falling off and bumping their heads ever since.

Spanish

Text: BJU Press Spanish 1, 3E

If Spanish was the lingua franca of the world, I could buy into becoming bilingual. While all my friends took a couple of years of this, none of us ever broke out into Spanish. How could we have? The thing is, it really is the wrong way to learn a language. What is the motivation for the student?

The takeaway from its study is in examining your own language, which I would argue, like grammar, "What's the point if there is no failure to communicate?" Ah, we must appease the Requirements and Grammar gods!

Again, this is a checkmark. It is not the stuff of character and legacy.

Conclusion

I hope this course set gives homage to The Requirements while giving an upgrade to the kids' workshops. Maybe the biggest thing of this approach is for them to think on their own and not be like the raving mad sheep, so quick to bleat to join The Cool Kid's Table. And while I did not directly address the subject, a lot of this coursework all ties together for the Entrepreneur class.

There are times when all the world's asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

-Supertramp, The Logical Song (1979)