Author: Kyle Dickerson

This was our last week in Texas.  Heather did some playing in the rain and Kyle finished up his classes on the 26th.  After taking a final he drove back up to Frisco.  Jess' parents offered to watch Heather so we could have a night out to celebrate our anniversary.  We went to the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas.  It's a nice hotel.  We walked to dinner at an Italian restaurant, Bellini's, down the road which had good reviews.  The outside could use some serious updating, but the inside was rather nice and the food was good.

On Saturday we saw "How to Train your Dragon 2."  I've been corrupted by my classes because I kept seeing the movie in light of how the characters portrayed various foreign policy strategies and how problems develop when those different strategies clash.  The vikings initially want isolationism, Hiccup wants to practice liberal interventionism, the bad guy practices primacy, and the vikings are forced to adopt primacy to defend themselves.  All of that is sub-text, not really the topic of the movie, of course, but these are ideas infused in our culture and media without even thinking about it.  It's interesting to have had it exposed so you can see it and how it influences the world around us.

That evening we went to dinner with Jess' parents and the next day we were on our way home.

A quieter week.  Father's Day, the Dallas Zoo, and the grocery store:

June 1 - 7:

Jess and Heather spent this week (as most of the month) hanging out with family.  Heather was able to meet grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.  She had a blast with all of them after having a little time to warm up.

Kyle picked up his rental car and drove down to College Station.  The Lab invited me to participate in what they call the National Security Leadership Program.  It's a joint program with Texas A&M.  Each year the Lab selects ~7 employees to participate in the program.  During June, those employees go to Texas A&M to take two graduate courses in national security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service.  Then we take another course during each of Fall and Winter via video conference.

The two classes during June covered nuclear deterrence and coercion theory, international relations theory, military strategy, history of U.S. intelligence programs, intelligence agency organization and tradecraft, and counter-intelligence operations.  The intelligence/counter-intelligence course was taught by a retired Director of Counter-Intelligence at the CIA who spent his life under cover as a case officer working operations around the world.  So he knew his material.  Both classes were fascinating and enjoyable.

They were a lot of work though.  The deterrence course had 4 books to read plus 100-250 pages of reading per night and two papers.  The intelligence course had 3 books, but luckily minimal additional reading, as well as a paper and two exams.  So I was very busy the entire month.

I was, however, able to drive back up to Frisco for the weekends to hang out with everyone and have a little fun.

The first weekend we went to the Perot Science Museum and celebrated my birthday.