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.
I have decided that cousins are the best!