Chironautical because . . .

You might wonder "Why does this guy call his blog Chironautical?".  Or, most likely, you really don't care and barely noticed that's these scribblings have an Ubername.

In any case, I shall enlighten you.  Chiron, as you know, was a centaur.  Not just any centaur, though.  Way back then, centaurs were wild critters.  They were strong, fast, drunken, and debaucherous.  Even though debaucherous isn't even a word, they were and they made it work, thank you very much.
Amongst the constant partying, one centaur emerged that decided "screw all this having fun and chasing girl centaurs about.  I'm going to settle down and study science."  Yup, he gave it all up for science.  And not just for a little while.  He knew that once he started on the journey of self-enlightenment he'd be ostracized by his fellow debaucherers (yes, they made that work work too, those centaurs).  No room for a thinking-type in those wild parties.  Imagine the typical approach to a willy centaurette, running all around her, shooting some wild boars with your arrows and presenting her with a feast of raw pork before mounting her lustily, instead of all that, just going up to her and saying "doesn't all this just seem as though we're trying to run away from ourselves?  Loosing our divine essence in this wallowing in wine and raw swine?"

You can see that he wasn't far from being ostracized, and he was never going to get any centaurette anyway, so no big loss to him, but that's not the point.  The point is that he made the leap, to loneliness and better literature.

And he also took up with humans.  Failing to get on with any centaurs, he went off to the next best thing.  He knew that those Greek ladies weren't all that particular, what with all the minotaurs and attractive geese running around.  In order to stay close to ladies he knew would put out, he started tutoring their kids.  And the two most important kids he tutored ( at least in my opinion) were Ajax and his cousin Achilles.  Yes, the two of Trojan war fame.  The two greatest heroes that the Greeks ever produced, as long as you don't count Hercules, and maybe Odysseus.

I should, probably, tell you that my boys are named after these Greek heroes.  Achilles and Ajax, not Hercules and Odysseus.  And now I see my role as comparable to Chiron, having to navigate the sea of parenthood, hence the "-autical" part of the title.

Now, don't start to write me an angry comment telling me how I ruined the kids lives with crazy old names.  They do have a mother that has enough sense to keep me from doing things like that.  Only their middle names are weird.  They have perfectly conventional first names.

You see?  That first part wasn't about me at all.  You thought I was the one giving up social life to study science, and the one who couldn't get any.  Hah!  That's all I have to say to you.  I probably got more after I took up science.