I wonder...

I wonder what I will be like when I get old...

Well, actually, some days I wonder if I *will* get old.

Where am I going with this? I don't know. I talked to my Mom tonight. She spent the whole day with my grandfather, who will be 83 this summer. He was having cataract surgery today, and Mom was taking him to and from the hospital.

My grandfather still lives on his own, and drives himself around, and is pretty self-sufficient. From what Mom says, though, that may not be the case for much longer. At 83, he is starting to show (some might say he has shown for several years) the signs of someone who needs help with the daily things. I don't think he cooks too much for himself anymore, and his apartment has slowly gotten a little messier as time has gone on.

He is the type of man who has never felt his age, until now, when his body no longer will keep up with the image he has in his head. For years we have tried to get him to be active with senior groups or things of that nature, but he refuses, saying that those people are 'old'.

My Mom broached the subject of assisted living with him today, and he actually was a somewhat responsive to it. I hate to think that it will mean the end of freedom for him, but then also, being around other people more may help him as well.

I wonder what I will be like at 83...

"What a Good Boy"

I took the subway to and from work today, which I don't often do anymore. R had a late night at work lined up, and I didn't feel like waiting around, and I don't like her to have to take the subway late at night, so I did.

Taking the subway is cool once in a while, if for no other reason than I get to use my iPod a little more often than I do now. When I was in grad school and the first year I worked, I took the subway every day to get where I was going, and that equaled a lot of quality time with the iPod.

After the first year, I realized that the life of an assistant professor is often not synched up well with the train schedule, and so in year two, I started driving to and from work. This makes much more sense now, since R and I work at the same place and can commute together. Anyway, the end result is that we are often in the car together, and I am not using the iPod in the car for the relatively short commute that the car allows. We are usually talking with either NPR or the local sports radio station on.

Anyway, the point is that I forget how much I enjoy the iPod. Today I was using my tiny iPod Shuffle, which basically just plays songs in random order. Since it has no screen, you have no way to know what's coming up next, so it is like a little surprise. I have embraced Apple's marketing on the subject, and have taken to the 'life is random' advertising slogan that they use.

Today, on the walk home from the subway, I ended up listening to "What a Good Boy" from the Barenaked Ladies album "Gordon". I haven't listened to BNL in a while, and never really paid attention to this particular song before, but the lyrics struck me today, and I have been listening to it on repeat for hours now.

"I wake up scared, I wake up strange.
I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever going to change.
I wake up scared, I wake up strange
and everything around me stays the same."

Yeah, that really sums it up for me today.

On Basketball...

Played some pick-up basketball with some of the Chemical Engineering undergraduates at lunch today. That's really a pretty big accomplishment, given that I haven't played basketball since maybe the eighth grade. Not that that is so long ago, but I was just never terribly good at it, and so never kept up.

There were supposed to be more faculty there, but of course, there wasn't. I was the only one. That seems to happen a lot around here. For all the talk about building community and such, I find that there is a lot of talk, but very little actual action. Not everything needs to be planned or structured. Meeting up for lunch or playing basketball can be as much community building as anything else.

Maybe I have my priorities wrong, and I should be working more. Actually, I am sure I should be working more, but I really think that the smaller things in life are the things that should be enjoyed. Everyone around me is always running around so busy. Sure, I'm busy, but I don't let it stop me from going to an afternoon baseball game, or playing some basketball with the students. Then I wonder if maybe I'm not busy *enough*, and that if I really knew what I was doing, then I would never have the time to do some of the things that I do.

It's frustrating, because I feel like I could in general really enjoy life if it wasn't for all of the worrying about everything all the time...

"That one's on fire!"

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted to this, which really doesn't matter since I'm fairly certain there are maybe three people who read it anyway...

In the intervening time, two significant things have occurred: The semester ended, and R and I may have bought a house. I'll tackle these in order.

The semester ending is always a mixed bag for me, emotionally. I get the greatest reward from my job through teaching and interaction with the students, so the semester ending is always like a sort of sad farewell for me. On the other hand, it frees me from the constant stress of preparing lectures and grading assignments.

This year was particularly difficult, because I had the same group of students in class that I had my first year teaching, so we already knew each other and had a good rapport. They were (are) a terrific group of students, and I am very happy to have had the opportunity to have them in class twice. I went out and had a couple of beers with them after their final (everyone is of age, for those of you who are worried), and probably 2/3 of them all came over to my place for a brunch the weekend after the final - which was a great time. In any case, half of this group will be graduating next year, and I will miss them a great deal. I guess that 'firsts' always stick in your mind, and my first class will definitely stick in mine.

Speaking of other 'firsts', R and I currently have a successful bid in on a house in the suburbs, not too much further from where we live now. We had the home inspection on Saturday...

I really would like to meet the person who thought home inspections were a good idea. I mean, I know, intellectually, that they are an excellent idea and that they serve to identify potentially major problems for the buyer, but from an emotional standpoint, they are absolutely the worst idea possible.

The home inspector's job, it would seem, is to walk through the home and tell you, the potential buyer, who presumably likes the place enough to pony up major dough for it, every possible thing that could ever go wrong with the place. I mean, you read the report (ours is 41 pages, by the way), and you would think that this place should be condemned, not purchased as a place to live.

What's more, is that there really isn't any filter. The inspector doesn't want to get his/her ass sued off, so they tell you everything that is wrong with the place. Some things could potentially fail tomorrow, or 10 years from now. So, it seems like a big crapshoot, guessing what the 'important' items are to address.

In any case, after reading the report thoroughly, we decided a lot of it seemed like the standard boilerplate stuff that could be wrong with any home, and focused in on a couple of major things. So I guess we're moving forward...