Wind

The inevitable has caught up with me after six hellish days of non-stop day and night work. What began with a bout of excessive grumpiness has now become a nasty viral head full of snot and lungs that work like a pair of rusty old bellows. I had to cancel class this morning. Years ago, when my classes hovered at around 100 bodies, this would be done by asking a teaching assistant to wander over to the room and write a note on the board. Now it's done by posting a message on an electronic blackboard that you know will be picked up by many of the laptops in the classroom. Hopefully, I caught a few students before they had to leave the house. I can actually check to see when each student opens the message (but not, as was once pointed out to me by our IT guy, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye, when the message was read). It's a frosty one this morning. 19 C drop in temperature over the course of just a few hours. People freezing to death in the west. Snowstorm in Guangzhou. Just normal freak occurrences -- surely nothing to worry about.

Here, the wind is howling like fury and I'm sitting watching this gigantic pine tree in our yard do battle. If I can ever hoist myself out of this chair and down to my study, I think today will be the day that I will finish the new draft of my book and send to editor and agent. Something is gluing me to my seat, though. I've been through this before. It'll never be good enough because I'll always know where it could have been improved.

Geebus it's windy out there now. I'm wondering how safe it is to sit by the window.

the final final final frontier

Hiding out in the basement trying to finish another edit. When this project is finally all finished with, if I never hear the word 'space' again, I might be ok with it. Long ago, just after I finished defending my dissertation, I remember lying on a floor drunk somewhere, telling someone who probably wasn't listening that if I never had another thought about anything connected with the topic of my PhD research for the rest of my life, that would be about three lifetimes too soon. I feel much the same now, only more so. How do people do this over and over again? I had a beer yesterday with a man hard at work on his second book. He looked a little unwell.

My brain is sucked dry.

Silly brain too small to write books.

Must. Nap. Now.

I made it

All teeth still intact (those gums, though) and, you know, I only feel a couple of days older than when I was 49. It was a great weekend. I saw all of my siblings in the same room for something other than a funeral. This is a rare event. I had the pleasure of seeing most of my favourite people in my house, all at the same time, being served delicious canapes by a man in a bowtie. I even got to spend a few minutes with one of my oldest friends -- haven't seen him for years and years and he made a long drive to give me a hug.

It occurred to me the next morning that 50 is really the last landmark birthday where people make fun of you for aging. The next ones (60, 65, etc.) are the ones where they start really lying and tell you how well you're looking. Only one person at my party told me I looked really good for my age, and she was exceedingly intoxicated. There are so many ways I could take that.

I wish I could think of something more interesting than any of this to say, but not today. You've logged in on a bad day. As my oldest daughter (who turned 21 today) would say, "sorry about your luck."

Is that a liver spot??

I'm pretty sure it is...at least 2 mm across I'd say.








More seriously, I'm now on final trajectory to this birthday. No fear here. I just finished the most difficult editing. Three chapters left and I already like them all. Listen! I hear a nice bottle of zinfandel calling me.....

Nice hits, baby

Just spent a minute looking at what Google searches are hitting me. The usual Darryl Hannah crap -- I tell you, more people (poor pets) come calling looking for the lowdown on her missing digits than anything else I have here. Give the woman a break! There are at least a dozen much more interesting things about her than her hand, and that's from someone who knows almost nothing about her. Go watch Kill Bill. Go look at her eco-videos. If you want missing body parts, go look up Telly Savalas whydoncha? End of rant.

One nice hit. "Virtual shenanigans". That would actually be a good job title for me. Officer in charge of virtual shenanigans. Me likes.

Not much else of mental note to report today. My neurons are thinning out nicely as the big birthday approaches. I've justified my existence today by doing much reading about Dilbert and cubicle culture (which is a slight crossover from my fun to my work blog, but mostly its all fun, isn't it?). At my age, I'm not good for much else. Carpet bowling or mall walking maybe.

Fiddy

I got my first birthday card today. Somehow, seeing that number in big bold font is a whole different thing to saying it. Fifty. 50. Whole different feeling.

When I first met my wife, way back in the last century, we used to talk about the day, sometime far off in the future. She predicted we'd have lots of kids. And I'd be quite distinguished. One out of two ain't bad.

It won't be long now. Hope my teeth don't suddenly fall out.

Tea party

It's one of those busy single dad mornings where my wife goes off to work while I stay home to tend the brood. My attention is somewhat divided at this moment by two little children (Thing 1 and Thing 2, we've taken to calling them) squealing around the room looking for any sugar that they can find. They woke me up this morning by bouncing up and down on the bed, announcing that they had prepared a tea party for me, and I just needed to hoist myself out of repose, pay my money (!) and get my 'tea'. Tea turned out to be generous portions of soy milk and an entire six foot long dining table covered with every form of cookie, cracker, granola bar, dried fruit, and apple sauce that they were able to find. I tried to explain gently that there was no way we could actually eat all of this food. They looked a bit crestfallen at first, but when they discovered they were allowed to chug down all the Gatorade they had found (not clear where this came from) then they were ok with it.

Given the circumstances, that's about as profound a set of utterances as you'll get out of me today. But I'm madly hoping to write a little entry in the book blog so look over there if you want some mental stimulation.

Horn blowing

I had to do something today that I'm not always so great at. Every year, I have to write a report documenting my accomplishments over the year. The report is used to determine pay raises. We have an odd system in that even though we're required to do one of these things every year, it is only really read by anyone every third year. Yeah. Go figure. But if you want your report read on an 'off' year, if you think something has changed, you can request that it be read. At the urging of a colleague, I made such a request today.

Funny thing was it reminded me of another random aging thought I'd had recently. To myself, and occasionally in confession to my wife and one or two others, I sometimes say that I think it possible that my best work may be ahead of me. Mostly, I can believe that this might be true. But then I imagine myself as some pathetic semi-on-the-brink-of-being-an-actual-aging-man saying something like that and having the youngsters nod in agreement to my face, while behind my back the whippersnappers are smirking slightly and saying 'Sure your best work is ahead of you, pops. Sure it is...."

In a way, Robin, who commented on my last post, is right, this is all just a funny state of mind created largely by popular culture and media, but it still has an interesting feel to it. Perhaps because we've done such a great job of convincing ourselves that the 40s are young, reaching the 50s now feels a bit like falling off a cliff.

Bon mots from my little son

There's nothing like a linguistically advanced 3 year old to advance language itself.

During a recent bath as we discussed the subtleties of human anatomy:

"Girls have vaginas and boys have brains." Hmm. I think girls might put things slightly differently.....

Somehow, in a discussion of collective terms (I'm not sure if he knew how clever he had been--possibly).

A group of women is called?

"An emergency of chicks."

I love that little gaffer.

Shallow new year

It's a new year. We did the ringing out the old and in the new thing in the best way I can imagine. A small, manageable, happy and relaxed group including some of our oldest and best friends, and some nice people we just met two hours before the year left us. Tonnes of great food -- old, old cheddar, chocolate, a new discovery compliments of the NYT appetizer recos: dates wrapped in bacon and broiled. Not healthy, but otherworldly delicious. Devils on horseback they called them. Devils indeed. We drank heartily but nobody got slurringly drunk. We woke up to a gorgeous dump of new snow -- the wet kind that clings to the trees and makes the boughs of our huge backyard evergreen hang down (I think it might have heard me talking to a buddy about my ruminations on cutting it down so we could solar power our house).

Now a new year. I woke up with another strange mortality thought. What if you knew that last night was the last New Year's Eve you'd ever have? Millions know just that. Millions more don't know that it was, but it was.

Final internet snippet of 2007. "The only thing sadder than a 40 year old with a mullet is a 50 year old with a pony tail." I'm ruminating on that. I have 20 days to decide.

Also, much time spent looking for pictures of famous old men to see if they look cool or just pathetic.

Turning 50 is going to be unhappy at times I think. But then I'll just forget all about it and get busy again.