The
Winter Wind
CY 2000
Steve
Again Unemployed
(this time by choice)
So when you hear about the nation's unemployed, it should include me in its count. The reason you have not had "Winter Wind" editions for the past few years is that I have been a full-time faculty member at the University of Maine at Augusta (Computer Information Systems). I was spending about 70+ hours a week doing a good job when it slowly dawned on me that this left no time for play let alone Christmas letters. I did not figure out a way to do as good a job as I wanted while spending a lot less time so I concluded that this might not be the best use of my remaining time when the "end-game" is almost within sight. So I gave it up after the Spring 2000 semester, at least for a while, to regroup, woo a girlfriend, and maybe even take a vacation (more on this adventure in another column). On an absolute scale, I remain solvent ... relatively, maybe less so ... but happiness-wise, more so.
Status of Garage Organization
This major measure of life’s achievement and psychic fortitude remains dismal after 5 years of good intent (it requires a contortionists abilities to get into my garages). Although I do regard this as a failing ... I do not regard it as beneath sympathy or forgiveness. (I know some of you have clean organized garages that you can get into ... but I prefer to regard this as suspicious). I remark on this because this was thought by me to be a minor task that would be accomplished during the first 2 weeks of my '95 unemployment. Sigh ... But maybe this confession will give some solace to similar sinners ... by having me as company.
 The Point House with flowers in bloom |
||
Mother
Wobbly But Still Willing My mother (Magn -- the maker of the world’s best Swedish coffee bread ... and other claims to fame) is now 92 years old. She has been wobbly on her feet for several years now. The doctor says that it is due to inevitable brain degeneration and that there is nothing that can be done. She has had a couple of falls and now has a compression fracture of a vertebra. It causes her flinches of pain, but the treatment is just to take it ease ... hard for her to do ... and squirt something up her nose (not cocaine). But she is mostly still willin' ... though there are more discouraging times too. Sam the Dog Samantha remains a constant couch-potato companion of my Mother and I. This seems to be a particularly perfect match. Slow as she is, she is still the most agile of us all at this time. Each night Sam sleeps beside the person that seems to need her company the most that night.
|
France Vacation Then we took a train South to Provence (Auvignon, a medieval walled city) and a bus to Apt where we rented bicycles and pedaled around the Lauberon valley and hills ... enjoying peak-top ancient stone villages, vineyards and pastry shops. We joined another friend, Alice, here. All went well until toward the end of the 2nd day biking as we were returning from a long ride ... |
|
