A red-letter day

In light of today's auspicious occasion, I thought I'd regale you with a tale or two from my youth.

What stands out to me most about my father is not just one occasion, but all sorts of little ones that, piled one on top of another, create a palimpsest of joy that is the hallmark of any happy childhood. One time when we were driving somewhere--I think it was on the freeway that heads south out of Riverside to Palm Springs. We were together, planning to meet my mom, sister and brother who were already at our destination. That whole ride down, my mind was alive with questions, from wondering about sharks and jellyfish to various internal organs, to astronomy and space. Dad had an answer for every one of those questions, usually one that made me think even harder, but what's more, I remember thinking how great it was that he was listening to me--not just what I was saying, but to me, his son.

Dad would always be the one to wipe off all of the counters in our house, polishing them until I could see my reflection in the surface. He never complained, and still doesn't, about working incredibly long hours at a job packed with responsibility and unhappy people. He would go out into the snow with us and toss snowballs, and he always wore that black sweater with the flourescent green chevrons on the front when we went skiing. Dad never got sick, he never got uncontrollably angry, and he was never, ever ticklish--no matter how hard Bobbi and I tried to make him laugh.

As I raise my daughter, I think back to the gift my father has given me--an example of how to be a role-model, confidante, authority figure, and friend, all in just the right proportions and at just the right times in my life. Happy birthday, Dad.

The weather feels . . . Hillsdale-y

So walking outside this morning to replace the cover on the grill from last night, I had a distinct sense of nostalgia. The rainy cold weather, the snap in the air--all of it took me back to my college days. I've probably written about this before, but the powerful associations with Hillsdale and fall in the Midwest will probably stick with me the rest of my life, at least until Evie's old enough to go back to school.

Instead of getting in the car and going to work, the weather tells me I should be waking up at 9:55, heading to a Victorian Lit. class captained by a disturbingly cheerful Sunny D. Instead of figuring out my time sheets, the cold air tells me I should be figuring out how to cut Falke's latest article by 15 words so it fits on the page. Instead of tapping away at a keyboard blogging, I should be pounding away at an N64 controller, Mario Karting.

There is one silver lining in all of this, though it does have a trailer of a black cloud attached: I'll be going up to Homecoming this year, staying with a good friend and trying hard not to let the nostalgia overwhelm me further. For those of you who can't be there, I'll be your eyes and ears, blogging about significant and less-significant events that will be taking place. And for those of you who can be there, let's get together and relive the memories together.

Blogging on blogging

You know, I think I've revealed a funadamental truth about myself when it comes to blogging, and that truth is: my life is fairly regular, safe and predicatable. It's unfortunate that those words hold a perjorative sense, but hey, I'm stuck with English for now, thanks to lazing about in Japan for 9 months instead of dilligently studying kanji like my friend Tony no doubt is right now. I think that the sameness of the days contributes to the feeling that nothing is really changing, when in reality (now that I think about it a little deeper), things are changing around me all the time.

Take Evie, for instance (a subject I can't get very far away from). Just two weeks ago, she had lots of words, but rarely, if ever, said more than one at a time. Nowadays, she's stringing two and three words together, and most certainly can understand almost everything said to her, as well as, I suspect, much of what's said around her.

Or, take my work, where the crush of tasks to be done continues to pile up, as usual. Things can be going along swimmingly for awhile, creating the illusion of regularity I mentioned earlier, then Bam! People leave, new ones come, clients leave, clients sign on with us, etc. etc.

I forget the thinker who came up with the concept of "Punctuated Equilibrium," but I think that, no matter what you think about evolution, the idea can be applied to everyday life as well. The basic theory, as I understand it, comes from evolution, where instead of a slow, gradual change in a species, resulting in a fox slowly changing into a wolf, for example, evolutionary change happens very rapidly and is punctuated by a catastrophic change in conditions. Thus, you can have a fossil record of trilobytes stretching back for hundreds of thousands of years, and then, in a century or two, they're all gone--either they evolved into something else or they're extinct.

Life seems to move in the same way---lots of stability punctuated by fierce bursts of rapid change. My only wonder is, when and how will my life change in the same way?

On Seeing Dr. Arrnn again

Yesterday, though a monster day at work, Megan and I made time to attend a Hillsdale reception hosted practically in my own backyard. This marked the first time I was able to attend one of these functions, although I have attended similar "Hillsdale events" back in the day, including "THE Hillsdale Event," the inauguration of Larry P. Arrrrrrrrnn and the subsequent initiation/christening of the Good Ship Hillsdale.

That was a night to remember. The College went all out, setting up a giant pavilion in the Quad, putting in A/C and false floors and transforming my humble Ultimate pitch into a rough approximation of a convention center ballroom, or the deck of a sailing ship. Drinks, both alcoholic and non-, flowed freely as the Captain doubled our daily ration of spirits for this occasion. SAGA outdid itself with bacon-wrapped filet and the biggest shrimp I've ever laid my oxymoronic eyes on. After speechifying, a band played and my girlfriend (now my wife) and I danced the night away in the soft summer evening.

The reception certainy echoed that initial inauguration--say what you will about the Captain, but at least he throws a decent shindig. Probably the high point of the evening, aside from seeing old friends and professors again (Dr. Conner is looking particularly well), was a brief conversation my wife and I had with the Captain himself. He was very complimentary, particularly of the old gang of miscreants and malcontents that I used to run around with (we called ourselves the "BackPage Staff" then). Dr. Arrrrrn even went so far as to say that he learned a lot from how we treated him, the Administration, and even the rules of the College itself, and paid us the very flattering compliment that he used our example as his model for student engagement at the College in the present day.

If that's the case, where's the Backpage? What happened to the funny?

Oh well. My wife and I both left invigorated, reminded of just how special a place Hillsdale is, and particuarly how special the people there are.

Greenish-pale thoughts

So I've been sick lately--spent most of Sunday in a chair at my wife's grandmother's trying to trick my body into sleeping so I wouldn't have to experience the feeling of losing last night's dinner, or what was left of it, again. And again. And again. Although it might seem like I only write in this blog when I'm sick or guilty, I want you to know that that's not the case. I also write in this blog when I don't have much to do at work, which lately hasn't been often.

That also contributes to why I'm writing today. Something I'm starting to realize is that I (I won't presume to speak for you, or even my fellow americans) have a slightly overblown sense of my own importance to the place where I work. Living in Japan, and talking to Europeans when there, made me realize that this is not a common attitude worldwide, though it is a common one, I've observed, in Americans. I'm at work today, despite a recent recurrence of the symptoms from Sunday, and so this sense of the importance of my work is much on my mind right now.

Is it something you've observed in yourself as well? Do you feel like you have to be at work, or at least know what's going on there, 24/7 or 24/5 as the case may be? In my case, I think it was something ingrained in me when I was little--I was the kid that always wanted to go to school, and would pretend to be better than I was in order to go. My sister had a much more sensible attitude--when my Mom took time off work, she would conveniently be "sick" until it was too late in the day for her to go to school, and then she'd pop up, cured and ready to spend the day with her mommy. Maybe this sense comes from being the first, and theoretically, most responsible child, I don't know.

I just know that I think I'm going to go home early today--right after this important meeting with my colleague.