Halloween Coming

Today was our campus Halloween luncheon, a time in which many of the faculty and staff dress up in costumes and have a big potluck. I brought my wife's fantastic pear-crisp dessert (like apple crisp, only better). My whole family paid a visit to the guest of honor, a fella named Jeff who's moving on to a new job. The event was as much a farewell to him as a celebration of the season. The quirky nature of our wardrobe, the light-heartedness of the holiday...it all helped me swallow the bitter pill of his departure. He was my best friend here, always with anecdotes, always a good listener, always there for me in the early mornings for good fellowship. No more.

Sigh. At least one of my favorite holidays is coming fast. I take Halloween too seriously. I ran a haunted house (a big one, cast of 30 people, 100K sq feet or so, indoors and out). I still take my kids trick or treating (door to door, none of this 'trick or trunk' funk for me). I still remember all the old costume I had as a kid (mummy, dracula, hobo, etc)...

1. This year I wore a mattress, and on my head, an infant's bee costume.
2. A couple years ago, I wore a baby doll attached to my bottom.
3. In 2006 I was in a trash bag, cowboy hat and boots, with garbage stuck to me.
4. In 2005 I painted my face blue, wore all blue, and beat a drum.

And that's just while I've worked here. At my previous job, I dressed as a nun once, which was peculiar as I had a good beard at the time...it was all-the-more awkward when I came into a meeting late (in a big meeting room, about 50 people, when I expected 5) only to discover the representatives of the college's accreditation visiting team were there!

1. Mattress/bee....pest....a bed bug.
2. Doll attached...if I sat down...a baby sitter.
3. Trash bag--a white trash bag....I was white trash.
4. Blue and rhythmic drumming....I was rhythm and blues.

Bid'ness Cards!

I don't know why...I don't know what I was thinking....but for some reason I really thought I needed business cards. The college I work for provides them upon request. I'd never asked until this fall (6 years into this job). When they arrived, I felt like Steve Martin in The Jerk when he found his name had made it to the phone book!

First minute of this is The Scene--"I'm SOMEBODY now!"


(aside: is there a better comedic line than this, "He hates these cans!")

HOWEVER, after a couple of months with them, I am sorry to say that nothing has changed. I've only found two people to give them to. I don't even know what to do with them, perhaps make a house of (business) cards? I'm thinking about placing them randomly around the world just to see who will correspond with me. Maybe I'll distribute them to students in the spring, just to show them that "I'm somebody!"

Beats Antique

Just when I think I'm all Zimmered out, just when I'm getting all Blue Man...feeling that there's no more Bellowhead to blow me away, I find a new band that tweaks me to my Rusted Roots.

This time, I really don't think there's going to be a contender. I think I've found it, The band for me: Beats Antique. Gypsy, tribal, electronica...complete with a hot belly dancer.

How COULD it get any better than this?

Call me silly, but...

...it's worth it to go to work at 5am on a Sunday so I can clock out by 10 and go hang w/family. It's worth it today, leaving the house on a Monday morning just after 4, so I can go home after 2 to "be all there" for my wife and kids.

Problem is: it's really hard to be all there, when I'm so exhausted...but I try.

Yesterday was good, for I was able to catch up on mowing (football field-sized front yard) and gardening (harvested potatoes, peppers, etc). I was able to work on the ship for a couple of hours, and we made a new home to some new piglets.




Yes, I said piglets. We now are the custodians of walking bacon. I have very mixed emotions about this (see previous entries), but I figure if nothing else, it may give us all greater appreciation for how much food and effort goes into what ends up at our table. It may make us better stewards of our food, more conscientious about eating meat, knowing the animal it came from. Maybe we'll be more respectful and less greedy consumers.

I truly love the fall weather and the afternoons at home. I've been working my fingers to the bone while I'm in the office to better accommodate the kids when I get home. (It's better than getting home after 6, like I had to do some, recently.)

I truly am fortunate to have so much autonomy and flexibility in my schedule. Even if I do make it crazy for myself.

Now listening to "Monsoon" Sitra mix, by Mantra, on the album Global Chillout Lounge at Pandora.com.

The coming twilight

So, this is how it's going to be.

I've just turned a corner, mentally, coming to acknowledge just how old I am. People who I seemed to chum around with of late, people I'd come to consider my peers...are retiring. Today it hit me hard, as one of my "besties" told me the road had been long but it was now forking. This leaves me in the dust.

And we all turn to dust.

That's what is becoming more and more obvious to me. I've had something of a delayed maturation, since I did not marry (for good) until late, did not have kids until only 7 years ago. On Facebook, I see that most of my old cronies from high school are old cronies and worse--grandparents.

So my buddies are retiring grandparents.

I look at their pictures and I see "mature" people. This has been instructive, for in the same way we cannot often discern the changes in our own kids/environment because we are always there, our brains only mapping general detail (unless we're physically threatened or have some other need to be more attentive)--in that same, oblivious way, I've ignored my own maturation, my own sagging and wrinkling and plumping.

I guess I thought I could cope well-enough with getting old, myself. I'd just never had to embrace the fact that those around me would be checking out, too. It's starting to get lonely here. I feel the cold chill of the nursing home, already.

I'll tell you one thing--I'm going to start doing the math on my KPERS (retirement fund) to see just how close I, myself, might be to clocking out. Hmmmm.

Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us | Video on TED.com

Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us | Video on TED.com



THIS video (and several others on TED talks) has stuck to my sulci and gyri!

His big emphasis seems to be on nanotechnology, and in both his Ted talks, he's suggested that we're going to see such advances in re-engineering humans that it will be hard to fathom. He bases all his prognostication not on pie-in-the-sky dreaming but on hard, cold logical tracking of where we've been/where we're going. The growth rates in the evolution of technology have been exponential, and he does not see this trend leveling out or canceling itself out anytime soon.

I encourage anyone who's into the potentials of the future to do like me and follow this fellow's thinking to its limits.

Wild.

Water

So, I'm doing a research project with my students--meaning, I write and model and struggle and slog through the process shoulder to shoulder with them. I don't know if it means anything to them, but it keeps me humble.

This term, I'm writing on water. I started out simply on water pollution. I thought about writing an expose on bottled water. I was intrigued by desalination as a solution to drought. I'm now leaning toward water scarcity and the good stewardship of water.

This topic is especially interesting to me, for I grew up on the (somewhat) arid plains of western Kansas, where to have a good yield of anything, one had to irrigate. We had 3000 acres of irrigated property. One of my jobs was to move irrigation pipe from field to field on a regular basis. I also had to change the water, meaning, I'd go to the bottom of the field, note which rows had flooded through, and then go to the top of the field and shut gates for the completers, open new gates as we progressed across the field. I maintained irrigation engines, these being BIG engines that drove powerful wells pulling thousands of gallons from the aquifer beneath us. It was all in the name of high yield, prosperity, and mo' money. Looking back, I realize that was not necessarily the most conservative or responsible way to irrigate. Now they use giant sprinkler systems that deliver just-right doses of water, just in time. Even that is a horrific suck on natural resources, not only of water but also natural gas to power the engines.

Of all the things I'm learning about water, I was most recently shocked by the concept of one's water footprint.

Sources argue that if we are really going to make a difference, then yes, we need to be attentive to issues of global climate change, especially those that may be man-made stimulants to the problem. We must also become sensitized to how simple lifestyle decisions we make--like what we eat and how we flush--also matter to the planet.

Note, for example, the enormous amount of water it takes to raise the food that is then converted to meat. This figure includes the related aqua costs through the whole processing, etc. of cow to beef. (Even at that, it does not acknowledge the tremendous petrol-related expenses in getting that steak to the table!)

In class I brought up the idea that what we pour on our yards, wash our cars with...flush with...is a commodity worth killing for. As it continues to become harder to come by (or at the very least, harder to process for consumption due to pollutants, etc.) we may all some day be astonished at our water practices.

I am becoming more and more attuned to water waste. We have a sink in our building that runs constantly (for six days now, without stopping). I have a dripping facet at home to fix. It rained yesterday, and we could have captured so much water in rain barrels and such for irrigating the yard.

BUT...
Yoda, or someone, once said that knowing is not doing. I know a lot I do nothing about. I don't know why that is or what to do about it. I don't even know what to call it. Perhaps it's laziness or complacency. Maybe it's procrastination. I know I tend to act only when acted upon, which is not only bad form, it's reactive instead of proactive. One thing I'm sure of: it's ugly behavior, to know and yet sit idle.

Losing something leads to finding more...

There's a truth to the subject line above, "losing something leads to finding more." One can wax philosophical about it all day long. The losing might be a loved one. The finding might be discovering a new way of life...

In my case, it was simply losing a screwdriver bit for my drill. The bit fell into the wood chips and bramble surrounding the pirate ship I'm building. I don't get much time to work on it, and I don't like blowing all that time looking for parts, going to buy supplies, trying to scavenge just the right--so I was duly frustrated when the bit fell from the drill.

In my growling around, one of my boys came to join me in the search. While I had to crouch and creak, he was down at ground level, resorting even to what he calls his army crawl. While I was angry and annoyed, he said it was like a puzzle or a "Where's Waldo" game. Taking notice of his attitude, I sat down in the chips and ran my fingers through them, taught him how to carefully sift instead of just throw the raw material around (hazard of throwing the bit out with the chips, after all). I was on his level and we were eye to eye talking about tools, pirates, puzzles, wood chips...

As the moment extended, we were joined by another of my sons, and I began to notice there was more than wood chips underfoot (well, under butt). The chip salad also included strands and striations, fiber and flotsam. We talked about how the chipper had done its job, and now how nature was taking up the task of decomposing the rest. We noticed the fine line between what was a wood chip and what was becoming dirt. We identified all manner of insects trooping and groping around in the chips, too.

Altogether, I was coming to appreciate why my other son spends hours digging with the enthusiasm of an archeologist all over our property, unearthing rusty bolts and (nearly) unidentifiable car parts. (The former owner was a mechanic and the one before him a farmer, so this place is rich in mechanical debris.) I was coming to enjoy that little stretch on my bum, yucking it up with my boys.

Eventually, I found a couple of lost screws, a nickle, and the lid to my WD-40.

I found the bit, too.

More importantly, I found a sense of wonder, and I found a moment in time with my sons. I found a way to convert anger to awe, and I think I'm beginning to find a way to make the most of the scarce resources I so often complain about in this blog.

Instead of stopping to smell the roses, I had to stop and sift the chips.

Resources

I feel like I write about this all the time, but I continue to be mystified by resource management. Whether it is time, money or materials, I am always at a loss for how to get the most out of everything.

I have awesome books and access to an infinite supply of others--but it's so hard to find time to read them all. I walk into a library or bookstore and I am overwhelmed. I have hundreds of bookmarks to get back to and even more content that I never get around to online. I have hundreds of online friends and a handful of real, live friends that I neglect.

There is so much out there, so much to do, so little time!

I cannot understand those people who EVER claim they are bored. How is it possible to be bored when there is so very much available to us, so much one could do.

Religulous--watch it again...

Inflammatory, but isn't that what we all need? a good jolting.

What do you think, gentle readers?