Ringing in the new/old ear

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. This week, as I make my way further into my sabbatical, I'm still ringing in a new era, while still ringing in my ears (sigh). 

My ears are still a little bit stuffed up, despite taking the Flonase, and I don't know if that's the reason that I continue to have so much tinnitus, which is a little disorienting and distracting.  The doc says it might take a few weeks for my ears to unclog, and I hope hope hope that the ringing goes away with the ear clog, because man; I usually love to be in an empty, quiet room, but this week that has been exactly the worst place for my head.  Websites I've read say there's no cure, but that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy might help, as does having white noise.  I'm not sure about the first, but I've been trying a bunch of white noise apps, and they seem to help, as does spending time walking around outdoors.

Early this week I got to drive (in our old beater car, which has lots of good noise to help my poor head) down to Delaware to visit one of my childhood friends. We spent the day chatting and walking around and generally catching up, and it was very good to see her, her mom, her younger sister, and her niece.

As for the rest of the week, I've been trying to find mildly noisy--but not too noisy--places to work.  I figured out some things about math that made me really happy, and I practiced the "Thriller" dance with about a dozen friends, and I attended a bunch of events that my city has hosted, including one on human rights, and I spent a bunch of time pulling together all of my future want-to-do topics in a giant heap, and then sorting them out into appropriate piles so that I can plan for the future. It feels like May (which I always think of is not really existing) is coming to an end, and in June I'll actually really start doing things again. So maybe it's good that my ear congestion is hitting now, instead of next month. We'll see.

At any rate, that's an abbreviated version of my news, cut short so I can turn on the radio and distract myself again. Wishing you a lovely Memorial Day weekend!

Tickler / To-do / Toy Box

In the "Journey to Retiring" series:

I am incredibly fortunate to have a transition year next year -- before I officially retire -- where I'll get paid part of my salary and keep my job-related medical insurance, but not have teaching or committee obligations.  During my upcoming sabbatical (which officially starts on July 1), I'll definitely keep busy doing the mathematical research that I promised in my sabbatical application I would do, but I'll also have a bunch of unstructured time away from the deadline-driven demands that has been my norm.

All this is to say, when people have asked me, "what will you do when you retire?," I have difficulty answering.  The difficulty is not that I can't think of anything; it's that there's so much, SO much.

The months leading up to May were jam-packed with job-related stuff, and I let it pile on.  It's one of the things I appreciate about the academic calendar:  April is always a hurricane, but we know the hurricane will dissipate once the semester ends.  My friends and family in other kinds of jobs don't have the same ebb-and-flow, and when things get hectic for them, often it stays hectic or gets more so.  For me, though, I know that I get to be completely swamped by urgent tasks and ceremonies and meetings and reports and student meltdowns and such, but I'll be swamped only for so long.  I don't mind holding my breath and paddling as hard as I can, because I know I'll get to breathe in May.

At the same time, though, beyond the shores of May there are all sorts of new adventures beckoning.  In the past, I would have figured out a time and structure for each of these, and dropped it into a particular future month in my "Tickler file" (or I would have declined and deleted the idea).  But the open spaces ahead are so much more open than I've been used to, that I gave up all pretense of figuring out when-and-where these future projects should go.  Even as I submerged myself in March and April academia tasks, I also started collecting piles (literal and figurative) of "someday" projects, ideas that I might want to think about during the summer, or activities I might want to take up during my sabbatical year, or even after.  Nowadays, now that May (which is still strangely a whirlwind) is here, I'm starting to sift through these piles of projects and sort them out.

Julie Morgenstern, one of my favorite organizing gurus, writes about how terrible toy boxes are, organizationally speaking:  they make clean-up a cinch, but retrieval a nightmare.  She points out that savvy kids stop putting their favorite toys "away" in a toy box, because they know that's the surest way to lose them.  But me, I created a metaphorical "To-do Toy Box" for all of those someday projects . . . or rather, several toy boxes.

 I've got a spreadsheet of books that have been recommended to me, and also a shelf full of reading material that's just groaning with "read me!" wannabes.

Middle shelf: A pile of books and magazines to read "someday", 
plus crossword puzzles I saved for later,
and materials for the denim yoga mat I'm actually currently working on.

On my desk: a folder for blog ideas,
plus various folders with clippings of things
that at some point I decided I'd want to do in the future.

I've got a whole email folder where I've been chucking stuff to come back to later.  It's mildly selective (it's got 30 different emails in it, but not 300); even so, it's much denser than my "@to do" folder (7 emails), "# waiting for replies" (3 emails), or "#-upcoming appointments" (15).  

Underneath my CD/craft shelfs:  boxes and boxes of
family memorabilia (photos, letters, documents)
that I want to digitize, organize,
and then get the heck out of my house.

I've also got (as the photos show) piles of projects tucked away in various corners in the house.  The piles are not generally of the get-in-my-way variety, but I do hope to beat them down in the future and reclaim that space at the margins of my life.  

So that's a bit of one stage of what my journey to retirement looks like:  I've been letting these Someday Projects pile up in heaps and boxes, ignoring them while I've worked on and played with the stuff that's been right in front of me.  I'll write eventually about how I decided to sort through these piles and create order out of . . . well, if not exactly "chaos", then something more like "amassed mish-mash".  

Update with animals and children

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  This has been an animals-and-kids kind of week.  It kicked off with a fun Mother's day, at which I mostly got to appreciate my offspring at a distance, which was the way I loved spending Mother's Day when they lived with me, so that kind-of continues the tradition.  Thanks for the texts and cards, y'all!  

Cow planters that Inkling didn't get me for Mother's Day.
Don't be too jealous; she didn't get them for you, too!

And also, I got to entertain Other People's kids at church, with Little Animals in Little Bags.  This was a nice bookend, because at the end of the week, I got to entertain kids at a doctor's office by making jumping frogs (but that story comes later).

Little Animals in Little Bags, with frog material to one side.

During the middle of the week, I had lots of math fun.  This was very good for the psyche, but not as exciting to write about, unless you really want to know about static dynamics of funicular diagrams (I'm guessing, no?).  So let me just share a trophy instead:  my husband said that I really ought to include a picture of the trophy I won at the Peep Diorama display earlier this spring.  

I asked the organizers: 
"We're going to do this next year again, right? 
So I can give the trophy back to someone else?" 
And they just chortled and said, "Oh, no no no."

Since one of the most excellent things about doing math is that it pairs well with random physical activity (for example, the final idea for my PhD thesis came to me while I was scrubbing a floor in Oxford, England one summer), I got to spend a bit of math time while working on my yoga mat, and I am very, very happy to say, it is done.  

A completed Denim Yoga mat, still on the frame.

This means that I've been able to take the frame/loom apart, disassembling this baby back into smaller pieces, which makes moving around in my command center a bit easier.

The Yoga mat crumpled at the food of the frame,
cuddled up with a braided denim rug I'd made long ago.
The frame is now ready to be disassembled
and put back in the basement.

Now that the project is done, I have to say it's perhaps not the most pragmatic of the projects I've undertaken.  For one thing, I don't actually do yoga.  For another thing, this baby is substantial -- it weighs 10 pounds -- so, it's probably not a great gift for other people who actually do yoga.  But making the Yoga Mat really was an enjoyable project while it lasted, and I like the way it feels underfoot.  I've decided to use it in my bedroom (since I don't do yoga, I might as well not do yoga next to my bed), and the mat is a lovely thing to put my feet on as I head to bed in the evening or as I rise first thing in the morning.  

But back to kids and animals.  On Tuesday, Prewash did her annual visit to the vet.  She has a frugal owner, but she's not at all a frugal dog, and her vet visits are pricey, due to her sensitive ears, stomach, and kidneys. Yeesh.  I'm glad our vet is right around the corner and that she's overall strong, thanks to the vet plying us with Many Meds.

Nelson had an interview Thursday with a gas station.  Rumors are, he got the job.  (Yes?  Somehow, I didn't get in touch with him).   

The day after Nelson's interview, I did a series of workshops with local gifted-and-talented school kids, whose confidence is admirable: I described some cool geometry stuff, and they tell me they know it all.  They completely get right angles, they tell me.  They then proceed to draw lines going every-which-the-heck-way, and the drawings just thrilled them because of their prowess.  These were happy, happy kids.  

The next day, I got to spend the day with my three grandchildren.  In the same vein, it was fun to see how Achild and Bchild are so confident and adventurous. We had a great time climbing and swinging and drawing things on the playground. (Achild declared, "I am really good at drawing fairies!!") .  

C-child hanging out in a rare moment of quiet and calm.

While I was there, I kept hearing a telephone or doorbell ringing in the distance, and then I realized the ringing was actually in my ear.  My left ear in particular got more and more stopped up and sore (and kept doing the feedback ringing thing), and so after I left the kiddoes and did a few other visits to people I'd made plans to see, I went to urgent care where I (1) got to make jumping frogs for two different random children who were likewise waiting, and (2) learned that I have seasonal allergies.  

Here are some random weird things about my allergies.

• Flonase is apparently a wonder drug (says my doc); it'll take about three days for it to kick in, but then it'll be like magic.
• Flonase and Flomax are very, very different medicines.
• If I stick my finger in my right ear, I get a dial tone in my left ear.  
• If I call out or sing, my left ear rings like church bells or distant telephones.   
• Although this feels a little bit like a cool magic trick, I'll be ready for it to stop soon.
• I don't have a runny (that I can detect; the doc says I do, but you could have fooled me) or itchy eyes or sneezing or anything else that I would associate with allergies. Bodies are complicated!

And that's the latest from our neck of the woods, where we continue to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Little Animals in Little Bags

My sister has started making gift bags out of t-shirt material.  Some of these, I return to her, and some come home with me.  I've been using the very tiny ones of these lately in my take-to-church bag. 

A tiny bag I made myself;
a tiny bag my sister made;
a stack of cards for folding into origami frogs.

We've got a lot of families with small kids in my church, and now that I'm no longer shushing and entertaining my own kids in the pews, I've been having fun bringing small what-nots to amuse various OPKs*.  My "go-to" form of amusement is to fold little jumping frogs out of paper.  I'll make those out of any paper handy -- for example, even bits of our church bulletin -- but I've discovered that business cards are optimal for "jumpiness" of the folded frogs.  My husband gifted me a box of unused blank cards that he no longer needed (he'd used them to make flash cards for studying vocabulary and chemistry), and I drew eyes on them right where the frog eyes ought to go -- these serve me well at church and in airports and such.  

[*OPK = Other People's Kids, which is an awesome form of children to play with, 

because you can give them back and then have quiet time when you're done.]

The frogs have proved to be quite amusing, but I have discovered that "Little Animals in Little Bags" is also an amazingly desirable toy.  The animal by itself, maybe.  The bag without the animal, meh. But a Little Animal in a Little Bag is a toy of obsession.

Cow twins, and an itsy bitsy cat.

Indeed, although the parents are quite particular about getting me my toys back at the end of church (because, apparently, I must need to have my own animal toys???), sometimes the kids still manage to clench the toys so devotedly that it's a week or so before I get it again.  The awesome thing is that these little toys were just clutter in my house -- leftovers from other kids or from ages-old cow obsessions.  So I don't really care if the kids take and keep the junky little plastic things.  Moreover, I happen to be exceedingly wealthy in extra t-shirt material and random bits of string, so making yet-another-tiny-bag is a matter of minutes.  

At any rate, if you are looking to amuse Very Small Human Beings, I can recommend Very Small Bags with Very Small Toys as one potential way to do so.  

Updates with Cow-noes, transitions, and zombies

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. This week we've been particularly rich in all the random stuff that May is!

(I tell young professors:  May does not exist.  You think that because your classes end in April, that in May you will catch up on your missed sleep and start to work on your research projects, but instead you will get to the end of May and think, "I feel like I have been very busy all this month, but I can't remember what all I did!"  That is because May does not, actually, exist.  Or at least because it's the month that is the catch-all for things that we didn't do in the semester or need to do before the summer).

So, to kick off some of the randomness, I offer a picture I just got from my sister.  She wrote, "Kent and I were at a canoe festival last weekend and this made me think of you."

A "Cownoe".

I love this very, very much.  It reminds me of the times Inkling sends me photos of "things I didn't buy for you".  And yes, it's a compliment that someone says, "I saw a cow-thing, and it made me think of you."

On a related water theme, I've missed having Gosling's dogs in the newsletter, and I'm delighted they're back.

Summer is here!  

Gosling:  Guinness and Watson enjoying the water today!

Kinderling:  Love it!!! Happy dogs!!

Gosling:  Very

Wet dog.

Nelson is not in the water, but he's having fun with sport (basketball, in particular, of course). 

picture of the travel team

And segueing from travel team to travel (ooh, I've got some kickin' transitions between photos this week!), Inkling and OfSnough went to New York for their various New York-y things.  

"Traveling with Dude and knitting in Times Square"

As for me, back at home, I submitted grades last week, and then had a student lie to me, pretending to have turned something in that he hadn't.  Ugh -- what I won't miss about teaching:  students lying to me about work they have (not) done.  I had no plagiarism cases this semester, but I won't miss those, either.  At any rate, today we had graduation; I read the names of about 140-ish students, mostly getting the pronunciations correct, and that was wonderful but also simultaneously wiped me out and made me feel brain-dead for the rest of the day . . . which is a perfect segue into the next topic, which is  . . .  Zombies!  

You may or may not remember that I'd set myself a goal of learning Michael Jackson's Thriller dance this year.  I started mentioning this to friends, several of whom offered to join in the fun.  I found space in our dance studio (there was a highly amusing back-and-forth about this:  "What group is this you're representing?" Uh, me and a couple of friends.  "Who are these friends?" Mostly employees . . . "Okay we'll get back to you!"  [A week or two delay] . . . "We've had a committee meeting and decided to approve this, but you'll have to fill out a contract.  We will charge you $0.00.  Also, everyone needs to fill out a waiver."

I sent out a campus-wide email about this, and as of now, I have about 20 people who say they want to come participate in what we're calling "Thriller Thursdays" this summer.  I've dutifully promised the powers-that-are that anyone who wants to come dance with me will have to fill out a waiver that says, in part, 

I acknowledge that the nature of the Activity or Trip may expose me to hazards or risks that may result in my illness, personal injury, or death, and I understand and appreciate the nature of such hazards and risks.

In consideration of my participation in the Activity or Trip, I hereby accept all risk to my health and of my injury or death that may result from such participation. 

These words sound a little ominous in the face of a dance about zombies rising from their graves, but maybe they'll add to the ambiance (?!).  That being said, I'm not planning to venture into the realm of personal injury or death during these gatherings, and I'm looking forward to being silly with lots of people.   Or thrilling.  Or something. 

May might not exist, but the Zombie Thriller dancers will soon exist, and I'm feeling particularly rich in my adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Our eyes and ears (and money)

Eyes

For a little while, a few years ago, I had an eye doctor with a local office downtown, one that I could walk to easily, but I switched away from him when my eyes started doing the aging thing.  As long as I had 20/20 vision, he was a great doc, but once I started needing reading glasses he became a salesman.  To get from the waiting room into the eye exam office, I'd pass through a well-lit room full of glasses on display; to get from the exam room back out to the desk where I'd pay my bills, that well-lit room became a hard-sell room.  No, thank you.

I use reading glasses these days, but I get them from one of those stores that sells things that other stores couldn't sell; I'll buy 3 pairs for $8, or single pairs for $3.99, or similar kinds of thrifty things.  I'm willing to pay good money for a good eye exam, but I'm not going to a place that tries to upsell me on accessories. 

At any rate, earlier this month I went to my not-quite-so-local, but still nearby, eye doctors.  My previous visit was two years ago; in 2021 they gave me a prescription and told me my eyes were good enough that I didn't need to come back for two years.  It's 2023, so back I went.  This time, I'd had minor floaters and some flickering vision.  My doctor dilated my eyes, and peeked around inside my head, and declared me good for another two years, same prescription.  In fact, after he checked out my optical anatomy, he reassured me about my concerns by saying, "the blood vessels in your retinas are the most normal I've seen all week."  

I have to say, this is the only situation I've ever been in where someone has told me I'm the most normal person they've encountered this week. Perhaps it will be the only such situation.  (And I'm enough of a mathematician that I argue in my own head about the paradox of what "most normal" is).  Still, I'm happy, and my discount glasses have been green-lighted, so I guess I'll see my eye doc again in 2025.

Ears

My husband's hearing is going the way that often happens with people who are fortunate to live for many decades: he's having a harder time hearing kids and women with high voices.  A few theater shows we've been to have been almost inaudible to him if the main cast and characters aren't strong altos, tenors, or bases.  He'd tried hearing aids a few years back, but they made uncomfortable electric crackly noises and didn't help much, but we thought the continued changes in his hearing warranted going back and trying again.

So, he went to an audiologist who tested him, and then told him he'd need to come back with his wife.  Whatever; he figured that for some reason the audiologist needed to use my voice or my knowledge as further data, and so we made a joint appointment and went in together.

Oddity number one for me was that the magazines in the waiting room (of the audiologist, remember) were all about some Alzheimer's association.   Then, when we went into the doctor's actual office, next to the sound booth, he started giving us a lecture on how hearing worked and showing us the results of the last exam, but didn't actually perform any other tests.  And then he launched into telling us about studies that had come out of Johns Hopkins ("Have you heard of Johns Hopkins?  It's a research hospital") that showed a connection between hearing loss and the onset of dementia.  I told him that I'd read second-hand reports of these papers -- which was true; that was part of why I urged my guy to get retested now. 

As the appointment progressed, it was clear we were there not for testing, but for a sales pitch, and that I was there to be part of it: it was almost like being in a time-share promotion.  He emphasized the studies ("mild hearing loss doubles your chances of getting dementia; moderate hearing loss makes your chances of developing Alzheimer's 6 times greater!")  He led us into another room where he fitted my guy with hearing aids and had me talk to him, either from behind him or even from down the hall, and verified that my husband could hear me much more clearly with them in.  (He also made jokes about how my husband could avoid hearing me by turning the hearing aids off -- it was my husband who said that we're not that kind of couple and those jokes weren't welcome).  

Then the doc repeated the dementia stats, and asked my husband "do you want to hear better?" -- and when, of course, the answer was "yes", he brought out the laminated brochure with his recommended hearing aids: the "decent quality" $2000 version, and the excellent quality $5500 version, which was (he assured us) actually a reduced price because his medical practice had made bulk-purchase deals with the manufacturer.  Which of these hearing aids did we want?

I'm glad my husband and I are a great, think-alike team, and we both responded that we'd think about it and get back to him later, thank you.

For the record, I want to say that I am very much aware that hearing loss is something to take seriously.  But the doctor's strong-arming us with skewed statistics, that's another matter.  Here's a bit of context for those stats:  while hearing loss is correlated with dementia risk, so are other things.  The NIH says, for example, that dementia risk doubles every five years for people over 65 (so getting older is also a risk factor, by that definition!).  But if your risk of dementia is, say 10%, then doubling that risk still means there's an 80% chance of not developing Alzheimer's, so scary words like "double" aren't death sentences -- or even dementia sentences.  Even more significantly, hearing aids aren't a magic bullet that cures all: they chip away at the increase in dementia, but only by about 20%, from what I've read since.  

We were fortunate that Consumer Reports came out with a helpful article on over-the-counter hearing aids right after we visited that doc.  Kind of in the same way many people get their reading glasses from a drug store instead of an optician, it's going to be more and more common for people to get their first sets of hearing aids from Costco and Walmart, where they cost hundreds instead of thousands of dollars.  And since my husband's medicare (medicaid? I guess I have to learn the difference soon) actually covers hearing aids up to $1200, that's the direction we're going soon.  

He hasn't gotten the hearing aids yet, because a few other life events have gotten in the way; I'm really looking forward to seeing (hearing?) how this all works out.  More later, I'm sure!

Journey to retiring: what people ask me

I thought it might be nice to chronicle some of the particular aspects of what it's like to go from being a full-time faculty member to being a retiree, and so here's one peek at the current state of that transition, through the lens of questions that my co-workers have been asking me this past month.

What are you going to do when you go on sabbatical or retire?

This is a really obvious question to ask, and my short answer is "math!"  There's a somewhat longer answer, which involves one or two specific papers, some research with undergraduates, and longer-term projects involving potential books.  I have a couple of other big things that I hope to do, like hone my skills as a rubbish rescue artist, and then later work on organizing family heirloom photos, and learn to do welding.  

And more.  Mostly, though, I've been trying to get to the end of the semester; I figure I'll start thinking more specifically about the future later, once the summer truly arrives.  

I might do a bunch of this, 
but I have a lot of other plans, too!

(Variation on the above) Are you planning to travel?

I guess this is another obvious question, considering how many people suggest this. (No one has asked, "are you going to sit on the front porch and solve crossword puzzles?", or even "are you going to stay up late reading library books?", but the "are you planning to travel?" question is a biggie).

Yes, but with caveats.  One constraint is that as I become increasingly Eco-nutty, I have more and more aversions to taking airplanes, so I'm unlikely to, say, decide to fly to Ye Olde Touriste Spotte just for the heck of it.  I'm hoping that being unconstrained by work will allow me to do more train travel instead of flying to math meetings, but I have to figure that out still.  A second constraint is figuring out a good dog-sitting plan.  (I know there are options; I just haven't figured out which ones will work for us best yet.)   

A third--and very significant--constraint is that my husband and I travel in very different ways.  He flits and jumps at whatever interests him; I have a purpose and a plan that shapes my travel.  Several years ago, for example, he planned a once-in-a-lifetime trip across Russia.  He spent months beforehand telling me about all of his latest itinerary changes and lining up Visas and such.  In the end, he visited 17 countries, none of which was Russia. I'd go bonkers trying to keep up with him, and he'd go stir-crazy on my own more regimented travels. I don't think either one of us (or our marriage) could survive a trip where we spent the whole time trying to synchronize our schedules and itinerary.  My best guess is that our best shot at joint exploration is that I will pick a Task Oriented Thing (like teaching a math class in Rwanda, or visiting a Math Institute or a colleague somewhere), and we'll use my itinerary as the center from which my guy will ping-pong in and out and here and there to his heart's content, so we'll have a shared hub but different modes.  

How are you feeling about your last class? Are you excited? Are you going to get all teary?

I don't do feelings in the same way that other people do, so I don't entirely know how to answer this question.  

Um, no?

I was really glad that our department has started a tradition of clapping professors out on their last class, because ending my last class with, "well, I guess that's the end . . . " would have felt highly anticlimactic.  It was nice to have a Ceremonial Moment to mark that transition, and it was good to share the moment not just with the particular students sitting in the room at the time, but also other students who came back for the event and with my colleagues.  

My students and colleagues decorated the chalkboard.
I loved it!

Wait: are you really going to retire? I didn't see you at the ceremony honoring retirees, so have you changed your mind?

I haven't actually formally submitted my retirement paperwork yet.   Next academic year (July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024), I'm going to be on sabbatical, meaning I'll still get a large fraction of my normal pay and I'll still get medical (etc) benefits, but I won't teach classes or serve on committees.  The usual rule for faculty members is that we're supposed to come back for a full year of normal work after a sabbatical, but I have a special exception: I was granted a sabbatical two years ago, and I postponed it to become an Associate Dean.  I had it written into my contract that therefore my next sabbatical doesn't have the usual come-back-for-a-year requirement.  

So my retirement date isn't official in the paperwork sense, but I'm really not teaching any more, and I'm planning to submit my paperwork later this summer, meaning that June 30, 2024 I won't be officially employed anymore, either.  

****

That's all the question/answer mojo I've got for now.  More transition updates will be forthcoming!

Birthday cleansings

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  This week we've been particularly rich in birthdays!

We know how to do birthdays right in this house, that's for sure.  You might remember that I celebrated my birthday back in March by reading job applications (whee!).  Well, for my husband's birthday earlier this week I stayed up late giving my students a final exam (there's the life!).  And my guy, during his big day, he had all the very special food and drink that goes with colonoscopy prep.   Don't be jealous, peeps!

Gosling made this card; I love it!

The lovely follow-up to his big day included special photos that reassured us all that my guy is beautiful on the inside, too.  The shiny, silver bow on all of this came when we got the results of some early blood work tests; the physical discomfort he'd been experiencing was apparently the result of a parasite.  Since we'd both been imagining much more significant and severe diagnoses, this result actually delighted my husband, and he's happily sharing the news with anyone who appreciates scatalogical humor.  

We followed up OfSnough's celebrations with further festivities of a more traditional variety, heading out to dinner at a local restaurant and a fabulous show at our local theater to celebrate Inkling's birthday.  Although, come to think of it, the show we watched was the musical Titanic, which (spoiler alert) has a very unhappy ending.  I think Inkling shed more tears with her celebration than OfSnough at his, so maybe in the future I should just give her a math test and a gallon jug of special juice for her birthday instead.  

At any rate, with my exam behind me, I've graded exams and papers, and I've submitted my grades.  So that's over and done now!  I've also completely packed up my office, and moved everything into my new sabbatical office, which will need a bit of unpacking and arranging, but is already in pretty serviceable shape.  

Doing Cow-gebra with a friend:
123 cows + ? cows = 247 cows.

I'm getting ready to enter my sabbatical, and the timing of this transition is lovely.  We're entering my favorite season of the year.  Other people (including many of my friends) love this time of year because of the weather, and I won't disagree.  The cold weather we've been having is giving way to short-sleeve weather, and it's fab for being outdoors. 

See the runners in the distance?

This was from a fun event we did this week.

But I think the part of early spring that I look forward to the most is not the weather (which I love), but rather the yard sales and Free-for-alls that pop up all over my city now that May has arrived.  I've picked up odds and ends as I walk around; I also appreciate seeing all the amazing and wonderful things the world has that I decide I just don't need more of -- I've got enough, and that's a place of contentment, for which I appreciate reminders.  

Achild gets into the act, offering her own yard sale.

On a complete side note, that I can't figure out how to segue into, apparently my son-in-law makes donuts.  They are beautiful donuts and I think I need to experience them up-close-and-personal someday.

And so we've got donuts and yard sales and new offices to arrange; we've got clean bills of health, and lovely weather to enjoy it in.  Life is good.  And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures (inside and out).  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

What I keep in my dungeon

Four summers ago, when OfSnough and I were house hunting, we toured a pretty miserable place with our realtor.  As we all came out, shaking our heads "no", the realtor reminded us there was another house just around the corner that had just come on the market that morning, so we walked over.

We weren't the only people with that idea, and there were already a couple of other families wandering around on the front porch and in the living room, so we decided to enter the basement instead, and start our tour down there.  

And the basement was everything we wanted.  That sounds like a strange thing to have strong opinions about, but because we do so much bicycling, we knew we really wanted a city home that had a way to bring bikes in and out easily -- and that's a tricky requirement for most of our stair-intensive row-houses.  So, when we saw that the basement had a cool side entrance that led into a room large enough to store a half-dozen bikes, our antennas were buzzing.  Better yet, that side entrance door had a dog door installed (yes, we want a dog door in the basement, please!). And then, beyond the room we were already thinking of as "the bike room", there was a workbench where I could put my tools (workshop space!).  And then there were shelves that were just screaming "canning supplies" (can this be real?!?).  And a laundry space for my husband (whoop!). The basement was amazing.  

When we went upstairs, we discovered the rest of the house was nice, too. (Maybe even too nice, in fact -- we'd thought about trying to buy a fixer-upper, but the place was in great shape).  So we put in an offer that very day.  The market was hot; we were one of four offers, and we were delighted that ours was the one that went through.  

But back to the basement.  There's one odd little room in the basement with its own door; it's tucked away under the front porch, so it gets a tad chilly in the winter and warm in the summer.  Even if it were closer to the kitchen (and it's not -- it's at the farthest point in our long basement from the kitchen stairs), the temperatures wouldn't be suitable for canning supplies or food storage.  So right now it's just a catch-all kind of a space. 

Cardboard boxes that will soon get recycled.

For a little while, it held Nelson's drum set, and he'd come practice making noise in that space.  (Good noise, mind you; he's a good drummer!).  But he's in Minnesota now, so other stuff has found its way into the space instead.

A shelf full of stuff that will go to a yard sale.

Because the walls are bare brick and stone, we call this little "L"-shaped space "The Dungeon".  In fact, I even made a label for it that says "Dungeon".  Because I label things, that's why.  

It's labeled, so it must be:  "Dungeon"

Also, we happen to have a broad sword and battle axe, back from the days when we used to have season passes to the Renaissance Faire.  And the sword and axe seem to be appropriate things to keep in a dungeon, don't they?

The sword and axe . . . 
and can you see the new guest tucked away there?

So, that's why I'm just so tickled about bringing home a suit of armor!  (I need to give this guy a name . . . hmm. . . )  

Where does a person get a suit of armor, you wonder?   My church dragged it out of an attic that had stored up a bunch of Youth Group supplies, and asked if anyone wanted to take it home.  Apparently, I'm the only one in our church with a dungeon, so I volunteered.

Our dungeon's newest inhabitant.

Now I have to fund a name for this suit of armor.   I've tried a couple of quirky things in my head, but nothing sticks yet.  More later, I'm sure!