Caps and Gowns

Tempus fugit.      Time flies.  Boy, whoever said that got it right.

Today is May 22, 2006.   Twenty-nine years ago today, I donned a cheesy, dark-green robe, a cap made of mortarboard with a tassel with two shades of green, and some decent shoes.   Then I sat on a folding chair in Fireman’s Park in Waterloo, WI, and waited for my name to be called.

Yep.   Twenty-nine years since my high school graduation.   Sure doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, unless I stop to think about everything that’s happened since then.  Things like three marriages, two divorces, three kids, two grandkids, friends made, friends lost.   Over thirty cars, twenty-some apartments, two houses, numerous pets, hair grown long, hair gone away.   You know what they say—“hair today, gone tomorrow?”

I look at my two youngest children, and wonder where the time has gone.   Amanda is finishing up her sophomore year in high school, and will be a junior in the fall.   Jesse is an outgoing freshman who no longer looks up to me, but looks me straight in the eyes.

I’ve gained weight since high school—quite a lot, which doesn’t make me fat, but definitely puts me in the ‘stout’ category.   I’ve lost a lot of hair—everywhere except my back (one of God’s little jokes that he plays on middle-aged men).

Milestones like these make me sit back, reflect, and ponder my life so far.   I try not to wallow in regrets, because short of a quantum leap, I’m powerless to change my past.    All I can do is think back, and wonder where that young man went when he turned into me.

So, happy graduation day to me.  

And so it goes…

And now...A word from our sponsor...

     Many things have happened lately, and now that I’m on vacation, I thought I’d talk about things a bit…

     Got new carpeting in our house…first time for new carpeting in about 20 years.   I like it a lot, but my paranoia level has gone up about three notches since its installation—it cost enough to make me want to have it last as long as possible.  So:  no shoes on the carpeting, frequent vacuuming, no eating on the floor—and absolutely NO spilling!!!

     Bought an older system from a friend.   It’s an IBM Pentium II 266, and it came preconfigured with a whopping 32MB of RAM, a 6.4GB hard drive, an onboard 2MB display adapter, and an integrated sound card/modem.   Thanks to my friends Todd and Ebay, I now have 288MB of RAM and a network card, which allowed me to network with my main box [thanks, Moe!].  Ebay is supplying me—at a nominal cost—with a 16PCI graphics card, and a 20GB hard drive.   Since I plan on using this machine primarily for burning cds and scanning photos, it should do the trick now.   Not a blazingly fast machine, but solid.

     My dad was supposed to come up this month to promote his new book of poems/essays (www.throughmymind.net), but because of my mom’s poor health, he had to postpone.   He might be able to come up the end of June, which would mean that he would be able to be here for the 9th annual Fourth of July party.  That would be cool…he’s gregarious, and would fit right in with my friends.

     The weather has literally sucked for about the last week:  cold, rainy, miserable.   I finally took advantage of a couple of hours of near sunshine this afternoon to mow the jungly front yard…but the back was too long and wet to tackle.   Maybe I’ll rent a couple of sheep (

     Thinking about tackling my den tomorrow.   That should kill a day.  

     Thursday I am going to tackle the garage.   I’m sick of my tools being scattered, and I have so many lawn and garden implements now that I have to actually organize them, too.

     So it turns out to be a working vacation, but on the plus side I’ve been sleeping like a normal human being (at night), which makes for more interesting days.   I’m not as grumpy as usual…which means that I’m still grumpy, but I’ll fire a warning shot before planting buckshot in your ass.

     And so it goes…