<p>Happy to hear the news about boysx3, sounds like she still has a long road though.
Sorry to hear about your friends’ grandchild, shaw. Very sad.
NM I hope your H’s recovery goes well for both of you!
Happy Anniversary, moda! H and I have been married for 34 and we have never done anything “big” on an anniversary. Maybe next year.
I am likely missing a lot, just skimming post these days as I have been spending most waking hours at work</p>
<p>Life is so bittersweet, eh Shaw? I know what you mean though. The wonder of all things moves me, whether tragic or triumphant. It does something to your consciousness, like heighten it. Peak experiences that somehow cut through all the clutter and give you momentary bouts of clarity on a more existential level.</p>
<p>Some authors, or rather, the scope of their stories, make me feel this way.
The most recent for me is The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, just released last month. Not a conventional read, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sweeping scope of plot and the connections. Masterful.</p>
<p>Sending good mojo to all and happy to hear boyx3 is turning the corner.</p>
<p>Okay, I won’t feel right until at least make an attempt to catch up…spent 4 days with my mother, then worked late yesterday trying to catch up, in addition to a breakfast and a lunch to try to drum up business.</p>
<p>DTE, I am so proud of you going back to school. I hope your fellow students continue to pay attention to your wisdom and life experiences.</p>
<p>Oregon, so sorry that your Aunt is having such a hard time.</p>
<p>NM, hope your husband is glad he had the surgery.</p>
<p>Zetesis…nano fabrication, inorganic…do parents who raise kids who understand this stuff also understand it?</p>
<p>Moda, happy 25th. You share the anniversary with a couple from my church. The wife posted wedding pix on Facebook. Wow, she went full on Princess Diana. Did you?</p>
<p>c-q, so proud of you for taking on a new job. Best of luck!!!</p>
<p>Shaw, so sad to hear about the 12 year old boy. </p>
<p>I admit that I have been almost afraid to check here about boysx3, for fear the news would be bad. So glad things are looking up for her.</p>
<p>Our ebola patient has passed away.</p>
<p>A 16 year old at the kids’ HS shot himself in the head on Monday after school. He was in choir and I think ran cross country. I didn’t know him, nor did my kids, but it just makes my heart hurt to think about it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Would members of the congregation have been upset if lots of choir members had stood up? This was my H’s second High Holidays, but he is still learning a lot. A (Jewish) guy in the choir kept leaning over to tell him what was happening and why… H was grateful. There was one service Saturday morning where the music was handled by only a six person ensemble “that needed to be Jewish.” H likes the sermons and thinks I would, too.</p>
<p>Okay, final catching up post.</p>
<p>Four days with my mother is … tiring. I wish she would attempt to put on a brave face at least some of the time, instead of wishing aloud that I would move to her town, telling me how lonely she is, telling me how no one calls her over the weekend, etc. I know it’s good for her to have me to talk to, but I fear she doesn’t put on a brave face for anyone. Sigh. She said she never gets to do what she wants to do, always has to do what others want to do. I tried to impress upon her that she does have choices, even if they aren’t her ideal choices.</p>
<p>Here is what I learned from/resolved during my vist:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I have resolved to not have my hair cut super short for at least another 20 years. On Friday I took Mom to her favorite tea room. At 11 am on a weekday, I was one of the younger women there. All the older women had super short hair.</p></li>
<li><p>I am in no hurry to retire. Monday we were at Aldi in the morning. Depressing to see all those old folks shuffling around Aldi. I’d rather shuffle around work.</p></li>
<li><p>You can never have too many friends. Yes, the conventional wisdom is that you only need a few good friends, and I don’t know if I even have that. But by the time you’re 80, friends have passed away, couples friendships are awkward after your spouse passes away, friends have moved away to be closer to their children, it’s too far to drive to see friends who live even a hour away.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>MP, there is no choir but it is a congregation that has been accepting of mixed marriages. My mother’s congregation is not. And it was probably a typo but it was a 12 week old. </p>
<p>I agree with you-- definitely not looking forward to retiring. </p>
<p>I checked your post - you did say 12 week old. I guess my mind could not process that.</p>
<p>mp–sent you a pm</p>
<p>MP - I can’t wait to retire! I have so many hobbies and just want to knit, sew, garden, go to the gym and NOT work. :)</p>
<p>H keeps saying he would retire tomorrow if he could; not me.</p>
<p>We never took many vacations alone but we do now. it does bring you closer.
LED whaaat,???
Missy your mom needs to be in a retirement community. She would have ready made friends.
Shaw, those are very touching stories for different reasons. Unfortunately children dying is commonplace where I work.
In my class we are talking about reproduction issues. etc… there is a debate about BSE, I posted a story from my BC group, on knowing your breasts. a personal story of one of my friends. Then I found out yesterday a work friend is having a double mastectomy today. 40 years of age. she found the lump herself. I found all of my BC too. I don’t care what they say about BSE it can help save lives.
I don’t want to retire ever. H does. </p>
<p>NMN - Missed the post about your H’s surgery; Hoping the pain killer’s absence isn’t a killer!</p>
<p>The clock is ticking to Friday - S’s interview date… asking that good karma, intelligent discourse and stellar charm be sent his way. And no, parents of kids who love this stuff sometimes have no idea what they are talking about MOST of the time. And all I’ve picked up about the chem grad school conversation is the surprise realization that there is inorganic chemistry (S absolutely loved organic chemistry - and ended up being a TA). Sometimes I have to flat out tell him to take it down a level in IQ, which he sometimes needs to do just to not sound overly arrogant. (or that he is talking with too many words). What I try to explain in knowing him is that it comes from both a place of confidence and insecurity, but other people might mistakenly read as intolerant or impatient vs passionate and sometimes pointed. Anyway… my advice to him was to not say what he THINKS they want to hear, but to be as genuine as possible without making a dumb joke due to nervousness that results in an awkward silences.</p>
<p>Missy - friend of mine up here had a dad who was very against going to a retirement center and now he couldn’t be happier. The only reason he went in fact is because he had fallen and couldnt be released to home alone. He has said that he should have gone sooner. Has a touch of dementia and was so busy trying to hide it or work around it, and now all that stress is gone which makes him much happier.</p>
<p>I think I have to be employed to be retired… But I do think I’ve earned the right to take a page from TS Eliot in that it’s never too late. As for friends, the good news is that many of my friends will retire here! We joke about buying a big house on the water and making it our own personal spa/retirement community!</p>
<p>Best wishes to Moda’s son on the interview!</p>
<p>In college, D loved organic; worked in an organic lab for 3+ years and summers, and then decided: that’s enough. It’s one of those disciplines where you spend a lot of time in labs (to monitor reactions), and she’s not interested in living in the lab. So she’s exploring other things that might make use of some of her other skills: her math minor (computational chemistry); making things (nano-fabrication); and the like. l I think her o-chem days are over; and we are all glad.</p>
<p>D’s bf started in organic and pre-med. He got certified and worked as an EMT. Then during a summer internship at your D’s current school, Zetesis, he did his first research in inorganic. After that he decided to go the PhD route instead of trying for medical school.</p>
<p>Hello to all! I’m always glad to come here to touch base with so many friends!</p>
<p>NMinn – thanks for the kind words on my photos. All my Instagram pix are taken with my iPhone – it’s really a decent camera, and I almost always have it with me. Hope your H is feeling better after surgery.</p>
<p>Speaking of iPhones – we all just upgraded from the 4S to the 6. I spent a large chunk of yesterday futzing around with the info transfer and trying to get everything set up. H mistakenly wiped out an app that collected data on wine we had tried and liked, and he is REALLY ticked. My best piece of advice – do not change your Apple ID, EVER. Mine had been our joint AOL email address, which H said we needed to ditch several months ago. So I started the lengthy process of changing everyone to with a new joint email, or to our individual addresses, all on Gmail. That went quite well until I realized it meant changing the Apple ID. I think it’s all sorted out now, but at one point it felt like technology was winning …</p>
<p>So glad to hear some encouraging news about boysx3. Sorry to hear about your friend’s grandchild, shaw. Was it a case of SIDS? I can’t even begin to imagine the pain …</p>
<p>Moda – H and I celebrated 25 years in 2011. We didn’t do a big trip or anything, but I did end up with some “bling in a ring!” We’re also not big on elaborate celebrations of milestone birthdays – our mindset is more of,“If we ignore it, maybe it will go away …” </p>
<p>Congrats on the new job, c_q!</p>
<p>We’ve been doing a fair amount of running back and forth between the beach and Cambridge, much to the dog’s dismay. Although she always seems eager to get in the car, she’s not a good passenger. Even if she doesn’t get sick (that’s about a 50/50 occurrence) she drools like crazy, and we usually need to give her a quick bath. I’ve tried everything the vet has suggested. We’re still hoping she’ll outgrow this …</p>
<p>I’m taking another online archaeology course, this one on Hadrian’s Wall in Great Britain through FutureLearn. It’s very well done. What I like best about these online courses if I can do it on my own timeline. Class “discussion” is a bit cumbersome, though, with some 2000 students enrolled from around the world …</p>
<p>Hello everyone!
Just checking in…I’ve been keeping up but have no news to report myself…other than I can’t imagine retiring - although with summers off, I don’t really have the need to! H and I are scouting out some places to downsize to…‘closer to the water with lower taxes’ is a start!
Remember the latency from Erickson’s developmental theory: childhood latency is from age 5 to ~ 12. I have a new one: post-adolescent latency. You know, after the intimacy v. isolation period but nothing really happens! S and D are definitely in it!
PS Best karma to moda S!! I’m sure he’ll knock it out of the park!</p>
<p>For those of you who can’t even think about retiring I have to ask. Why? I keep wondering if I’m missing something or some reason why I would want to work? No judging on my part just trying to understand. I suppose if you love what you are doing that may be it. I just would love to do my hobbies and not have to deal with young engineers who have no clue about life yet and make everything WAY more difficult than it should be. Currently dealing with a person who has been habitually a poor performer who just was reorged to me. I don’t do well with poor performance so when I catch something that he has done incorrectly and tell him he is constantly putting the blame on someone else. Driving me nuts. Okay – you screwed up. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. This is life. You are not going to get a trophy for just showing up. ARGH. Sorry RANT over… I really think society has done a disservice to some of our young when they have not been made to take responsibility of their actions and know that there is always (typically) going to be someone who can do it better than you can. That’s life. </p>
<p>RM, I hope this doesn’t come off as bragging as I feel blessed by my career/calling. I have been very fortunate in my professional life. I made a number of choices that, in combination with prodigious amounts of work, have paid off. In my little field, I’m a well-known expert. I get the opportunity to work on incredibly challenging problems. They are intellectually fascinating and we are often able to help clients beyond their wildest expectations. In one of my pro bono efforts, I was able to come up with an idea that helped end a civil war. People actually stopped getting killed as the combatants laid down their arms. People pay me to do this kind of work and to hear me speak and later some tell me I have improved their business or careers or lives. I write books and fly around the world business class and stay in nice hotels (I’m drinking port in my business class seat on the way home from Europe to have dinner south a close friend who has been more successful than I in a related field.). Alas I don’t have groupies (although one very able person in the field, who happens to be an attractive woman, upon meeting me for the first time, said, “i feel like I’m meeting a rock star,” which may be the closest I will come to a groupie). </p>
<p>The key tests are: Do you wake up in the morning wanting to do what you are doing to do that day?. Do they treat you well by whatever criteria you measure good treatment?. Are you good at it?</p>
<p>One advantage: I run our firm. So I have control and autonomy, which are important to happiness. It sounds like autonomy and control over what you do are lacking from your job. </p>
<p>My life is not for everyone. I work a lot more than most people. Evenings and weekends. I sleep less than 6 hours on a typical night. When I was younger I worked much harder. ShawWife and early on had to agree to block out a day off each week or at least part of a day because we found we gravitated to working 7 days a week. </p>
<p>I think I will travel a little less and do more pro bono projects as my retirement for as long as I am mentally and physically able. </p>
<p>With three kids in college, two weddings to eventually pay for, etc., I am certainly not in a financial situation to consider retiring in the foreseeable future. Lots of attorneys “ramp down” for many years rather than retiring…it works great for everyone as long as they are willing to make less money as the ramp down progresses, which I certainly would be. the guy who offices next to me now makes about 1/3 of what he made 10 years ago, and spends quite a bit of time in another (far more scenic) locale. But he is brilliant and gives very valuable advice to our clients and to other lawyers in the firm. </p>