Again it's been a cold snap of non-writing lately. Even tonight I didn't really feel like signing on, it was either this, write some emails to people that deserve them, or watch a movie. So this is somewhere in the middle. They really deserve those emails though. Correspondence is probably one those matters of civility that is losing it's spot in my generation, so not only do I owe to those 4 people that have helped me out tremendously the last six months, but I kinda owe to the good of us.

I'm still working at my father's office, and the last few months have fallen pretty much into the regimen that I expected earlier this year. It really wasn't much of a prediction, since I was just modeling it on what was happening then. That's not to say not much has changed!

I have a few more weeks to get the last scraps of my work done before I can fully immerse myself in post-bacdom. I've been wondering how my writing will have changed since I'm no longer a grad student. I'm a little pleased to have realized that my troubles in graduate school are not unique. I don't want to say vindicated, but something along the lines of having a better vision of what kind of people function well in that type of environment, and what kind of people they become if they choose to remain. Of course, without much modesty, I don't consider myself wholly one of them, but the phrase of I have my mind is more "phew" than "ah-hah!".

Things that get started get finished, so hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be writing about slow but sure progress.

My mom and I have been having a running dialogue about family/ancestry/genetics and why my brothers and I are the way we are. Everything from my tendency to leave things them a mess and then frantically clean up to my struggles with gout has been commented on. There's something in a family with three boys that is the material of adventures or at least novels. None of us can be the same, and we'll all live our own lives at wherever we end up. Our differences are probably as interesting as our sameness. It's the kind of thing I see myself tearing up over when I'm rigidly old and stiff.

I wonder if I'll ever make it to that point, or if I'll die young. I've had doubts the last few days about how long my body will hold out, no matter how well I take care of it. I recall in High School not being able to imagine what I would look like if I grow old. Even when I think of my mother's father the only picture I can remember clearly is one of him in a college portrait for his university's debate team, he was my age. I'd like to grow old, I love this world more everyday.