I am envious of Lorena eating in Sommerville, Mass. at an Italian Restaurant in Davis Square named Posto. That is always our first stop when we visit Christian in Boston. I am sitting at home eating canned soup and wishing I was there with them. I think they are headed up to Maine to do some leaf watching tomorrow.
I am very grateful to be married to Lorena. The picture at the left was taken in 2009 in Raleigh, shortly after the kids started college at Wake Technical Community College. It is mind boggling how fast the time has flown. One of the things for which I am most grateful is how much we still love to do things together and how much we are on each others’ side. Probably the greatest constant between us has been our efforts to keep Christ first in all of everything we do. We do not always succeed, but we work at it consistently and if there are measures of what is good in a marriage, this is number one for both of us.
Lorena and I walked Fort Worth’s spectacular zoo as part of our three-day, 31st wedding anniversary celebration with more still to come. Of course, now that we are in Texas, red meat is an even bigger part of our celebration ritual and it was a very big part before we got here. We do really love that zoo. There is something new to see every time. We truly love to be together and do stuff. Next year, we hope to be doing this in Mexico, maybe at the new house on the hill.
Lorena and I are celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary this long weekend–I have Columbus Day off from my work. That actual anniversary is not until after the weekend, but we thought we would get a head start on it. We are both trying to stay on our health kicks so we have to plan carefully. There is so much stuff to do in Fort Worth that it is pretty hard to decide. Lorena has been wanting a fitness/GPS/smart watch so she picked one from the Garmin website and I got it for her. I love my Garmin Instinct and have been using it for several years now. Hers is a LOT better. I have a lot of years left in my current watch and there is no reason to buy another other than they are WAY cool and the battery life just keeps getting better. I think I am going to have to wait until I retire, then God willing, I will upgrade.
Now I am heading out for my workout before we go to Fort Worth.
We got the good news today that Christian and Kelly are coming home for an entire week for Thanksgiving! Grandma Conchita is planning to be here the whole time, too. In addition to that, several surprise visitors are making plans to try to fly in for just the long weekend part. God willing, it will all work out. Last year, Lorena’s brother Rigo and his family were with us. With Thanksgiving, the more the merrier is always better. This could be one for the record books if the surprise visitors are able to work it out to be here. And the good part is virtually everyone loves to cook. Hope I still get to cook and carve the turkey this year!
Yesterday, Lorena and I had a long conversation about what we do for ourselves. Its genesis was a brief chat Christian and I. What “for ourselves” meant was what we do, not out of a sense of responsibility, but solely for joy. It is a little easier to figure that out for me than for Lorena. I find joy in taking on big projects like the houses in Mexico, the Ph.D., and writing a book. I also love my job and want to keep doing it. If I can see the kids and Grandma Conchita every couple of months and talk to them more frequently than that. I am happy. Lorena’s interests are broader than mine. She loves to go travel and do things out of the house more than me. In talking about it, though, we both agreed that doing it on our own is great and we hope to do that more as the kids continue to get more established, but if we are going to travel now, we prefer to go do something with the kids or visit Grandma Conchita in Mexico. Lorena leaves the house to go into town for shopping and other stuff almost every day, but I sit at my desk almost every day and never leave the house because of work and projects. Honestly, that makes me kind of stir-crazy, so we have been going on outings almost every weekend to visit Lorena’s brother Rigo in Austin, to Fort Worth to the zoo, museums, events, etc. We know that things will change and maybe change quickly, but right now we are very happy with the way we live.
BIBLE: Whole Bible Read #39 (King James Version) — Started
I love this picture of Christian. This picture was taken when he was 20-years old and two years and change into his Ph.D. He had come to visit us when we were living in an apartment in Lewisville, Texas. During those years and even now, we see Christian in this mode. Thinking. It is hard to overstate the difficulty of the research program onto which he had embarked. The difficulty and importance of his work has accelerated since he received his appointment at MIT. His work is hard in ways that few people are equipped to understand. He is one of those few who are able to move between the development of difficult theoretical solutions to their implementation in mechanical and electrical hardware and the software that drives it all.
BIBLE: New Testament read #38 (New Living Translation) — Complete
Not sure why, but last night I had a dream about Grandpa Milo. I have so many great memories of him, but it seems like everyone of them was when he was operating in one of two modes: 1) Working and organizing and 2) sitting in his BarcaLounger recliner reading his Bible, a novel, or a magazine. There was no other. Even when he came to visit us he worked on the lawn, organized and cooked dinners and parties, or worked on whatever creative project that would make our house better. Lorena loved to work with him. They would plan, shop, and then work together on whatever caught their fancy. It is amazing that Lorena is so much like him in character.
It dawned on me several weeks ago that, on this birthday (today), I would be just a couple of years away from 70. My plan for a couple of years now, God willing, was to work until I was 70, then do some contract work to stay active and earn a little extra money. Now, though, I am considering a plan revision, God willing, to keep working my current job if it continues to stay as fun and interesting as it is now. There are lots of interesting choices to make and all of them depend on my health, both mental and physical.
I got a coffee mug (love those can’t get enough of them), slippers to replace my old worn out ones (essential tool for working from home, but they need to be durable enough to run out to the mailbox if necessary), and some measuring spoons (essential tools for the kind of diet that works for me). Lorena and I have been celebrating all weekend. We went on a full-blown date last night and then out for Chinese food after meeting (church) this afternoon. Lorena, the best of all possible wives, also bout a rib-eye steak for this evening. This time next year, we hope to celebrate my birthday and our 32 wedding anniversary which falls in early October in Mexico if the house on the hill in San Pedro is far enough along in its remodel to be liveable.
Lorena and I drove down to Leander, Texas on Saturday to celebrate her brother, Rigoberto’s, birthday. With some of their friends from church. It has been such a long time since we had an evening to just sit around and talk with friends, we are kind of forgetting what it was like. There was another family there we had never met before who are engaged in a lot of interesting work and projects. We discussed, work, college, kids, geopolitics, American politics, health, medicine, energy technology, and just about everything else under the sun. We had no agenda other than to eat lots of red meat, sing happy birthday, and chew that fat. I need more of that.
During the geopolitics part of the evening, our new friend, Lyle, recommended a book. I ordered it and will put it up as soon as it arrives.
We are spending the evening with Lorena’s brother Rigoberto to celebrate his birthday (it was a couple of days ago) and Mexican Independence Day. We are too old to have stayed up last night until midnight for El Grito de Independencia (Grito de Dolores), but we were there in spirit. We are pretty pleased that Mexican Independence Day coincides with the birthdays of two of our favorite people (Trisha and Vanessa). They actually remember their birthdays every year!
Christian shocked us all with an amazing gift for Lorena’s birthday–a robotic vacuum cleaner. He got one for himself to clean his apartment and absolutely loved it. I have to admit I was skeptical about how good the thing might be, but have to admit I am a complete believer after seeing it do its thing.
One of the most amazing things about the device is how easy it was to set up. It took about a half an hour to unpack it and get everything installed. Lorena and I can both start it, stop it, adjust what parts of the house it should clean, watch it move around on a map as it is cleaning, etc., etc.
On top of that, the height of devices is low enough that it can go under things that were hard to reach with our regular vacuum. The path in the map in this post is in our bedroom. The side-ways ‘T’ in the middle of the room is the post holding up the middle of our bed. In addition to that, it was able to clean under the sofa and the Barcalounger in the living room. The amount of cat hairs and dust and the repository was nothing short of amazing.
One thing I can say for sure, though, is that it is not really saving us any time because it is so fun that we usually just sit there with a cup of coffee the whole time it is doing its thing.
Today, everything that is going on just seems crazy. We do not have a new U.S. President yet and whichever one ends up in office will make half of the country go crazy. The morality of the culture at large is abjectly bad. We are in the middle of a pandemic for over which there are additional levels of crazy on all sides of the issue. The funny deal is that at this one snapshot in time, our lives are going well, at least in a temporal sense. Lorena just earned her Associate of Arts degree in December. Kelly and Christian both have good jobs that would preclude them from being taken into the military if there is war. They both got good little, end-of-year raises at a time when that is quite uncommon. I have a job I love that, if we can solve a few more problems, we will speed up and provided a more controlled environment for virology and other types of research that require the growing of cells under specific conditions. What happens over the next few weeks with respect to the President will not have a huge effect on any of these things, but life could get a lot more insecure with respect to financial, moral, and physical security. In the meantime, we have a great view out our living room window.
We ran Kelly and Christian to the airport in Portland this morning so they could head back to Baltimore and Boston to return to work on Monday. Their visit this holiday season was a category difference than those in the past. They have been adults making their own way in every sense since they left home to go to graduate school six and a half years ago. They have been adults, making their own decisions for years now, but it just seemed more real this time that they really are grown and gone. We got a little melancholy about that, but also there was a gratifying satisfaction. This is the way it should be. We are grateful for opportunities for them to be here that probably would not have happened if it had not been for the pandemic.
It has been great to have Christian and Kelly here for a couple of weeks. We drive them both to the airport tomorrow morning to fly back to the east coast. We cooked a turkey, donuts, creme puffs, and a ton of other stuff to see in the New Year and have way to many leftovers with two less mouths to eat it all. This is definitely not going to help me keep my New Year’s resolution until we get it whittled down a little. I now longer have any excuses with the rowing machine and treadmill. It is no just a matter of will and taking the time to get some exercise. In broad strokes, the goals are to
I am going to try to remember to review this post at the start of 2022 to see if I was able to stick to my resolutions.
We are very thankful to have both the kids home with us this year. We have all been working hard–Lorena finishing her degree, Kelly, Christian, and I working on our day jobs from home. In many ways, this is has been a hard year of little direct contact with the outside world, but we all remain gainfully employed in work that can have a not insignificant impact for good. It has required more effort than normal to stay in touch with friends and family, but it is good to be reminded how important that is.
Christian hit a half century a couple of days ago. He got his PhD from a tier one university at 23 and now works at the pure research laboratory of an elite university on the East Coast. We are quite proud of him. It is a hard age, but he is navigating it well. In a few weeks I will be able to announce another accomplishment for him and for me. He is helping me with my retirement PhD effort and, believe it or not, with my day job.
I really do have the best wife. It is a joy to be sheltering in place with her. Maybe it is the isolation together that I has me reflecting on the gifts that derive from waiting on God. It is something at which I have never been particularly good, but for which I have always been grateful when things happen according to God’s timing. I have to admit that most of the time my waiting has been a function of having no other options, but I believe that is in God’s hands, too. It is nice, at this point in my life, to be reminded of what is good in my life. Lorena made shrimp fried rice today. That is what triggered my thinking about the great gifts I have received. And believe it or not, a wife who makes me shrimp fried rice because she knows I love it is not a small gift.
Everyone really needs a good Easter hat. Lorena found the one Tio Lauro gave to me as a gift and I think it works for the professorial look at which I am aiming. That is a hard look to accomplish for a farm/logger/mill-worker kid so I take anything I can get. We had a party of four for Easter dinner which was, of course, ham, deviled eggs and scalloped potatoes. Very nice. It would have been great to have the kids here with us, but it was not possible so we want to do something extra good next year.
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