LDOS

Last Day of School. Throughout the area, parents are figuratively -- and perhaps not so figuratively -- battening down the hatches, preparing for the onslaught of summer, with its great rallying cry. "I'm boooorred!"

Our daughter got up forty minutes early, in recognition of the great day. It's her habit to get up early when she has no reason to get up at all... and late when she does. We can once again look forward to a summer of hearing the television downstairs come on at 5AM, and casual comments about the quality of early morning television. She has a full summer scheduled, with color guard and various activity camps -- and as I remind her, bleakly, we'll be routinely spending time preparing for the Scholastic Aptitude Test. I recall when I was her age, and my mother would haul this HUGE book of SAT questions whenever we'd go out to the park. This thing was about an inch thick and the shape of a small city's phone book. We're not going that far. But it's going to happen, though at least one of us will protest that it's interfering with her ability to have fun.

Last night, I added more RAM to our desktop PC. I screwed up in the order -- I thought that I was getting two 256meg RIMMs, and I was actually getting two 128M RIMMS. Still, more RAM is a good thing. It took me about twenty minutes to figure out how to pop the case -- each time they build one of these, Dell changes how the case opens. This one, you push an inconspicuous black button, which releases the catches on half the shell so that it can be lifted off. The other half doesn't come off. And to get to the RIMM slots, you have to pivot the power suppy, by unlatching something that in no way looks like a latch. If I keep pressing on this thing, its gonna snap right off! But its done, and now we tell ourselves that it really is faster.

More discussion about our favorite topic, last night. On the do-it side: the extra money would pay nicely for a) ten years or so of my mother's companion service, and b) the flight to Australia in four years (not the full amount, but the additional that we're grimly realizing it's going to take). On the don't-do-it side: we're painting my daughter's bedroom this summer; she's got lots of activities that my wife could take her to, but it'd be somewhat of a hassle for her. Logically, its on the do-it side; emotionally, on the other. I told my wife that I don't feel the need to go back to work; she surprised me by saying that she was thinking about that sign we have about doing things that scare you, and wondering if the job itself scared me. I told her no, it does not -- its the idea of being frequently away. Though that thought did give me pause: why does that scare me? Do I subconciously think they can't make it without me here all the time? Or is that my excuse? One thought thats occurred to me more than once: I'm not emotionally ready to retire, because I don't like spending money without earning it (gotta do it sometime) and because work does equal identity in our society. I kid my wife that at the moment I'm an unemployed vagrant, but you know what? Maybe, just a bit, I do feel that way.

Once again, I need an adult to tell me what to do.

LDOS!