Retirement

My place of employment offered a retirement incentive package because somehow they thought it would save them some money, although in the end they realized they are going to have to replace all the retiring employees because ... we were not over-staffed, and honestly, they'd have a lot of younger people quit if all that …

Murders, real and imagined

I, fortunately, have never been close to a murder. I am not an investigator, no one in my immediate family has been murdered, none of my friends have been murdered. However, I have been reading murder mysteries since I was eight, when my mother decided I should move from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie (it …

This is the end … of 2023

This is a list of favorites and things from this year. Because if I don't list them, will I remember they happened? And will I remember they happened in 2023? Memory and time gets weird these days (was that five years ago? More like 10? Really?? Who knew?). Favorite Fiction I read this year: Thistlefoot, Station …

Postmortem: September

September was not a good month for me. The month was filled with work stress, of spending too much time physically there, of horrible commutes that increased the stress of the work, of struggling to sleep well, of not enough downtime. Why does every road in Chicago have to be under construction right now? There …

Random thoughts of January

This January has been a month of change and coldness and sickness. I write these blog posts once a month (maybe more, who knows what the future brings?) because I want to keep up the practice of writing, and these posts give me the discipline of writing once a month. Because my other work-in-progress is …

Final Blog Post of 2021

I made a resolution this year to blog at least once a month: this is my final blog post of 2021, and with it I have managed to keep my resolution. Most of my blog posts have been full of doom and gloom: it's been a tough year. I think we had all hoped by …

Thanksgiving

This is the week Americans (i.e., those that live in the US) celebrate Thanksgiving - it's a bit after the harvest, so it's an odd time of year to do it - but of course there are more complicated historical reasons for why it is when it is. Nothing is ever simple. Lincoln made it …

September

A September to remember. The joys of Autumn returning to us all. The darkness in the early morning and evening. The "back to campus" ethos. Not a fan of "back to campus," to be honest. Although it's gone ok in some ways - so far, infection rates seem low (everyone is vaccinated). I am exhausted …

Ah, Summertime.

Trigger warning: this is not a light, "summertime reading" kind of post. Though I do talk about reading some. My summer has been kind of awful, actually. It's had it's delightful moments - some good times visiting with family we haven't seen in a while, some adventurous trips - it's mostly been ... depressing. Two …

It ain’t over till it’s over.

June has been a month for thinking about the suddenness of living this life - how the best-laid plans can go off track in an instant. Between sudden health issues in my household, and a sudden death in my family circle, it's been a bit of a reminder than things can go wrong very suddenly …