Retirement Over?

Well, my image of retirement changed today when the home depot delivered the new basement door and I realized (pretty quickly) that it is unfinished.  What was I thinking?  So I have a couple days of prestaining, staining, sanding, and varnishing to do. The materials to do the door cost more than the door! That's not right.

On another note, as you get your movie list together (SOON!) check out these images with movie tie-ins and try your sporcle skills (Scott!) to guess the movie.

Probably number 1 on my list.

Also probably on my list (maybe the only musical -it got me interested in bluegrass music - I still hate country music though).

  

Maybe on Nate or MIke's list. Comedy - Horror?

 Orange Whip, anyone?

These images are from a cool movie T-shirt site called Last Exit to Nowhere.  Check it out.

It's Close to Movie Time

For those of you who participated in Marshmallow Fight's top 25 song list (here's mine and might I add any list that has Styx and Aaron Copland next to each other is a winner), you know the drill.  This time you need to pick your top 10 movies of all time.  You may use your own criteria for this but remember, not all of us are film critics.  We don't really care that the cinematography was outstanding, or that it made good use of location shots.  Sometimes a movie is in our top ten because of who we saw it with, or what our life was like at the time we saw it.  As an example, here is a trailer from Matinee with John Goodman as a horror film producer.  Every time I think of this movie I smile. That's enough to put it on my list.

I'm thinking I'll include a favorite line or two from each movie  in the list because we love remembering them when we are in the midst of something.  It's hard when the waitress comes to get our drink order not to go "Orange whip, orange whip, orange whip?" And you can always get a laugh from the kids when you mention "Don't cross the streams!"  And a superintendent I know is especially fond of saying "Work, work, work" at just the right time.   From Matinee, the obligatory Army general is watching the creature climb a building and he shouts "What do you call that thing?" and the creature's former girl friend standing right next to the general says, "Bill." That's enough to make it a top ten in my book. 

Start getting your list together.  Either Nate or I will do the processing - this time around he has a job and I have all the free time so I will probably help.  And no sitting out this time, Ann and Mary.  Everybody reading this blog is welcome to join in.  There will probably be some people posting you don't know, but none of us have too many friends (even you, Bill), so meeting someone new is a good thing. 

Staples!

When the Lighthall, Robinson, Armstrong party of 6 (and more as the kids started coming along) would go camping in Wisconsin, we were always on the lookout for the new and the unusual.  Or what would in Wisconsin be the normal and the usual.  On one shopping trip, we stopped at a small store near the campgrounds looking for all sorts of things.  We were informed that they only sold staples: beer, ice cream, and firewood.  My years of playing Oregon Trail had led me to believe that staples were things like sugar, flour, corn meal, beans, bacon, and salt.  It was nice to see that our neighbors to the north had outgrown those useless lists and substituted supplies that were truly indispensable: beer, ice cream, and firewood. I thought that was probably the best list I would see, but I was wrong.  The sign I found two weeks ago has become the new winner!

Hooray for beer! Do you think the first two are generally sold together?  It would probably be a good idea if the wedding gowns had a 20 day waiting period like the guns do. The first grade teachers would be a lot happier that way.  I'm just saying.

Life in Chicago!

I had a discussion today with my youngest about cities we would like to inhabit.  I ended up telling Mike that there was a good chance we would be in the Chicago area for some time.  Five years ago my wife and I talked some about where we would like to move when we retired (which for her is in 4 months, yay!).  The only preference I had was that I would like to move to a college town where there might be seminars and talks open to the public (preferably about math). We talked about North or South Carolina, but they are becoming the new Florida. Arizona sounds nice until you realize it is filled with Arizonians (Arizonimites?). More recently we talked about Tennessee  -  a nice area with the added benefit of being home to the National Storytelling Festival (Jonesborough) in October. But that talk has slowed down recently as we realize that other than moving because of family, we are pretty happy here in the Chicago area.  We are lucky to be retiring with a sufficient pension that we will be able to do things in the area as long as our health holds up.  And I can't think of another city that has as much to do as Chicago.  If you go to the Theater in Chicago website and look under "Now Playing" there are 86 plays listed in the Chicago area.  We have season tickets (in the cheapest seats) to the Bulls games which we love, Cubs and White Sox games to go to, and I still haven't done the Segway tour that I have been talking about since we saw them from the boat while doing the Architecture of Chicago Boat Tour five years ago.   There are two "Chocolate Tours" in the Loop that I have my eye on, and a "Cupcake Tour".  

Part of what prompted this discussion was watching Pardon the Interruption, the lone ESPN show I watch regularly.  This summer the Mariners play the Marlins in an interleague series in Florida, but the game is being switched to Seattle to accommodate U2 setting up for their concert the day after the series ends. Wilbon mentioned he was happy because Seattle is the second best place in America to be once winter ends.  Kornheiser said "Let me guess what's first" and Wilbon shouted "Chicago, of course". 

He's right.

Old School?

I have been informed by the younger set that my social skills are lacking. For example, my text messages are too long, I don't need to put my name on them, and I'm spending too much time editing them and checking for spelling errors.  And a few weeks ago, I had a former colleague who used the acronym BTW in a text message, then stopped to explain it to me, just in case I didn't know.  I am having a hard time moving into the new era, where the ability to put together a coherent sentence is optional.  In spite of my math background, I have always had a fascination about words and language. It may have rubbed off from my older brother who is in real life a highly thought of shakespearean scholar and dramaturg.  And right now, most of my attention is drawn to the question of whether I should have capitalized "shakespearean".  And whether the period in the last sentence should have gone inside the quotes.  In my mind, there is no such thing as informal writing. If I am putting it on paper (or in electronic ink), it needs to be checked.  That is not to mean that I get it right all the time. It just bothers me.  I remember a bit by Jim Gaffigan where he is leaving a note for friend saying he will call tomorrow, but isn't sure how to spell tomorrow.  He ends up changing it to next week just to avoid it.

Under design options for this blog, I have the possibility of putting a list of what I've been reading lately; but on further examination, the list will only contain URLs of blogs I read.  I do read a number of blogs, but when someone asks me what I've been reading lately, I don't normally think of them first. 

At least I've moved into the Kindle era this last year, so maybe I'm making progress.  On the minus side, at least once a day, I still try to turn the page by hand before I remember it's a Kindle.  I'll try harder.

Cool Tech?

Now available from Hammacher Schlemmer

It even makes the snowballs for you. And it includes targets in case you don't have brothers or sisters.

Work?

It seems, when you retire, one of the things that you think about is work. Issues involving work  have come up a lot recently among family and friends.  My wife's bosses are bullies, my former boss has lost it, and my sister in law thinks her boss is Satan.  I had a long chat last week with my friend who was forced to resign from his teaching position last week in order to keep from being fired.  He was instructed to tell no one of the reason for quitting and to simply say that he thought it was time to move on. That way he would be given a good recommendation. I had taught with him for two years and found him to be a very good teacher. I have some suspicions about why he was forced to resign, but it doesn't really matter.  As a non-tenured teacher, he has no rights and needs to move on; it would be my hope that he ends up in a job with a boss worth working for. I guess a good boss is just hard to find. Two other teachers in the department (one with 13 years experience) left on their own in the last six months because they couldn't tolerate the boss.  I was privileged for 21 of my years teaching to have a great boss. I started working for him at just the right time.  I was developing my own teaching style and he was  a major force behind the teacher I turned out to be.  I remember when he interviewed prospective teachers, he would draw a grid with the terms "the book", "students", and "math" around the outside and ask you to fill in where you fell in the grid. What was more important to you? Did you put your X closer to students or to math. At my retirement recognition, he was an invited guest and mentioned that I was his first hire and the woman who spoke on my behalf was his last hire. There is a marked difference in the philosophy of those teachers hired by the current boss and the department has a very different feel to it now.  We have a number of good teachers now, but fewer exceptional teachers. When I started, a lot of the teachers were real characters with a lot of personality. You never knew what they would do next or where they were headed, but it was exciting and thought provoking for the students. And they wanted to talk to you about math or english or history or teaching, Now the teachers mostly talk about special ed issues or rti  or the cool diagram they drew on the smart board. When teachers were first given websites linked to the district website to use, each person was asked to put up a saying or motto on their own site that reflected their attitude.  Mine was "This is math; what could be more exciting?" When the vast majority of the department disagreed with that statement, I knew it was time to retire. 

One of My Favorite Songs

I have found in my retirement from 37 years of teaching mathematics that I have been using blogs and websites to satisfy the geek component I used to get from teaching calculus to really bright kids.  More than anything in retirement, I miss talking about math with colleagues and students.  That is first on my list of traits I'm looking for in a new puppy. To make up for that (and until we get around to buying a new puppy), I am enjoying several sites about science and technology and general geekiness.  One of my favorites is from musician Jonathan Coulton, whose blog can be found here.  You can find a version with lyrics of his song Skullcrusher Mountain (which song by the way makes a great ring tone) below.  Let's hear it for evil scientists!  Enjoy.

     

  

my vision of retirement

Free Time With Dad

As a benefit of being retired, I was able to spend most of last week with my dad who will turn 90 this summer. He lives alone on 5 acres outside of town. He has decided that he has too much stuff and it’s time to start clearing away the things he doesn’t really need.  He worries that eventually we three kids will have to do this with everything that is left.  So for two days we went through pictures and scrapbooks and boxes of old newspaper clippings to see what he wanted to keep.  We threw out close to 200 pictures along with lots of other things - 3 large garbage bags full.  The pictures weren't really worth saving. They were mainly shots of scenery taken during vacation trips he and my mom (who passed away in 1993) took after we kids were grown and gone. Dad said if there were no people in the picture, lets toss it. So we did. I saved several things that had meaning to me and sent a large envelope to Oregon for my brother to look through. We left a box of things for my sister in Arkansas to go through when she visits at Memorial Day.

 

This afternoon I went to a funeral visitation for the wife of someone I taught math with for 22 years.  I was in line with two other retired teachers from the school and when we got to the front, we spent the next seven or eight minutes with the husband of the deceased telling stories about people we had taught with. We gave our condolences then and moved out of the parlor. 

That experience made me think back to how quickly my dad and I went through the old photos.  If the three kids are together (with the spouses and grandkids) there will probably be more of the storytelling going on as we go through the pictures. I think Dad just wants to get it done. But this is fair warning to my siblings. You better not be in a hurry when it comes down to cleaning out the house. There are a lot of stories I want to hear again.  I’m just saying.