Why so silent

You'll wonder why I haven't posted much lately. Actually my friends in academia won't wonder. They know. But it isn't just end-of-semester business. Some interesting things have made us busier than usual.

Last weekend we drove to Iowa for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. Linda didn't want to go because traveling is a drag, but she didn't want me to drive alone so far and she came. We had a nice handicap-accessible hotel room--smoking, but not too stinky.

It was about the only accessible thing anywhere. Don't think of moving to rural Midwest if you have a disability. It's amazing how many places are just-about accessible. Everything would be great, if the bathroom door was hinged on the other side. Or the handicap stall would actually be usable with a wheelchair if it was 12in deeper. Or if there were grab bars. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out.

The steakhouse where we had dinner was the worst. Linda's chair wouldn't fit through the bathroom door. It's not exactly a problem, I just helped Linda walk into the bathroom (which has no bars--who would need them, they couldn't get through the door anyway). It was prom night, so there was Linda and me and a lot of girls in stunningly pretty dresses. One was nice enough to hold the door for us.

That really was the worst. Most places were better than that at least. But we did use up our whole weekend and I in particular spent the next week grading and catching up. One of my more dramatic friends noticed that I was ignoring her. But we'll have coffee soon and I think she'll feel better. Or maybe she can ignore me now and all will be fair.

Things you can't talk about

Now that I have had some success with my speech software, I have been sitting down to plan out what comes next. I've done a bit of paper-sketching and planning. I'm busy picking out the tools I want to use. Some of it I've really looked into carefully. But it's all so damned technical that I can't tell anyone about it. Well I could, but they wouldn't care--not even people in my own discipline.

My college advisor told me this would happen sometimes if I chose to become an academic.