Caught up in life

Wow, school starts tomorrow. Like any normal kid, Ellie is looking forward to being with her friends, but not looking forward so much to the structure of school. I, of course, am completely excited to be getting back to a schedule for myself. Ellie seems to like hanging out with Linda and me, but I can't imagine why. She seems bored so much of the time.

I'm getting a little end-of-summer programming in. Once the semester starts, I expect to be too busy with things to program for fun. All of my programming will aim at lofty projects and work. As usual, I have more projects than I have time. That's probably a good thing, though, because it forces me to have students involved. I've almost always got good projects for them.

I'm also keeping up with Jim and Jen (although I've never talked to any of the family, it's all been email). Jim had a stroke much like Linda's, i.e. same area of the brain. All strokes are different because all brains are different (which you've noticed of course, although we usually say all people are different).

Still there have been lots of similarities, and that makes me something of an informal expert. I can say, "Did you think to ask him this... or that..." They'll be going to rehab next week. As much as I enjoyed rehab and the people at Rusk, I'm glad we're not there. It was an aweful lot of work.

Speaking of Rusk. We were there this week. Another 6 month visit. Dr. R changed Linda's medication again because he thought she was slower than in February. I think it is better already now, but Linda says it feels about the same to her. We missed seeing most of the therapists who were busy or off that day, but we did run into miss Molly. She was chipper as always.

One nice improvement to Rusk: they are going non-smoking inside and outside. I wish the whole world would do that.

Classes start for me on Monday. I'll be a bit busy this week, too. I volunteered to do a group discussion on Wednesday with some of the new freshment. Thursday is division day, so we'll be meeting the new majors. There will be computer things to get done somewhere in there too.

Still, fall is my favorite time. I love that first day of classes; new people, new energy and excitement; the uneasy anticipation of the freshment. Ahh, and fighting for a parking spot...