In case you were wondering how I would celebrate my birthday…

I regret to report that I did not complete my grading yesterday. I was up late slogging through it all, but it was a long exam and a lot of students and a couple of the questions involved careful calculations that I had to trace through, and so I only got halfway through the stack. Today, I try to finish it.

Unfortunately, on Tuesdays I have a long morning class starting shortly, and I have a lab most of the afternoon, and I have to attend two senior seminars, so I’m going to be working late again.

I estimate that maybe I can spare a half hour around noon. So, lunch. Which because of my advanced age and feeble condition will probably consist of a lump of fiber.

Yay. Birthday. They just get better every year.

Prophecy…validated

This story is numerically accurate, at least.

Paul McCartney wrote this song in 1956, a year before I was born, and before Mary Gjerness was born. He was 14.

It was released to the public on the album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in the spring of 1967. I was 10. Mary was 9. We had met the year before. McCartney was 25. We had not and have never met him.

I heard the song, and the whole album, often that summer. It was the Summer of Love.

Mary and I might have fled to Haight-Ashbury together, except our parents would have disapproved, and, well, we didn’t know each other that well. Also, we were kids.

The song may have implanted ideas in my head, though, because 7 years later, in the fall of 1974, I worked up the courage to ask her on a date.

It did not go well.

Shortly afterwards, Mary departed for Southeast Asia, where she studied martial arts and eventually returned to the United States to right great wrongs as the Batwoman.

I fled the opposite way, to languish in exile in exotic Indiana. I returned having learned no lessons, to repeat the same mistakes yet again. In the summer of 1976, when the song was 9 years old, I asked Mary out on a second date.

It went a little better.

I was 19. Mary was 18. Paul McCartney was 34 years old. He had nothing to do with us, but we all kind of wish we were that young again.

It was about this time that I began to wonder whether she would still be interested in needing me and feeding me when I turned 64.

She said the word. We filled in a form. We got married in 1980, when I was 23 and she was 22. Tentatively, the answer was “yes”, but I still needed empirical confirmation of the robustness of the agreement.

Suddenly! Unexpectedly! To everyone’s surprise! Forty one years flew by. Finally, I can answer the questions in the song.

When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three,
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four? Ooh
You’ll be older too.
Ah, and if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four?
Ev’ry summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight if it’s not too dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee;
Vera, Chuck and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
yours sincerely, wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine forevermore.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four? Ho!

Yes, she still sends me valentines and birthday greetings. No, she doesn’t drink…wine.

Yes, she will lock the door if I’m out very late. But I have a key!

She probably needs me less than I need her, but she will still feed me.

Mary, unfortunately, must wait until September to find out if I reciprocate.

Wait, the song is over! What happens now? What about when we’re 65? 74? 103? I guess I better find out. My new mission: to determine the accuracy of the lyrics in the song, “In the Year 2525”.

One in-box is empty!

It is glorious. I am completely caught up on grading in my introductory biology course, and the website shows no pending items awaiting my perusal. That feels so good, even if I know it is fleeting.

I’ve already started pounding on my genetics backlog. I have once again given myself a goal of getting it completely done today. I will persist and overcome. I will taste the heady joy of a brief freedom from obligation late tonight, no matter what. I might even have a few days this week with a little time for the spider work.

Although I do have the students launching a new fly cross this week, so lab will be busy. It’s weird how I find working in the lab relaxing and not at all stressful, but sitting at home in front of my familiar computer just reading and judging student writing is agonizing. I’m already getting a headache contemplating the rest of today.

No spiders today 😢

The sun is shining! It’s warm outside! My lab spiders are busily constructing new webs! But I have vowed that I shall get completely caught up on grading my introductory biology class, Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development. Yes, I shall clear that nagging notification in Canvas that I have this one long assignment to complete grading.

Then, tomorrow, by Grabthar’s Hammer, I shall get totally caught up on Genetics grading! Indeed, it shall be done. I want to have one day with no pending grading left to do. On that day I shall wallow in spiders all day long.

And then I will assign more homework. It never ends.

But for now, yeesh but it looks nice out there, like I ought to strip down to shorts and a camera bag and dive into some tick-infested brush, or something fun like that.

Nope nope nope nope nope

I tried to walk in to open up the genetics lab this morning, and it ain’t happening. The roads and sidewalks are sheets of glassy ice — I got as far as the corner of my house before I went flying. I’ll be OK, I landed on my head.

Unfortunately, I can now feel every muscle and bone in my spine from thorax to cervical vertebrae aching and complaining. I’m going to be feeling this for several days.

Every year, godfuckingdamnit, I have take at least one serious fall. This is it. This better be the last one.

The lure of the exotic! Adventure awaits!

I was served up an ad that, for once, triggered a deep yearning in me. It was for a Lake Superior circle tour, a collection of 84 museums in various states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario — that ring the big lake up North. Many of them looked like somebody’s old house that is used to show off some local artifact, but still, I am so desperate to get out that the whole thing looked like grand fun. It’s a measure of my need to escape that even this place looked appealing.

I wanna see the largest motorized tricycle “possibly in the world,” the world’s largest working chainsaw, the world’s largest working rifle, and I want to use the “free batrooms”.

Not really. Once I get vaccinated and once my teaching obligations are over, what I really want to do is flee Morris, Minnesota for a while.

Nothing against the Da Yoopers Tourist Trap — I appreciate the honest advertising, at least — but if I hadn’t been cooped up for a year I wouldn’t be ogling that place like it was the Louvre. Although, actually, there are probably more spiders in Da Yoopers than there are in the Louvre…

We’re getting better?

Have you been watching the statistics? It looks like we’re finally on the right track.

It might have something to do with this:

I also check the state stats. Minnesota is looking a bit above average for the country.

I still have anxiety nightmares about the pandemic, though. After all, someone has to be the last person to die of COVID-19 this year, and the end of the pandemic doesn’t mean we aren’t going to have to live with this virus forever after.

Also, I figure that once I get my second dose of the vaccine (I haven’t even gotten my first dose yet), I’ll probably get hit by a bus the day after.