Old.

Today is the day for my annual physical exam, and I’m about to get my veins tapped and my body poked and get informed about my bad habits and told about my imminent doom. It’s going to take a while. Then I have to rush back for multiple appointments with students and to teach a couple of classes.

So today is filmstrip day! Is anyone else old enough to remember when the teacher was hung over and just wheeled in the machine that would show a series of still images with voiceover so they could retreat into a back corner and close their eyes for a while?

That might be the same people who remember who Al Gore was.

Winter isn’t over yet

We were hit by a snowstorm this past weekend, but it’s now melting away fast. We can’t get too excited yet, because apparently another storm is supposed to brush by us this week.

We’ve had a few flowering plants that brave the whole winter, and this what they look like right now.

Here’s what they looked like last summer.

Maybe when they stop looking so skeletal and dead, the spiders will come back.

Minnesota doesn’t like students

Yesterday, I left my coat at home and went for a brisk walk downtown, which left me sweating. It felt like a nice warm spring.

Tomorrow, all the students will be returning from spring break, all tanned and rested and ready to work.

So what happens today? I was awakened to the sound of sleet and wind rattling the windows, and went to look out and see what’s going on. This is what I saw.

The windows are all glazed with ice. There is a nice foundation layer of ice on the ground, with snow coming down on top of that, wind blowing it everywhere. We’ve got weather warnings about whiteout conditions.

Drive safe, students! I guess I’ll have to prepare my planned lecture so I can deliver it over zoom. It’s not as if I’m going anywhere today, I’m just going to hunker down and work from home anyway.

Flooding the zone works!

Lately, I’ve been getting up in the morning and glancing briefly at the news. More tariffs; we’re in an unnecessary trade war with our allies. The US is breaking climate agreements right and left. The Trump administration is unconstitutionally throwing out the principle of free speech, and has arrested Mahmoud Khalil for the ‘crime’ of legal protest. Trump is using “Palestinian” as a slur. DOGE has slashed $800 million from Johns Hopkins’ research funding. The president of the US just made a commercial for Tesla cars.

It’s overwhelming.

I don’t want to know more, unless someone has a suggestion for how I can contribute to the overthrow of the American government.

In lieu of that, I’ve got a lot to do in the lab.

I’m autoclaving fly bottles in preparationg for the next cross we do when the students get back.

I’m doing the next step in the cross for all the students. The fly breeding goes on even if the students are away on spring break!

I’m making these adorable wooden platforms for my spider cages. I’m going to be recording spider behavior, and I want them to be building cobwebs in the horizontal plane.

I’ve got an exam I’ve put off grading.

I have to do some critical reviews of student paper summaries.

The students have been working on a major lab report. I have to look over their methods section.

By the weekend, I have to get next week’s lectures prepared.

I’ve been trying to schedule an hour of light exercise every day. Easy to do over spring break, my plans will fall apart when classes start.

I have to spend at least an hour in bed tonight overcome with general feelings of dread and anxiety.

I’ve got stuff to do while the country swirls down the drain!

My sister Lisa

I had my birthday the other day, and my birthday brings sadness and depression with it. Not because I’m getting older, that I’m used to, but because every year around this time I think of my sister, Lisa. We had almost the same birthday, the 9th of March for me, the 11th for her, so the dates sort of collided, but she was so much younger than I was that it didn’t cause any conflict. She was my baby sister, 11 years younger than I was. I was a neglectful brother to her, and that always stirs up regret around this time of year.

I have to tell this story in reverse, because it ends in grief, and this way as I work backwards it gets happier. Also, there’s a big gap in the middle, because I was living so far away from my family as everything fell apart for her.

She died in September of 2001 at the age of 33. It was not a good death, if there is such a thing. She was homeless, living day by day, and she picked up a massive systemic infection — neglect and drug abuse played a role here — and seemed to be tangled up with a street preaching group. The first I knew of it was when I got a call from my mother to say she was unconscious in the hospital. She lingered for a few days and died.

I flew to Seattle for the funeral. It was open casket, unfortunately. She’d been a pretty young woman, but the edema from the infection left her barely recognizable. I did meet the woman preacher who’d been ministering to her in her last days, and that left me furious. The preacher used the funeral to proselytize, and ask for donations, and invite everyone to join her in praising the Lord there in the funeral home. I refrained from punching her in the face, out of respect for the fact that my sister had at least found some comfort in her ministry in her final days.

I knew little else about her life before that. I’d regularly call my mother, and ask what my brothers and sisters were up to, but they didn’t know much about Lisa. She wasn’t allowed to come to my parent’s home anymore. She’d been caught stealing checks and doing petty pilfering around the house, all to feed her drug habit, so she couldn’t be trusted to not rob them blind, if given the opportunity. She spent some time in jail. There was over a decade in the 1990s where I was out of touch, living a thousand miles away, and all I knew of her was short mournful whispers from my mother or my sisters, no direct contact, even when I visited the Pacific Northwest all I’d hear is that they didn’t know where she was living, and she wouldn’t come visit me.

There was some happy news, though: she had two sons, Ben and Dylan, who have turned out just fine and are doing well today.

Otherwise, I was out of touch for the entirety of the 1990s. The 1980s were when we drifted apart — I moved out in the 80s, when I turned 18 and went off to attend university. She was only 7 when I left, and that’s how I mostly remember her, as a shy, sweet little girl. I only caught up with her now and then as she became a teenager, and a young woman. Then it seemed like I turned around and she was gone. I had missed so much of her life.

This year, though, I inherited a collection of 8mm film recordings from my family, and some of them were from the mid- to late 1980s, taken by my father during family visits and on vacations. This was a time when all of us, her brothers and sisters, had moved out and started our own families. She was pretty much an only child for those years, and it made me glad to see that at least some of the time she was happy with mom and dad.

I spliced out all these short clips of my sister and strung them together in a short video — a very short video. I’m afraid my dad was a terrible videographer. He’d film family members very briefly and then cut away to spend most of the recording panning across the landscape, and when I cut out the scenery, there wasn’t much left. But still, it’s all I have left.

She was a sweet kid and a troubled woman. I miss her.

Florida is taking pride in what they’re good at

I guess that’s good, to put a positive spin on what you have a demonstrable skill in doing, even if it is something most of us would be embarrassed by. There’s a company putting on what they call Florida Man games, a series of competitions where Floridians can show off their unique talents.

For instance, there’s an “EVADING ARREST OBSTACLE COURSE” where

Floridians are chased by police after stealing copper pipes and catalytic converters. Find the frozen iguana and chuck a gator through a drive thru window to earn a victory, and your freedom.

Very good. These are all useful skill to have when living in a crumbling dystopian swamp that is slowly sinking beneath the sea. Sure. Polish Florida’s reputation while you’re at it.

I may have just turned 68, but I still have a little dignity

I’m not wearing one of these things, or obsessing over the hundred pills I choose to swallow every night, or comparing myself to my sons. I’m not Bryan Johnson, the current joke of a man aging poorly.

According to my calculations, it ain’t worth it. But he also has the penis of a 22-year-old.

He should give it back. To be clear, he has the penile health of someone 25 years younger.

How would you even measure that? By the number, duration and quality of one’s night-time erections.

And how would you even measure that? With an erectile tracker – you wear it to bed and it sends the data to your phone.

So your phone tells you your penile age? After a fashion, yes.

Where can you get one of these devices? Asking for a friend. You can buy them online for £150, but the company that makes them is oversubscribed, so there’s currently a seven-to-eight-week waiting list.

If anyone wants to buy me a present, don’t get me an erection tracker.

Remembering my grandmother

Dang, these people look so happy.

Those are our kids, Alaric, Skatje, and Connlann (l-r) and their Great-Grandma Westad. Of course they’re happy — the kids are thrilled to be on vacation and hanging out with their favorite great-grandma, and great-grandma was always so excited to see them. This was probably the early 1990s, when we were living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and we didn’t get up to Washington state often enough. I found this photo in a pile and it reminded me of how much she loved to see her great-grandkids. She’d usually take them out to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard, or to Arby’s. She practically lived on Arby’s roast beef sandwiches, buying them in bulk and freezing them, and thawing them out for her dinner. Poor, you know, although she owned that house in the background. I think her greatest joy was her grandkids and great-grandkids.

She also had a yard full of flowers. Way back when I was dating my wife to be, she’d cut flowers and tell me I had to bring them to her — she was always telling me I had to marry that girl. I was happy to obey.

Unfortunately, these notices were also in the pile.

I wish I’d visited her a few more times before it was too late.