The day before

Well, friends, the day has finally arrived.

Actually, it's the day before the day.

Tomorrow I get up in front of a live studio (okay, classroom) audience and talk about everything I've done here in Michigan (okay, not everything, just the academic parts).

I'm feeling okay, telling myself tomorrow's just another day. But still, regardless of how the defense goes tomorrow, I'll probably remember 7/11 as something more, the bookend to the shelf that started with 9/11.

9/11 occurred the week after I started grad school. I know the "war on terror" has been going on for a long time, because it's been going on for as long as I've been in grad school. And that's a long time.

Now, here at the end, a life that had seemed in slow motion is suddenly in fast forward. The pages that were turning over slowly, when there was time to read every word, are now flipping by quickly. There's a flip-book stick-man -- he's jumping rope, he's deciding where to move next, he's thinking about his parents getting older -- and that stick-man is me.

Okay, how about a pretty picture?

That's sunset over Ford Road just east of Ann Arbor.

And here's something else that's interesting:

That's one flavor of Doritos you can get in Vancouver (see "deciding where to move to next" above): "Tandoori Sizzler". Suddenly "Cool Ranch" seems downright dowdy.