Time

When I was a kid, I went to an elite public secondary school that squeezed junior high and high school into five years by combining seventh and eighth grade into a "subfreshman" year. I was already on the young side for my grade and had a hard time keeping up socially, but I did get an excellent academic education.

You'd think with that accelerated pace, time would have flown by, but it didn't. I have a vivid memory from 9th grade--the year of geometry and analytic trigonometry--I was around 13. It was late fall or early spring--probably early spring, as we were well into sines, cosines, and tangents. There was no snow, but wet leaves covered the ground, and I was walking around in circles in our front yard, thinking about how woefully, painfully, agonizingly, boringly, SLOWLY time was passing, and wondering how I would survive into adulthood, let alone the rest of the school year.

That was 36 years ago, and I am pleased to report that time has accelerated continuously since then. I have friends who complain sometimes about how quickly time flies. But I know better, having peered into the depths of cold-molasses-standstill-boredom and survived. While I'm surprised, on a regular basis, by how quickly E is growing up--I miss those adorable-toddler years as much as I love these mature-young-autonomous-teen years--I would not trade this accelerated pace for the slowness of the year of geometry and analytic trig. I suppose time speeds up because every new year occupies an increasingly smaller percentage of my accumulating total. Whatever the reason, I will always be grateful for the acceleration.

Hence I am not complaining, but rather simply explaining, how January 2016 zipped by without a single blog post.

We went to Mexico to visit S's sister P between Christmas and New Year's. Posts will follow.

In mid-January, I flew to Syracuse, NY, to give a science writing workshop. Do to scheduling issues, I was forced to wish for just the right amount of blizzard so that I could miss my return flight, visit the ceramics collection at the Everson Museum (unfortunately closed Mondays and Tuesdays), and then catch a flight home in time for choir practice; but alas, the weather gods did not cooperate. I did get to see a little lake effect snow at the airport, along with a small display of pots on loan from the Everson, but only because my flight home was delayed for other reasons.

Oh, and it snowed in Durham too, last Friday and Saturday, causing schools to close from Thursday evening through late Wednesday morning. My music-gig church closed too, for the second time in at least a dozen years, so I had a rare Sunday morning at home with my family. The photos below capture the intensity of the snow and ice.

I'm honestly not sure what happened the rest of the month, since, as happens these days, it just flew by.