Autumn Musings

It's November already, and the last few months have been busy. Figured I'd post a bit on my own blog instead of just commenting on others. Got a promotion at work, with the net effect being that I'm now coordinating two teams instead of one and I'm busier than ever. When I get the week after Thanksgiving off, it will take three people to cover what I normally do. I'm sure they will all be glad to see me when I get back, but it's been too long since I took a good vacation.

The other thing that has been on my mind is my dad. He's been dealing with the after effects of a minor stroke, maybe two, and still has a way to go. I visited him for a couple of hours the other day, and we managed to have a coherent conversation the whole time, although he was sometimes struggling to find the words he wanted to say and the course of it was bumpy to say the least. Considering he's 88 now, these sort of twists are not unexpected. He's frustrated by having to learn things over again, and laughed when I pointed out that he doesn't have the boundless energy that a kid does when learning such things the first time.

I hope when I get to have kids of my own that I do better than he did while they are young. He never really was the father I wanted when I was young, and while he kept food on the table and clothes in the closet, emotional needs were a totally different matter. I've gotten along with him much better the last decade or so, a few years after my parents divorced he finally started growing up himself. My mom finally remarried recently, and her new husband is much more mature. With my dad being 26 years older than her, I've always known he would likely be the first one to go and it would probably happen sooner rather than later, so it hasn't hit me that hard that he's probably close to it. It may also be because I distanced myself from him quite a bit when I started college and he wasn't as helpful as he should have been, and I'm still dealing with the effects of that. To a large extent he's been forgiven, and it certainly seemed that he finally realized that if he'd helped more then he wouldn't have needed to help later when he did with some things that came up as part of life.

I think it's safe to say I've grown wiser and more mature myself over those years as well, although I have to wonder where I'd be now if things had happened differently, and others hadn't broken promises which caused the whole mess that was life back then. I think about the inflation and other economic nonsense being imposed on the world over my lifetime, and realize that there have been many factors involved, but I still have to think that the storms would not have been as bad if the early path had gone the way I wanted it to, or even how it should have been. The short-sighted vision of those afflicted with greed is mind-boggling. Having that lesson first taught by the administration of a so-called Christian school contributed greatly to my general distrust of religions. There are so many that talk up a storm and it turns out to be nothing but lip service and a social club. Down the road I realized much later that much of the root of the problem is that none of them know the whole truth, and the egos that get attached to one flavor of belief or another can't accept that fact, so they go overboard trying to defend it and we get to deal with the results.

Taking a turn off those bits, I sometimes wonder how the world would change if we could introduce a web system of teleporting gates for public transportation. We'd get the polluting motor vehicles off the road for the most part, everyone could walk to work in a few minutes, and one could have dinner in a different city every evening. The system would have to be able to detect and exclude weapons and diseases, although that wouldn't help with excuses for not visiting relatives that you don't really want to see. The sticky point would be crossing national borders of course, plus the effects of crossing time zones. Wishful thinking to be sure, but I wonder if it could be done some day.

There have been a lot of good movies out recently, movies I went to, movies that I don't want to go to, movies I thought I wanted to see and then when they actually came out I wasn't in the mood. There were even a couple that I missed when I was sick for a week or so and didn't go do anything I didn't have to. I think at this point I'm looking forward to Juno, Enchanted, Charlie Wilson's War and the Golden Compass, and probably some others down the road. The trailer for Jumper reminded me of the transit system idea I mentioned above, although I don't remember what the original inspiration was.

Anyway, life goes on. There are times when I wish I could wake up and find things had jumped ahead a year or two, but it wouldn't be worth the lost memories.