graduation

My daughter graduated from college early! I gave her a sword and a trip to the Atlanta Aquarium and she was thrilled with both (which was nice because I often miss the mark with her these days). I'm excited for whatever comes next for her, but feel bad that she's graduating into a terrible job market. She has an apartment with partners/friends (I can't keep up) in Buffalo and will be looking for work there after Christmas.

Her first semester there, she got an A minus in a 2-credit class. I foolishly said something like, "Oh good; now there's no chance of you having to worry about keeping a 4.0. That made it so I didn't take as many risks as I should have in college." Weeeellll she was determined to get back that 4.0, got all As throughout, and RETOOK that class this semester.

And ended up getting an unexpected A- in a different class. It doesn't matter even a little bit, but it does matter to her, so I feel terrible for her. 

these dreams...

In the past few months I've been having occasional graphically violent nightmares. Like, seeing dozens of people including my mom getting gunned down in a war zone sort of thing. A lot of male partners have talked about dreams like this, but I don't recall EVER having them before. Not a fan!

no good choices

"Where exactly in this schedule am I supposed to see friends? Go to social gatherings? Maintain relationships? Have a life? The answer is: I don’t."

important dog content

 Detail I enjoyed in this article about a guy who stole vast amounts of art and jewelry from rich people in the 80s: his team was able to handle guard dogs by giving them scritches and food from the refrigerator.

hungry hungry hungry

Years ago, gaining weight significantly reduced my low dizziness and vertigo. They're increasing again since I lost weight (not terribly surprising, but my blood pressure is a little higher now and I thought that would help). Bringing my BMI above 25 is probably necessary. Whether that will also allow me to not feel hungry all the time and to stop having constant dreams about food, as I have been since May, remains unknown. 

young adult drama

My son is coming back for ten days over Christmas, and bringing along a very new girlfriend. Their relationship is moving extremely quickly (like, I won't be surprised if they announce their engagement) and there are a number of other red flags (even ignoring her right wing Christian beliefs, since he shares them). I expect this to be a very challenging visit. It's always tough to stand up for my daughter and for my own beliefs when he's here without every interaction being an argument, and I think we have to play extra nice in front of the girlfriend or we risk being cut off. (Not that he has threatened anything like that, but they are on track to get married, and that's a time when he could be easily pressured to do that.)

trains

In the past 15 years I have spent a well above average amount of time listening to various people in my bed talk about trains. One of them was going on about a Chinese 600 km/hr train, and my contribution was something like, "And here the best we've got is what, the Acela line? What does it top out at?" 

Now here's the real evidence that I have a type: when he didn't happen to know that train fact offhand, I was shocked.