Status quo

Sometimes, a lack of change is good.

While others muse on Autumn after moving to a far, fair city, or wax eloquently about their new home after wandering to the Antipodes and back, I find myself, in many ways, where I was last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Which, I confess, suits me well.

I've an upcoming trip to Southern California, to the same general area as I visited before. That fits my comfort level nicely - I've been to LAX before, and rented a car from the same agency as I will this time. The trip down the Interstate I know well, and the final destination won't be hard to find. Even better, I know the hosts of the conference I'll be attending - it'll be a social visit, as well as business.

On the home front, despite frightening weather recently, things are calm - and pretty similar this year to last, too. The notable exception being that Mrs. Ricardipus is now a fully graduated, and (temporarily, we hope) unemployed school teacher.


A graduation rose.

And other things haven't changed much - still employed, still dealing with early-fall grant-writing season, and once again relaxing following the Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport, which I and my brother also attended last year. We had the annual cottage weekend earlier in August, and it was pretty much as it always is, too. Which is a good thing.


The red Ferrari was around last year, too.

I really find that I'm content, in a Jane Austen, settled-in-the-neighbourhood, kind of manner. Yes, it's a quiet life, but I know my limits. I'm well in my comfort zone, and happy about it.

Father's Day 2009

In celebration of Father's Day, I thought I'd share a photo of myself with one of the Junior Ricardipi:


Thought question - where's the camera?

That's JR#2 on the swing. JR#1 and Mrs. Ricardipus were nearby, at the splash park.

Perhaps in a little while I'll post a photo of the Most Excellent Gift they gave me. We have to all sit down and assemble it first, though.

Happy Father's Day, you lot (or whatever subset of you lot this applies to... you get the idea).

Overcast

In the new organizational structure that is life with a teacher-in-training in the family, and the necessity of shuttling around two now very active kids who are too young to be left on their own, I find myself now driving my very own vehicle in the morning to the local commuter train station. Which is a welcome change from the endless parade of buses that I've been accustomed to in recent years.

All this gives me time in the car, to and from, to listen to music and in so doing dig back through my music collection, almost all of which is a) on compact disk, and b) has never been put onto my Minidisc player, let along any kind of iThing. So there's a large back catalogue of music I've been missing out on, and am happily rediscovering.

Albums, for example, like Dead Cities by The Future Sound of London, an indescribably complex electronica mish-mash from the late 1990's, which has some truly incredible pieces on it: from the downbeat grooves of My Kingdom, to the aggressive video-game grooves of We Have Explosive, through the ambient floatiness of Vit Drowning and Through Your Gills I Breathe, to one of my very favourites, quiet and sad and poignantly calm: Everyone in the World Is Doing Something Without Me.




It's the musical equivalent of the far-off rumble of a jet passing in an overcast sky - lonely and bleak and a reminder that there are people all around you, going places, doing things, absorbed in their own lives, completely outside your own.

Quite like myself, isolated away in the green Protege, on my way to and from the station, humming along with the 1990's, oblivious.

Another Holiday weekend, continued

It seems the long weekend, which consisted mainly of work, has continued into Tuesday night with a trip to Ikea. Okay, technically, a trip to a point roughly five percent of the way to Ikea, followed by a trip home, followed by removing the kids' car seats so that there would actually be room for furniture, followed by a trip to Ikea. There was also a trip home, but that came later. I was on my own, so oh yes, there was loud music.

All of which was followed by the assembly of a new kitchen table, round this time instead of oblong. And the matching chairs, which I smuggled into the house knowing full well that Mrs. Ricardipus had resigned herself to the fact that they would never, ever fit in the car along with the table. Hah! Never underestimate my l33t p4ck1n6 sk1LLz!!!

We'll see what she says when she comes upstairs...

The new school curriculum lesson plan, according to Junior Ricardipus #1

Which he completed as part of his homework assignment: "what would you do if you were the teacher"?

I would take attendance. I would teach how Earth looked at the time of the dinosaurs. I would let the class play games in the morning, and in the afternoon I would give them no homework.

Why wasn't school like this when I was in Grade Two?

I shall keep this on file, as I'm sure his mother will be able to use it, once she's a teacher.


--

In other news, the F430 Spider has disappeared and was replaced yet again by its friend the 599 GTB Fiorano. And downtown, a Maserati Biturbo Si, circa 1987, I believe very similar to one that Jeremy Clarkson drops a skip on. Oh yes, and a while ago, a Maybach 57 S, driven by some guy in an expensive suit buying a coffee at Tim Horton's along with the rest of us plebs. It may be the most expensive car I've ever had the opportunity (opportunity, folks, not inclination) to kick. And one of the most boring looking, to boot (so to speak).

Oh yes, I almost forgot: last weekend, within half an hour of each other, a Ferrari 308 GTB and a Testarossa, probably a 512 TR, both red. This weekend - nothin'. So far.

One week...

...until next Wednesday. But also one week (roughly) since the beginning of school for the entire Ricardipus clan, except for me. Been there, done that, got a couple of diplomas and no, I don't have to teach medical students any more, thank goodness. Been there and done that too, for five years of graduate school. My sole investment in the new school year, apart from shuttling various and assorted Junior Ricardipi here and there, is in avoiding all of the frosh (translation: freshmen, first-year students) trampling around the downtown campus these days.

But now that Mrs. Ricardipus is off at teacher's college, our home seems to be filling up with binders, exercise books, various important-looking notices and other assorted bits of paper, and textbooks with titles like Engaging Minds: Learning and Teaching in a Complex World, Elementary and Middle School Mathematics, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, and the odd novel like Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which I might actually read myself. Oh, and American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang, which is also apparently part of the curriculum. It's a graphic novel featuring, among other things, a farting monkey. People who read it may, one day, be teaching your children, you know.

And me? Well, apart from unfortunately having discovered the shoot-em-up fun that is Cube, I'm just plugging away at the usual slog, helping people with grant applications for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (due Monday; thank goodness that will soon be over) and generally failing to answer Black Knight's confusing question about DNA splice junctions (oh, go look it up - actually, don't bother, it's probably not worth it). All in a day's work, really.

"Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others."

...as Confucius said.

Mrs. Ricardipus was accepted to teacher's college at the local university yesterday. A big fat envelope arrived bearing the good news, along with a request for an equally big fat tuition deposit.

Oh.

Tuition.

Textbooks.

Daycare.

Studying.

Exams.





Career!

She's been waiting a long time for this, while someone else got his career in line, so now it's time. And she'll be excellent at it.