Year 50

Year 50 Day 145

by

Me sitting in our living room in a comfortable chair with my feet on an ottoman, reading a book. Books and vinyl records are visible on the shelves behind me, and green trees can be seen through a glass sliding door leading onto a deck.

Day 145: Got lots of chores and housework done, and still managed to spend a very pleasant amount of my day curled up with a good book. Great way to spend a rainy fall day.

Year 50 Day 143

by

Me standing in front of some bushes and ivy, holding a full trashbag and a 'grabber' used for picking up trash.

Day 143: My part of the last day of opening week: campus cleanup duty! Last year, my most interesting find was what appeared to be a full suitcase’s worth of women’s clothing. This year, it was a full dozen 22-oz. Heineken beer bottles in the same basic spot; apparently someone in the apartment building on the other side of the fence has a pretty serious “drink it dry and chuck it over the fence” habit going on.

Year 50 Day 142

by

Me standing on a second-floor walkway in a small square building with a courtyard in the center. In the courtyard is a small pond surrounded by plants. The sun is shining through the open roof.

Day 142: Stopping by my wife’s office in one of Highline’s older buildings. While it’s in poor shape and is scheduled to be demolished and replaced in the next few years, I really do like these funky old ’60s buildings. It’s definitely ready to go, and not worth trying to renovate to modern standards, but I’ll be a little sad to see some of the old character of the campus disappear.

Year 50 Day 141

by

Me in my living room, with out-of-focus books visible on shelves behind me.

Day 141: Nothing particularly fancy today. We had more opening week stuff at work, but this was more straightforward work planning things and not so much photogenic fun and games. So it’s yet another “me on the couch in the living room in the evening” shot.

Year 50 Day 140

by

Me, wearing a shirt with cartoon aliens and a black face mask, on a stairwell overlooking a large room filled with people sitting around round tables.

Day 140: Next week is the beginning of fall quarter classes at Highline, so this week is our opening week for faculty and staff. We started with a big welcome event, then followed that with a “Highline Bingo” activity that had us going around campus to visit various services and departments, learning a bit about them, and getting our bingo card marked to try to win prizes. I got a Highline lanyard!

Read more

Year 50 Day 138

by

Me sitting on the ground in front of our front door, adjusting a poseable decorative skeleton on the ground in front of me.

Day 138: We swapped out our summer front-of-house decorations for spooky season stuff (most, at least; lights will go up later on), part of which involved re-configuring a decorative skeleton from standing at attention (better for storage) to a less rigid (well, for a skeleton, at least) pose. After coaxing this many bones into place, I’m probably a chiropractor.

Read more

Year 50 Day 137

by

Me standing in an entryway with a high ceiling, using an extension pole to replace a ceiling-mounted lightbulb.

Day 137: We definitely like the nice open entryway to our place, but it does make changing lightbulbs a bit more complicated than usual. Slightly more so when you misjudge your step and unexpectedly go down four steps at a time instead of one. No injuries, thank goodness, but it was a bit of an adventure.

Year 50 Day 136

by

Me holding a thank you letter from the Nielsen company and two five dollar bills.

Day 136: A couple weeks ago, I got an invitation (complete with $1 bill) to fill out a Nielsen survey. I had to jump through some ridiculous hoops to do it, and then it went on forever and had far less to do with the media I watch and more with shopping and leisure activities, so it wasn’t very interesting. But I slogged my way through, and today got a thank-you note with $10 cash! So…yay?