Holidays Used to Be Cool

As a child, I once looked forward to holidays, such as Memorial Day, Labor Day, and so forth. They meant that I did not have to go to school, which translated to 'stay up late the night before and generally laze about the house all day.' Now that I am grown up, I understand why my parents never seemed as excited as I did about holidays.

What did I do this Memorial Day? I did get to sleep late, but that is more a function of Ranger's not awaking at the crack of dawn than a sign of a holiday. After making some sandwiches for lunch, I loaded the dishwasher, mowed the front yard, pulled the gas-powered mower out of the basement and tried a tip from Sandi's dad on how to get it to crank (big props to Bobby, because it worked), mowed the back yard, cooked supper, ran the dishwasher, and put away a bunch of laundry that was washed today. It isn't all bad; we took a break from all this work to play a couple of hours of video games.

I have also found as I get older that holidays warp my sense of time. I have repeatedly found myself thinking that tomorrow is Monday, which has the potential to wreak havoc with my schedule for the rest of the week.

Tomorrow begins a quantitative literacy workshop I will be attending at Emory and Henry College. King is sending two other faculty members up the highway a few miles, as well. Wackily enough, I had apparently not remembered to tell Sandi that I should receive a $750 stipend for attending this workshop and devising a plan with my colleagues to improve quantitative literacy (which, by the way, I always thought was called numeracy) on our campus. Extra money is always good, especially when you have no idea you are going to get it.