Something I will definitely miss next year is former students returning from college to visit. This week both Mimi and Amy came to the Math Lab, and while their visits were necessarily short, they were still enjoyable. Yes, I definitely need to find time to send emails and Facebook messages to people.

My cousin Patty died recently. Although she was relatively young at age 55, she had such serious heart trouble as a baby that in some ways her living this long was a medical miracle. My mother stayed in close touch with Patty when she was alive, but since my mother died I have generally lost touch with both my parents’ families. That is not a good thing.

I had a scary conversation with my cousin Rita yesterday. She has applied for Social Security, which Jean and I will be doing very shortly as well. How quickly we have gone from having our own children to becoming the “older” generation! This is more evidence that I have made the right decision to retire, since I have dozens of books to write, and the window of time to write them is becoming increasingly smaller.