My favorite night of the week

The cat's winter coat is unusually thick and glossy, and I wonder if this is the result of his thyroid medicine or a predictor of a cooler-than-usual winter. If animals have strong enough sensory equipment to forecast epileptic seizures half an hour before they happen and sniff out cancer, even in patients in remission, they may certainly also be tuned into atmospheric events.


I'm so glad it's Friday. I'm worn out. I'm ready for Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, next summer's vacation, retirement! Not to complain. With the current economy, I'm grateful every day to have a job, especially a job that I really like. But it's been over three months of non-stop planning, grading, and teaching, so I crave a few days of total immersion in anything BUT student-related stuff.


Liberto still complains of a pain even though the colonoscopy and biopsy showed nothing wrong in his intestines. He finally has two doctor appointments at the end of next week. It's frustrating for him to go through these various tests and turn up nothing and still have the pain. Sometimes it's mild and other times worse, but it's always there. The frustration of navigating through the medical world is painful in itself.


Nothing unusual to report from this past week. Right now, I'm too tired to have any opinion about anything on the news. But one bit of good news is that my retirement account from GSU, though nothing to write home about, at least has not lost 1/3 of its value after all. Summer before last, I had a premonition that the market was headed for a plunge, so I arranged for the Interlock option AIG offered and locked the account in at that amount. This option meant I'd be guaranteed to have no lower than the lock-in amount to draw from when the time comes, and if the market performs, could have more, but no lower than that figure from that date. Since we had a day off on Tuesday, I had the chance to call the new account manager to confirm that what I had signed up for was what I thought I would get---with this rotten economy, I'd had visions that something in the fine print would nullify everything---but surprisingly, the contract still stands. By the way, the AIG representative who did the paperwork for me that summer of 2007, who can't be more than 35 years old, is now retired in Florida, the new rep tells me. Managing retirement accounts for teachers must be a helluva lucrative gig!