The Curmudgeonly Professor

What Would You do if You Lost Everything You Had? Part I: Avoiding Disaster in the First Place

I used to tell my classes and my kids that the real test of their ability to cope with life would come if they lost everything they had.  This potential disaster very nearly happened to me about 30 years ago when I had made a stupid mistake in opening a second book store and the energy bust in Wyoming led to declining rentals in our student apartments at the University of Wyoming.  My oldest son is an attorney and he nervously awaited our decision to declare bankruptcy so he would have something to do filling out some papers.  Just kidding.  We survived thanks to some careful planning and resource allocation, plus my wife's incredible endurance in managing our household finances.

Every day we learn of someone who has lost everything, or nearly so, and is approaching or in the midst of financial and personal collapse for reasons of health, family, finances, and unforseeable disasters.  Some of these problems come under the heading of what I called "avoidable grief" in an earlier post on this blog.  And avoidable grief is what we're talking about now.  Hindsight is always sharper and clearer than foresight, of course, but sharper and more intelligent foresight could have saved much of the misery that confronts us when the roof caves in.

Some of the most frequent causes of personal loss come from mismanagement of household finances.  Trust in unqualified financial advisers has led to wiping out 401(k)s, IRAs, pension benefits, and personal savings.  The recent recession created many such losses, but many, if not most, complete disasters could have been avoided if funds were invested with a financial manager who switched quickly from stocks to bonds and some money funds.  Fortunately, we had such a financial adviser since our son, who did cause grief as a teenager, mostly with long hair and ridiculous clothes, redeemed himself and saved our necks, so to speak.  A good deal of grief comes from failure to save in the first place, to waiting too long to begin putting a nest egg together.  The complaint most frequently heard is that "we don't have enough to live on anyway, so we don't have an extra $10 to save."  Some early financial advice and budget planning is critical.  I was talking to a young woman the other day who told me that her husband liked to spend all his money and that he turned a deaf ear whenever she mentioned to him that they needed to set up a household budget.  Decades ago, I taught two sections of consumer economics to home economics students at Colorado State University.  When I cautioned them that they needed to begin financial planning early and be prepared for the possibility of financial collapses from divorce, illness, loss of jobs, and other reasons, the sweet young women became much less sweet and actually became quite hostile, knowing with certainty that their marriages would be perfect and their lives without problems or blemishes.  A degree in home economics was all that they needed to go forth and live a dream life and a dream marriage.  So much for cautionary home economics.  I hope they all had a happy life without problems and financial issues.

Having some kind of financial plan is absolutely critical.  Knowing how much is spent on what and how much discretionary income is left, if any, is only the beginning.  Too much of the recent financial collapse came from unrealistic expectations in thinking that megamansions were available to any and all just by signing some papers, that jobs would never be lost, that a new boat or a new car or a granite counter top would make one happy and the money would come like manna from heaven. 

To be continued . . . . .Feel free to contribute!

The Curmudgeonly Professor Studies His Daily Horoscope

Of course, a learned professor with a Ph.D. certainly does not believe in nonsense about horoscopes.  But two mitigating factors lead him to examine his daily horoscope: (1) he is an economist, and the public widely believes that all economic forecasts are done by horoscope maker uppers gazing into crystal balls anyway, and (2) what if the horoscope actually, really could be true?  Ignore the fact that horoscopes, like messages in Chinese fortune cookies, are likely generated by random selections among a large list of phrases and words.  So, like, "today you will meet a tall, dark, handsome (stranger, woman, friend, or whatever)", and "clean up your mess, eat all the food on your plate, and you may meet the love of your life."  Etc.

Today, I am advised to "deal with others directly."  Since the only "other" I am likely to meet today is my wife, it is hard to avoid dealing with her directly, unless I ignore her, which is difficult to do when cooped up 24/7 with one's eternal helpmeet following retirement.  Furthermore, "you may want to understand what motivates a key person."  Now there's a tough one.  I assume key person means the spousal unit, and I know from 58 years of marriage that the only motivating factor that is likely to cause her a sense of disequilibrium is me.  And I know exactly how to motivate her when things get boring around here.  I try not to try the same irritating behaviors too often, but hey, what is one to do?  But here's the good part: "your instincts are right in line."  Right in line with what? And finally, "don't fill in the blanks."  Thus, I will keep in mind at all times today that I am to deal with others directly, understand what motivates a key persion, know that my instincts are AOK, and avoid filling in the blanks.  Following those inspired directions will certainly keep me operationally sound for the day, along with the 10 billion other Virgos around the world, all of whom, miraculously, are to deal with others directly.  The rest of you mass of humanity can deal with others however you may want to deal with them.

My wife, however, is a Gemini, and today she "can be found in meetings, talking to friends, associates or bosses, but most certainly not alone."  Moreover, she "could be surprised by everything that occurs and opens up" and is advised that "tonight she is to paint the town green."  Well, much of this horoscope is true by definition.  She will go to water aerobics, where "information" passes freely about the doings of the home owners in our little community, and unless I go for a walk around the block, she will certainly not be alone.  I need help, however, in understanding how to paint the town green.

So, even if you don't believe in horoscopes and think they are utter nonsense, one is well advised to check them out just to see, just in case, just maybe, this is your day for the proper juxtaposition of stars, planets, global warming, political folderal, to bring a breakthrough in your life, along with the lives of all the other zillions of people with the same zodiac sign with which your birthday blesses you. 

The Curmudgeonly Professor Makes Up Another To-Do List

As the Curmudgeonly Professor has heretofore noted, making up New Years' Resolutions is largely a waste of time.  Chances are the New Years' resolutions one makes out this January 1 will be identical to last year's resolutions, only this time the list of resolutions will be appended with statements like, "This time I really mean it!" or "This year I will really shed 100 pounds of excess lard," or "I will really become more saintly and quit all my bad habits."  Stuff like that.

Instead of going through the waste of time to write out new resolutions will actually, definitely, finally, absolutely, certainly, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die will be carried out moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, and month by month, the Curmudgeonly Professor has an alternative suggestion:  make up a To-Do List.

Every once in awhile, when the spirit moves him, the Curmudgeonly Professor makes up a new To-Do List.  While going through old papers, I have discovered a number of to-do lists from days of yore.  Sadly, I discovered that very few of the items on the lists were ever done, and remain perpetually in the to-do category.  A couple of months ago, I decided to get a head start on my slovenly and procrastinating ways and made out a complete to-do list.  And then I lost it.  The list miraculously resurfaced yesterday.

I counted 36 items on the list, and the number of items is growing as I gain inspiration about things that I should do.  I am pleased to report that I have already completed five items on the list without even remembering they were on the list.  That is five more things than I would have accomplished if I had made out a list of new years resolutions.  Thus, my self confidence has been restored in the ability of mankind to move from a lower state to a higher state, at least by a little bit.

The trouble with New Years Resolutions is that they tend to be universal and ethereal pronouncements, like the gushings of Miss America candidates who want to bring about world peace, end world starvation, and end discrimination.  Similar goals like "lose weight," "get more exercise," "be a kinder and nicer person" are lovely thoughts, but these kinds of thoughts are quickly relegated to the dust heap.  Like deathbed repentance, as soon as the near-croaked person recovers and rises from the sick bed, like the old geezer in the John Wayne movie "The Quiet Man," the fear of dying recedes into the past and the recovered person goes on pretty much the same as he or she did before nearly passing on to the higher realms.

A to-do list, however, focuses on specific tasks.  For instance, one of my tasks is to fix the hinge on the kitchen cabinet, as the door is almost off the hinges.  To help remind me of the urgency of this task, I finally wrote a sticky note and attached it to the cabinet door.  Not being visible enough to provide a sufficient reminder, I moved the sticky note to the face of the kitchen TV where I could not avoid seeing it day in and day out.  Thus, I am firmly confident that soon I will prioritize this task and conceptualize its completion and, ultimately, see if I can figure out how to fix it.  This kind of reasoning and recognition of things that one must do is far superior to the broad-guaged nonsense of New Years' Resolutions which noone has any intention ever of keeping.  In the case of the kitchen cabinet door, I have every intention of fixing it,. if for no other reason than I am really weary of my long-suffering wife who keeps sweetly commenting on the necessity of this task being completed.

Similarly, all of the other tasks on my to-do list are necessary and manageable duties.  I can see right off that several I can postpone as long as possible because the chances are good that they will never need to be done if enough time elapses and these duties become inconsequential and unnecessary.  That is the beauty of a to-do-list as opposed to a resolutions list.  The tangible duties enumerated on the to-do list pose only incidental difficulties of completion, whereas the universal and mind-bending goals of the resolutions are never going to be done in the first place and we already know that to be a fact.  Thus, we have offered here a worthy alternative to the New Year's Resolutions lists, an alternative that will give one a tremendous sense of pride.  And, by the way, if your goal is to lose weight, you could try losing one pound this next week, and put that on your to-do-list.  Then one pound the following week, etc., etc., and thenceforth 52 pounds during the year.  See how easy it is?  Happy New Year.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Bemoans the Futility of New Years' Resolutions

The Curmudgeonly Professor has long ago learned, along with countless millions of other weak-willed but goodly intentioned citizens that making up New Year's Resolutions is a pitifully hopeless pastime.  I heard some statistics the other day about how quickly people abandon their fleeting good intentions to repent of all their sins, lose all their excess poundage, change their nasty dispositions into Pollyannaish sweetness, quit all their offensive and obnoxious bad habits, quit wasting time watching Matlock, clean out the garage, help with the dishes, and all manner of other behavior modifications to overcome heretofore slovenly, ignorant, and lazy behavior patterns.  No longer do we want to emulate Hagar the Horrible and the Born Loser on January 2.

Problem is, so the statistics show, and as a former statistician-economist, I know that statistics convey only truth, half of all folks give up on their resolutions within a couple of weeks.  The new gymnasium memberships are abandoned, the frozen pies are unthawed, the trips to McDonald's recommence, the new treadmillsand exercise bikes are sent to the basement or to a garage sale, a few bad words are slipped in a moment of despair, and the Lord, who knew your future patterns beforehand, acknowledges once more your sorry and miserable plight as a human being.  Within a couple more weeks, the pain of maintaining an unrealistically pure and righteous demeanor has become all too stressful, causing gastric distress, grouchiness, and doubts about the hopelessness of man.  And another half of the previous half drop out.  A few more days, and you guessed, it, half of the half of the half are dead ducks.  Before you know it, only two or three out of hundreds of millions have maintained their fervent devotion to cleanliness of mind, body, and spirit.  These people listen to Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer self-improvement tapes 24 hours a day and also participate in self-hypnosis and study their horoscopes daily to determine if they will encounter a new love life before the day is over.  These people tend not to be members of the Rotary Club and have only a small circle of friends since the level of righteous and exactitude they convey is not conducive to mingling with riffraff, which most of us, regrettably, are members thereof.

All of this dire and Biblical-like pronouncement of woe and misery is not to suggest, however, that all is hopeless.  In future installments, the Curmudgeonly Professor will provide greater enlightenment on these weight matters that clog our brains at this inventory-taking time of year.

Desert Landscaping at Dixie Regional Medical Center

The Curmudgeonly Professor Offers Advice for Newly Retired Husbands

The Curmudgeonly Professor has now been retired from active employment as a professor of economics for nearly eight years.  Based on this extensive experience, he can offer the following gems of advice for newly retired husbands (some of this stuff may be recycled from earlier posts which you likely have neither read nor remembered):

• Do not say repeatedly "I'm parched" when you are thirsty and need a Coke, a drink of water, a Pepsi, a Mountain Dew, a beer (for non-Mormons), or when you need your third refill.  Get off your lazy butt and go get it yourself.
• Do not ask "How soon will lunch be ready?"  The answer will be "Not in the remainder of this life or any time in the life to come."  Your sweetheart has not fixed lunch for you for 40 years or however you were gone from home every day and she is not going to start today.  Or tomorrow.  Or the day after tomorrow. Nada.  She is not going to fix lunch unless (a) it is your birthday, (b) it is Christmas, or (c) her sister has come to visit.
• In view of the above, here are a few suggestions for lunch:  peanut butter and jam, canned soup, grilled cheese, leftovers, McDonald's 99 cent double cheeseburger, Wendy's $1.29 bacon cheeseburger, dry breakfast cereal, or the contents of any random can in the pantry.
• Do not accuse your wife of losing the TV remote, your glasses, your socks, your computer passwords, your crossword puzzle dictionary, your ballpoint pen, or anything else.  
• Take a shower once a day for obvious reasons. 
• Do not go around the house in your underwear for obvious reasons. 
• Say "please" and "thank you." 
• Remember, your wife has been in charge of the house for 40 years or however long and she will not welcome you organizing or planning her daily work or schedule. 
• If you don't know how to fix stuff it's probably cheaper to hire someone rather than screw it up and then have to hire someone to fix it anyway.
• It may be hard for you to accept, but your wife may not be overly thrilled at having you around and underfoot all day every day, 24/7.  So find something to do to keep you occupied and out of her way most of the time. 
• Let your wife keep her normal schedule of activities, visits, etc. and don't bug her about it. 
• Take up a new hobby, like digital photography, blogging, or a new sport like golf if you've never played.  Find something creative and don't just waste your time away playing computer or video games. 
• Do not watch each Matlock rerun more than five times.  Beyond five, continuing to watch means you need therapy. 
• Clean up your language.  You are no longer in the office men's room or around the office water cooler. 
• Recognize that you are gone from the office or your former job forever and that they probably won't miss you as much as they said they would on the last day you were there.  Time passes quickly and, sad though it may be, you are now history. So deal with it.
• Find some activities you and your spouse can enjoy together.  
• Try taking a tour.  I objected for years, then tried it, and I'm ready to do more. 
• Take a class at a junior college, a university or college, or a night school.  Learn something new. 
• Read books.  If you haven't been reading, shame on you, and get started now. 
• Learn to use a computer. 
• Lose weight. 
• See your doctor for a complete check, including colonoscopy, prostate, diabetes, eyes, skin, and everything else.  Start with a new set of health benchmarks and go from there to take care of yourself. 
• Pay attention to each and every grandchild, great grandchild, son, daughter, and in-law. 
• Happy retirement.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Ten Most Egregious Mistakes of 2008: Mistake Number 5 was Abandoning my Suspenders

The fifth most egregious mistake of the year 2008 was attributable to the Great Suspenders Program of 2008.  After purchasing two pair of industrial strength suspenders at Ace Hardware in St. George, one tan and one blue, I quit wearing them because I knew I could never look like Larry King.  Consequently, the cuffs on my last two new pair of Dockers have begun to fray.  I have decided that fraying is stylish.

Meanwhile, my little piece titled "Should I Wear Suspenders and Look Like Larry King?" remains among the top five of all posts the Curmudgeonly Professor has written in the past year out of 1,050 posts.  From Bosnia to New Zealand, from South America to Alaska, from California to Maine, the hits keep coming.  Men everywhere are interested in determining whether they should wear suspenders and look like Larry King.  Men throughout the world are concerned about holding their pants up and keeping their cuffs from fraying.  Or maybe they think they would like more handsome and distinguished if they looked like Larry King and all they had to do to look this way would be to wear a pair of suspenders.  As we have indicated here, however, Larry King has 10,000 pair of color-matched suspenders and shirts and none of the rest of us could ever accumulate a wardrobe like that.  So give up, men.  Hike your pants up every time you get out of the car.  Pull up your drawers before you go through the Costco checkout line.  Be sure you are not in danger of a pants collapse when you arise from your pew at church.  You can see the danger.  Or, you can go to Ace Hardware or your own country's equivalent suspenders purveyor and invest in a pair of suspenders.  Harness yourself up like a draft horse.  Then enjoy your friends and colleagues who will come up to you and make smart comments and snap your suspenders two or three times.

The Curmudgeonly Professor is giving serious consideration to the analytical pros and cons of once more entering into the geezerly fashion model of suspender-wearing old gentlemen.  There is something to be said for not having to pull up your pants a million times a day.  Men of Bosnia, unite!  Get to the Ace Hardware of Bosnia and buy a pair of suspenders!  Your troubles are over!  Your wives will no longer complain about your pants sagging!  If every man in the world who needed suspenders bought two pair, think what that would do to stimulate economic activity and cure the world recession.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Reflects on the Uselessness of Dwelling on Past Mistakes

The New Year offers a period of reflection, a momentary lapse in hectic schedules, a lull in the press of work and home and family for a brief respite.  At this time, it is easy to get caught up in dwelling on the remorse we have for past mistakes, for troubles we have experienced any time from yesterday to twenty years ago.  Thus, the Curmudgeonly Professor offers once more his observation gleaned from forty years of teaching economics:  Past mistakes are fixed costs.  Repetition of past mistakes and old habits today, knowing the misery and guilt we have from dwelling on the past, is just plain stupid.

The economist's rule on the role of fixed costs in current decision making is simply to ignore them.  You cannot do anything about them.  True, you may need to atone for what you did, you may ask forgiveness, or you may pay off a past debt, so you may not totally be able to put past problems permanently aside until you do a bit of cleanup work.  But what we are talking about here is the utter futility of continuing to beat a dead horse that is already deceased.  The horse is dead, you can't make it any deader, so to speak.  So stop flogging yourself, wallowing in guilt, and quit clobbering the poor dead horse.

What you can do is focus on today, here, now, and on tomorrow and on the things you can change.  In economics lingo, stuff you can change is like variable costs, which are costs which you have control over, things you can delete or increase or alter in some way to achieve your current goals.  So, as in economics, ignore fixed costs once you have done your bit of salvaging past mistakes, and focus on what you are doing this moment.  If you don't like what you are doing this moment, change what you are doing to something that you will feel good about.  There is a whole world of bright opportunity out there in which we can learn new things, seek new paths, make new friends, and improve our lives and the lives of our families and others around us.

Again, the Curmudgeonly Professor has saved you the expense of buying a thousand dollars worth of motivational tapes, listening to them for hours, or reading the huge collection of "ten ways of this" and "ten ways of that" books.  Think of all of the things you can change, all of the variable costs you can alter that will empower you to start on a new and brighter future.  And this advice is free.  Again, Happy New Year.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Ten Most Egregious Mistakes of 2008: Mistake Number 4

By and large, the Curmudgeonly Professor faithfully followed the maxim "Every day in every way I am doing better and better."  However, occasionally a bit of slippage, intended or unintended, occurred to put a cloud over this goal and to cast a few demerits on the water, so to speak.  Mistake Number 4 occurred in trusting the LinkSys wireless router company to actually make a router that would work for more than a year, or to make a new router that I didn't have to send back.  All of this saga plunged the Curmudgeonly Professor into tech support hell for hours and hours, raising his blood pressure and encouraging him to swear off electronic gadgetry and go back to paper and pencil, or perhaps even ball-point pen.  Now the Professor continues to be skeptical that anything will work, or that it will work for long if it works to begin with, or that anyone can fix it if it quits working, or that the extended warranty will not cost more than the gizmo cost to begin with, or that he can understand more than one or two words spoken by tech support people from the far corners of the globe.   He even suggested to the LinkSys people that they institute some basic quality control procedures and find some tech support people one can understand.  One can always dream. 

The Curmudgeonly Professor Reflects on the Futility of New Year's Resolutions

Millions of people, if not billions, throughout the world are now going through the annual rite of futility--making New Years Resolutions.  Doing so makes them feel better, instantaneously, like momentarily repenting of one's egregious sins.  But stop and think:  If New Years Resolutions did any good, or if they were effective, we would now be living in a near-perfect world.  Fat people would all be thin.  Rude people would now all be polite.  Grouchy people would now all be cheerful, exuding sunshine and smiles.  Workers in offices would now double check all details on orders and paperwork, making sure no stupid and inexcusable errors remained that would require months of exasperation, dozens of phone calls, and thousands of dollars worth of effort to correct.  People in movie theaters would now shut their blabbering mouths and turn off their cell phones.  

Teen agers would now pick up their dirty laundry on their bedroom floors, keep their rooms clean, and faithfully observe the principles of basic hygiene.   Husbands would vacuum floors, do dishes, help fix meals, read to their kids, and stop making excuses about not having time to do what they don't want to bother doing.  Folks would stop yakking on cell phones with one hand while trying to steer monster SUVs through heavy traffic with the other hand, or worse, fixing their hair with their other hand while steering with their knee with a dog on their lap. Congress would figure out what the country and the world actually need for a change without promoting and voting for their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else.  Hamas and Israel and everyone else would stop killing each other.  

Sinners would go to church and shape up.  People would forgive each other of petty grudges and even worse things and get rid of centuries of guilt.  We would all start eating healthy fruits and vegetables and lean protein and give up all the junk we love but which we know is killing us.  We would find someone who needs help, a phone call, a pat on the back, a sack of groceries, a lawn mowed, a house cleaned, a story read, and skip watching reality shows for three hours a day to lend a hand.  We would stop doing and saying things that we know wound and irritate others, and which we may have been doing for decades, either deliberately, or without thinking.  We would give kids, wives, dogs, and anyone else who needed them, hugs and kind words.

But maybe we could at least think small and find two or three manageable things we might change, tasks we might do, habits or behavior patterns we know we should change, and go from there.  Small changes have a way of multiplying once we get the hang of them.  We may not make ourselves and the world perfect, but we surely have the means of making at least some important steps in that direction.  We need not wait until we are on our deathbed, repent momentarily, and then, when our eyelids flicker open and we realize we haven't passed away, say, "Oh my heck, I'm still alive.  It's back to business as usual."  We don't need a thousand dollars worth of motivational tapes and videos, a library of "ten ways of this" and "twenty ways of that."  We just need to use a little common sense and ask what we can do today to make the world and those around us a little happier and a little better.  And then do the same thing tomorrow. And then the next day.  Until we come to New Years Day 2010.  Then we can assess whether, for a change, we actually made a difference during 2009.  

Happy New Year.

Top 10 Egregious Mistakes of 2008: Mistake Number 3

I just recalled another mistake I made this past year.  I attended the movie Mama Mia.  While everyone else was raving about it, I was sitting in agony praying for it to get over with.  And when Pierce Brosnan broke into song, that was a bit too much.  Oh Double Oh Seven, how could you do this?  My memories of you as a James Bond hero are forever tarnished.  The second half was some improvement, but the first half about did me in.  My main memory of the movie is that every two seconds everyone was holding hands and jumping up and down or running around singing.  Maybe I need to see it again when I am in a better mood.  But then again I am not being paid to be a movie critic and have no qualifications whatsoever for being one.  So, Mama Mia lovers, please don't fill my in box with hate mail.  

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Ten Most Egregious Mistakes of 2008: Mistake Number 2

Egregious mistake number 2:  Criticizing my wife's favorite soap, The Young and the Witless (i.e., Restless), which she has watched continuously for decades.  Apparently, this soap is something to which she is emotionally and nostalgically attached, having watched generations of actors and actresses come and go on the all-time famous drama.  Before retirement, I had no idea about this daily extravaganza.  Now, I go in the other room when it is on.  But then she watched numerous sports programs over the years in which she had no interest.  But that was different.  I can see that it's five to one, time for Matlock, surely a program of redeeming value.  I may have trouble thinking up eight more egregious errors of 2008, but I'll work on it.  These are the only two I can think of so far.  I'll have to ask my wife.

How to Redeem Yourself From an Egregious Mistake

To redeem yourself from egregious blunders, follow these steps:

1. Go to grocery store for a $2 loaf of bread.
2. Buy a dozen roses. 
3. Bring roses home. 
4. Show roses to spouse who has previously doubted your sanity.   

Your troubles are over.  As long as you remembered the bread.

 

How to Recover from a Disaster

My loss of about 5,000 photos from my Mac computer was, by any stretch of the imagination, only a minor disaster compared to the real and major disasters of life that many people experience. Yet, losing a year's worth of photos, pared down from about a total of seven or eight thousand total photos taken, and losing the hundreds of hours spent editing and fixing these photos, was not a pleasant experience. After all else failed, and no one at Apple, the Mac Store, or other techies were able to help me, I called upon Google, asking "How do I recover deleted memory card photos?" Google informed me of several memory card recovery software programs. I tried four and purchased one, for twenty dollars (cardraider.com) which gave me back about 470 photos, including the photos from our July family reunion, the most valuable of the lost photos. For about 48 hours this past week, I thought I had lost all 20,000 of my photos, but, fortunately, 15,000 were backed up on a protected drive.

All of this misery and time led me to think about disaster recovery in general. A couple of years ago, I had written a 150 page weight loss manuscript, and accidentally deleted it. What to do? I sat down and rewrote it from scratch in three weeks. No one ever wanted to read it anyway, but at least I proved I could recover from this disaster.

Nearly 40 years ago, I was diagnosed with MS in a Denver hospital while I was still at the University of Wyoming. I was asked by the president of Utah State University to resign from the position to which I had just been appointed, chairman of the economics department at Utah State, in view of the prognosis of my illness. For a year, I continued to exhibit all the classic symptoms of MS and then, miraculously, everything went away except for neuropathy in my toes. I have never had any recurring symptoms since. At the time, this event seemed an irreparable disaster. I decided that I would not miss any days from class and, for many weeks, had to teach sitting down and could not write on the blackboard. That Christmas, my oldest son had to put the toys together and be Santa Claus because the extreme fatigue that goes along with this ailment allowed me only shortened days of activity. I thought about how fortunate I had been as I listened to Michelle Obama tell the story of her father who contracted MS at an age similar to my case, and then eventually had to get up an hour early each morning to dress and get ready for work.

My wife has had three hospital emergencies, two of which she was fortunate to escape with her life. And then we lost a stillborn son many years ago. I will never forget all of those interminably long trips down the hallway of Brackenridge Hospital in Austin Tx to visit my wife, who spent weeks in intensive care with pneumonia which was serious enough to shut everything down in her system. Then, one day, I was called by the doctors to come back to the hospital from my daughter's home since they had decided to do a tracheotomy, otherwise she could not continue breathing. The trache was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. I waited. And I waited. And I waited some more, not knowing what was happening. Then, about 4:00 p.m., a doctor came to find me with the news: "We don't know how this could possibly have happened, but beginning at 11:00 a.m., she started to rally, her body began to function again, and her life was spared."

What I learned from all of these experiences is that we somehow muster the courage to endure the disaster and make the best of it when we are actually confronted with it and become immersed in the middle of it. My oldest daughter says, in such circumstances, "What do you do?" The answer is, you just endure. But you don't give up. You don't ever, ever give up. We may feel sorry for ourselves for a bit, and we may even feel that we are better off if we let out a bit of emotion and whining. But these phases of our reaction to disaster, however natural and expected, cannot last long. Once we abandon hope, we have abandoned life. So we just keep going.

We live in two retirement communities. The depressing side of these residences is that we have continual news of medical emergencies of the most serious kind, and a few deaths a year in each community. Yet, when we see people, and ask how they are, everyone typically answers, "I'm fine". We may feel apprehensive about what is in store for us, particularly as we become older, but, somehow, as I watch my friends and neighbors, they adapt. They endure. They tell us about their new stent, their hip or knee replacement, their angioplasty and bypass surgery, their cancer treatments. And they go on with their daily lives. And they tell us they are fine.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. Losing 5,000 photos wasn't a happy occurrence. But I can take 10,000 more in the next year, maybe some even better ones. That doesn't mean that I will ever trust my computer again, or any other technological wonder, for that matter. But I've fixed the problem the best I can, and am looking forward to the photos I can take tomorrow, and the next day, and the next months. If I get any good ones, I'll show them to you on my blog.

How the Curmudgeonly Professor Spends an Evening Now that the NBA Season is Over

Now that the NBA season has come to a glorious and proper end, the Curmudgeonly Professor seeks to provide guidance to those wondering what to do with all the spare time they now have. Nights are a vacuum, a blank stare. After flipping through 500 channels, the only possible alternatives to the NBA to watch on TV are old Perry Mason reruns, I Love Lucy (which is still far superior to anything now on TV), and Ice Road hauling in the frozen north, just waiting for the ice to crack and swallow a mega-ton semi trailer. I checked through the latest issue of Newsweek, checking the Conventional Wisdom column to see if our Leader had earned his first up arrow or even a sideways one, but no, that was not about to happen. I asked my wife if she wanted to play Name That Tune, a game which I invented years ago which is played by drumming out rhythms to songs and guessing what the song is. She went along with this fun and entertaining game once, about 35 years ago, and has refused to play it ever since, despite being offered a million dollars if she guessed the correct song. I asked her as she decided to go to bed, as I do every night, if she didn't want to spend a little quality time with her dear husband, to which her answer was the same one she gave every night.

I checked my blogs to see which of my sisters were currently waiting eagerly for my latest posts so they could comment on them, but that took only a few seconds. I finished the crossword puzzles from USA Today and The New York Times with the help of three crossword dictionaries, two atlases, Google, some help from my wife, who is a better puzzle finisher than I am, and some absolutely brilliant deductions. I was asked again by my wife when I intended to move my accumulation of mail, books, newspapers, and other valuable items off the kitchen counter, which scarcely leaves room for us to eat, but just enough, so I figured it wasn't a critical matter. We bought a new doorbell the other day at Lowe's, which I found displayed prominently on the kitchen counter, presumably as a reminder that I should prioritize this project and in the true manner of a Steve Covey Disciple, Do First Things First. What an annoying idea. I wish I could write a book with such an obvious premise that any mother with a bunch of ornery kids could have written ten times over and rack up millions of dollars in sales.

I asked my wife if she knew sixty years ago what she knew now, would she have still married me. I cannot even get her to discuss this matter. I think she thinks it's too late anyway, so she might as well tough it out. I am asked whether I intend to buy a new pair of loafers for doing outside chores to replace the battered ones that are now 28 years old, verifiable by carbon dating, and which my grandson, Tyler Nielson, has indicated that he wishes to be the recipient thereof when I get tired of them. Anything that can be postponed indefinitely, should be postponed indefinitely. Hey, maybe that's the title of my bestseller book; I can just see it now listed on "The New York Times Hard Cover Best Sellers of the Week." I could subscribe to ten more magazines and buy several hundred new books, a new telephoto lens for my Sony Alpha, and a package of $5-apiece razor blades with my royalties.

Then my dear wife brings up an egregious topic: "We are going to have to clean out the garage one of these days." What does she mean "we"? After all, I am a Doctor of Philosophy. Do Doctors of Philosophy need to do anything except engage in creative intellectual pursuits? She has been bringing up this topic for about three or four years.

By now the evening is winding down and it's time for the 10:00 o'clock news, the latest display of drive-by shootings, robberies, traffic fatalities, fires, building collapses, sound bites from politicians, all neatly packaged into about 20 minutes out of 30, with 10 minutes, at least, of commercials, cranked up to triple the volume of the news so you will learn to love Honest Jake's Used Car Lot. No matter that Honest Jake is now loaded with SUV's, tractor trailers, Hummers, and other gargantuan vehicular monstrosities, and that no one wants to buy them, so the TV ads have to be triply obnoxious and loud. Then, if I am lucky, I will have exactly two minutes and twenty-six seconds for the sports news of the day, time for two baseball scores, a couple of irrelevant jokes, and the ultimate "We'll be right back." Be right back for what? The program is over.

Then we have Leno coming out and touching palms and fingers to spread germs with those who have surged forward to be near him for a second, and Letterman marching out in his white socks, which we are told in the media he will not discuss in any manner, shape or form, and in fact, gets irritated if anyone does ask about them. On Monday nights we have Leno's headlines, which may or may not be funny, and, at exactly, 10:45, we have Letterman's Great Moments in Presidential Speeches, immortalizing the spoken words of JFK, FDR, HST, and GWB. That's pretty much it, folks, so to speak, unless an occasional guest worth listening to for a few minutes is on one of the two programs.

Thus ends another scintillating evening in the post-NBA era.