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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

An Outing in Springlike Temperatures

Thanks to a college visit that my kid had scheduled for Tuesday, I managed to get away from my computer for a good part of the day. He is attempting to decide which of two schools most interests him and has largely been basing his decision on expense. Whether he gets the scholarship money he has applied for will decide where he goes to advance his education. He knows enough not to take out student loans to finance his education.

He is considering one school that his mom and dad graduated from, the same school where they met. Today, we visited one of the departments that interests him and talked to one of the professors before we gave him a brief tour of the campus. Some of the students he talked to proved to be friendly and encouraging.

As we were leaving the campus, I got a quick look at one of the professors that I had worked with while earning my Master's degree. Twenty-three years later, he continues to teach even though he is now seventy. He had just left the building that houses his office when I got a quick glance from the car and recognized him immediately. I probably should have stopped and talked to him. We haven't talked to each other in twelve years; the last time was when I was on campus for a lecture and a reading one Saturday afternoon. Not much in my life has changed since then.

On the way home, we stopped in Wamego for a short visit. My wife wanted to see the windmill located in one of the city’s parks. It had been built nearby and was later moved to its current location. Those few minutes marked a pleasant way to celebrate getting outside in what had been an eighty degree day.