Catchin' Up....

Once in a while I post an e-mail exchange here. It's fun to catch up with my bloggy friends, but at some point, it occurs to me that others might find it interesting, too. Here's the latest sampling:

hi, ____....i discovered your wonderful email on yahoo last night. many thanks for the update. your place in ____ sounds charming...and you have housemates, too! i stayed in a place like that in st. cloud, minnesota, right after i graduated from college. all the bedrooms on the second floor were rented to various students, and the more-or-less kitchen was in the attic. (my ex-husband used to say he married me to save me from a diet of boiled hot dogs and macaroni & cheese from a box.) (ha. didnt work!!) it's nice to have others around even as you have your privacy. your housemates sound like a great mix--teenagers, too, once in a while!

i am taking a class in statistics this semester. to complete the requirements for a class in creative writing she's pursuing in her spare time, the chair of the social work dept has been doing an internship in magazine editing with me. last week we got to talking about my former job working for a survey research firm in iowa. i told her that i had enjoyed working with statistics, even SPSS, although i had never studied it, and she said she was going to be teaching a class in statistics this semester. i thought it would be a great opportunity to brush up on SPSS for future freelance work after (oh, god, WHEN, not after) i retire.

there are some fantastic kids in that class. one delightful young fellow next to me is from northern japan, and he is full of light. (how else to explain that quality? it's the way i'd like to be, but i'm lots darker.) i also had a good laugh when the teacher, in the last hour of class, had us do a little exercise in statistics. we went around the room giving our ages...and it soon became clear to me that i was going to skew the class' average age all to hell and gone. my 21 classmates are mostly aged 19, 22, 18, 23, etc., and then there's me at age 71! i raised my hand and asked if we could calculate the mean and the mode, also, and she said "we'll do that next week."

funny how things come back to you when you use your mind for more than just deciphering the week's cable schedule.