Tag: Family

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I want to know what love is

Prologue

Again, I know that I used this prompt last year when I got the idea to update this daily. Again, I remembered this prompt then. I can’t remember what I wrote to answer what love is then, but now I’m going to simply copy and paste from my Father’s Day Instagram post last year. It more or less covers everything I want to say.

The Prompt

The Prompt: We each have many types of love relationships — parents, children, spouses, friends. And they’re not always with people; you may love an animal, or a place. Is there a single idea or definition that runs through all the varieties of “love”?

Father’s Day: My Father

https://www.eriegaynews.com/news/article.php?recordid=200401donpaulobituary.html

I usually make a crude joke at today’s expense, but I guess I’m feeling sentimental or nostalgic today, so if you actually read these, this one may be a bumpy ride.

Father’s Day means something different when your father has passed away. It is still a celebration but within that celebration is that constant ache in that piece of your heart that has been empty since they passed.

It has been over 17 years since my father passed away on December 1 from “complications due to the AIDS virus”. Makes it sound so neat and clean. Trust me, it wasn’t. I wasn’t there at the very end, but he got us all together the Thanksgiving weekend before to say good bye. He looked like hell frozen over and we all knew his intentions but, of course, nobody said them out loud.

Christine was tasked with calling me at work to let me know he has died. Either shock or an idiotic commitment to a place that didn’t share that commitment to me causes me to worry how they might cover a week of shifts if I went back home for the service and to reminisce/heal. Also, my boss at that place was a real ass.

But, I didn’t come here for that purpose. I was talking with a friend earlier and the topic of father’s came up. More recently, his became sick. But, at the time, he wasn’t. I can’t remember why we ended up talking about Dad. But, my response, simple and direct as ever, was, ” I miss the old bastard. Every single day.” Especially this day. I love you, Dad. I miss you. Happy father’s day.

Father’s Day: My Kids

Father’s Day also means something different when you are a father. I’ve already shared these pictures, but I’m not much of a pictures of my kids guy and Aiden hates having his taken, so you get the same pictures and none of Aiden by himself.

I also talked about them at great length in my anniversary thread. Having kids, for those who don’t know, obviously changes every aspect of your life and, honestly, not always for the better. But, as humans tend to ignore the negative over time and accentuate the positive, overall it has been a wonderful experience.

Some of our friends, families, and associates are in the early to middle stages of parenthood and it has been a joy sharing my own experiences as advice with them. It also has been a reminder that, while I always said I wasn’t going to miss it, I always do at least a little. I guess that gives me a reason to live long enough to become a grandfather.

So, I guess, uh, happy father’s day to me.

Father’s Day: School Kids

Father’s day has a different meaning when you teach. You entrust your kids to us for over 7 hours a day 180 days a year. We take that trust seriously and when we talk about them, we can’t help but call them our kids. We don’t always like them all, but we still love them.

I have been blessed to be on both sides of this mentoring relationship. In college, my physics professor Yadu, earned my undying loyalty by professing his love for swearing in our first class. He went on to earn my love by being one of the best mentors and teachers ever. I best sum him up by saying that I was waiting for him to show up to office hours. He walked into his office and proudly proclaimed to a colleague, “I just taught 50 minutes of physics without talking about physics once.” I went to him to ask for a book as his “textbook” for the class was a workbook without accompanying text. “You want a textbook? Here, here are some books” and he proceeded to throw books from his book shelf at me. I got that lesson, and many others, Yadu. Love you and miss you.

Jon, Tom, and Ileana all conspired to get me my first college teaching job at a time I thought myself unemployable in the field. Maria helped me build my confidence to fight for the job and Paula reminds me daily that, with some adjustments, my way really can work I have much to share about them, too, but tragically not enough space right now.

So, it is in their honor and memory that I love and care about every one of my kids in hopefully the way that they need. I mean, as my mom is quick to remind me, the letters and cards serve as proof that I’m doing something right. Just today, I have had 2 former students wish me a happy father’s day. Just know, kids, that I watch your posts with great pride and joy as you share your lives. Even if we haven’t talked, I still watch your present and future success with great interest. I cherish the time we had/have together.

Much love. Mr. Lucas.

The Epilogue

I think that says it all. Talk to you all tomorrow.

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Recent Highlights – An update on 2 April 2022

Prologue

I tried rebooting the pages again last week. That, as evidenced by nother week of radio silcence, failed. So I find myself, on 2 April 2022, attemping once again to make myself relevant through my writing. Well, aside from the fact that I often fall back on writing as my hobby to destress, I heard a podcast recently. “Wow!” You may think, “The guy who listens to podcasts during every commute heard a podcast! Stop the presses!”

Okay, okay, I get it. Perhaps that introduction leaves something to be desired. Let me explain further. The episode in question came courtesy of Planet Money. They told the story of a man who started a web page about soap operas without knowing a single thing about soap operas. He hired a freelancer to write for him and sold ad space with Google. By the time he sold the page for about 3/4 of a million dollars, it made over 40,000 dollars a month in ad revenue.

The epitome of success for an entire generation.

Hear me out. I’m not saying that my weekly ramblings are worth 40,000 dollars a month. However, I don’t think that I’m out of line to say that it might be worth more than the *checks spreadsheet* absolutely nothing in income that I currently make. So, time to research how to make that happen. In the meantime, enjoy the still (economically) worthless content. How long will it take to actually get caught up to 2 April 2022.

Monday, 21 March 2022
Tuesday, 22 March 2022
Wednesday, 23 March 2022

Monday 21 March 2022 and Tuesday 22 March 2022

I saw the names of the geocaches on the map and they made me chuckle; Sasquatch, Unicorn, and Cockapoo. I admit that they took longer than expected to find, but I still made it home with plenty of time to spare for dinner. Then, on Tuesday, I ended up on the other side of the Birch Hills Wildlife Management Area (WMA). That might not mean anything to you, but the geocaching web page offered a souvenir for hiding a geocache during the year. I tried to hide one earlier in the year, but the people who ran the conservation area denied me permission to do so.

While researching other areas to hide geocaches, I found that Massachusetts gives implied permission to all WMAs. I used that to my advantage a couple of weeks ago and found some nooks in the BHWMA to hide two geocaches. They approved them and I got my souvenir.

There’s the souvenir!

Wednesday 23 March 2022

We administered PSAT and SAT tests on Wednesday. They gave us the afternoon to prep and grade. I actually took advantage of the time and caught up on nearly everything. Then, after school, I went to find some geocaches at Dennison Lake. Originally, I thought I might find one set of caches, including some multi-caches (a type I haven’t found in quite a long time), but I ended up going the other way. Along that path, I found a letterbox hybrid cache. Letterboxing is a precursor (I think) to geocaching in which you are given a location and then clues from that location to find the treasure.

This one made me walk something like 75 steps, turn right, and the letterbox will be there. Apparently my strides were too long because I overshot the area by a good 25 feet. I circled back, though, and found the letterbox. You’re supposed to take a stamp and leave a stamp, but I don’t have stamps. I probably should get a stamp because I recently accidentally found another letterbox by accident. In both cases, I left a sketch of Garfield.

Thursday 24 March 2022

A student said to me in response to the pictures, “Was the school day really awesome?” I replied, “Goodness no.” “Oh, that makes sense,” he said, “because I didn’t think it was anything special.” “Yeah,” I finished, “the place I hiked was amazing.” “Oh yeah,” he said to a peer,’you found a crypt and a lake the color of Baja Blast.” In addition to that, I hiked down and then up and then up and then down. I found two caches that went hidden for over a year. In the biz, we call that a resurrection. I often write it as “rezz” in my logs because I’m cool like that.

Honestly, I can’t explain it any better than that. The hike down took me to an amazing river. Then, I searched for a good 45 minutes before finding it. My log read, “I poked and prodded with my hiking stick. *squish* *squish* over and over for 45 minutes *squish* *squish* *thud*. Wait, was that a thud? *thud* Definitely a thud.” Then, the other log (after another half an hour of searching), “This is the reason that I love this hobby.”

Friday 25 March 2022 and Sunday 27 March 2022

On Friday, I returned to the scene of a crime, as it were. When I went to that trail system a couple of weeks ago, I parked in a spot that poved inconvenient for another person. She called me an a-hole and I told her to eff off. Ah, the unspoken camraderie of fellow hikers. This time, I hiked for a short period of time to get home for dinner and trivia night. We won.

Then, on Sunday, I took Quinn to the YMCA to sign up for and practice for little league. While there, I noticed a cache was activated again. They only activate it for the spring, summer, and fall because they hid it in their front yard and they don’t want the liability of someone falling on the ice. I took Quinn over and he looked for it while I looked up if we were actually in the right spot. We were and he reported, “I just found a birdhouse.” Bingo.

Saturday, 26 March 2022

I went back over to Poplar Mountain on Saturday. I saw six other caches over there that I missed missed during my visit with Christine and Lilo. Two of them were on top of the moutain and they didn’t want to climb a mountain that day. I already made them climb part of it unkowingly, so I didn’t push it. Well, I wanted those caches, so I returned.

I found not only the caches, but wonderful vistas of all around our area. I also grabbed the other caches and dropped off some themed “swag” into a like minded pirate geocache. Somehow, I spent 6 hours out that day without realizing it. I said to more than one person, “I just lose track of time out there.” While not on the same level as Thursday, I enjoyed myself and wish all hikes can be like this one.

Epilogue

And, so I find myself on 2 April 2022 writing about two weeks ago. I want to find a way to share my adventures with others and give them the same thrill that I get from exploring right in our back yard. I always see the posts, “If I ever got rich, I’d just travel.” I want to show people that you don’t have to be rich. There are hidden treasures all around just waiting to be discovered. For now, join me tomorrow and hopepfully not weeks from 2 April 2022.

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Christmas and New Years

Prologue

I meant to do this last Monday, but I got substitute teaching jobs three days in a row.  Since my writing priority so far this year has been the main 2 Generations Gaming page, this entry got postponed.  However, it works out because then, in two weeks, I can do my back to school entry.  I’ve done one about Thanksgiving and Halloween.  The last one was about Winter in general.  All of that was done with the plan in mind that this entry would be about Christmas and New Year’s.

Since the 2GG end of the year article followed a more traditional format of best and worst of the year, I wanted to make this one less cliche.  I can’t promise anything as it would appear that I’m becoming the living embodiment of the midlife crisis cliche.  However, I will try to keep the fluff to a minimum.  Let’s see how successful I am.

Journal

Many of my entries last year focused on one theme.  (Cliche alert!) When faced with the second “half” of your life, it is only natural to look at the first “half”.  More often than not, you will find things that you want to change.  At least, that seems to be my attitude regarding all of this mid-life nonsense.  Because that was the theme of last year.  Change.

New Year

I started running to help Aiden finish his Boys on the Right Track 5k.  That first run ended with me limping in pain the entire second half of it and finishing dead last.  Unhappy with that result, I started a couch to 5k program on my phone.  When the final 5k event happened, I was about halfway through my training.  I was no longer in pain at the end.  In fact, I danced a little bit at the finish line.  I did not come in last, either!  While the winter has slowed my schedule some, I had been running the entire 5k distance about 3 or 4 times a week.

I can’t say for certain that my running has kept me from falling into the “winter blues” that I often experience in January and February.  I can only speculate that as the reason. It could be because of the other big change that I made this year.  Then again, maybe it is because of my running that kept me from falling into a funk and leading to my new outlook.  There’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing happening here.

I wrote in my miniature painting (that’s painting war miniatures for you non-nerds out there) article on the main site that I’m not much of a resolutions guy.  That’s true.  I generally don’t make resolutions because (cliche alert!) you often end up breaking them within 2 weeks, feel bad about yourself, spiral out of control, and end up worse than you started.  Instead, this year, I’ve decided to continue to live my life according to the improv credo of “Yes, and…”

I realized recently that’s been my major change.  Instead of being content with putting things off (sometimes until they were no longer relevant or, in some cases, unattainable), I have been doing them.  It sounds like an easy change and, ultimately, it was.  The hardest part was the first few times.  As I said to my wife the other day, “Humans are creatures of habit. Once you’ve established that habit, it is easy to just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Now, all that remains is to get through the next big test.  I start school next week and will start a night time job this week.  I’m teaching 5 classes again, plus a lab, so I’m going to be very busy.  It remains to be seen if I will be able to maintain my writing schedule.  I’ve resigned myself that I won’t be able to write every day, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try.

Christmas

In contrast to all of the change that the New Year brings, it’s nice to have the stability of the traditions of Christmas.  Granted, our traditions aren’t generations spanning rituals or anything.  Also, some of those traditions are currently in flux.  Still, it is nice to have that consistency to welcome you into the season.  Creatures of habit and all.

Every year we visit a festival of trees.  This one is multigenerational.  It started with Christine, me, and my parents many years ago.  Now we go with our kids.  The past two years we have gone to one that they started at Yankee Candle because it is closer and also fun to go visit the store during the holidays.  Similarly, we have gone to a light display almost every year.  We started at Bright Nights in Springfield.  This year and last it was Look Park because they had a model train show, too.

A few years ago, we went to Old Sturbridge Village for their Christmas by Candlelight experience.  It was a lot of fun (and also free) and that brought us back again.  The second time wasn’t as fun because there wasn’t as much snow.  This year, we didn’t even think about doing it because of the arctic temperatures.  So, as I said, there’s some flux to our traditions.  Mainly, Liam is growing up.  For those of you that still believe, I’ll just leave it at that.

My most favorite tradition every year is going to Christine’s parents house for the day of Christmas.  It used to be her aunt and uncle and cousins there, too, with karaoke and laughs until too late at night.  Now that everyone has kids of their own, it has just been us, our kids, Christine’s sister’s family, and her parents.  The laughs are still plenty, but the karaoke hasn’t been as plentiful.  Dinner and appetizers are always the best and this year I spent the entire day lying in their kitchen nook watching a whole season of Holiday Baking Championship.

Epilogue

The New Year holiday brings naturally brings with it change. (cliche alert!) The changing of the calendar from one year to the next makes you think of all the hopeful new possibilities of that new year.  I often denigrate it as the one second holiday and don’t put much stock in the concept of resolutions.  However, this year is different.  I’ve spent most of the last year changing, in fact.  I think and hope that all of the changes are for the better.

Because the things that haven’t changed are pretty great, too.  It may be my new attitude, but this is the first winter break in a long time that I remember as being awesome all around.  The crazy thing about it is that we didn’t do that much during the break.  Other than the usual, we mostly just sat around the house and avoided the cold temperatures.  Though I know it must, I don’t want it to ever change.

 

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Winter

Prologue

I have already written about the holidays.  I will write in a couple of weeks dedicated completely to Christmas.  I will also most likely do a “post holiday” journal in January some time.  However, I wanted to ruminate (perhaps?) briefly on the general overall joy that winter brings me.

Journal

I never used to like winter.  I didn’t actively dislike it either.  Mostly, I just fell into a weird hibernation state for the months of December, January, and February.  Some of the people around me who love and care about me wondered about seasonal depression.  While there might have been some of that as my father apparently suffered from it and depression tends to run in families, I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what I was feeling.

Sure, I had bouts of what you might call the “winter blues”.  It’s hard not to with 3, and eventually 4, other people in the house for days at a time because of cold temperatures and occasional blizzards.  Add in that one of those people vehemently hates winter and the cold and, sure, there were a few moments over the years that cabin fever set in and progressed every now and then to the winter blues that I mentioned earlier.

Generally speaking, I’m a fairly positive and “go with the flow” kind of guy.  As long as there are things to do and places to see, I’m happy.  It has taken some others in the family some coercing to feel the same way about winter.  My conversion started about 4 or 5 years ago when I went disc golfing for serious, for real with our friends.  It was at the Tully course that I visit at least twice or three times every summer now, but that was the first time that I’d actually ever been out to throw discs with the intention of making them into the basket.

And it was in the middle of winter, and there was about a foot to a foot and a half of snow on the ground.  And I loved every minute of it.  I don’t remember if this led to my purchase of snow shoes or if it was one of our trips after I purchased the snow shoes, but they have gone miles (pun fully intended) to helping us come to terms with the fact that it is dark, cold, and snowing 3 to 6 months out of the year here in Massachusetts.

I originally got the snow shoes to inspire us to take more trips during the winter.  They did for a while, but then the kids got too big to carry/drag along in the sled for very long and they started to develop some of their own anti-winter biases that have prevented us from getting use out of the show shoes in that fashion.  Instead, we’ve found that we can strap them on for quick trips into the woods behind our house or through the trails behind the schools near where we live.  We can leave the whiny kids at home (now that our oldest is 13 and able to watch them without much incident) and go out for a quick 30-45 minute hike through the snow.  Admittedly, the trips get old, but maybe we can start to branch out a bit to other local hikes.  Heck, we were even able to slip away for a couple of hours to go to a wine tasting at one of the local inns, so we might even be able to head up to one of the mountains.  We are starting to get our lives back!

Okay, maybe that isn’t completely fair.  Now that the boys are getting older, they are tolerating the cold much better.  Another reason for this general winter post, even though I haven’t had a chance to get out and enjoy the actual winter yet without the specter of holidays, is that we got our first snowfall of the year over the weekend.  We got a bit more today and there is snow in the forecast for the weekend, but no big storms yet.  In any case, January and February are usually our big months for snow, so expect a full report of our adventures in the snow coming in the next month or two.

The reason that I bring up the snow is that the boys, who have mostly been moping around the house on weekends, went outside to play in the snow every single night and they were even out there doing chores and helping out with shoveling and brushing off the cars.  Sure, they ended up coming back into the house fighting and crying, but that’s what having brothers is all about.

Look, I’m not positive that my childhood and relationship with my brothers is typical in any way, shape, or form.  As an adult, I haven’t exactly talked with friends about growing up with brothers.  And, as often happens, that just inspired something inside of me.  I should discuss these issues with friends.  In spite of any of that, I grew up in a house with three boys just like our boys.  There were times that we fought to the point of hurting one another on more than one occasion.  So, at least as far as I know, that’s par for the course as long as they kiss and make up.

Epilogue

Winter is long, cold, and sometimes depressing.  It has taken us a few years to finally come to grips with the positives of the season.  However, we have been able to open our minds and branch out to new and different things.  As a result, winter doesn’t feel quite so depressing.  Sure, it is still long, cold, and dark most of the time.

But, when you can travel back in time to Sturbridge Village and see with your eye and your imagination how things were, it makes me smile.  When you can strap on snow shoes to stomp around in the back yard (either literally or figuratively), it goes a long way to making you appreciate that hot cocoa at the end of the day that much more.

College football and then hockey viewing parties with a friend in his shed or closed porch are a reason to look forward to a random Tuesday or Wednesday near the end of winter when you can smell spring, but can’t quite feel it.  There are other activities that we’ve added to our winter fun as we’ve gone along, but I will save those for the next post when I write about how much I love Christmas.

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The Holidays

Prologue

I started this journal in the early spring and it really got going during the summer months.  The rest of the family are summer people.  They enjoy lounging on the beach for hours at a time.  I’m not a huge fan of the beach, but I have found some things about summer that I enjoy like fishing, kayaking (and fishing, canoeing (and fishing), and attempting to swim across our local lakes.  That last one makes it tough to fish, but I did find and retrieve a rod once while swimming, which was cool.  The point is, while this journal was conceived and nurtured during the spring and summer months and it has helped me to become more comfortable with summer, my absolute favorite time of the year is the 3 month period of October, November, and December.

Journal

After the laziness of summer and the craziness of September, the calendar flips to October.  Everything starts to smell and taste like pumpkin spice.  There are signs that Christmas is just around the corner.  Mainly, people who complain that Christmas is just around the corner.  Speaking of early grinchiness, both Christine and I have recently discovered that Aiden is a bit of a Scrooge.  She tried to listen to Christmas music on her drive to work and he wondered out loud, “Why is this on?!”  I was watching a Chopped episode with him and Quinn and a Christmas commercial came on and he shouted, “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!”

To be fair, he might have gotten this attitude from me.  It is only recently that I’ve mellowed on the whole Christmas before Thanksgiving thing.  I know that there is Facebook evidence of me chastising Wal*Mart for their early display of merchandise.  My cousin tried to rationalize with me, which obviously never works with a person that is being irrational.  Maybe it planed a seed, though, that has blossomed into my new attitude about the holidays.  Honestly, it is most likely just my antisocial and contrarian attitudes that have turned me around, but we can give Mark some credit, too.

There will be plenty of time for winter and Christmas.  If I’ve learned anything about kids and winter in the northeast, it is that I go from 0 to “Shining” in only a matter of weeks.  But, more on that cheerful transition to come.  This article is about Halloween and Thanksgiving.  Look, I know that Thanksgiving is not technically an outdoor holiday.  Neither was Halloween this year, to be honest, but more on that later.  I include Thanksgiving both because we recently celebrated it and it is one of my favorite days of the year.

I took this picture at the move theater when we went to see Wonder and posted it to the 2GG Instagram feed with the caption “Food, Football, and Family (no matter how messed up)” because that’s what’s great about Thanksgiving.

What’s funny is that this year Christine asked at the beginning of November if it would be stupid to have a turkey dinner so close to Thanksgiving.  While it might have been, I shrugged and decided that it would be worth the risk of ruining actual turkey day.  Aside from the fact that it didn’t ruin anything and we still enjoyed the second turkey a month later, I got the added bonus of cooking my own turkey.  It didn’t quite go as well as I hoped because I undercooked it, but it turned out okay and got me warmed up to get into the holiday spirit.

So, what’s the big deal about cooking my own turkey?  We used to host Thanksgiving and her parents did Christmas.  Ever since learning how to cook at Friendly’s (well, that’s where I refined my skill.  Don’t laugh!), I have taken pride in being able to cook.  Since Thanksgiving is such a big and important meal, I especially wanted to do a good job.  Heck, I even got offended when the topic came up in one of my classes.  A student said that they didn’t even like turkey that much.  I put on my “fight me” voice and assured them that they’d love a turkey that I cooked.  Though ultimately unconvinced, we joked that we should have a Thanksgiving dinner for the class.  All jokes aside, that isn’t happening.  Two turkeys in a month is one thing, but three is a crime against humanity.

So, if I’m so good at Thanksgiving, why have I been demoted?  Well, it is less of a demotion (that’s exactly what someone who was demoted would say) and more “life goes on”.  First, my wife isn’t that keen on hosting.  We have 3 kids.  Her sister and husband now have 2 kids.  Her parents have a house that is much more suitable for hosting company.  Our house is bigger, but they recently remodeled and therefore, their house just flows better for big parties.

And so it is that I no longer am in charge of Thanksgiving dinner.  It’s fine because I usually get a chance to do a turkey at least one other time during the year.  Oh!  One last thing about turkey and then we can get on to candy.  I have told this on more than one occasion.  I picked up the turkey (something in the range of 22-25 pounds, so hopefully it redeems me a bit that I undercooked it) at the local grocery store for 16 dollars.  16 dollars and it fed our family of 5 for 3 meals!  The initial turkey, then soup, and finally turkey melts.  I seriously don’t know why people don’t buy more turkeys.

Okay, on to ghouls, ghosts, and candy.  I mentioned earlier that Halloween wasn’t an outdoor holiday this year.  Most years, we engage our kids in the weird ritual of knocking on someone’s door and then threatening them unless they bribe you to leave them alone.  We didn’t do that this year.  The past few years, it hasn’t been the best in our town for trick or treating.  There’s really only one street that has participated and last year, even that one was dead.  One of our friends had the idea to have a kid Halloween party instead and we were ready for a change.  It didn’t hurt that they live in the town where Christine and the boys go to school, which was hosting a party in the town hall before and that trick or treating has been lame lately.

The party was fun for the kids.  They got to eat pizza, hang out with their friends, make slime, and played party games like mummifying one another, glow stick ring toss, and pin the boo to the ghost.  It was less fun for us, but we did get to act like kids and take the toilet paper that was left over after making mummies and throw it all over the yard.  Unfortunately, that only lasted about 5 minutes or so and the homeowner decided to play adult and make us all stop.

Epilogue

Look, I get that Halloween is a holiday for the kids, and the party was fun, but our kids still wanted to trick or treat.  Christine even took them out after we got home to hit a few of the local houses.  I mentioned that it would be fun to do the party the weekend before Halloween and then trick or treat on the actual night.  The hosts of the party said that avoiding trick or treating was the point of the party.  So, if the party is on Halloween again, we will either miss it or show up fashionably late.  The town does a group trick or treat after the party, so maybe we will go along with that and then hit up the party.

Plus, it was a bit of a controversy that we skipped trick or treating.  Christine’s sister, husband, and kids were disappointed that they weren’t able to go with our boys.  So, we will most likely end up going with them next year.  I just don’t understand why we can’t have the best of all worlds.  Oh well, all the soccer mom magazines tell me that I can’t have it all.  That doesn’t mean that I won’t try.

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