.
Creative Thought & Piecing the Puzzle Together

First, a brief apology apologizing for my rather sporadic posts the last several days. I have felt a need to focus as much energy as possible on starting off the semester strongly. I believe I have done well and should be able to return to daily posting from this point forward.

One of the most valuable and wonderful aspects of my job as a professor and scientist is that I have been given the goal in my career to try to think new thoughts, to explore new ideas, and to try to uncover fresh insights about the world. It is really a goal that I believe ALL of us have if we search deep into our soul as human beings... I am just lucky it is my official goal and challenge in life as well.

Thinking new thoughts is a wonderful passion and yet the ebb and flow of getting and developing creative new thoughts is hard to understand and predict. Sometimes new thoughts and ideas seem to flow easily, other times it seems a struggle to break out of traditional thinking, dictatorial thinking, or thinking "outside-the-box."

Well, yesterday, I was feeling happy enough with my start of the new semester, and was feeling generally quite content, so in the afternoon I meandered over to my elderly father-in-law's home and we made a grand afternoon of indulging in pipes and delightful libations. The drink of the day consisted of roughly three fingers of a good, blended whiskey poured over crushed ice and sweetened just a bit with a dilution of lemon-lime soda. In addition, On my way over there, I stopped at the tobacco shop and found a new, rough, cube-cut raspberry tinctured burley leaf neither of us had previously tried. By the time we had each started our third drink, we were pleasantly tipsy and were just enjoying talking and laughing about all manner of stories and news we hadn't yet had a chance to talk about. While there, I worked on updating some of the new electronic items they (my mother and father-in-law) received for Christmas from various relatives. This included a few games for their computer, a new set of cordless phones, and digital camera and speciality printer that could be used stand-alone but also would attach to their computer. It was pretty straight forward work, but both of them get quite frustrated attempting anything new involving electronics, so I try to always go around to help them out.

After completeing the new electronics set up, we were both feeling quite pleasant, and we both found the new pipe tobacco pleasantly potent as well. I think we both nodded off for a bit until nearly dinner time. We awoke when my mother-in-law arrived home. I gave her some help learning how to use the new phones and how to access the "speed dial" numbers I programmed in for her. Then I proceeded home.

It was a very nice afternoon, and, in reality it has been a very pleasant start of the semester. I have felt relaxed and content with my efforts and feel creative in my ideas. I think this may be a sign my grief is becoming more managable and I am feeling more of my old self returning.

PipeTobacco