August 31, 2002: Last night I attended what's bound to be the last "official" college event of my career, a retirement party thrown for me by the ACCTA (Alvin Community College Teachers Association). It was held at Darryl Stephens' house, a great old 19th century home with high ceilings, antique furniture, and huge rooms. The people I worked with at ACC for 19 years are the main reason I sort of hated to retire, but I'm sure I'll be seeing all of them again.

One interesting thing about ACC is that there are no bells. Sometime in the past, someone got the idea that school bells were "high school," so no bells ring at ACC. That's probably fine in a lot of ways, but it made me into a real clock-watcher, as if I weren't already. You have to keep on your toes, though, so as not to get deep into some project and miss class. And of course school teaching made me devoted to routine, as if I weren't already. The hardest adjustment to retirement will be establishing a new routine, one that I can live with. I'm trying. Now instead of going to class in the morning, I go for a run. I used to run at around 11:30 when I took my lunch break, and the early morning is certainly cooler (but no less humid). If I could just begin writing earlier in the day, I'd feel I'd accomplished something, but I'm still doing the writing at night. That has to change. And it will. Trust me.

August 29, 2002: Sure enough, school started without me today. Instead of teaching an 8:00 class, I went out for a run. Not even a twinge of regret. Well, maybe a minor one. When you've been there for the first day of class every semester since starting the first grade (in 1947!), it's kind of hard to believe things just go right on without you. But they do, and I'm sure I wasn't missed. By next week, no one will even remember I was ever there.

August 28, 2002: A guy at the college tells me that they're headed for near-record enrollment and will certainly come close to the numbers achieved during the recession of George the First. An enrollment like this is a sure sign that there are no jobs out there. The college administration should be pleased, since this is a funding year. Hey, who said Republican presidents weren't good for education?

The book burners are at it again. I've never quite figured out why some goobers are so afraid that someone else might read a book or see a movie that the goobers find offensive. If the goobers don't like it, they don't have to read the book or see the movie. They don't have to let their kids read or watch, either. But no, they want to tell everyone else what to do. Naturally they would be first in line to protest government regulation of, say, talk radio, but not something they deem offensive. They want the government to step right in and take charge.

First there are the nitwits in North Carolina who don't want their college freshmen to read the Koran as part of an assignment. Right. Why expose anyone to a different point of view? They might accidentally get educated. But wait a minute. Isn't education the reason for going to college? Not for these enlightened souls. Keep people ignorant. That's the ticket!

Then right here in Texas, in the lovely city of Cut and Shoot, there are people who are outraged about a book in the Montgomery County library. It seems that It's Perfectly Natural (placed in the YA section) implies that homosexuality might not be a hideous sin for which the vile practitioners will burn in the everlasting flames of hell with Satan giving them a pitchfork enema every day. You sure wouldn't want your kids thinking something like that! Gotta train them right. They have to be carefully taught.

Of course, the Houston police have been carefully taught. Taught to follow orders, that is. So when they went to the K-Mart parking lot last weekend to arrest drag racers and didn't find any, they arrested everyone else who was there, and everyone at the Sonic next door for good measure. Even people with receipts for food at the Sonic or for purchases at K-Mart.

Let's see now: mass arrests of innocent people, banning books, where have we heard all this before. Oh, yeah. Germany, 1938.

August 26, 2002: Went to the college this morning to practice with the guys for tomorrow's performance. We aren't good, but we're enthusiastic. And we aren't too boring, which means we should be the hit of the workshop.

Allen called. He bought a new hard drive for his computer. 100 GB of memory. That's a lot. A mere $199, with a $70 rebate coming. Sounds like a deal.

I have about three more days of work on the western novel I'm doing, and then it's on to the one with Humphrey Bogart. I have to do an outline, which I hate, but I need the dough. I'm even considering writing romance novels. I'll have to come up with a new name, though. Angela Allen is one I like.

August 26, 2002: Today is registration at the college. Registration week was always the worst week of the semester, and I never slept well during any of it. It was the only bad part of the job. But of course today I didn't have to worry about it, since I'm retired. I went to the school in the afternoon to practice with the G-Strings, though. I'm an emeritus member, and we'll be singing three songs at the workshop on Wednesday, all original compositions: "Workshop Blues," "Waltzing to Alvin," and "In the Fall." I'm sure we'll be a rousing success.

August 25, 2002: President Bush is calling for an "expanded" and "extended" war or terror, which I guess means a war, or whatever it will be called, with Iraq. Looking back on Afghanistan and our "war" with al-Qeada, I don't see much success. We killed plenty of civilians, several Canadians, and a handful of our own troops. But as far as anyone knows, Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants are still on the loose, and al-Qeada is still plenty active. And then today a London paper reports that the Saudis paid bin Laden millions in "protection money." What does this mean in relation to Bush's "You're either for us or against us" declaration? From my persepctive, the whole response to 9/ll has been a badly-handled, if not completely bungled over-reaction. And an article in the Houston Chronicle today says that on Tuesday a report will be issued to say that the budget deficit will be double Bush's last prediction. We're in serious trouble here, and there doesn't seem to be a coherent plan to do anything to get us out.

August 23, 2002: OK, it's official. Any way you look at it, I'm retired. Yesterday was the last day of the summer semester, and registration for the fall begins on Monday. I was employed through the end of the summer. So now it's over. After going to school every fall since 1947, I'll be staying at home on Monday. As the '60s saying went, today is the first day of the rest of my life.

So how am I spending it? Other than writing this, I went to the grocery store (seedless watermelon, Olathe sweet corn, lettuce, green beans, potatoes, balsamic vinegar, raspberries, blueberries, mushrooms, peanuts, Pepsi One). And later on Judy and I will be going to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Her choice, not mine. I'd probably pick something with explosions. But who's to say there won't be an explosion in this one? We can only hope.

Actually, I won't be staying at home on Monday. The group I occasionally pick and sing with, called The G-Strings, or sometimes Bill Benton Bill Benton, will be performing Wednesday at the college's in-service workshop. I've been made an emeritus member of the group, so maybe I'll practice with them on Monday afternoon.

August 21, 2002: I went in to try to get a little more done in the way of office cleaning, and my phone wasn't working. I figured this was the final push out the door: first they move your mailbox over to the Old Guy's side of the room, and then they cut off your phone. But, as it turned out, the whole phone system at the college was kaput. Considering that students are trying to enroll and that the college has telephone registration, this is about the worst possible time for something like that to happen. I was glad to know, however, that they hadn't cut off my phone.

This is lawn-mowing day. You already know what I think about that.

August 20, 2002: When I went to the college mail room this morning, I discovered that my mailbox had been moved from the regular faculty line-up to the Old Guy's area. It must be that my retirement is official. I still haven't finished cleaning out the office, though. That may take a while.

While I was in the office, I fired up the computer and wrote a note to "All Personnel," wishing them a fond farewell. I'll still be around a lot, but it was time to get that done.

Then I went to the bank. There were six or seven people waiting in the tellers' lines. You have to wonder why only two tellers were on duty, but then this is the bank that advertises "12 Drive-Thru Banking Lanes!" And they have them, all right. However, there are usually between four and eight of them open. I've never seen all 12 open, and I've been banking there since 1983. Anyway, I waited in the line for about ten minutes before I decided that the bank was as bad as the post office. I went outside and went to the drive-through, which was practically deserted. Should have gone there in the first place.

August 19, 2002: We're back from Austin and the Armadillocon. Good convention, even if Joe Lansdale tried to humiliate me in his toastmaster speech. He didn't bother me at all, but he might have succeeded with Martha Wells. It was all pretty hilarious. He also did a well-attended reading that was very funny. I was on four panels, bought some books (including a 1972 Buddy Holly bio), and hung out some. James Reasoner, Scott Cupp, and Willie Siros were there, too, so there were plenty of people to talk to. We went to my sister's house on Sunday night, and she cooked lasagna for us (and Allen and her son Scott and his wife, Norma). Had a nice visit there, as well. We drove back through Houston today and picked up my car at Angela's townhouse. Her car is fixed now, thank goodness.

August 15, 2002: Rain is good, but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. We've had nearly five inches of rain today (so far). That's too much. I was going to Hugo Valdez's retirement party at the college today, but there's no way I'm getting back out in this mess.

I was at school earlier, and the new chair of the English Department, Bea Hugetz, came by. While she was there, she signed a grade change form for Dr. Fox. That's the first time she'd signed one, and the first time I hadn't in 19 years. Not a big deal, but a sure sign that I'm no longer part of the big scheme of things. Or even the small scheme.

Judy and I will go to Austin tomorrow for the Armadillocon, a small regional SF convention. I'm a guest, even though I don't write SF. I'll be on a few panels, see a few freinds, visit a few bookstores. Can't beat a weekend like that.

August 14, 2002: I went to my office at the college today, and I'm already beginning to feel like an alien there. People who came by seemed to talk a little differently, but maybe it's just my perception. I have to go in tomorrow to make sure that all the summer session grades are turned in, but after that I'm pretty much a free man. And odd feeling.

I had to mow the lawn today, which, as I've already said, is not my favorite chore. Since we're leaving for Austin on Friday, and since we have to go to Houston this evening to see about Angela's car, today was about the only chance I had. Got it done.

The stock market is up, which is good, and I hope it will stay that way. I have less and less faith in George W. Bush's ability to help the economy or the country. He wants to get Saddam, and yet he's the one who promised (without delivering) to get Osama bin Ladin "dead or alive." Maybe delivery comes later. At any rate, if we can't get the one, how can we expect to do any better getting the other?

August 13, 2002: Judy went for her final post-surgery visit to the doctor. The nurse saw her and dismissed her. All is well

Angela called. She's having car trouble, so we'll have to drive both cars to Houston tomorrow night and let her borrow one of them. Since we're leaving for Austin on Friday, we'll have to pick the car up on the way back on Sunday. This is getting boring.

August 12, 2002: Highlight of the day so far: driving to Sugar Land to visit Half-Price Books. Didn't find much worth telling about, but I picked up a novel by Mary Astor, who played opposite Humphrey Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON. I didn't realize that she wrote novels. This one appears to be some sort of romantic suspense. Hey, at half of the 50 cent cover price, I couldn't pass it up. Maybe I'll even read it, but it's not at the top of my list.

August 11, 2002: Judy and I drove to Houston today to have lunch with Allen and Angela. Allen was in town because he'd worked a private party with Cornell Hurd's band on Saturday night. We all went to Chuy's. I had the veggie enchiladas, which proves what a wild and crazy guy I am.

When we got back to Angela's townhouse, she told us her refrigerator had been making a funny clicking noise. While listening for it, I found water on the floor in front of the 'fridge. We opened the freezer and discovered that everything was thawing. I found a repair service in the Yellow Pages and called for help. They got a guy right out, and he replaced a burned out relay. The Maytag refrigerator is only 2-1/2 years old, so the relay shouldn't have gone bad so quickly, but there's nothing you can do except thank the guy for coming and pay him the Big Bucks. $160 for the part and about 20 minutes' work. But, hey, it was Sunday afternoon, and Angela needed the freezer fixed fast.

We got a call not long ago from Allen, who's safely back in Austin with all the DVDs we got him for his birthday. Now all he needs is plenty of time to watch them.

August 10, 2002: Here's my take on Gold Medal writer Wade Miller (actually a writing team), as posted to rara-avis, the hardboiled listserv:

I thought I might as well read Wade Miller's THE TIGER'S WIFE (1951) for a very good reason: I'd never read it before. I'd read several others by the Miller team, though, including the one that's probably my favorite of theirs, THE BIG GUY (1953). Before reading THE TIGER'S WIFE, in fact, I scanned THE BIG GUY to see if it was as good as I remembered. It was. Great opening: "Joe Drum glanced dispassionately at the blood on his knuckles. It was not his own blood. Even if it had been, the mere sight of blood would have lighted no fire of emotion in his eyes, which were a rusty-brown color like old armor plate. Noe one ever knew what went on inside Joseph T. Drum, and he was proud of that. He dried his knuckles on the clothes of the mand held pinioned before him." And there's an even better ending, which really impressed me Back in the Day. I read it again, and it's still good. I won't quote it because it's a spoiler. I wonder, though, if Peter Rabe didn't go to school on Wade Miller.

But I digress. Back to THE TIGER'S WIFE. Another classic GM situation: a guy meets a beautiful woman and they marry in haste. As the book goes along, he begins to discover that she isn't at all what he thought she was. That's the case here. Lucius Bohy is a knockaround guy, gun-runner, soldier of fortune, nicknamed The Tiger. You know the type from other GM books. He meets Jill Spring and before he realizes it, his life is really changed. This is definitely not a feminist tract. Maybe it's the reverse, but again I don't want to give away too much. Readable and slick, and if there's way too much of that irritating love talk, there's a good reason for it. The psychology is very 1950s, but that's part of the book's appeal for me. There's some hot (for the early 1950s) sex, some of it just a little kinky. And another great ending.

If you have any of these early Miller books in your collection, give one a try.

August 9, 2002: Judy and I went to see BLOOD WORK this afternoon. Not a bad movie, but pretty easy to figure out. Clint Eastwood was good, and in fact so was most of the cast. It was nice to see an old-fashioned cop movie, with no car chases and no big special effects. Just a straightforward story.

August 8, 2002: Went to Wal-Mart (Boy, I go to Wal-Mart a lot, don't ? But then where else is there to shop in Alvin, Texas?) and bought the DVD release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Not for me, though. I'm giving it to Allen for his birthday, along with several other DVDs, all westerns. It's nice to know that somebody his age is still interested in watching westerns. I figure most of the ones sold go to people my age.

This afternoon I took Judy to the doctor to get the drain removed from her surgery. All went well, and she didn't even feel it when the nurse removed the tube. This wil make bandaging her back a lot easier.

August 7, 2002: Here's my take on forgotten writer Jonathan Craig, in a message I posted to the rara-avis list:

Dragnet probably spawned plenty of fictional procedural
series, but two of the best were published as paperback
originals. You all know about one of them, Ed McBain's 87th
Precinct series, which eventually went into hardback and is
still going on. The other one began about a year before
McBain's, and hardly anyone remembers it. Too bad, because
it's a good one. The author was Jonathan Craig, and the
series is set in a (named) New York City. The main
characters are two homicide cops, Pete Selby and Stan
Rayder. They work out of the 6th precinct, and most of
their cases (I think there were 10, all for Gold Medal) are
in Greenwich Village. The book I picked to re-read (for no
particular reason) was CASE OF THE PETTICOAT MURDER (1958).

The book opens, as nearly every Selby/Rayder case with the
discovery of a beautiful nude murder victim. It proceeds
with very little action but a lot of attention of details
(both of forensics and of regular police routine). And with
plenty of cross examination by Selby. Craig was really good
with dialog, and the story moves right along. Like all the
crimes Selby and Rayder get involved with, this one has
plenty of sexual overtones. Here's Selby: "People do weird
things for sexual enjoyment; strangling themselves and
others is only one of them. The idea, of course, is to stop
just the other side of climax and just this side of death;
but by the time that point is reached, the victim is often
in such a state of excitement that he no longer recognizes
it. In our years together, Stan and I have cut down a lot
of them: men dressed in women's clothing, girls with their
bodies coveredwith obscene words written in lipstick, men
and women with their stomachs bristling with needles or
forearms livid with cigarette burns." Pretty strong stuff
for 1958. (Trust me; I was there.) But at the same time,
there's Gold Medal's apparent ban on the grosser
body-function words. One character, for example, is "peed
off."

If you read several Selby books in a row, there would
probably be a sameness about them, but I highly recommend at
least one. Why didn't they hit the big time like McBain's
books? One reason was almost certainly Craig's decision to
write in the first person. He doesn't have the big cast
that McBain does. And of course McBain's plots are a lot
more varied.

August 6, 2002: The reviews for Anna Nicole Smith's "reality" show are brutal. I watched it, of course, because Anna is from my hometown of Mexia, Texas. In fact, my brother taught high school there for many years, and she was in one of his biology classes. Under a different name, of course. She's clearly dumber than a rock, but she was smart enough to somehow go from working at Jim's Crispy Fried Chicken (where my father used to go because he liked the gizzards) to becoming a media phenomenon. Smalltown girl makes good. I mean, my brother's a lot smarter than she is, and he's not famous.

I have to admit the show was awful, though. Anna Nicole slurred her words so that I could hardly understand her. She knew nothing at all about the suicide bombings in the Middle East, and in fact when someone told her about them, she said, "Doesn't that hurt?"

But there she is: a star. Or what passes for one nowadays. Gotta give her credit for that.