I am committed to retiring as of May 2027. I’ve yet to talk to any administrators about it, but this has been such a terrible year — knees going kerblooiee over the summer, a bad fall last month — that I don’t think my body can keep up with all the pressure. I can make it one more year, I’m pretty sure, and then I get to live a worry-free life, lounging about the pool, sipping pina coladas, etc., that’s how it works, right?

But then I looked around my office…I have over 26 years of accumulated books, just books.

That’s less than half — there’s another set of shelves on the other side of the room. I’ve been shedding a few, mainly giving them out to students, but now they all have to go. I think this is the summer I have to clear everything out somehow. I’ll sell some, give away some, some are going to a landfill (I’ve got toxic creationist books that it would be irresponsible to release into the wild.) A while back, I gave away a lot of old textbooks to a charity that would ship them off to African schools, maybe I can look them up and give them a good home.

Then there’s the lab. I hope Mary doesn’t mind housing a lot of spiders.

Anyway, I think shutting down and cleaning up will be my major summertime project. That, and occasionally skipping off to observe more spiders.