Our life is more than our work and our work is more than our job. It is a phrase that I heard labor union members chant at an anti-nuclear rally on the first anniversary of Three Mile Island. It has stuck with me all these years and I often mention it in terms of things going on in my life today.

It seems particularly appropriate in an experimental memoir focused on living ones life as a novel. I can imagine people getting all tied up in the idea of living one’s life as a novel, and focusing only on their life work as part of that novel. But I imagine this could be detrimental. I remember the old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

I’ve known people that are so dedicated to whatever their cause is, that it is all that they can talk about. I run into them at parties and listen politely. Often their causes are also my causes. Yet after I’ve given them a chance to have their say, I try to politely move on and find someone else to talk to.

I often talk about this in terms of social media. I will run into people at work who ask me how my weekend was. We chat about the stuff of life that isn’t directly work related before we move on to the issues of the day. Since I work with social media, I often have to spend time explaining aspects of social media to them. Very often, the same people who were just talking with me about their weekends go on to say that they just don’t get Twitter. Why would anyone want to listen to other people talking about what they had for breakfast? I point out to them the natural ebb and flow of conversations, and most of them eventually get it.

As an aside, I should note that last night Kim made lentil soup. It was dark brown and good. There were chunks of sausage floating in it to liven it up. The plans had been to share it as a family dinner with our neighbors, but in the end, Kim and Fiona spent time in the neighbors’ hot tub, and so the soup dinner did not come about. I had a little soup when I got home, and later Kim had some as well.

Kim had bought a nice loaf of bread to go with the soup which ended up not getting used. So, this morning, she made some amazing French Toast. I’m not sure what made it so good, the eggs, the cream, the bread, the spices or something else, but it came out very well.

There, I’ve had my discussion about this mornings breakfast and should continue on with the writing. So far, most of my writing has been work related, and I worry that it may make for dull reading. Now, I’ll write a little bit about the weekend, but I’ll do it as a transition from writing about work.

At work, I am meeting with a couple Wesleyan students to explore research into health care and social media. It is a really enjoyable part of my job. On Fridays, I head over to the campus and speak with the students, typically in the student union. They talk about research papers they’ve found on the subject matter. I relate it back to what is happening where I work. We talk about how some of the research could be done at the health center.

Yesterday, was one of those beautiful autumn days. I pulled into the campus and looked for a place to park. A student wearing one of those florescent construction worker vests let me know that it was homecoming weekend, and where the available parking places were. I ended up parking on a side street around the corner, which is where I often park.

In spite of the October snow storm, there were still many bright colored leaves on the trees which stood out against the deep blue sky. I passed places where there were still wires down and looked at pieces of broken wire hanging from some of the poles.

As I walked across the campus, I saw large crowds of what appeared to be prospective students and their families being led around the campus by student guides. In side the student union, there were tables set up for people to register for homecoming weekend. I found the students I’m working with and we sat down and chatted for a while. Afterwards, I sent a few emails from my cell phone and headed home.

When I arrived home, I found it had been nicely cleaned. Our lives are cluttered, and often our house reflects it. The dog enjoys chewing up all kinds of different things and leaving pieces on the living room floor. Fiona likes to sit on the couch and watch television or play games on the computer, and leaves homework, dishes, and other stuff on the living room table.

The dining room table, likewise, is often the repository for various partially completed projects, as well as mail to be dealt with and other pieces of our daily lives. All of this had been cleared away in preparation for people joining us for dinner.

I walked through the kitchen, the dining room and into the living room. There I noticed that the office door was closed. I thought that it was perhaps because the office is the most cluttered space of all.

I opened the office door, and there was our dog Wesley. I wondered why he had been closed in the office. Was it an additional preparation for our expected guests? I tried calling Kim on her cell phone, but she didn’t answer. So, I took Wesley outside to do his business, and then brought him back inside and put him in his crate.

As a large dog, he has a very large crate. Initially, we had felt uncomfortable putting him in a crate from time to time, but people wrote online about how a crate can be comforting to a dog. It is like their cave, their special place. Wesley seems to like his crate and usually trots happily in to it when we tell him.

I then headed over to our neighbors, where I expected to find Kim and Fiona. As I started my trek, the phone rang. It was Kim returning my call. I asked her why Wesley had been closed up in the office. Kim said that Wesley hadn’t intended that and that Wesley should be free to run around the house, so I let him out of his crate.

Wesley likes to bury things; bones, treats, or anything else that he finds special. Later, he will go find his treasures. My guess is that he was either burying something behind the office door, or trying to find something behind that door, and closed it, locking himself in the office.

With Wesley now free to roam around the house, I headed over to our neighbors. I walked up the gravel driveway. The driveway has been washed out from various storms, so there is a gully in the middle of it. It isn’t bad enough to present significant problems for the car, but it does make the walk a little more uneven. The driveway turns off to the left out to join a common driveway shared by several houses. Where it turns, I headed straight up the little trail from our house to our neighbor’s house.

November 4th is a big day in our family. Kim and I started dating in July 1999, as Kim’s mother was fighting cancer. In early September, things took a turn for the worse and the decided to move her to hospice. On a Friday evening, I got together with Kim for dinner. Her father, brother and sister-in-law joined us. It was the first time I had met any of them. Besides being a difficult time as they dealt with Kim’s mother, it was also a happy time as we celebrated Kim’s birthday.

After dinner, Kim opened various presents, including something that her mother had managed to order as a surprise. After opening the presents, Kim’s father’s beeper went off. Yes, that was back in the days of beepers and not text messaging. It was the oncologist’s phone number. Kim’s father called back to learn that his wife had died.

I spent the next few days with the family. The place I was working at the time was not particularly receptive to me taking time off to care for a grieving family, and it reminded me again of how our lives are much more than our jobs.

The following year, I proposed to Kim and we decided to have a fall wedding. November 4th turned out to be a good day. It was also Kim’s mother’s birthday. We figured if she died on Kim’s birthday, there was something appropriate about us getting married on her birthday.

Another year passed and Kim gave birth to Fiona in early October. The church we were attending were having baptisms on the first Sunday of November, which turned out to be the fourth, so Fiona was baptized on our first anniversary and on her Grandma in Heaven’s birthday.

Every summer, from even before when Kim and I met, I have been going to a folk music festival in New York State. When Kim and I started dating, she started attending the same festival and Fiona kicked her feet to the beat of drummers on the stage at the folk music festival three months before she was born. Fiona has always gone to the folk music festival.

The festival has several stages, including the main stage, a workshop stage, and a family stage. Mostly, I stay at the main stage, with various trips to the workshop stage and the family stage. Fiona has grown up at all of the stages, but there are some acts that appear at the family stage that she has become particularly fond of.

One is a group called The Storycrafters. This year, Kim got the idea to see if they could come and perform at a special birthday party for Fiona. Normally, they perform at schools and other larger venues. However, they were going to be performing in Connecticut on November 4th this year, and Kim convinced them to come for Fiona’s birthday.

We didn’t let Fiona know what was going to go on at her birthday, other than that it would be a special surprise. She had about ten of her classmates come and we had the event at our neighbors who have a larger yard and a larger living room.

By the time I got home, the festivities were well under way, however I did get a chance to listen to some of the stories. It was very enjoyable and the kids were entranced. Storytelling is a great old tradition, and Barry from the Storycrafters did it in fine form. I try to capture some of it in my blogging and other writing.

Afterwards, I spoke with some of the parents. One other parent is also attempting NaNoWriMo and has a daughter Fiona’s age that is taking a shine to writing. We talked about how perhaps next year the two of them could at least do the kids NaNoWriMo and I mentioned Miranda’s successes at NaNoWriMo.

Another topic I had with Barry, as well as with several parents was about making hard apple cider, and I distributed a several bottles to assorted parents. Cider making is a fine tradition which deserves its own attention.