Got up early and am about halfway through resetting the clocks. I hate this- I think they ought to just let the sun alone.

In the snail-mail there were a couple clippings from my 84-year-old girlfriend out in San Diego about dementia, commenting on the saga I have been trying to document on the decline of my parents.

I wish life were not like this, at the end, and note with mild concern the genetic link between dementia and the generations. That suggests that I will be one of the one-in-two that will have this a awful affliction, should I live long enough, and I am intensely interested in how to avoid what seems to be inevitable.

I will be thinking about that. I have a little over twenty years, if Mom and Dad are any example, and I want to plan for it. I have thought about a new medical appliance. Something you could implant in the body, perhaps in the buttocks, which every few months would prompt you to enter a code phrase into a remote control.

Something really simple and profound- the name of your partner, perhaps, or your birthdate. The remote control would offer plenty of chances to try to get it right, like the trusty Blackberry on my belt that offers twenty times. That should be sufficient to prevent unintended activation of the implant.

I figure if you can’t enter your own birthday correctly, it means the time to hang around has passed. The chip would release a dose of something that would take you out of the picture.

I dunno. You certainly can’t ask someone to do it for you.

It was too nice to spend a lot of time on my invention yesterday, though.

Jake rolled up right on time, and we were off for the Maryland-UVA game.

This has been a rocky season for the Terps. The team has not done that well, and the new coach is still gaining his sea-legs. What is more, the weather has been brutal. We have cooked out in the rain, and on two occasions, actually counted the tail-gate as being good enough to qualify as attending the game and went home.

Today was the last home game, and a magnificent confluence of weather, company and food.

The Man Up crew was in place and firing up the grill as we arrived. It was an old-school kick-off, at noon or thereabouts, and thus the bar opened well before lunch. You have to do what you have to do. The daughter of one of my pals was coming, with a couple friends.

We figured they would take off on their own rather than hang with The Fogies, but it turned out to be a rollicking good time. As it turns out, they stuck around: sassy and fun, they made me wish I was just forty years younger.

Man Up’s specialty is dispensing shots of liquor to any likely-looking passers by. Not malicious, mind you, but as an enhancement to the general mood of merrymaking. I would recount the experience, but it was the same as it always is, progressive inebriation prior to making the trek to the stadium, increasingly sobriety through the five quarters (the half has to count as the bonus) and then a plunge back into the open bar, waiting for the lot to empty and traffic to die down.

The Terps lost, though that did not seem to diminish the general entertainment level. There is nothing, I thought, looking at Jake, that I like better than hanging around a parking lot filled with kids, with a big stadium not far away, great food, great friends and plenty of alcohol.

Life is pretty goddamn good.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicscocotra.com