On this day in 2001, the top floor of our house burned down. My sister lost nearly everything she owned, the rest of us lost other things, and it was the end of my "week from hell" that saw us all move into a hotel room for ten and a half months. I got bored, went back to school, and, well, here I am now. Like every other important date in this family for the past three months, realizing it’s the first time we’re marking this date after Dad’s death makes it hurt a little bit more. On that note, let’s play the friday5.org Friday Five.

(Oh geez, and this week’s five isn’t going to be fun to get through.)

1. What makes you feel old?
Pretty much everything at this point. I’d probably feel better if I could get back on my diet here, but I’m still five Red Wings victories away from that.

2. What makes you feel young?
I don’t know if teaching necessarily makes me feel young, but it’s probably the closest thing to feeling young that I can do these days.

3. What was better when you were allowed to do it the old way?
I don’t know that I ever "allow" myself to be forced to do things in a new way. The best answer I can give to this is that I always bake without using any electric mixers, doing all the mixing by hand because I think it improves the flavour.

4. What’s better now that you do it the new way?
Research. If I didn’t have easy access to recent English journals when I was in school, I don’t know if I could have studied the topics that I did without wanting to pull my hair out.

5. What’s something you are old school about?
I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that saying I’m "old school" about something means that I’m making an attempt to sound cool, and I am not cool.