slipping

Just got the family up to Hillsborough to walk the River Walk, which is a nice thing, though I will confess and advise my readers that the part east of downtown, by Ayr Mount, is really the prettier part, and we had to turn around before we could really take it in, sadly. It was good to get the family out, as we honestly have all too few full group excursions, something we need to work on.

On the way up we listened -- as we are oft wont to do (love that phrase) -- to NPR, Radiolab, to be precise, and it was an interesting episode. The most fascinating part was some guy who had done quantitative analysis of Agatha Christie novels, and found that there was a strange shift from her 73rd novel forward, where the frequency of vague terms like "anything," "something", "someone" increased dramatically, and that she was generally using 20% fewer words than she had before. (just Googled this, it is apparently an old show, so many may have heard it before)

I will confess that I fear this at times myself, when I find myself grasping for words -- I struggled momentarily to find the word "Alzheimer's" when recounting the story later.  Oh well. It's not like I don't try to keep the old noggin nimble. I think what I'm experiencing is likely just normal aging.

Little of which was apparent on the soccer field yesterday, though. It wasn't my best game, mind you, but I was pretty darned mobile and effective in the back keeping a couple of much younger guys under control.

So there. Time to go enjoy the waning of this lovely fall day before I have to fire up the grill.