A Few of the Finer Things - September 2013

For those of you who have been with me for a long time, the following sentence might make you feel a bit old… I recently dropped my oldest child off at college. He is a freshman at U of A majoring in business. I gave to him a gift that my parents gave to me when I was a younger man – the popular in the 1990’s coffee table book, Life’s Little Instruction Book (511 suggestions, observations and reminders on how to live a happy and rewarding life).

I wrote a note on the inside cover about how my parents gave me a copy of this book and that he should read it, read it again and live it…my personal favorite is #187: "Measure people by the size of their hearts, not by the size of their bank accounts" but there are probably 500 I love and 11 I just really like!

We had lunch at Sausage Deli (former Wildcats all just smiled) with his roommate and his very nice parents (sign of the times…the boys met via roomsurf.com – kind of a match.com for college roommates). Sausage Deli is still alive but the rickety old building with the special aura is no longer…it has been bulldozed and is now a Walgreen’s complete with a drive-in pharmacy. The new Sausage Deli building is just off to the side, sort of in the back corner of the lot where it used to be. The food is still good (my wife had a Susie Sorority and my son had a Grinder), but to me it felt like we brought our Sausage Deli to a brand new Chipotle restaurant and were eating it there.

The dorm that he now lives in wasn’t yet built back in the late 1980s, nor was the sprawling, state-of-the-art Rec Center that is across the street.

All these things tell me that time marches on and no matter how hard we try, it is very difficult for things to stay just the way we left them…at least we have the timelessness of Life’s Little Instruction Book and the valuable messages contained within it. Life’s Little Instruction Book

– Gary Weiss, September 2013