Here I sat, looking at an empty Logic project and thinking, what am I going to talk about on your Daily Lex today?

I don’t want to talk about my friend, I guess acquaintance, because we’re not really, we don’t hang, but I don’t want to talk about a person I’m fond of overall, Federico Viticci, who I think has made some really bad decisions over the past week.

I don’t want to talk about AI, because nobody wants to talk about AI anymore, right?

We just always do all the time.

So I was like, you know what?

I’m going to go post on Mastodon.

What should I talk about?

First person to send me a topic that I have something to say about, that’ll be the topic.

So congratulations to follower, rebound listener, Your Daily Lex listener, and HVAC professional who has occasionally given me HVAC advice, Jay, Jay Torres, who wrote to me and said, Back to school.

So that’s what this episode’s about.

Let’s go.

Your Daily Lex.

First of all, I live in central New Jersey.

I live in the state of New Jersey.

And when you live in New Jersey, school starts late.

Coincidentally, Ani’s college, Emerson, also starts late.

So my kids don’t start school until September, and not even early September.

Ani’s college starts a little bit sooner.

It starts late August.

But still, all of my friends who have kids either going to college for the first time or going back to college, they’re already there.

But Ani’s move-in date is Friday the 28th, and I think the first day of class at Emerson is like the 31st.

For my two high schoolers, the first day of school is Tuesday, September 8th.

That’s so far from now still.

I get sad about back to school.

My high schoolers do too, but it’s for different reasons.

Like, they even like school.

Liam has not loved school in a while, which is a bummer.

He doesn’t always feel challenged enough.

I’m hoping that changes this year.

He has successfully lobbied to take harder classes than he’s supposed to be able to take.

Sierra took four AP exams last year and is taking four AP classes this past year and is only taking three this year, but she got all fives, which is amazing.

They’re hard workers, and they’re very busy.

They do a lot of clubs, a lot of extracurriculars.

They do all that stuff.

But I get sad when it’s back to school because I like having them home.

I like the fact that, you know, when I’m working during the day, I can come out and there they are a lot of the time, or that we can do fun stuff randomly, or, like, I can just, you know, with no plan, have a meal with them or whatever during the day.

I like all that.

School also means we have to get up earlier.

It means that they’re more stressed and they’re more stressed than— listen, I want them to get smart, but if Lauren at any point was like, We should homeschool our kids, I would have done it in an instant.

I think that the socialization of regular public high school has been great for them and that they have done very well from it.

But I don’t know.

I would have loved having them home all the time.

I think it’s great.

As I have long said on this show, I hate that I have a kid in college.

I mean, I’m very happy for Ani that they’re in school and that they’re doing quite well, but I’ve loved having Ani home this summer, and I get emotional when I think about Ani going away again.

I get emotional when I think about the fact that Sierra is going to be applying to colleges, which is a whole separate topic unto itself, and going to college next year, in theory.

I mean, assuming we get accepted, I think we will.

It’s we, because it’s a family effort.

You get it.

But there are some aspects of back to school that I really like.

It’s certainly fun to do, you know, back-to-school shopping and getting the cool stuff.

And I always liked, when I started a school year as a high schooler especially, like empty notebooks being ready to go.

And I was always, like, the tech nerdy one, shockingly, in college and in high school to a degree.

You know, I sometimes had a laptop in classes, which I know now is very common.

And early days in college, like my freshman year, I had a Handspring Visor, which was a precursor to a Palm Pilot, or a follow-up to the Palm Pilot, I should say.

And I had a fold-up keyboard that would fold up into the shape of another Palm Pilot, basically, and I would snap the one into the other.

Man, it was awesome.

I took all my notes on that.

Loved it.

But, like, getting all your empty notebooks ready, you’re figuring out how you’re going to allocate all the things, divide up those folders, whatever.

I loved all that.

But yeah, what’s interesting this year is Sierra can now drive to school because that’s a privilege limited to seniors, and she is one.

But you have joint custody of a parking spot.

And by law in New Jersey, learner’s permit—no, not learner’s permit—probationary license, whatever it’s called when you have your first year of a license in New Jersey, those drivers can only drive one non-family member.

So on the day Sierra drives, she can take Liam and pick up the person that she shares the parking spot with.

On the day the other person drives, by law, she cannot take—that other driver cannot take Liam.

So half the time we have to put Liam on the bus, and half the time we don’t.

That’s annoying.

Sierra, we know, will wake up and get to school.

Liam, we don’t know, will wake up and get to school.

Liam, great student, very, very conscientious, very good at the work, really bad so far at self-discipline.

Liam also does a lot of band gigging stuff.

He has stuff where he has to pack up all of his equipment, and we are constantly harping, like, you’ve got to get the car loaded up with all your band stuff, with all your gig stuff ahead of time.

And if you want to leave the next time, load up the car before then.

And we are putting more and more of it on him, right?

Like, when he had the giant heavy piano that he used, I was like, I think it’s stupid that you’re using this.

I got you a lighter one.

You should use that one.

If you’re unwilling, then buy a cheaper piano with your own money that you do like, because this is too heavy.

Not buy a cheaper piano, buy a lighter piano, because this is too heavy.

And I’ll help you carry stuff if you get lighter things, but I’m not going to help you carry this because it’s stupid that you’re taking this giant, like literally 75-pound keyboard.

He did eventually get a lighter keyboard, which is a great one.

And so now I am willing to help him, but, like, he’s got to be in charge of loading up the car, and he can’t always do that.

He’s in charge of waking himself up for school and getting ready.

He often does that, but he, like his father before him, I used to really struggle with alarm clocks.

I had to put the alarm clock in college across the room, otherwise I would turn it off in my sleep, not even know, and go back to sleep.

I’ve never been a snoozer, but I was turning off my alarm.

Liam has an alarm on his watch and on his phone and on his iPad, so he has to get up.

He can’t just turn it off from his watch.

He wears his watch to sleep because he can’t see his clock from bed because his vision is so bad without glasses.

But yeah, it’s not guaranteed Liam’s going to wake up, so we got to get up with him all school year.

So that’s the part that I probably dread the most, and it’s a tie: missing them during the day and having to get up early.

But anyway, back to school.

It’s less than a month away, but still a long time from now.

That’s it.

Thanks for the topic, Jay, and several other people wrote in topics while I recorded this episode, so I’ll slate them in too.

Goodbye, Lex.