Trail Days, Now Over

Another year of Trail Days has come and gone. As always, we had a blast, saw lots of old hiking buddies, ate too much, stayed up too late, and in general, partied like it was 1999. We left early Friday morning (and I do mean early! we got up at 3:30 AM) drove to Big Western City, through a snowstorm, I might add. Our flight to Newark left on time at 7:30, and though it was a bumpy ride, we made it there. Late. Having only 45 minutes to connect, I was pretty sure my luggage wouldn't make it to Charlotte, but it did. Rented a car, then drove the four hours from Charlotte to Damascus, which put us into our friends Trace and One-Third's home just in time to throw on a jacket and a hat and head out to the campground for the bonfire.

Ah, the campground, also affectionately known as "The Ghetto." It's a section of land outside of town that the city allows hikers to camp in during Trail Days. Imagine a parking lot, some port-a-potties, and then trails weaving in and out of bushes, trees, weeds, and mud. That's where the hikers who pour into Damascus by the hundreds get to camp, and pay $5 for the privilege. I completely understand the city charging hikers for the camping, because they have to pay to clean it up when everyone leaves and to police it while they are there. We are lucky to have had places to stay in Damascus every year that we've gone for Trail Days -- I don't want to camp in the ghetto. Not to mention that, according to rumor, it's a Superfund cleanup site.

Anyway, every year there's a huge bonfire in the Campground. This involves a massive fire, lots of folks gathered around it drinking beer, several drum circles, people playing guitar and singing, drunken shouting, occasional dog squabbles, etc. General hiker stuff.

We didn't see anyone we knew at the Bonfire -- it was mostly this year's hikers -- so we walked all around the Campground, past the Riff-Raff site, Billville, and the Quiet Zone, and then came back to the house for some well-deserved sleep.

The next morning we had a light breakfast and were getting ready to head out when Slogger looked out the window and saw Firefeet walking by (we found out later she was on her way down to the Baptist Church, where they have a trailer with FREE! SHOWERS! for HIKERS!). Now Firefeet has special significance for me, because she and Chickflick saved Slogger from hypothermia when they were all hiking together in 2003. Needless to say, I was excited to meet her.

After our chat with Firefeet, we headed out to the vendor area to give it a walk-through and see who we would see. First person we run into: Tangent, our buddy from the Nekton Dive cruises we've been on. And that was only the beginning, as we spent time chatting with Grampie, Texas Jack, AT Troll, AWOL, Carolina Cruiser, Moonshadow, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Rain Queen, Karma, Mellow Yellow, Jen, and too many others to name. Needless to say, we did more talking, laughing, and hugging than we did looking at the vendors. It's always fun to be with the popular kid, and Slogger definitely fits that bill. The fact that he almost died this year made it even more special for folks to see him and talk to him.

And that's pretty much the way the weekend went. The highlights were the parade and the reunion dinner for Slogger's class of 03.

The Trail Days parade is both an opportunity for this year's hikers and previous year's hikers to get out and strut their stuff, and an opportunity for townspeople and hikers to blast each other with water balloons, water guns, and everything else wet they can get their hands on. The water fight wasn't quite so big this year, but there were lots of hikers in great getups.






That's 42 in the flowered outfit.













And Mala as the "Harmless Hiker."













All in all, it was a great time. Perhaps we stayed one day too long, as the festival ended on Sunday and we left town on Monday, but it was a chance to rest up, have a nice dinner with Seneca Lou, Tom for Short, and Trace. Monday morning we drove back to Charlotte and did the whole trip in reverse, which still took us 14 hours. Today we are recovering.

Trail Days

Tomorrow morning (early! We're getting up at 4 AM!) we'll be heading off to Virginia for the annual Trail Days celebration, a hiker festival extraordinaire. I've been to Trail Days many times over the years. Perhaps the most memorable was 2001, when I had been injured (see the side panel for the story) and was on crutches for the entire event. Well, not the entire event -- by the end of it I was walking without crutches for short distances, and shortly thereafter I got serious about physical therapy and got back on the trail.

Slogger and I bought our wedding rings at Trail Days, before we were married, for $8 each from a stall.

In 2003, the year Slogger hiked the AT, I met him in Damascus for Trail Days and hiked out with him. That year I was able to hike a month with him, before heading to Texas to visit my brother, his wife Lynne, and the newborn triplets (all boys!).

So, needless to say, we're looking forward to Trail Days. We'll be staying with our friends Trace and 1/3, who visited us in High Plains City a couple of years ago. It should be a blast!

I'll try to take some pics and post them when we get back.

On Reading First

I've hesitated to write about the report out that evaluates the impact of Reading First on the comprehension abilities of children. Basically, the report says that teachers were doing more of what they were supposed to do according to Reading First guidelines, but that all of this had no impact on the comprehension abilities of 1st through 3rd grade students.

And then I read this, which equates Reading First and NCLB with Iraq. Lovely piece of writing.

My concern about Reading First all along, although I am an adolescent literacy type, not so much an early literacy one, is the way the scripted kind of instruction insults and inhibits teachers. Stager gets that spot on. And now we shall see how the focus on scientifically-based research folks handle the results of their own research!

Week O' Meetings

It's been a crazy, finishing-up kind of week, and I apologize for not posting since last Sunday. Some of the things that went on this week:

MONDAY: Well, yes, there was the three-hour meeting. For the most part, it went down as I said it would. I'm sure we must have accomplished something, but I only remember being one of the laptop users, pretending to be taking notes while surreptitiously checking my email.

TUESDAY: A very friendly committee meeting for a fabulous doc student who is just about halfway through her coursework.

WEDNESDAY: A two-and-a-half-hour department meeting (at least it included lunch!) followed by a retirement reception for the outgoing dean. One highlight of the department meeting was watching one easily frustrated department member's face as we considered having an additional meeting in May. Entertaining!

THURSDAY: The last meeting for this year of the advisory council on which I serve (my last year to serve on it, as I will be on the T&P committee next year). This is actually one of my favorite committees to serve on (can any committees be "favorites"?) because we get our business done quickly and almost always get out early. I don't think that will be the case with t&p. I spent the evening at my investment club meeting, which also ended early (only half of us were there, which explains it a bit).

FRIDAY: Members of the t&p committee met with our outgoing dean to elect a chair (not me, thankfully!) and to discuss which of us would be attending which department meetings regarding discussion of t&p in the fall. I spent the rest of the day working on a manuscript that is due at the beginning of June, and on revising my program report for accreditation. My sense is that if I spend 3-4 hours a week on that accreditation report this summer, I'll have it ready by the September 15th deadline.

In between and among all of those meetings, I've been working on getting my online course ready for this summer, finishing up grades for spring, and resolving placement issues for next year's student teachers. Next week is all about the writing and the course. Has to be.

Three-Hour-Meeting

Today I have a meeting that will last from 10-1. At least they are buying us lunch. A few things I can guarantee for this meeting:

* a proposal will be made to "streamline" our master's degree program, which will have huge support from one faction and will elicit extreme negative reactions from another faction. We'll argue about it and then agree to allow a task force to work on it.
* the question of how many advisees each faculty member should have will come up, with some faculty members complaining about getting too many and being overworked, and other faculty members complaining about not having enough students (or any!). We'll argue about it and then agree to allow a task force to work on it.
* a proposal will be made to offer our masters' degree online nationwide. Two faculty members will support this; the rest of us will think it is ridiculous. We'll argue about it and then agree to allow a task force to work on it.

During this time, one faculty member will be typing diligently on his laptop -- it will appear that he is engaged and taking notes, when actually he is writing yet another practitioner article to appear in a widely circulated journal.

I will be texting with my buddy Red, cause that's just how I roll.

I know worrying is no good for me. It doesn't accomplish anything, in fact it makes me feel unhealthy, stressed, and probably has all kinds of long-term ill effects that I should be . . . um . . . worried about. See the problem?

We just returned from our Sunday-morning-ritual of walking downtown to the coffee shop, having breakfast and reading the newspaper, and walking home. It's a lovely crisp morning, there were dogs in the park, and I noticed one of the hawks swooping overhead as we got close to home. But Slogger seemed tired, and that makes me worry. Thus the pensive post about worrying. It's ironic, because I'm always on him to lower his stress level. I should take notes on my own lectures.

Because I Haven't Done This Meme Yet, And I Know There Is Another Meme I Was Tagged For But I Can't Remember It Or Find It

I've seen this one around a bit, but most recently at Strange New Teacher's blog (new to the blogosphere -- you should stop by and comment).

Here are the rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Okey dokey. Here we go:

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Spring of 1998. I was finishing up my last year of teaching high school English (mostly sophomores and seniors) before heading off to begin graduate school full-time. Footslogger and I had just met and we were spending lots of weekends flying back and forth between the big cities in which we both lived (several thousand miles apart). The senior class had asked me to speak at their graduation, and I was busily writing my speech while inwardly rejoicing that I would never have to teach Julius Caesar again. (I love me some bard, but not the same play every year for 12 years, 6 times a day!)

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list today (not in any particular order)?

laundry
polish my nails
exercise
make some bread
make a huge vat of marinara sauce to freeze

3) Snacks I enjoy:

chips and salsa
yogurt-covered pretzels
dark chocolate

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Healthy-selfish things:
take Footslogger to Uganda and introduce him to my second family there;
take Footslogger to Germany and let him introduce me to all the places and people there he knows;
buy a T@B Trailer and camp my way through this continent;
pay off all of my student loans and that of all of my colleagues from graduate school;
finance a repeat thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail for myself and for Footslogger (he could do it -- we'd just have to take it slow).

Philanthropic things:
establish a massive program in this state to encourage, pay for, and support secondary school teachers from all content areas to go through our literacy program and be certified to teach literacy, grades 7-12.
establish a massive program to finance secondary and post-secondary education for kids from Uganda who have lost family members to AIDS
pay off debts for tons of people -- my two brothers, Footslogger's two kids, and others.

This sounds exciting! Anyone want to give me a billion?

5) Three of my bad habits:

eating too much
picking my cuticles
snoring (Slogger says this is my worst)

6) Five places I have lived:

Greenville, Texas
Marietta, Georgia
Hoima, Uganda, East Africa
Pasadena, California
Commerce, Texas

7) Five jobs I have had:

Drug store clerk/cashier/stocker at Page Drug in Dallas, Texas
High school English teacher at a school in a very small town in East Texas
Secretary/receptionist in an academic setting, Pasadena, California
Customer service clerk at Marshall's Department Store in Texas
Cashier at Captain D's (grease, grease, grease)

(I never was a truck driver, though I wanted to be one when I graduated from high school.)

8) 6 People I want to know more about:

Well, I think I'm the last person on the internet to do this meme, so I'm going to open this up to anyone interested. Have fun!

A Reader for Slogger

Set Slogger up with Google Reader this morning, so he could read my blog and our friend Jeff's AT hike journal.

[waves]

Hi Slogger!

Two-Mile Day

So I've come to realize that if I want to lose weight, I'm going to have to both control my intake and up my exercise regime. I've been walking at a fast pace for 30 minutes a day, and maintaining my weight, but not losing any. Since my goal has been to lose about 20 pounds, that's just not going to be enough. Last Friday I started upping my exercise work to include running a mile and walking a mile. I'm going to keep up that goal every day this week, and then up it next week to running two miles and walking one. It's ridiculous that someone who has hiked as many miles as I have should be down to this, but it's the reality. Time to get serious about exercise.

Of course, my leprechaun name has something to do with underpants . . .

Your Leprechaun Name Is:

Plucky Greenknickers

What's Your Leprechaun Name?

Hawks

For the last couple of years, a pair of hawks have nested in our neighborhood, raised their little ones, and made our spring and summer fabulous. I love to stand outside and listen to their screeches, look for them swooping around the sky. The most beautiful sight imaginable.

Can't Write No Dissertation

This feels awfully familiar, though as if it were in someone else's long ago past . . . .but in case those of you out there writing your dissertations need some levity, here you go:


No Dissertation from ticoneva on Vimeo.

on the committee

WTF? I just got tenure, haven't even gotten the official letter yet, and I'm already on the T&P committee? I had no idea that would happen!

A Week in Review

I can't believe it's already been a week since I last blogged. It's been a week of just crossing things off my list, nothing really interesting.

This morning, on the other hand, was a landmark for Slogger. It was our first time walking to the coffee shop since his heart attack. I think he's been capable of walking that far for a couple of weeks now, but the cold weather gets to him more than it used to -- this morning it was in the 40s, although on our way back home the wind really picked up. Luckily it was at our backs.

I tried with the bread machine again yesterday, with the same results -- the dough rose and then fell like a rock. I'll keep experimenting and see what I can figure out, but my stock of hard, heavy bread (suitable for making my own seasoned bread crumbs!) is getting a bit on the huge side. What else can I do with homemade bread that is hard as a rock? Any ideas? I already used the bread crumbs to make turkey meatballs (this to go with my super-flavorful but salt-free marinara sauce).

I'm working on exercising every day, though this week was not the best for it. I'm still operating on my plan of giving myself non-food prizes for exercising at least 6 of the 7 days in the week -- needless to say, this week I get no prize. Oh, well. I plan to do better next week.

Evening Blogging

Slogger is already in bed -- he fades fast, as soon as afternoon wears into evening -- and I'm all up by my lonesome, so I thought I'd blog a bit. I spent today cooking and working on my summer online course. The last couple of times I've made bread in my bread machine it fell flat, so I did some reading on the subject and decided to start a little bread-making experiment. Basically, because I am at high altitude, the idea is that the yeast will rise faster and higher than the gluten can stretch, which will cause the whole structure to collapse. Recommendations include reducing the amount of yeast by 1/4 of a teaspoon, and reducing the amount of water by 1-2 teaspoons. I did both today (and kept a record) and found that the bread ended up a bit higher than last time, but still fell a bit. I know, I should have only changed one thing at a time. I did notice, as the dough was rising for the first time, that it was a bit stickier than I would have liked if I were making it by hand. Soooo...... I think the next time I make bread with the machine, I'll reduce the water a bit more, keep the yeast at the same amount, and/or perhaps increase the flour just a bit. I'm pretty sure I'll get it eventually.

The word "recommendation" there reminds me of the email I just got from a student who is student teaching currently. He had asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him, which I did and mailed to him. Apparently, though, I left in a "she" instead of a "he" in the last paragraph of the letter, which led him to ask this, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way:

"Does my long hair make me seem more feminine to you?"

So, I'll be rewriting and remailing that one!

The registration for my summer online class is getting crazy -- that class is almost full, and I know there are still students out there who are just able to register on Monday. I hope I don't end up with a waiting list, as I'm not keen on having to grade jillions of papers all summer!

I can't think of anything else, really, so I'll close and head for bed with a glass of water and Harry Potter.

Received in this week's mail

Dear Dr. Bad Ass,

I am pleased to advise you that I am recommending to the President and the Board of Trustees that you be granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor, effective July 01, 2008.

Thank you for your contributions to the University of the High Plains. I look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,

Associate Vice President

__________________________________________________________________

LET THE HAPPY DANCING BEGIN! THE NEXT ROUND OF DRINKS ARE ON ME!

Blog Haiku Meme

As seen at Brigindo's




Haiku2 for badassturtle
freecycle turns out the guy who's been taking all of you who have sent
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

TOO RIGHT!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Overheard...

... in a 7th grade English class:

Teacher: OK, does anyone know what satire is?
Student: Isn't that a guy with legs like a goat that plays a flute?
Teacher: (Laughing) No, that's a satyr, but I think we may be close . . .

Then till now

Thursday morning I had a lovely walk around the Big Easy. Blisters to prove it. It was warm, it was humid, it was breezy. Had a nice lunch, some beignets, a cafe ole, and took pictures of a statue of Andrew Jackson. Relaxed, easy, and pleasant. Got back to my hotel just in time to take a quick cab ride to the airport.

Thursday afternoon and night's flight back from the Big Easy was relatively simple, but the little commuter plane I took from Big Western City to High Plains City was delayed for about an hour. That put me well after bedtime getting home -- which was just as well, since Footslogger had gone to sleep early.

Friday morning I did make it into the office, got a bit of work done, and met with an advisee. This same advisee had stopped by the week before to make an appointment, and I noticed then the SSSTTTTTRRRRROOOOOONNNNNGGGGGG odor of pot hanging around him. I didn't say anything at the time, but decided I needed to, just for his own sake. So on Friday when he showed up, I mentioned that I had noticed a strong odor of pot hanging around him twice (because it was present again for our advising meeting).

"I don't know if you smoke pot or cigarettes, or live with someone who does. But you need to be aware that any run-ins you have with the law will have serious consequences for your student teaching placement, your possibility of eventually being certified to teach, and your progress through this teacher education program. I'm not judging you, but I think it is my responsibility to let you know about the consequences for this stuff."

"I know, I know," he said. "I'm a smoker. I'll be careful."

I add this experience to my response last week to the student who enrolled in my online class and then said he/she would have to miss two weeks of it, and would she/he be able to make it work? My response: "Missing two weeks of an 11-week class is a sure way to fail it."

Ooh, I'm getting ballsy here, folks. (said with sarcasm)

I also tried Friday to do the picture meme that's making its way around, but I got so frustrated with the formatting issues I was having that I just deleted the damn thing. I might give it another try tomorrow.

Conference Stuff

What's sad is that I had three glasses of wine over the course of several hours and I feel seriously tipsy.

Fantastic dinner on Bourbon Street. I'm thinking I might actually start attending this conference on a regular basis, cause I like the folks I met here.

But still, I'm looking forward to heading home tomorrow. After sleeping late, of course. It's a conference, after all!

Traveling Letters

Traveling Letter #1:

Dear Older Guy Eating a Sandwich in the Airport While Waiting for His Flight,

Really? At 10 Am you're eating a sandwich loaded with jalapenos and pickles? The smell alone is enough to turn my stomach, but dude. Please don't attempt to use the seat between us as a table, because a) your sandwich stinks and b) you never learned table manners and bits of food are flying around out of your mouth like they're being shot out of a cannon. That's right, I'm picking up my bags and moving away. 'Cause my mama taught me better.


Traveling Letter #2:

Dear Extremely Tall Young Man Sitting Beside Me on Our Flight,

I realize that your arms and legs are very long, and that you need somewhere to put your elbows while you peruse the newspaper. But dude, did God tell you that all armrests belong to you? 'Cause I'm pretty sure She told me that at least half of this one is mine!

Oh, yeah, and also? Slamming the door to the luggage compartment when your suitcase is sticking out of it into the aisle? Yeah, it'll break and a mechanic will have to come and fix it before the plan can leave, leaving you standing in the aisle and looking like a nincompoop. Oh, wait a minute -- sorry -- you already know that, don't ya?

All my best,

Dr. Bad Ass

Travel Guilt

Sitting in the High Plains City airport (free wireless!) feeling guilty about leaving Footslogger for a couple of days for a workshop in a big southern city. Send good thoughts his way, internets.

Weekend Bullets

I've been cooking like a crazy woman all weekend, which is always a fulfilling and exhausting experience. As I've been cooking, I've been doing lots of thinking about many different topics. Thus my weekend bullets:

• On Friday, I went for drinks with my dean and another colleague who was also up for tenure. It was a "congratulations" drink. So even though things are not official, the process is pretty much over for both me and my colleague. And we're in. Tenured. Movin' up to associate. Which leads me to think about how things will be different for me now. Mostly I just feel a big sense of relief that I don't have to put together a packet of materials every year.
  
• Cooking this weekend:
  
• Rye bread in the bread machine. For the second time, the bread I cooked in the bread machine rose and then fell, hard. Result -- a small, hard, solid loaf of bread. No worries. Slogger has decided he likes that hard, solid bread dipped in olive oil.
  
• Rye bread in the oven. Just to see if the yeast was good.
• Roasted chicken, which we ate for dinner last night.
• No-salt chicken broth, made with the bones of the roasted chicken. The recipe called for me to roast the bones for an hour before using them to make broth. Never done that, but it made loads of chicken broth, which I'll be using to make chicken and dumplings tomorrow -- plenty left over for later use.
• Minestrone. Yummy, veggie goodness.
• I had planned to use some leftover steamed sweet potatoes to make sweet potato biscuits, but I figured that between the various loaves of rye bread I've made, we're good on breads.
• I'm heading out of town on Tuesday for an important accreditation workshop, and I'm trying to get as much cooked up for when I'll be gone, so Slogger can take it easy and just reheat.
  
• We've upped Slogger's heart muscle meds recently, which leaves him with a bit lower blood pressure, feeling kind of "punky." But he just took his evening pressure (we take it twice a day, just keeping track of how he's reacting to his meds) and it was 105/69. Decent.
• Tomorrow I have a meeting that I'm going to skip. Is this because I have tenure? Because I want to spend as much time with Slogger as I can? Both, really.
• I talked to my friend, Miss Bliss, who has quit her job as a university type and is now very happily going to massage school. She's organizing a yoga/writing retreat in the mountains next fall, which I'm going to attend. I told her I know jack about yoga, but I'm looking forward to spending time with her and writing, and learning yoga is a bonus.
• I realized at the last moment that I hadn't prepared this coming week's minilecture for my online course. This necessitated a quick trip to the office and a hurried recording (yea, Camtasia!) of the minilecture. Glad I remembered that.
• Got rid of some super-spicy stuff on Freecycle. Turns out the guy who's been taking all of my spices, etc. was my buddy the post office clerk. Funny.
• I've watched more mens and womens NCAA basketball in the last week than I had in the previous 40-odd years of my life. Addicting.

That is all.

Experiment

I'm experimenting with feeding my blog to twitter. That sounds dirty, doesn't it.

The Great Salad Dressing Hunt

As a result of Footslogger's heart attack, I've been spending some quality time this week looking for low-sodium, low-fat alternatives to things like chili powder (did you know that the kind you buy at the grocery store has salt in it?), chicken broth (again, store-bought is LOADED with sodium, even the stuff that's advertised as low-sodium0, and salad dressing. This one looks like a great possibility. Plus, the creator of this recipe lives in the same town as Dr. Bad Ass' mom!

clipped from profbush.blogspot.com Joel’s Salad Dressing Number 1 Ingredients 2 ribs celery ¼ C raw ginger 2/3 C non-fat sour cream ½ C non-fat plain yogurt 1 clove garlic ¼ C rice vinegar Juice of one lemon 4 green onions (tops and all) ½ red bell pepper 1 peach ¼ t. dry mustard Onion powder to taste Fresh ground black pepper to taste Cayenne pepper to taste Add all ingredients to food processor and process until smooth. Refrigerate to allow flavors to blend and serve over fresh green salad. This recipe makes two cups and a 2 tablespoon serving has, 20.33 calories, 1.4 g protein, 4.06 g carbohydrates, .11 g fat, and 33.54 mg sodium.

Six Word Meme

Being tagged always makes me feel (even if for only a short time) like one of the "popular kids." As a former band dork, choir nerd, and drama freak, this is certainly a warm-and-fuzzy for me, though short lived. So thanks, Brigindo. I know you tagged me for an earlier meme, and I still have that on my to-do list (since it happened at the beginning of the hospital stay from hell).

Here are the instructions:

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4. Tag five more blogs with links

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play

Here's my six-word memoir.

Show me a hoop. I'll jump.

















Now I turn to the tagging. So, I'm going to tag Kathryn and Paul, Weezy, Jen, Russian Violets, and anyone else who wants to play.

Bronchial Problems

Almost as soon as we arrived back home in High Plains City, my coughing (which had been rather subdued, but persistent while dealing with Footslogger's crisis) elevated itself to a much higher plane. So yesterday I took myself off to see my local nurse practitioner, get a prescription for some antibiotics and -- as an exciting bonus -- a bronchial inhaler. Yes, that's right. Bronchitis. Lovely. It seems that bronchitis will now be an annual event for me.

If anyone can give me advice on how to catch a cold and NOT have it turn into bronchitis, I would be happy to hear it.

Back in High Plains City

Drove in this morning, with clear roads, blue skies, and a good bit of wind. It feels fantastic to be back home. Fantastic. And hairy. Why hairy, you may ask?

Because the cats spent their last two weeks pulling out big chunks of fur and rubbing them on EVERY. SURFACE. IN. THE. HOUSE. Not to mention the hairballs, but we won't go there.

Footslogger is doing well, still tiring easily, but hanging in there. We're working on planning, buying ingredients, and cooking low-sodium, low-cholesterol meals. With smaller portion sizes.

Thanks again to all of you who have sent your best hopes and good wishes. We're hanging in there, and trying to imagine how life will be now. Working hard to stay connected to each other and honest with each other.

Word of our release

It seems pretty certain that we'll be out of here tomorrow morning. So I'm making a list of things I'm looking forward to:

• Slogger's release from the hospital, hopefully tomorrow morning.
• sleeping in the same bed with Slogger
• delivering bagels and shmears to the folks in ICU, probably Monday morning
• checkup appointment with the cardiology practice, also Monday morning
• head for High Plains City, hopefully on Monday afternoon.

At the top of this particular roller coaster....

We were both scared shitless last night, so I spent the night at the hospital. Meaning I didn't sleep much, both because I was scared that Slogger was going to die, and because I was sleeping on a couch designed for midgets. I did sleep some. Just not enough.

Today the roller coaster is up high again. Slogger had his procedure, which he came through just fine even though it involved STOPPING AND RESTARTING HIS HEART.

Cringe.

He was loopy for a good bit of the day, but now he's feeling good, sitting up in his chair, and looking like nothing but himself. I'm happy, and even if it doesn't last forever or even for very long, it feels great.

I'm not even going to say a word about when we might get out of the hospital, but I do think we'll be back in High Plains City by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Ready to begin our new lives, whatever that may mean.

Or not.

We were in fine spirits this morning, expecting to be out of the hospital today. However. There is one more procedure that the docs want to do, one that will be instrumental in saving Footslogger's life should he have a second heart attack, so we'll be having that at 10:00 tomorrow.

Then we'll probably be out of the hospital, should all go well, sometime on Friday.

Scary times, folks. Very scary.

...and Moving Out (possibly)

Footslogger is

• down to one liter of oxygen per hour
• walking around the cardiac telemetry floor 3-4 times a day
• talking about rehab and resuming exercise
• texting nonstop with Precious Firstborn
• planning low-fat, low-sodium menus.

I think we're about ready to be released from prison. The cardiac surgeon dropped by today and told us he was thinking of having us out of the hospital tomorrow; the insurance company is starting to also push for us to be released.

All of this makes me very happy. Giddy, even.

Except. That it makes me very afraid. I know that I'm driving him crazy, but I can't stop looking at him and asking things like "Are you feeling dizzy?" "Any chest pain?" "Are you out of breath?" I want him to rest, to recover. He wants to push. That will be the story, I imagine, for the next 6 months. I hope we can meet in the middle somewhere.

And I've found that I have a new sympathy for folks in ambulances. I've been walking about 30 minutes a day in the park across the street from the hospital, and occasionally an ambulance will come by, with or without lights and sirens. When that happens, I shake my head, sigh, and mutter "I'm so sorry" to the folks inside and the ones hurrying to meet them at the hospital. I know it's not my fault -- that's not the issue. It's just that I have a new sympathy for people who are suffering from medical emergencies and for their family members. What a hardship that is. And how lightly I've taken our good health up to now.

Stepping Up

Today the hospital gods smiled on us. Footslogger was moved out of ICU and into a telemetry (sp?) wing. I gather that the main difference has to do with a lower degree of scrutiny, plus instead of being plugged into a monitor that gives constant feedback on heart rate, oxygenation rate, respiratory rate, bank balance, hair loss, armpit odor, etc. (ok, those last three are an exaggeration. But only barely.) he is plugged into a small box that transmits his heart rate to a central monitor on the wing. The nurses come in every couple of hours to check his blood pressure and oxygenation; plus they are carefully monitoring his intake and output, since he is on a drug to help him get rid of excess fluid on his lungs.

But the main part that he likes the best? He can get orange sherbet on request.

My fave? I don't have to vacate the premises between 6 and 8:30, which means that I can sit with him through dinner and leave once he starts to get sleepy. Instead of leaving at 6, coming back at 8:30 and sitting with him until 9:30. That was starting to get extremely wearying.

So tonight I went to Subway and purchased a tuna sandwich (comfort food) and as I was walking out of the store I found myself smiling giddily for the first time in a week. Really, all I want in this world is for him to be healthy. The rest means nothing.

For the first time since his heart attack, I feel certain that we are on our way there.

A Funny Thing Happened on Our Way Home

Friday night, February 29th: We pack up after work and drive down to the home of our hiking buddies, Skidmark and Balloo, for Skidmark's 30th birthday bash. Lots of friends, lots of beer. Our gift to Skidmark was a framed photograph of a group of hikers (her included) in varying stages of undress at Bryant Ridge Shelter in Virginia.

all day Saturday and Sunday morning, March 1st and 2nd: We drive into the mountains for the Rockies Ruck, a gathering of long-distance hikers held annually for the last 4 years and organized by our friend and triple-crowner (ie., has hiked all three big long-distance trails in the US, the AT, the PCT, and the CDT), Mags.

Sunday afternoon, March 2nd: Our world changed forever. We decided to drive the back way to High Plains City, driving through the mountains and small towns. We had just passed through Small Mountain Town (where I had noticed a big blue H for hospital sign, only because it was right next to a sign for a library. I always notice those library signs.) when Footslogger started complaining of pressure in his chest and difficulty breathing, nausea, and dizziness. We turned around and went back to the hospital in Small Mountain Town. They diagnosed him with a heart attack and decided that he needed to head for Big Western City, where hospitals with cardiac cath labs abound.

And the crying began. I mean, my crying, out of fear and shock. How could my husband, a fit, strong, not overweight, healthy-eating guy be having a heart attack? The doctor and nurses at Small Mountain Town talked about getting a helicopter out for him, but the weather was too bad.

Oh, did I mention that all of this was happening in the midst of a huge snowstorm that eventually shut down the interstate?

But back to our story. The ambulance came, with two EMTs, Shannon and Mark. They gave me the option of riding in the ambulance, but I decided to follow the ambulance in my car, thinking that would give me more flexibility in Big Western City.

I spent the next four hours trying to keep up with the ambulance (I eventually got stuck behind a snow plow and lost a good bit of ground there) and crying. I was reminded of the days around my divorce from Bad Andy, when my friends Kyle and Debra said they didn't know that anybody had that many tears in them. I'm not saying this out of pride, believe me. I tried to stop. But I was scared, and fear always brings out tears in me.

I arrived at the hospital around 4:30; the ambulance had arrived about 15 minutes prior. The cardiac surgeon who met us there had already started prepping Footslogger for cardiac catheterization. He stressed to us the need for speed in this, and we agreed, so they pushed him off to the cardiac cath lab very quickly, shunted me off into a waiting room, and we waited. Footslogger's sister and brother-in-law live in Big Western City, so they joined me to wait, we ate a terrible dinner in the hospital cafeteria, and waited some more. They finally brought him in to ICU. One of his arteries (the one often called "the widowmaker" -- I can't tell you how much I hate typing that) was completely clogged, so they performed an angioplasty to clear it and put in two stents to keep it open.

Today is Friday, and we are still in ICU. Every day he makes a bit of progress, but it is slow. He's had some difficulty with breathing, so he is on oxygen, but we expect that to be a temporary problem. Yesterday and the day before he sat up in a chair to eat; today he is going to be walking around the ICU floor for a bit. Slow and steady progress, that's what we're looking for.

I hesitated to post this, but I know you'll be rooting for him, internets. Positive thoughts, prayers, meditation -- whatever you believe in will be greatly appreciated.

Awarded

On Friday, I received a phone call from my dean, asking me if I would be willing to facilitate a small-group discussion during Monday's college faculty meeting. "About what?" I asked. Turns out the college is working on its contributions to a university-wide planning document, so faculty members are beginning the discussion about what our foci and action items should be. (But that's beside the point.) Of course, I agreed, though I was secretly thinking that there were other people (hello! faculty with tenure! or maybe administrators!) who would be more likely to be asked to do this than me. But whatever, I'm in for the good of the order, etc.

So I showed up at the faculty meeting on Monday, a little nervous and really unsure about the process, or even the topic. Turns out I needn't have worried, because here's what really happened.

Two university bigwigs showed up and said that they had an announcement. For Dr. Bad Ass (well, they didn't say that, but they said, you know, my real name). I was shocked and I'm sure turned red. Then the two bigwigs proceeded to read out a letter stating that Dr. Bad Ass had won a highly prestigious (at least at our uni), university-wide teaching award.

Knock me over with a feather. The dean lied to make sure I would be at the meeting.

CCR Misheard Lyrics

Thanks to nephew Rex for this link.

Bad Ass's Mom

Oooh! I will never say another bad thing about the department here that administers our online courses. Cause my mom? She's gonna be in my class! I'm teaching an online course this summer, on a topic that interests mom, and she's going to audit the class. Should be fun! Did I mention that my mom got her bachelor's degree in literature when she was in her 60s? She's the coolest of the cool kids.

Hi Mom!!

My signature

And here's how I did it.

Registration Woes

Now that I've been at home for most of the last week, coughing up a lung or two, I've had some time to devote to my online courses. I'm teaching a graduate course this semester, with a fairly small enrollment. The course was originally designed for a combination of intensive weekends (Friday evenings/Saturday all day) and online discussion, but I switched it to online because of the low enrollment, after which point the enrollment tripled. Interesting dynamic there. I'm having to put it together on the fly, which means I'm just about two weeks ahead of the class.

One of the techniques I'm using for this course is mini-lectures (voice over on powerpoint) that I record using Camtasia. The process of designing those has been interesting. Usually, I choose a topic that is related to the material in the assigned texts, or one that is only given a small amount of play in those chapters, and provide information on those topics. Only about 15-20 minutes per mini-lecture. I create a powerpoint, write notes underneath, and then record the lecture. Easy.

So now I've had a bit more time -- because of the coughing -- to work on my summer online course, which is on Literature for Young Adults. I teach this course regularly during the school year; this will be my first time teaching it online and my first time teaching it in the summer. It's a lot of work getting the course online, but I think I'll be getting some extra money for the course development (!).

So my beef is that -- because this course is also offered as a graduate course for teachers in the state who are in our literacy endorsement program -- registration is done through our off-campus enrichment program. That's fine, I have no problem with them doing the registration. But. The course doesn't show up in our registration system until the around-the-state folks (who register as graduate students) can register -- not until the end of next month. This makes sense, I guess, because we don't want the class to fill up with undergraduate students before the graduate students get a chance to register.

But the bottom line is that undergraduates are calling me and emailing me, all panicked because the course doesn't show up! And they can't enroll! Is it full? Would I please let them add the class? Because they are graduating in May and this is their only chance for an upper-division course, and if they can't take it the world will end!

Sheesh.

Sick and Snow

So I haven't been at work for the last two days. Instead, I've been sitting in my easy chair, coughing and feeling sorry for myself. I was hoping I would thus feel better by Friday, when I was supposed to drive 2.5 hours to Very Small Village (VSV) to do some professional development. Thing is, I'm not feeling better; in fact, I'm feeling worse. And the road to VSV currently is listed as "No Uneccesary Travel." I've already called the school (and nobody answered, which makes me worry) and left a message that I would not make it there because of being sick, and because of the roads.

In some ways, I feel guilty about it, mostly because I really like VSV, I enjoyed being there the last time I worked with them, and ... one of my former students is an English teacher there. BUT I'm relieved not to be going, because seriously I feel like I'll be coughing up a lung sometime soon, I have a fever, and I really, really, really don't want to get bronchitis again like I did last spring.

I've canceled everything for tomorrow, canceled everything for today except for my algebra exam (which was dead easy). Footslogger made me a delicious Valentine's Day dinner of chicken soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (white cheddar, which makes it gourmet). I will sleep, mess around online, read, and watch my humidifier do its thing.

Rest=Health

Iraq Withdrawal Date: 12,008

OK, I know I may be late on this, but check these out. First, the fantastic video/music/speech by Barack Obama and "various artists." Then the spoof of it focusing on McCain. I'm coughing up a lung, I laughed so hard.

Ten Years Later...

Last night I got an email from the editorial assistant for a journal I had submitted a manuscript to. It's accepted, with no further revisions. That in itself is great, but I have to share the long story on this one:

Fall, 1998: My first semester in graduate school. I'm assigned as a research assistant for a new assistant professor in my department. We decide on a project together, collect data, and analyze it over the following semester.

Winter, 1999 and Winter, 2000: We do conference presentations on our project, which get lukewarm receptions.

2001: We submit our paper to a top-tier journal, get a revise and resubmit, do revisions and resubmit, then get rejected.

2003: Repeat the process, complete with revising, resubmitting, and getting rejected, only for a different journal.

2005: Repeat the process, complete with revising, resubmitting, and getting rejected, only for a different journal. This time, I'm first author, as the assistant professor has now got tenure, and I'm an assistant professor in need of publications myself.

2007: Thinking we have invested too much time in this project to give up now, we revise it again, and submit it to a different journal. We get mixed reviews, and -- of course -- an option to revise and resubmit. We do that, of course, and then one of our reviewers gets a bit pissy. The editors ask us to respond to the reviews.

2008: We respond to the pissy reviewer, pointing out that we actually did do everything he/she asked us to do, and we wait. Then last night, the email! We're accepted! As is, with just one little correction in the reference page!

I'll tell you, I jumped out of my chair screaming when I got that email, and I haven't stopped grinning about it yet. Is this a cautionary tale? A critique of journal reviewers and/or editors? A story of persistence? Yes, yes, and yes. But damn it feels good to see that thing (which I really have grown to love) head out to print. Yeah, us!

Skiing Hungover . . .

... is not much fun. Especially when the wind is huffing and puffing like a huge gang of birthday girls obsessed with blowing out the candles on a million cakes. Whew. Luckily, with our season passes, we can feel comfortable leaving after only a couple of runs. We've already skied enough times to pay for our season passes, so anything else is a freebie.

Now I'm working on grading and commenting on reading logs from students in my online class. Interesting how there are HUGE differences in students' abilities to write summaries. Some are beautiful works of art; others are more like children's drawings on a refrigerator. I've graded four, will grade four more tonight after dinner, and then the remaining four tomorrow morning. Then I'll start on the next set on Monday.

Still, I'm enjoying the online class breather. I have to check in on the discussion every day, and of course there is grading, and lots of email to answer, but all in all, I kind of like this online business. I wonder, though, how it is for students in my classes when they can't see each other or me? I tend to be a "personality" teacher -- I make lots of headway with students based on relationships built over the course of the semester. I've tried to make my online class more like my on-campus classes by providing minilectures recorded with Camtasia, so they can at least hear me talking. I'm not sure how well that is working; when I listen to the minilectures, I notice that I sound like I have a lisp. So the recording is weird. I really don't have a lisp.

Anyway, enough rambling. Maybe I'll take a nap.

Raspberry Mojitos

After a late night of drinking (in which I discovered raspberry mojitos -- yummy! and I had too many of them!) and eating, we're hanging out this morning on our dual laptops, watching CNN, blogging. I've stopped in on my online course (check); Footslogger is hanging out on either whiteblaze. net or scubaboard. We're mentally and physically preparing ourselves for a lovely day of skiing, and hoping that the wind is not going to be too painful up there on the slopes.

I'm hearing good things about the process of my materials through the tortuous maze that is going to shape the rest of my career. You know what I'm talking about, but I can't really write about it here. Still with fingers crossed, but I'm breathing a bit easier at this point . . .

In the meantime, I think I'll be making raspberry mojitos on my own pretty soon ...

Here's the place to see how to do it.

On another topic, the writing has been coming along this semester, thanks largely to the freedom afforded by teaching online. I sent in revisions to a manuscript -- I'm crossing my fingers for that one, as I'm quite keen on getting it published. A colleague and I responded to an editor's query about another manuscript, based on some really pissy reviews; we have high hopes for that one as well. I've also made some connections for writing with a couple of teachers. One short-term (thanks Dawn!) and one long-term (Carol!). I love writing with teachers, for teachers -- it brings me back to what is really important to me -- impacting classroom practice.

OK, enough -- we have to get ready for skiing...

Grumpy

Everytime I think about something to write about on this blog, I run into obstacles... most of these are related to the fact that there are people who know me who read this. And I really don't want to ruin friendships, lose my job, or make myself look like an idiot.

But some things are going on that are making me crazy (to the point where I have to literally dig my fingernails into my palms to keep from shouting at people in meetings. I'm approaching some kind of menopausal fevered state, too, which helps absolutely none), and they are related to the following:

• Accreditation hell. Hell. Hell. Hell. Every time I turn around there is another email in my mailbox, saying "Oh, Dr. Bad Ass? Could you kindly analyze these data and write a one-page summary? And then could you find loads of paperwork from the last two years that you're not responsible for keeping and put them in a folder so we can have them ready in case someone wants to look at it?" I'm pretty sure this is all going to turn out fine, but hell. I'm in hell.
  
• Online course stupidity (this is totally me, not my students -- they've been great). I realized a couple of days ago that the rubric in the syllabus for online discussion is not the one that I wanted to use. Um, I had already used it to score online discussions for two weeks. So I had to 'fess up to my students that I made a stupid mistake, change all of the grades, and redo the syllabus. Dumb. I hate doing dumb things.
• In my College Algebra class (that I'm taking, certainly not teaching). ... oh, wait. I should explain that the last time I took algebra was 27 years ago? And I got a D? And my favorite part of the class was that I had a tutor with a Harley? (That should explain the D. Not much tutoring, but lots of touring around the countryside. ) And graphing calculators didn't exist? ........ OK, so I think I've established the context sufficiently. So there are these wrestlers who were sitting right behind me, until today, when I moved. See, Big Obnoxious Wrestler (we'll call him B.O.W.) (as in W.O.W.) kept putting his massive foot up on the back of my chair. Right behind my shoulder. Dude. I really don't want what you've been walking on to get all over my beautiful red coat. I contemplated telling him to take his size 14s elsewhere, but then just decided to be peacable and move. So today he comes in smelling awfully like he had washed his hair in Jack Daniels. Interesting. Wonder if the coach knows?

There's more, but I can't really talk about it . . . .

All will be well. All manner of things will be well.

It's All About the Pancakes, Baby

I saw this at Belle's and had to imitate...

Pink (while watching the debate)

I have recently developed a serious fascination with nail polish, for the following reasons:
1. It's pretty. And colorful. And did I mention pretty?
2. Keeping my nails polished goes a long way toward stopping me from indulging in my bad habit, namely picking at my cuticles.
3. I can color-coordinate to match my outfit. And it's pretty.

So here is how I occupied my hands while I was watching the California Democratic Debate:

Overheard ...

... while walking to a meeting:

"I hope the Weather Channel was wrong, and it doesn't snow; or else I hope it snows really hard and my history professor gets instantly snowed in somewhere."

Alright, Dammit!

My Band



Make Your Own Album Cover
1. Click on this link. The title of the page is the name of your band.
2. Click on this link. The last four words of the final quotation on the page are the title of your album.
3. Click on this link. The third picture is your album cover.
4. Add your band name and title to the picture.

Typing Story

Well, Belle got a bit freaked about the typing test meme going around, and I don't blame her. I, too, remember hearing that about all I could be expected to do was to type, nurse, or teach. If it weren't for my mom and her constant "You can do anything you decide you want to do," I might have believed that crap, too. But I don't.

However, Belle's post made me remember how I learned to type, so I thought I would post that story here. And then I'm going to go retake that typing test, BECAUSE I KNOW I CAN TYPE FASTER THAN THAT, DAMMIT.

I was married to my first (and very bad) husband -- it just occurs to me that he might be reading this, and that actually makes me smile! -- and was working as a department secretary in a graduate school in southern California. No I won't tell you which one, but it was in a religious phase of my ex-spouse's and also of my life. If that helps.

Anyhoo, there I was working as a secretary, and every faculty member in my department did his or her own work on his or her own computer. I had a computer, too -- in fact, it was this computer:

So there I was, working all day long, with very little to do except answering the telephone, and this computer to keep me company. So I decided to learn to type. I got a textbook, and did some practice exercises out of it, just to get the hang of where my fingers should go on the keys, etc. Once I had that down, and it was mostly about speed, I got my hands on an interesting book that I wanted to read and copied it. The whole thing. I still wasn't very fast, but I wasn't bored any more and I got to read a good book.

When I found another position in this school that I wanted to apply for, and I tried to use my department office manager as a reference, she told my prospective new hirer that I was "not a self-starter." Ha. Shows what she knew.

Anyway, I was only there for a year, and then I went and got myself a teaching job and never looked back.

Which brings us full circle back to those voices, you know, the ones that said I could type, teach, or be a nurse? Yes, I became a teacher. But I was a damn good one, people. And now I'm a professor (almost with tenure). So HA to those voices.

And I got a little faster:

81 words

free Touch typing

I thought I was faster than this . . .

67 words

Touch Typing

Best Day of Skiing Ever!

We took our weekly ski trip today, driving the 40 minutes to our local ski area. Light snow was falling in the mountains, the wind was down, and there was fantastic powder EVERYWHERE. What a blast! We even skied a black slope, because the powder made it doable. Footslogger was a maniac -- hurling himself down the slope, hooting and hollering like a teenager. Loads of fun, but now we're home and watching the second half of the Giants/Packers game. I don't really care about it, but Slogger seems to have developed a liking for Green Bay. It looks seriously cold there; but then it's supposed to get down to -7 (F) here tonight.

I'm promising myself not to go into the office tomorrow, as it is an official holiday. Since I have tons of writing to do, I'm pretty sure I can keep myself busy at home.

I've been asked to write a chapter on using a particular classic piece of young adult literature in an English methods class; this means that I'm spending a bit of time in the next couple of days re-reading said classic young adult literature novel, which I haven't read since junior high! Should be easy -- I have an outline written in my head, and the chapter is supposed to be short.

Now I must re-paint my fingernails. I find that if I keep my fingernails painted, it helps keep my bad habit of picking at my cuticles at bay. So now I'm all the girly girl, with pink fingernail polish. Whatever. I do kind of like it.

Risk Management and Global Climate Change

I found this video on Practical Theory . The geology course I took last semester was an earth-systems course, with an eye-opening look at data related to climate change and potential disasters. This science teacher's video is an interesting take on the "debate."

Week from Hell and Why I Have Trouble With the Election

Oh.My.Lord. What an insane week. Meetings and more meetings. Exponential increase in my list of things to do. And this is why I apparently can't find anyone I would like to vote for . . .

96% Mike Gravel
96% Dennis Kucinich
84% Chris Dodd
84% Barack Obama
83% John Edwards
81% Joe Biden
80% Hillary Clinton
74% Bill Richardson
35% Rudy Giuliani
27% Ron Paul
21% John McCain
15% Mike Huckabee
14% Mitt Romney
14% Tom Tancredo
6% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Skiing Today

So we're finally both feeling better, over our colds, and we're off for an afternoon of skiing. One of the best things about having a season pass is that we don't feel that we're wasting money when we go skiing for just the afternoon. It'll take us just a few minutes to pack up our skis, then we'll ski a few runs, drink some hot chocolate, and head for home. Good exercise, relaxation, and not thinking about work for a bit.

Really?

I spent a huge chunk of the day trying to figure out how to take a video I made for my online course (I made it using Windows Movie Maker, and saved it as a .wmv file) and save it as a Flash file. I tried a converter website; no luck! Apparently -- even though I have installed it -- Flash is not installed on my computer. I uninstalled, reinstalled; no good. It gave me a right good headache. And then I got my student evaluations from last semester, which were really good. Except for one seriously ugly comment.

Another Cool Thing I Discovered Over Break

Here's the other thing I was trying to think of last night but couldn't -- mostly cause I was watching LSU whoop up on OSU. Go SEC!!!

Freecycle. High Plains City has quite the active Freecycle group -- I've already gotten the FULL SET of Hardy Boys Mysteries. They're in the trunk of my car. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with them, but . . . I still have them.

Some Cool Things I Discovered Over the Break

1. Mozilla Firefox. I know. I should have discovered this a long time ago, but I didn't. I like it better than IE, though it doesn't work well for my E-Companion course author page.

2. IPod and Itunes. Footslogger bought me a Nano for Chrismas, and I luuurrrvve it. With a sloppy kind of love that makes me salivate over choosing new music and games, etc.

3. Watching tv online. I've already posted about that one, but let me repeat how cool it is to be able to watch tv shows online with a minimum of commercials.

4. Sleeping late. I can't stop doing it.

5. Starting my car remotely. Footslogger also bought me one of these for Christmas, and it's heavenly. I just point my little keychain remote toward my car, parked in the icy driveway or in the icy parking lot (wherever it is parked, there is PLENTY of ice these days). The car starts, warms up, and runs for 12 minutes. It's locked, so when I go out, I just unlock it, turn my key to On, hit the brake, and I'm good to go. Perfect.

5. Paperback swap. I post books I want to get rid of (paperbacks, of course). If someone chooses my book and I mail it to them, I get a point that I can use to choose someone else's book, which they will mail to me. This has ramped up my huge pile of To-Be-Read books exponentially.

6. Clipmarks. Makes it easy to blog about stuff I find online.

I'm sure there are more, but I just can't remember anything right now. I obviously spent too much time online during the break, and it's showing in terms of my lack of readiness for classes this semester.

I Heart Taylor Mali

Oh. My. God. Now I want to post every Taylor Mali video from Youtube.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Today

Footslogger is feeling a bit under the weather. We still ventured out for our walk to the coffee shop and our toasted bagels, but now we're kicking back and resting. Well, he's resting. I'm blogging and reading a book for this spring's class, and thinking about making split pea soup for dinner (with the ham bone from the Christmas ham!). "What a happy pig he must have been."

Never Mind

Well, the weather did not cooperate. It started to rain (yes, you heard me, rain! In High Plains City! The weather was above freezing! In January!) and shortly turned to snow, then the cold set in, turning everything to an icy mess.

We went shopping instead. We're looking for a nice printer stand for our new wireless printer, which I'm showing here using Clipmarks.



This printer is the coolest, because I can sit in my easy chair and print. I used to have to email something to myself, go into the office, and print it there. Now my printing is super easy, and I feel spoiled.
The possibility for skiing still exists for Sunday . . .

Cross-Country!

Maybe the three gin and tonics I drank last night were some kind of weird medicine, because I'm suddenly feeling so much better that I am totally up for a work-out. So we're going cross-country skiing. Well, I'll be doing nordic (cause I'm kind of a classical girl, myself), but Footslogger will be trying out skate-skiing. He was a speed skater in high school, and is not really happy with the straight-forward motion of cross country.

Two years ago, I bought Footslogger a gift certificate for a skate-ski rental, which he never used. (No comment on my serious gift-giving disability.) Anyway, we're going to stop by the local ski shop and see if they will honor that gift certificate, even though it has been expired for over a year. If not, I'll go ahead and pay for his rental. If he enjoys it, he'll probably buy himself a set.

In the meantime, we're hanging out, having nice pancake breakfast, and sitting in our matching recliners playing around the internet on our laptops. Maybe I'll take a picture and post it this afternoon.

Office Changes, T&P, and etc.

In spite of the sniffles and headache and general exhaustion that's been hovering around me like a storm cloud for the past week (a week! I can't believe it's been a week. I was really planning to cross-country ski every day this week. And all I've done is sit my butt in this chair. And my butt just keeps getting bigger, people!), I went to the office today to finish up my packet for T&P.

The good news is, I finished it. I'm still waiting on a letter about my teaching from Esteemed Colleague, but that should be in my box on Monday. I went ahead and dropped off all three notebooks this afternoon before I left. Fingers crossed, everyone.

The bad news? My office building is a MESS. Everyone and their dog is moving, which apparently requires walls to be knocked down, floor tiles to be replaced, and general havoc and smelliness to take over the place. A friend told me that the office smelled; I can't breathe through my nose at present, so I didn't smell a thing.

Oh, and this is kind of funny. There are lots of office spaces opening up, as the faculty from three different departments have moved to a different building. So the administration put together a list of faculty (in order of seniority, no less) and has been calling them up one by one, saying "Do you want to move?" I got my call just before the break, and recently confirmed with the administrator in question, that hell no, I don't want to move, have you seen all of the books in my office? So I'll be getting seven new hallmates this semester -- two of whom are the LOUDEST INDIVIDUALS ON THE PLANET. I guess I'll be closing my door a lot.

Seriously, keep your fingers crossed.

Completely Up to Date on Heroes

As you may be able to guess from the widget related to NaBloPoMo on the left side of this blog, I'm a fan of the NBC television show Heroes. I got started watching it on the Netflix site -- did you know that you can watch lots of movies and television shows on Netflix, if you have an account? -- and then I found www.hulu.com.

It took a couple of days for me to get registered and to receive my invitation to login, but now that I have become a member, I have found the site to be almost flawless. They have the entire second season of Heroes, so I was able to watch the whole thing, with almost no commercials. I say "almost" because each episode has a 15-30 second commercial -- always from the same company -- where the normal commercial interruptions would be. The commercials were only minimally annoying --- except for the Verizon commercial for their phone "Juke," the jingle to which was extremely repetitive by itself, and then once I saw the same commercial 6 times or so I was ready to yank out those dancers' hair. Strand. By. Strand.

So what do I like about Heroes? I'm always driven by characters, and these characters have interesting abilities. The foundation for the series is that certain people -- apparently at random, but perhaps this is genetic? -- have developed interesting and supernatural abilities, such as the ability to walk through walls, move through time and space at will, fly, move objects, find people, and to heal from any injury. Perhaps I have ability envy? Because I would love to have what one of the new characters from Season 2 has: anything she sees someone do (on television, thus far), she can do herself. The scientists call this "muscle memory." So far, this character has mastered making roses out of tomatoes, all kinds of kung fu types of moves, and some Jackie Chan tricks.

I think one of the cool things about hulu is that when I stop a video, even if I log out of the site, the video starts at the same place when I come back. So nice and easy.

In-Person to On-Line

So my spring course (I only teach one, because I spend OODLES of time supervising student teachers) looked like it wasn't going to make, with only 7 students enrolled. I queried options for teaching the course, because I knew that most of the students who had registered desperately needed to take it to complete an endorsement. I discovered that I could still teach the course online with a small number of students.

So I've been spending some time over the break translating my in-person class into an on-line class. It's actually kind of fun, since I've taught the class before, figuring out ways to take my discussion-heavy style of teaching into an online setting.

I really like routines in my classes. When I teach undergraduates, I always start class with a poem that we spend a few minutes talking about (not analyzing, just responding and talking). I begin and end class in predictable ways; I find that this helps me and helps my students know what to expect. SO now that I'm trying to recreate this in an online venue, I've developed a few things that will be taking place in each week of the semester.

I'm definitely going to be making a "welcome" video of myself and uploading it for students to watch prior to the beginning of the course. I'll be using Camtasia to record mini-lectures for them to watch before the threaded discussions. Each student from the class will take responsibility for moderating one week of discussion.

Anyway, I think it should be fun!

GO DAWGS!

So, I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. Chalking it up to being sick, NaBloPoMo (which totally fried me for blogging), spending fantastic time with Footslogger and Precious First Born, skiing lots, cooking, and generally super-enjoying the holiday.

Anyway,

Back to the Go Dawgs thing! We're watching the Sugar Bowl, after a fantastic steak, fried potatoes and onions, and several glasses of wine. I'm counting on you, Georgia!

Though I have to say that I love the Hawaii team too. They seem to have this inclusive community and supportive team culture.

Bullets and a Question

Well, yesterday didn't quite work out as a blog posting day, because of my schedule. OK, that's just a sad excuse. The reality is that I am feeling such freedom from having turned in my grades, that I can't focus on any one thing for any length of time.

Some interesting tidbits from yesterday:

• I walked on the treadmill for an hour (largely because my jeans are feeling a bit tight around the middle and I know I need to be getting more exercise to loosen them up).
• Wrapped presents, cleaned the kitchen floor, and did sundry stuff to get ready for Christmas visit from City Girl.
• Red and I went to a coffee shop for lunch, so that she could get some grading done and I could work on my t&p packet, online course, and whatever else. I spilled my coffee, which came close to drowning her computer (but didn't! hallelujah!) and did drown her cute little backpack, and then I apologized heartily and profusely, over and over again, ad nauseum. We ended up talking so much -- mostly about my online course setup -- that she graded NO papers. But I did get a lot done on my online course. Red also gave me a great idea for the introduction to my t&p narrative. And she bought lunch! So it was an all-about-me type of afternoon...
• We got back to campus just in time to attend a surprise birthday party for our dean, which was nice. Strawberry lemonade and some really dense chocolate cake.
• Got home in time to actually cook dinner. One of my favorite casseroles, involving ground turkey and eggplant. Yummy. And it was an opportunity to cook dinner for my favorite person, Footslogger, which is always a treat.
• Spent the evening at Rowdy Friend's house with friends that I don't get to see often, drinking wine and eating cheese. Which reminds me, this recipe for Walnut-Glazed Brie was a huge hit. Easy and delicious. One party-goer said that it was "elegant." Since I'm almost never elegant, I was quite excited about this.

On the whole, a busy day, so I hope you'll forgive me for not blogging about whatever crap I said I was going to blog about the day before.

Oh, one question. It's the norm here to write a narrative to go in the reappointment/tenure packet every year. It's a tricky business, because one doesn't want to just restate what's already on one's vita. Usually I adopt some kind of theme for the year. Now this is my tenure year, so I'm trying to do a nice job of it, rather than throwing it together at the last minute, as I usually do. I am using my completion of the AT last summer, after many years of plugging away at it, as a metaphor for my tenure trudge in the introductory section. I would like to include a summit shot with that, although my dean frowns on this type of fru-fru in t&p packets.

I'm leaning toward taking it out, because of the whole dean frowning thing. But another part of me says Go Ahead and Take the Risk. It's a Small One After All.

What say you, internets?

Tune in Tomorrow

Before I head for bed and a few chapters, I thought I would check in and say -- I'll be writing more tomorrow.

I'm going to try to come up with something more interesting than that I've finished my grading. Something about happiness? the academy? academic happiness?

Back, After a Long Absence

OK, so I may have been overreacting a bit to the end of NaBloPoMo.

I haven't posted in weeks, largely because I didn't have anything worthwhile to say AND I was tired of daily posting AND I've been snowed under with grading AND I had to study for my final exam in FOG (finished, thank God, and I think I got an A). In fact, I'm still not finished with grading, though I expect to finish up on Monday and turn in my grades at the end of the day.

So in the meantime, Belle tagged me for a Book Meme. And since I'm a sucker for Belle (hey, what can I say? She leaves comments!) and a reading freak, I thought I would give in to the posting temptation.

Here's how the meme works. (Just on a side note, it's only been a short time that I've known what a meme is. Isn't that odd?)

The rules: List five books that you have read in 2007 that you love. These do not have to be books that came out in 2007, but books that you (re)discovered/(re)read in 2007 that have become or are important to you. Link back to the person who tagged you. Tag five others.

I have this funny habit of re-reading books that I love. So although some of these books are old standbys, I re-read them this year. Others were new to me.

Pride and Prejudice. During the summer, I read this book about 5 times. I don't know why I was so enchanted with it, but ... I guess there's a reason it's a classic.

Friday Night Lights. A friend loaned me this one, and I put it in my reading stack but never read it. Then when we were getting ready to leave for our backpacking trip in Maine, I was looking for a small book with small print. I must always have a book on a backpacking trip, and if I can get one that won't weigh much but will last me a week or so, that's good. This one was fantastic, as it brought back so much of my experience as a high-school student and a high-school teacher in Texas, dealing with football players and football coaches and football fans.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I re-read this one, too, several times. Characters make any book for me, and I loved getting closure on these kids.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. OK, this brings my fantasy freak out of the closet. Kudos to my neices (also fantasy freaks! hi girls!) for directing me to a brand new series! That is long! And has bunches more books for me to read! With dragons!

Which brings me to my final book, Eldest. This is the second in a young adult lit series -- and I both love to and have to read YA lit, because I teach courses in it -- that satisfies my hankering for dragons, heroes, and engaging sets of characters.

This year I also discovered Library Thing (which I'll be using in relation to classes I teach in future) -- you can see most of my library here.

Hmm. Who to tag?

Dr. Brazen Hussy, Eddie, Female Science Professor, Jen, and RV.

Saffron!

Your Score: Saffron

You scored 75% intoxication, 50% hotness, 75% complexity, and 0% craziness!

You are Saffron! Those other spices have nothing on you! You're warm, smart, and you make people feel really good (and with no side-effects!). You can be difficult to get to know and require a lot of those who try, but you're so totally worth it. *Sigh*

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

The End of NaBloPoMo

December 1st! I made it! Now the questions arise:

• Will I continue to feel compelled to post every day?
• Will I actually have something worthwhile to post?
• Will my students actually take responsibility for their work? [oh, sorry, that's not about my blog, but I'm still annoyed!]

Whew. Very proud. Thank you all for reading and sometimes commenting.