posted 2008/02/29 at 18:40
Getting back to my normal activities is probably one of the things I need to do here in order to get healthier, so I'll do the Friday Five this week. A few weeks ago when I realized that I'd be doing a Friday Five on Leap Day, I kind of peaked ahead at Wikipedia's listing for this day to see if there was much of anything I could pull for the usual historical opener. I found some stuff that I thought I might be able to use, but I've kind of discarded it because there's only one lead I can go with here:
Today was Dad's memorial service up in Michigan. I love you, Dad, and I miss you terribly. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. How and when did you learn to swim?
I think the only real formal training I had in swimming came in second grade when we went to one of the local high schools (ironically enough the rival school to the one my sister was attending at the time). Given how often I was up at the vacation house my paternal grandparents had on Bois Blanc Island up on Lake Huron, though, and given how Mom always built small pools for me in the backyard in unused patches of her garden, though, I can't remember a time when I didn't know how to swim. I've never done it that well, and I don't think I ever will swim again for obvious reasons, but I can swim at least.
2. How and when did you learn to drive?
I first started driving school when I was 16, but I didn't get my license until I was almost 25. The driving school I went to had a deal where you paid a one-time fee, and in addition to the state-mandated number of hours you had to drive with an instructor, they offered to let you keep driving with their instructors until you were ready to pass the test. Well, I kind of used a whole lot of those hours because I really sucked at driving. Finally one day I almost ran a kid over going through the residential neighbourhood east of the school, and five minutes later I somehow had my graduation certificate. I think they just got sick of me and wanted to cut ties with me, but the incident kind of stuck in my mind for a long time there and made me too scared to drive. I got over it eventually, and these days I think I'm one of the finest drivers out there, but it was hard.
3. How and when did you learn to tie your shoelaces?
I don't remember the exact age, but I learned later than most (for all that I grew up to be so smart, I had difficulty with a lot of basic things back in the day), and I learned by practicing on a brick with holes in it through which Dad laced an extra pair of shoelaces. I can even remember the shoelaces being huge, and this absolutely hideous shade of green. (Green was Dad's favourite colour.)
4. How and when did you learn to cook?
I think I made my first Chef Boyardee pizza when I was thirteen; I can remember that I forgot to grease the cookie sheet, so the pizza stuck on like crazy. After that Mom taught me various things, and I watched a lot of The Frugal Gourmet and Ciao Italia and picked up things from the cookbooks there.
5. How and when did you learn to type?
I've never learned how to type properly -- I use my right hand for nearly all the keys, and keep my left pinky resting on the keyboard to the left of the tilde -- but I had classes when I was younger. Given that I was doing computer programming when I was four years old on Dad's Sinclair ZX-80, I think typing was just one of those things I picked up before I even knew what I was doing.
Labels: dad, fridayfive, personal
posted 2008/02/28 at 20:18
My family and I wish to extend our deepest thanks to those of you who have contacted us over the past five days with your sympathies and condolences.
I wish I could say more about what happened to Dad, but at this point all I can really say is that he died at 1300 this past Saturday, and that we were told that the preliminary cause of death was believed to be an aneurysm in his stomach.
As far as how we are doing, we are doing about as well as could be expected at this point. I went right back up to teach on Monday, and I've been busying myself with writing and starting to get answers to some of the three million questions raised by Dad's death. This is going to be a very long process, and it will probably never be over, but at least it's something that's helping me keep busy. Being idle right now is probably the worst thing for me at this point.
I'll be trying to resume normal blogging activities here soon, but I may not have too much to say about Dad for a while. There is writing for others and there is writing for one's self, and right now I feel far more comfortable writing about Dad for myself than for others. That will change at some point, but I can't say when.
For now, cliché as it is, I'd like to make one request to all of you, if you are lucky enough to be in a position where you can do so: please, please tell your parents how much you love them as soon as you can. Don't assume that you'll have the chance later, because you never know just when that opportunity will disappear, and disappear forever.
Everyone take care and be well. I'll be back soon.
posted 2008/02/23 at 15:05
My father died from an aneurysm earlier today. Apologies if I don't blog here for a while, but I have more pressing issues to tend to right now.
posted 2008/02/22 at 19:32
Sparky Anderson will always be my favourite manager of the Detroit Tigers. Happy 74th birthday, Sparky. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What’s a pretty good sign that your day at work or school is going to be rough?
I love it when I get to the classroom and can teach. The drive there, on the other hand, is bad enough because Michigan basically doesn't believe in road maintenance. When you add snow to the mix, it just gets worse, and the strong winds that have been whipping through this part of the country lately have made it increasingly harder for me to keep in my lane as I drive through the farmlands just north of the state line. I'd say bad weather is as close to a sign I get of a bad day at work.
2. What’s a pretty good sign that your day at work or school is going to be terrific?
Even with as much as I enjoy teaching, I don't know that I ever have "terrific" days. I have some pretty good ones, though, and when my students come up and talk to me about non-school stuff before or after class, I take it as a good sign that I've earned their trust and respect.
3. What’s a pretty good sign that you should probably eat out?
Must ... avoid ... double ... entendre. Even if something goes horribly wrong with my planned meal for the evening (out of an ingredient, drop something on the floor), I'm far more likely to order in pizza than go out. I seriously can't recall the last time I ate out on a whim; when I do it these days, it's planned out well in advance.
4. What’s a pretty good sign that you’re going to spend more money than you should?
When I don't make a list before I go out shopping. This trips me up every time.
5. What’s a pretty good sign that someone you’ve just met is going to be a pretty good friend?
When they don't run away screaming in the first ten seconds of seeing me.
posted 2008/02/21 at 21:22
I keep a small whiteboard next to my computer to write notes to myself on. I use the upper-left hand corner of this whiteboard to list topics that I want to blog about at some point, either when something happens with them or in cases like tonight where I feel a need to blog but don't have anything too pressing to blog about. Sometimes topics will only stay on the board for a couple of days, but sometimes they'll be on there for much longer. Usually I don't have a problem remembering why I wanted to write about a given topic, but this isn't one of those cases. Several months ago, for some reason, I wrote on my whiteboard that I wanted to blog about shoelaces. I must have had other things to blog about there for a while, because for the past few weeks I've been looking at the word "shoelaces" on my whiteboard and trying to figure out just what was so compelling about shoelaces that I felt a need to blog about them.
The closest thing I can figure out is that shoelaces played a big part in me buying a new pair of shoes last autumn. The tips of my old shoes had worn out a while ago, and there were huge holes in them that allowed water to seep directly inside. This wasn't so much of a problem after I graduated and I wasn't going out that often, but I knew that I didn't want the Michigan snow to have a way to get right to my toes, so I bought a new pair. (I think I wore my old shoes out so quickly because of the extra wear and tear caused by my dance games.) One thing that bothered me about my old shoes was that they didn't have the traditional eyelet lacing for the shoelaces; instead there were metal strips that ran along each side of the shoe along the tongue, with thin rectangular holes punched in at regular intervals, and I had to feed the shoelaces in through those. The original laces of both shoes wound up breaking on me near one of these rectangular holes, and I'm positive that the weird lacing design had something to do with that. (My new shoes have the traditional eyelets, so I shouldn't have worries there.)
For some reason, after the shoelaces on my old shoes broke, I just tied the laces back together instead of using the second pair of laces that came with the shoes. In fact, right now I have a huge collection of "second pair" laces in my closet right now, on a department store clip-hangar next to my sweatshirts. I'm not entirely sure why I would collect shoelaces like I do (get your mind out of the gutter, they're not safe to use for that), but perhaps one of these days I'll come across a really great pair of shoes and I'll be able to use up all of my extra laces when the original laces of that pair of shoes get busted. Maybe it's just that I can't bring myself to throw out things that I'll likely have next to no use for. I'm not really sure.
Labels: personal
posted 2008/02/19 at 22:16
Unless there's been a Red Wings game on, each of my past Tuesday nights has been spent with coverage of the major party primaries on the television behind me. Even though I don't particularly care too much who the Democratic and Republican nominees might end up being, there is still something about the process that captivates me. I kind of need to keep up on this stuff, not only because it does ultimately affect me deeply, but because some of my students have a passing knowledge of this stuff, and I want to be able to give them information. (The other day a student in one of my classes told me that she thought that Barack Obama was a Muslim.) I think I also just enjoy hearing all the political speak and un-spinning it in my mind. I guess it's somewhat akin to how I enjoy watching the television shows of people I can't stand (Craig Kilborn and Alton Brown just to name two) just to figure out every little thing that they do wrong. I'd like to think I'm doing it more to hone my skills of criticism than because I like to complain or because I like being miserable, but I know myself too well to say that for sure.
I'm still trying to figure out Obama's allure. I mean, nearly everyone knowledges that Obama is one of the most skilled orators of our time, but I don't agree with the current strain of thought that states Obama and Hillary Clinton are basically the same on all the issues. I don't think Obama is the Great Progressive Hope that some would like to make him out to be -- his recent support of private gun ownership after the Illinois school shooting particularly irked me -- I think he is one of the most liberal major political figures in my lifetime. Liberalism has practically been a dirty word ever since I can remember, and with the way the religious right has framed the national dialogue over the past twenty-plus years, I would have thought that not even Obama's rhetorical skills could result in him gaining this much support. Obama isn't left-leaning enough for my tastes, but he certainly leans further to the left than any other national political figure I can recall.
I'm particularly taken aback at how so many people who identify themselves as Republicans and even conservatives are supporting Obama, given how drastically Obama's views differ from mainstream conservative thought. Obama getting Oprah's endorsement particularly rattled me; given that Oprah was the person responsible for unloosing such a prototypical conservative like Dr. Phil on all of us, I don't understand how she could just turn around and support Obama in a way that politicized her far more than she had ever been before. Is the American public really so malleable that they can be so solidly swayed to extremes like those represented by George W. Bush and Barack Obama even when the fundamental principles and philosophies of the two of them differ so drastically? I get criticized often for being too inflexible with my principles -- I'll be the first to admit it's valid criticism -- but this election seems to be teaching me just how inflexible I am compared to most people.
Labels: politics
posted 2008/02/17 at 17:41
Somehow the news of Richard Zednik getting his carotid artery cut by a teammate's skate blade passed me by for a little while. After I heard about it, video of the incident surfaced in the "now playing" part of the YouTube homepage, and the first time I watched it, for a little while there I think I was as close to throwing up as I'd been in several years. I couldn't see any blood in the early part of the footage, though, and then later when I saw the footage on television I didn't see any blood there either. Still, something in me just gets sick whenever I know I'm about to see something like that, even if I know ahead of time that I won't be seeing lots and lots of blood. As much as I like to read horror novels, I strongly dislike watching horror films, and similarly I just don't think I have the stomach for those kinds of things in real life. Even knowing that Zednik is fine now, knowing how close he came to losing his life there just makes me want to never see that footage again, as much as everyone has been playing it over and over this past week.
I'm writing this post now so I don't have to keep watching the Red Wings lose yet another game here. (Why did they have to start the losing streak right when they start selling out the Joe again?) Even with the salary cap in place, I still think that the Wings are going to feel a strong temptation to try to spend their way to another cup by bringing more veterans in, and even though they've given away so many of their young talent and still remained a strong team, I don't like Wings' management's fetish with older players. The Wings need to get toughter, and I can only hope that Darren McCarty scoring a hat trick in Grand Rapids a few days ago means that he might get called back up soon. Part of me wants to think that the Red Wings might deliberately be dogging it right now just to try to get McCarty back up sooner, but I know that they wouldn't actually do something like that. I could handle this losing streak a little better if I knew that McCarty would be coming back soon, but right now it's gotten to the point where I may actually skip watching Monday's game when I've been putting a lot of effort into catching as many Wings games as possible this season.
Given that pitchers and catchers reported to spring training last week, maybe it's time to think more about the Tigers here. As much as I would prefer to go see a Red Wings game over a Tigers game, I'd be more likely to go see a Tigers game due to a variety of circumstances. The main problem I have with going to either a Red Wings or a Tigers game right now is that I don't have anyone to come to a game with me, and I'd really prefer not to go to a game by myself. My schedule is so unbelievably packed with work and other pursuits right now that I just don't have any time to socialize, and things won't get better in that regard any time soon. I don't even think I'm going to have that much time for myself over spring break, and I've applied to teach over the summer as well. The worst part is that I know that I could probably make time to socialize if I put some effort into it, but given my lack of luck in that regard in recent years, I'm kind of afraid to put myself on the line like that. I need to get over that soon, though, because it's just not been healthy for me.
posted 2008/02/15 at 19:32
This week's Friday Five at friday5.org is just too cheesy for me to attempt, and the only date-related thing I can really talk about today is that it's YouTube's third birthday. In place of that meme, I'll link to you my Johari and Nohari windows, if any of you would like to fill them out or look at the results.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2008/02/13 at 17:04
I finally got a "good" snow day yesterday. It had been snowing pretty much since I woke up, and as the afternoon dragged on things really got a lot worse, to the point where we had a winter storm warning here in town. I kept checking MCCC's Website to see if they were going to cancel, but they kept saying that they were open. Finally, just before I was about to go out and clean off my van, I called the secretary of my department to see if things were any better up in Michigan. She said that she'd call the person who makes the decision about when to close campus and call me right back, and sure enough the campus was in the process of closing up. That saved me a lot of hellish driving and gas money, although in order to make up for the snow day the universe seemed to turn everything else against me that day, from huge mistakes I made in the stuff I was working on at home that day to the Red Wings' awful performance that evening. I should be careful what I wish for, I know.
I dislike the cold and snow enough to start with, but these past couple of winters I have been getting the absolute worst cases of winter skin I can ever remember having. The back of my right hand is almost always super-dry and covered with tiny cuts, and no amount of moisturizer seems to make things better. What makes this all the more inexplicable is that I've been spending far more time indoors than out these past couple of winters since I'm not traipsing around UT's campus all day and all. I don't know if this has something to do with my age or something related to conditions inside the house, but it has become an absolute pain to deal with here. When I stop at Kroger on the way home from work tonight, I may very well pick up a couple of medicated mositurizing lotions, just to see if they'll help any more than the moisturizers I've been using.
Looking at the forecast ahead makes me want to go kick around Punxsatawney Phil. Perhaps I got spoiled by having a couple of thaws so early in the season, but it looks like we're not going to climb above freezing for a long time now. Between the blowing and drifting snow on the roads, snow-blindness (which has always been a huge problem for me since I'm so nocturnal), the cold, the dry air and what it's doing to my hands, and everything else related to the cold and snow, I'm beginning to question the wisdom of me staying in this part of the country any longer than I absolutely have to. I enjoy the familiarity I have with the Northwest Ohio region, and I still think that there's no more beautiful land on this planet than what you'll find in the upper half of Michigan's lower peninsula, but worrying about hurricanes or earthquakes instead of freezing my you-know-what off would at least be a nice change of pace.
posted 2008/02/11 at 20:38
In a lot of the business classes I took as an undergraduate, I would constantly run into these questions on tests where the wording of the questions and answers just completely threw me off. Some of the questions were missing vital information, some of the answers weren't very specific, and a lot of them used hedge words that made it nearly impossible for me to be confident with whatever answer I chose. Given that these were in classes where I was one of over a hundred students, and given how my teachers in these classes were adjuncts who were always short and abrupt in their dealings with students, it seemed foolish to go up during a test to ask for clarification. I tried asking for clarification a couple of times when I got these questions wrong, and the answers I got back were just slightly more polite rephrasings of "that's just not the correct answer" without any guidance as to what the correct answer was.
I always suspected that these instructors were just using test questions that had been prepared for them by the textbook company, but it was only about a month ago that I actually came upon one of these "test banks" when I got one along with the textbook for the business writing class I'm teaching this semester. Maybe it's because I'm a word junkie with a knack for finding all kinds of different ways to interpret words, or maybe it's because I'm so overly cautious about everything, but I can't figure out why these questions are written with such nebulous prompts and answers. Worse yet, I'm reading these test questions right after reading the corresponding chapters in the book, and I'm making notes on what I consider to be the important, overriding themes of the chapters, and then the test bank turns around and asks questions about some obscure statistic buried in the middle of a relatively unimportant paragraph. I don't know the process through which these questions are vetted and selected, but it seems really screwed up to me.
I'm not saying that test banks don't have a place in teaching, but looking back on my own days as a student I can now see just how they contribute to the laziness of some teachers. I can now look back on the tests I took in the Introduction to Business class I was in my first full-time semester, and the test bank questions literally look exactly like my instructor's tests were formatted. The instructor (a first-time adjunct who only lasted one more semester and who was almost universally despised by his students) must have just cut out the answer row from the test bank questions, copied that for the test, then filled out the answers on a Scantron sheet without even thinking about the appropriateness or quality of the questions. (He also taught from Powerpoint presentations that were obviously created by the same textbook company.) Being on the other side of the equation now, I understand that coming up with relevant, informative classes and methods of assessing what the students have learned is a difficult process, and yes, I think test banks are useful for instructors to have. Looking back on my own education, though, it seems like a lot of the instructors I had just took the Powerpoints and the test banks provided by the textbook manufacturers, talked for an hour and a half straight twice a week, and put little, if any, thought into just what they wanted students to learn and how best to help them learn those things. How can instructors expect their students to take the time to read and learn all of these things when they won't take more time to assess their progress than just running a bunch of Scantron sheets through a machine?
posted 2008/02/09 at 15:32
It says something about this election campaign that the candidate I'm most appreciative of right now is Mitt Romney, as his withdrawl from the Republican nomination means I'll only have about half as many candidate spots on my television to deal with leading up to Ohio's primary next month. Ohio doesn't look to be in play for Huckabee, and by the time Ohio rolls around I think Huckabee's momentum will be completely drained so McCain won't have any real need to buy more but a sprinkling of ad time locally. The Democratic nomination will still definitely be in play by the time of the primary, though, and although part of me feels like I should be excited that there's finally an Ohio primary that might matter, I am not looking forward to a month of dueling Clinton and Obama spots on every show on the dial. I got sick enough of those spots leading up to the Michigan primary (even though only Republicans bought ad time on Fox Sports Net Detroit), and I'm tired of watching the Obama and McCain spots that air on Countdown. Given how tight the Democratic race is right now, and given how close Ohio was in the 2004 election, I'm guessing that any moment now I won't be able to watch a half-hour of any commercial network on cable without seeing a Clinton or Obama ad buy.
I'll be skipping the primary vote, because there won't be anything else on the ballot that day and because I can't vote in the "official" state primaries because doing so automatically registers me as a member of whatever party's primary I vote in. I would much rather see Obama as the Democratic nominee than Clinton, but I'm probably not going to vote for him in the general election anyway. More to the point, I still remember several registered Democrats in my first-semester MA classes who got hassled by Ohio Republicans that year as the Republican Party challenged the voter registration of several people I knew, holding off on submitting the challenges until the legal deadline so that the students couldn't call off of work on such short notice to attend the hearings about their registrations. I can't help but wonder if Ohio Democrats might not try something similar with we Greens this year, given how ridiculous they were last time around in making sure that not even Nader's write-in votes would get counted. (Seriously, if they'd put that kind of effort into promoting their own candidate then Kerry might be in the White House now.)
Ohio's Green Party will handle its primary at their convention in April, although people who won't be attending can mail or e-mail a ballot before then. I think I may actually go to the convention, though, even though it's all the way across the state and there's no way I could reasonably make a daytrip of it. I'm still hoping that Nader gets in the race again, because I don't like the prospect of Cynthia McKinney winning the nomination; I'm still not getting a good vibe off of her. If Nader doesn't come in then I'll probably vote in the primary for Kent Mesplay, but I think the Greens need Nader more than ever now. Particularly if Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, people are going to need an alternative to the spectre of four or eight years of DLC neoliberalism, and even if there isn't a realistic chance of winning the presidency, at the very least we might stand a chance of getting that magical 5% of the popular vote that would give the Greens tens of millions of dollars of federal matching funds in 2012. I haven't been too directly involved with the Green Party itself since I first registered to vote, but more than ever now I feel compelled to do what I can to help the party along.
Labels: commercials, greenparty, politics, television
posted 2008/02/08 at 21:40
It was on this day in 1587 that Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed for suspicion of being involved in the plot to kill her sister, Queen Elizabeth I. Somehow I don't think it went quite like the BBC radio broadcast penned by Monty Python, but it's nice to think about. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five before it gets to be Saturday here.
1. When did you last use graphing paper?
I might have used some in high school algebra or trigonometry or even precalculus, but my last clear memory of using it is in eighth grade science. Funnily enough, my folks had bought me a bulk pack of graphing paper pads, and some of them are still on top of the bookshelf behind me as I write here.
2. When did you last use a highlighter?
When I was finishing up my MA thesis and highlighting bits of articles I'd photocopied. I've never been one for writing or highlighting in my books since I'm fussy like that, but when it comes to photocopies, I'll write or highlight however much I please.
3. When did you last cover a book?
Sixth grade, and only because it was required then. I try to save the paper covers of all the hardcover books I buy, though, even though most people I know pitch them out.
4. When did you last wear an apron or smock?
Third grade art class; when I started going to private school in the fourth grade, there were no smocks. (I only have bad memories of my art teachers at that school.) I could use an apron when I'm baking, though, given the messes I tend to make.
5. When did you last use glue?
If super glue counts, a few months ago to mend a figurine of mine. If this is meant to be Elmer's Glue, possibly eighth grade art class, maybe earlier than that.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2008/02/06 at 19:27
Twenty minutes into my class tonight, MCCC's PA system (which sounds about ten times worse than any drive-thru speakers I've ever heard) crackled on to say that all classes for the rest of the night were canceled. Not only was I not able to explain my class' next two assignments to them in depth, but given how bad the roads were at that point, I didn't even get home much earlier than I do on a normal night. Now I'm forced to consider whether I push ahead with the same lesson plan for my Tuesday/Thursday class tomorrow night, or if I cut that class short as well just so I keep both classes going at the same pace.
posted at 17:13
I don't like talking about the same topic twice in a row unless it's something on the scale of politics, but I can't help but write about the weather again today. My drive to and from MCCC takes a little over half an hour, and the intersection of US-23 and Ida West Road, where I get off of/onto US-23 up here in Michigan, is almost exactly the halfway point of my drive in terms of time. When I left the house a little over an hour ago it was raining fairly steadily, and between all the rain of recent days and the snow melting, we're actually seeing our street starting to have serious flooding issues. It used to be that our street never flooded, likely because we were all using well water, but several years ago Toledo mandated we all switch over to city water. I used to think the awful taste of the tap water was the only problem caused by this switchover, but I think the fact that we're not using well water any longer may be contributing to the flooding problems we've been having lately. (At least all the houses are significantly higher than street level, and very few houses in Toledo have basements since we're basically built on swampland.)
The rain was bad enough as I left here, and as I drove into Michigan it got so heavy that visibility became a serious concern. About halfway up US-23, though, the rain got heavier, and little ice chunks began to show up on my windshield. I literally drove right into freezing rain, and in the two miles before I got off of US-23 I counted a half-dozen cars that had slid off of the road. I immediately slowed way down and basically drove in a crawl up here to campus, thankful that I always budget a lot of extra time to get up here in case I run into circumstances like these. Things have since switched over to a heavy snow, and I can tell that driving home tonight will not be fun at all. Before I leave here I may try to get onto a mapping Website to find an alternate route home that doesn't require highway driving, because trying to drive home in this is going to be a serious test of my abilities. Is this the universe's way of getting back at me for saying the fog wasn't so bad to drive in earlier this week?
I can't say that I'm too happy with the college for not canceling class this evening. We don't quite have blizzard conditions here, but the snow is steady and the roads are going to be icy as all get-out by the time I let my class go tonight. If it weren't for the fact that I get paid by the class, I probably would have canceled class tonight just for the sake of my students. I mean, yes, part of the reason colleges have fewer snow days is because we want to get students accustomed to how few snow days there are in the work world, but the measures by which campuses are and aren't closed still feel way too against the students and teachers to me. Most of the people going to college are fairly new, less experienced drivers, and so I think it's in the interests of the school to be a bit more lenient when it comes to canceling class just to help keep the students -- and those who can't avoid driving in these conditions -- safe and secure.
posted 2008/02/05 at 17:21
I don't want to say that I dislike driving in fog, but it's not exactly my favourite weather. Driving in the fog in Toledo isn't so bad, but yesterday we had just a tremendous amount of fog all day long, and getting up here to campus proved to be quite difficult. I'm used to driving in the fog in the suburbs and such, where there are always lots of things lit up to help keep me on track. Up here in rural Michigan, though, the lights just weren't there to help guide me, and then to make matters worse we still had a considerable amount of snow on the ground. Between the whiteness of the fog and the whiteness of the snow, I had problems even orienting myself to where I was, and I think half of the time I was driving last night I was doing so merely out of memory of having made this trip so often these past six months or so. It wasn't as much of a problem as driving on icy roads, but it was fairly difficult. I suppose I should just be glad that all those years of video gaming have helped me with my reflexes, and that I still have perfect vision with which to see things. (It got worse when I drove home late that night in the dark, but I think it was actually harder in the daytime when everything was just so white.)
The fog alone would have made the day remarkable enough in and of itself, but then late last night as I was finishing some stuff up online, the sky lit up. Somehow, in the beginning of February, we managed to have not only a thunderstorm but one of the strongest thunderstorms I can remember having for quite some time. Perhaps I was just hearing the thunder better because there weren't any leaves on the trees to buffet the sound, but for a good two hours there we got hit pretty hard with rain and thunder and lightning. I'm just glad we didn't lose power, because I was doing some pretty important stuff online and a blackout would have really screwed things up for me. As if that weren't odd enough, we went from about 45 degrees late that evening when I came home from teaching, up to 55 or so while the thunderstorm was going on in the dead of night, and then when I woke up today we were back down to 45. We'll drop back below freezing again in a few hours, and there's a "wintry mix" in the forecast for tomorrow morning.
We seem to be out of the dead of winter at this point, which is important for me because it means I'll be able to go out to the garage to work out more regularly. The garage is only half-heated -- it's usually only 55 or 60 out there when I go to work out -- and I don't feel comfortable working out when it gets really cold out there because I worry that it puts me at a greater risk to get sick. The warmer weather also means I'll be more likely to go out to the local parks to walk or take photos, and yes, I will be taking more photos for the Website here soon. I just need to make time for that, and making time for things hasn't been so easy since I started teaching multiple classes this semester. I'm having to switch my schedule around here so I have more time during my "peak" hours, and although I hate doing much of anything before I've had the chance to shower in the morning, those early-morning hours are an ideal time for me to work on my creative pursuits. Maybe I'm just too much of a clean freak, I don't know.
Labels: weather
posted 2008/02/03 at 18:27
Someone has yet to explain to me the allure I've found in the past two years' Puppy Bowl broadcasts on Animal Planet. I'm not a dog person in the slightest, and I never watch Animal Planet any other time of the year. (We get enough animals coming around here to eat the food we leave out that I don't need to go to television to get my fill of animals.) There's something about the Puppy Bowl that just keeps me watching, though, and not just because there's nothing else on television right now besides you-know-what. Getting people to tune into the Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl would be an interesting countercultural project, although I have a feeling it would attract more people who disliked teams in the game than people who wanted to make any kind of grand statement against football or the Super Bowl teams. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that if the Bengals were in the Super Bowl, I'd be watching that instead of the puppies.
All things being equal, though, I am going to flip over to the game every once in a while just to see how things are going there. My feelings about the Patriots and the Giants aside, the fact that the Patriots might go undefeated kind of adds an historical element to tonight's game that makes me feel obligated to catch at least parts of it. It's just one of those things that I feel a strange compulsion to watch, like Barry Bonds breaking the home run record or something along those lines. I imagine it's the same way for anyone with even rudimentary knowledge and interest in sports; when you know something historic may be about to happen, you feel obliged to keep track of it even if you have no personal investment in any of the players or teams. I guess it helps that in my favourite (North American) sport, the Red Wings have been the team breaking all of the records in recent years.
There's another reason I feel obliged to catch parts of the game, which is that I'm sure that my students will be watching as well. Even with as late at night as I teach, I'm sure some of them will still want to talk about the game, especially with Tom Brady being a University of Michigan player back in the day. I try to keep up with the music and television and such my students consume just in case I can find some teachable stuff in there (you'd be surprised how much of my class I devoted to stuff from Chappelle's Show back when I taught at UT), and although I doubt I'll find much to teach from in the Super Bowl (especially since my students will be doing peer reviews Monday and Tuesday), maybe knowing a little about what happens in the game tonight will make me seem a little less dorky than what I normally come off as.
Labels: sports, teaching, work
posted 2008/02/01 at 20:00
Now, as a public service, I will repeat the introduction to today's blog entry for the hard of hearing: TODAY IS GARRETT MORRIS' 71ST BIRTHDAY!!! Okay, it doesn't translate so well to written form, but those of you my age or older and laughing right now, admit it. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five!
1. Which open-all-night establishment has been a lifesaver for you?
Meijer. Whether I need some doughnuts, underwear, or duct tape at three in the morning, it's just an eight-minute drive away.
2. What open-all-night establishment is closest to where you live?
The closest 24-hour establishment to me is a Speedway gas station about a mile away. Not counting that, there's a Kroger about five minutes away from my house that is open twenty-hour hours a day.
3. What nonexistent open-all-night establishment could you really use in your life?
Meijer and Kroger pretty much take care of anything I'd need twenty-four hours a day. Meijer's selection of entertainment media (books, CDs, DVDs, video games) isn't the best, but I do most of my shopping for those things on Amazon.com anyway. The only thing I need that I can't get from Meijer or Amazon is illegal to sell, anyway. (Ba dump bump.)
4. Which open-all-night establishment in your town is least likely ever to see your patronage in the wee hours of the morning?
The Wal*Mart a mile down the road from my house. If you don't know why, you haven't been reading my blog long enough.
5. Have you ever purchased anything advertised on television late, late at night?
I haven't, but back in the eighties Mom got me that "Where There's a Will There's an A" study programme, and back then I really, really wanted a Soloflex for some inexplicable reason. Something about the minimalist commercials appealed to me back then.
Labels: fridayfive
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