wii are familii...

Fucking hell... did anyone else get a Wii for Xmas? Has anyone else spent the last week inventing a whole list of new RULES because your children are incapable of extrapolating the rules of common courtesy to cover the realm of this new device?

* Do not STAND between the person playing Wii and the television.
* Do not TOUCH or POKE or STAND REALLY CLOSE to the person playing Wii.
* Do not offer your opinion on how the person playing the Wii might improve his or her performance UNLESS THEY ASK YOU TO.

They are driving me slightly insane.

Edited to add... the cats also need to learn that Wii-Time is not Kitty-Time. The eldest feline already got a Wiimote upside the skull (Bowling) as a reminder of what happens if you try to apporach the Humans when they are waving a Wiimote about. We'll see if she learns her lesson.

big vacation accomplishment #1...

I have purged my top dresser drawer of all faded, saggy, and unmatched black socks.

Hey... it's a start.

done...

Submitted grades for the last of my three classes tonight, with a full 1h 49m to spare.

It feels good to be done, now the only question is... how do I make the next three weeks or so relatively productive. As in... what do I do between now and the 21st besides play Wii.

There is house stuff... work stuff... long-term stuff. Not to mention a talk in Baltimore to prep for and family stuff that I'm trying very hard to avoid thinking about.

I should have a "plan".

twas the night after xmas, and all thru the house...

... everyone held their biceps, and all wimpered "ouch"!

Love the Wii. Just wish I had some better games. I hope that some of the pro-style sports game manufacturers have a tennis and a boxing game in the works that have more precise control and more realistic graphics. Because I really love the Wii Sports, but it could clearly be SO much better.

The only RPG I got (Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn) kinda sucks. And I have to wait until my Mom comes to visit (after new year's!!) to get Zelda and whatever else she bought me. Sad.

Anyway. The house is a wreck, and I have to think about grades again REALLY soon. Merry Xmas.

"i wanna strepto-cocco-mus for christ-maaaaas..."

The Girl has strep throat. The only remaining question is what fraction of us will be sick on Xmas morning.

Tiny sliver lining... the wife says we don't have to go to Church tonight.

2 big accomplishments...

* Physics exams - GRADED!
* Xmas presents - WRAPPED!

keep moving, nothing to see here...

I would post something about the Holiday Open House Craft Party we had at our house today, but that would require me to admit that I allowed such a thing to happen in my home, which I refuse to do.

pardon my nerdgasm, but...

SQUEEEEEEEEEEAL!!!!!!

i'm glad i checked before... you know... JANUARY!!

Apparently I'm presenting at the AAPT conference on January 21st in Baltimore. You know how I found out? By downloading the program and coming across my own name!! Nice of them to let me know. Jesus.

Anyway... a recent talk on the CV will help with the tenure review in the summer, so... yay.

brief holiday rant...

Have the people who design and manufacture Christmas ornaments ever actually DECORATED a Christmas tree? They need to hire some fucking structural engineers to inform them that there is a practical limit to the load that can be supported by a small, dead, evergreen tree. We have ornaments in our (absurdly extensive!) collection that would bend the trunk of a god damned giant sequioa. I think one of our Santa Clauses may be made of depleted uranium.

a mountain of molehills...

The sheer volume of minutiae I have to deal with between now and 2 weeks from now is... paralyzing. A meeting here, a document there, a letter of recommendation... my inbox is so jammed with Little Things That Need Doing that it's hard to know where to start. And that's not even to mention the Borg Cube stack of Xmas bins that currently looms unopened in the living room, ready to assimilate the house in festive holiday knick-knackery. Then there are 3 christmas concerts and 2 work parties...

I'm asking Santa for a personal assistant this Xmas.

festive...

Well, I survived the Boy's birthday party. More importantly, I survived the preparations for the Boy's birthday party - without strangling my wife, it should be noted.

WE NEED TO GET A TREE TODAY! EVEN THOUGH THERE IS A PARTY TOMORROW AND WE WON'T HAVE TIME TO DECORATE IT AND THE HOUSE IS STILL A WRECK! IT'S DECEMBER 8TH!! WE MUST HAVE A NAKED, UNADORNED PINE TREE IN THE HOUSE BEFORE THE PARTY!!

Every fucking year, people.

Anyway. It's over. The less said about it, the better.

icee...

The outside is frozen today. I almost slipped and fell walking on the LAWN, it's so icy this morning.

I saw some horses grazing on the way to work today. How do you think horses feel about eating grass that is covered in a half inch of ice? Does it hurt their teeth? Or is it like a frozen treat?

instead of goodbye he says "ciao"...

Oh boy... there's no seatmate I enjoy more on the train than The Class A Corporate Dickwad, who clearly intends to conduct a full day's business via his cellphone over the next hour and a half, loudly enough for everyone else on the train to hear. Hey, Buddy... I'm pretty sure that if you were as important as you THINK you are... they would be paying you enough money to actually live in Manhattan.

sitemeter tells all...

Ok... who is reading the blog from Dublin, Ireland? And do you have a spare room I can stay in when I'm on my sabbatical in '09?

these are the days my friends and these are my days my friends...

So, last night I went to see a "concert version" of "Einstein on the Beach" at Carnegie Hall... performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble, led by Philip Glass and Michael Reisman.

I was moderately disappointed.

Not that there weren't moments that were sublime and goosebump-inducing. But there were also flat out miscues, and saxophones playing it what sounded like the wrong key for a few bars, and big gaps in the singing while the whole chorus ran out of breath at once, and flat warbly notes by the soprano in the aria, and the violinist's second string was out of tune for one of the sections. I mean... I know it's a fucking difficult piece of music, but it's also the PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE. Seems to me they should be up to the task.

And I know this makes me a Philip Glass snob, but the performance was too short. It came in at about 2:50, WITH an intermission... and I'm sorry... anything less than four hours is NOT a proper experience of "Einstein". And I know the work well enough to tell when they were leaving stuff out. (Mostly bits of the "Trial" sections.)

But like I said - parts of it were awesome. "Prematurely Air-Conditioned Supermarket" had the original woman reading the monologue, which was very cool. "Building" was good. (The section with the saxophone that sounds like Pink Floyd.) "Spacsehip" was great. The violin-heavy parts like "Dance 2" were pretty good, although much faster than the recordings I know... and I think the violin part is too indistinct the way he was sawing away at it.

I still don't feel like I've really SEEN it, though... I don't think it's the same without the staging. The new director of the NYC Opera has promised a revival in 2009. I'll be there. AND I'll be listening for the mistakes, dammit... so let's get it TIGHT next time.


(PS> NEVER get the $19 balcony seats at Carnegie Hall. The view is fine, the sound is fine, but I have never been more uncomfortable at a concert... hell, I've never been more uncomfortable on an AIRPLANE. There is barely room for my FEET between my chair and the next row, and my knees were actually extending over the back of the chair in front of me. How old IS Carnegie Hall? Was it built when people were still really short??)

"Финансирование предпринимательского бизнеса или...?"

What in the name of fuck?

Does anyone know if you can set up a Mail.app rule to ignore and mark as spam any mail message with a subject line in Cyrillic characters?? I'm sure as hell not buying any black market Viagra from some former Soviet republic.

not as bad as it could have been...

The first "winter storm" of sorts has come and gone. Barely an inch of snow Saturday night, followed by an inch of ICE last night. I practically needed a blow torch to get my car thawed this morning, but once I got going, the roads were fine, thanks to the Very Busy Snowplows that kept me up all freakin' night. It is pretty bleak this morning, though. Standing at the train station looking at the tracks disappear into the fog and snow and ice-covered trees, with the abandoned-for-50-years cargo cars that sit across from our station... stencil some Cyrillic letters over the "Northern Pacific" signs and you could shoot a movie set in Cold-War-era Siberia.

I'm glad I know what I'm teaching today, since I'm really too damned tired to THINK this morning. It's time to start wrapping things up in both classes anyway. The reality of "December" has finally hit now that the calendar page has turned. I've been saying for weeks that we'll talk about this or that class topic "next month", but really... December isn't much of a month. I'm giving exams around the 18th , so I really only have 4 or 5 classes left in each course. Which is very exciting.

Usually around this time I start to think about next semester's courses. Not this year. Next semester will be pretty straightforward. Nope... I'm already planning my class for Spring 2009!!! The Administration is opening up my Introductory Astronomy enrollment from 25 to 60 in an experiment with "larger lecture classes". (Those of you who attended or teach at large state colleges can stop snickering over the thought that 60 students is a "large lecture".) I'm even going to get a TA!! This is unheard of in the sciences here, because we don't have a graduate program. (We'll have to hire some unemployed grad student off the street, I guess. Maybe Craigslist?) To celebrate, I've decided to make the course even more popular by changing the course title to "Life in the Cosmos" and making it an astro-biology course. Nothing draws the students in like ALIENS! Anyway, I love big giant faceless lectures, so I'm really excited. Sometimes when there are more than 40 students, you reach that "applause" threshold. Love that.

I may also be teaching a Science and Religion class with a guy from the religious studies department. Just imagine.

it's a jungle out there...

This exchange does not bode well for the future of a boy who already skips tiles at the mall, and who spent the morning of November 1st categorizing all of his Halloween candy into chocolate/hard/chewy piles...

GIRL: I don't get it, why do you always wear your shirts like that?

BOY: I just like them buttoned up all the way... Like MONK!!

I think we may not let him watch that anymore. He's too young to realize that the star is meant to be the "hero" and yet NOT meant to be a "role model".

whirrr-whirrr-WHIRRR-WHIRRRR.....



R.I.P Evel... thanks for the memories

(I think I actually owned this t-shirt too)

the grinch will NOT steal xmas after all...

I was starting to get worried that we would not be able to find one despite the fact that we had already kinda promised it, but I swung by Target this morning at 9:00 and they had 12 bright and shiny Nintendo Wii's that had just been put on the shelf.

I'm very excited... or, um... I mean... the KIDS will be very excited!

the end of the term is near...

I graded a stack of 20 homework assignments (6 problems each) in under 45 minutes today. Record speed. What does it mean? It means I just... don't... care... anymore...

eets notta toomah...

Something is wrong with my right eye. My wife claims it's a "sty". It feels more like the pressure in the vitreous humor has built up to around 35 PSI, and my whole fucking eyeball is about to BURST. Can you get a tumor INSIDE your eyeball?

bleak...

That's the word my wife used to describe Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother's. I guess I don't disagree. My dad is sick, he's lost maybe 20 pounds. My grandmother is taking care of him with my brother's help, and at 86 she is finally showing signs of slowing down. She's too old for this. My brother barely spoke to me the whole time we were there. I don't know if he's pissed at me because the burden of taking care of Dad is falling on him or what, but... anyway. Bleak.

Meanwhile, we stayed at my Mom's instead of a hotel, which we never do, but we're broke. My Mom shares a house with another woman whose life is like a ticket to the fucking Jerry Springer show. Her daughter must be about 26. She has 2 kids around the same ages as mine (9 and 4 - you do the math.) I'm not sure if they have the same father or not, but her ex-husband is currently in Florida hiding out from a warrant for a failure to appeal to a child support hearing. (His claim was that he went to Florida to "get away from the drugs" in Baltimore. Yeah. Because there are no drugs in FLORIDA!!) Now it turns out that her brother (also 26) has just had two kids. Two months apart. BY DIFFERENT MOTHERS!! I mean, fuck... it's not a CONTEST, kids... keep it in your fucking pants. And to top it all off, while we were there, my Mom's housemate had to drive to Annapolis at midnight to bail him out of jail on domestic abuse charges.

My wife is morbidly fascinated by these people. I try to pretend they don't exist. I think my wife is most appalled by the fact that they make no attempt to sweep any of this under a rug. They post court summons on their refrigerator like they are straight-A report cards.

Anyway, we try to keep our kids away from this household. The way they raise their children is just frightening. The 9 year-old boy's favorite movie when he was 4 was "Signs". By the time he was 7 it was "Saw II". He was a bloody machete-wielding slasher-movie killer for Halloween this year. Anyone see anything but prison in this kid's future? And the tradition continues. For a while on Friday Baby Mama #1 was over at the house with the new baby and her 3 year-old son (Yes, from a different father. My Mom says she's an ex-pole dancer. I'm not sure if she's joking, but god, I hope that's true.) The three year-old boy spent the whole time we were there in the other room playing "X-men" on the Xbox. It's rated "T" for Teen. We made our NINE-YEAR-OLD leave the room.

The point is, not only did I have to endure all of this, but I had to endure my wife TALKING about all of this to ME, and then again to HER relatives on Friday night. I find it endlessly tiresome as a topic of conversation. It pains me to even post about it.

It took us 7 hours each way to get from NY to Baltimore, which is insane. (We've made it in 4.5 hours before on non-Holiday weekends.) We did some Black Friday shopping at 5:30 AM, which is MORE insane. Black Friday was cute when it was something that only the truly dedicated crazies did, but now that you are EXPECTED to go to Circuit City at 6:00 in the fucking morning... it's just stupid. There is nothing in the world I want badly enough to stand in those lines. We had better luck at the smaller places like Office Depot and Old Navy, although we didn't really buy any GIFTS. My wife got a $29 printer/scanner/copier for herself... I got 2 new sweaters... who the fuck cares about XMAS SHOPPING??

We took the kids to see "Enchanted" later in the afternoon. It was cute enough. There are enough adult-targeted gags to elicit a chuckle. (Not to mention Patrick "McDreamy" Dempsey to hold the attention of the moms in the audience... and maybe no small number of the dads.) I won't give away the funniest bits. I'll just mention 2 things. Taking 2 kids to the bathroom THREE TIMES during a 1h40m movie? What the hell? I'm glad they weren't old enough to go see Lord of the Rings in the theatres. Second of all... there were NINE movie trailers before the film started. The one that caught our attention the most was for a horrible looking, formulaic Chick Flick called "PS, I Love You" starring Hillary Swank. Her husband dies and he leaves her all these letters telling her to go certain places at certain times... it looks really bad. So why did it catch our attention? Because it CO-stars, in what look like teeny-tiny roles, both Gina Gershon (Bound! Showgirls!!) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Denny - the "Patient McHeartTransplant" dead guy from Grey's Anatomy, also the dead husband-on-videotape from Weeds. I'm surprised he's not playing the dead husband in THIS movie too!) So the wife and I are both GASP!-ing out loud at the trailer, at the appropriate moments. We can probably wait until video, though. That way we can rush upstairs and have sex right after.

(I'm not sure I mentioned this last week, but I'd like to thank the producers of the [crappy] Grey's Anatomy spinoff "Private Practice" for casting Taye Diggs as one of the doctors on the show. Yay for Wednesday Night Sex! After 10 years, whatever gets things going... one doesn't argue.)

There was also a trailer for the sequel to that fucking AWFUL Nick Cage movie "National Treasure". You know... that movie where they had to steal the Constitution out of the Smithsonian's vault, because it had a secret first draft of The DaVinci Code written on the back? Or something like that. Well the sequel looks even WORSE. The wife leaned over and said - "That looks like such a trainwreak that we HAVE to go see it." It's the same as the White Trash Family with her! No matter how bad it is, she has to watch.

Anyway, the holiday is OVER now, and I have craploads of work and grading to catch up on. I took my grading with me on the trip, which was just the worst kind of self-deception. It's time to take a deep breath and dive into the pile now.

One Month Until Xmas...

ancient history...

I caught the early train home today, and instead of doing all the important pre-vacation things I was planning on doing, I'm reading my own online journal entries from 2001. Jeez. I was so full of shit 5 or 6 years ago. And yet... it's so much more interesting than THIS crap.

This question about the future made me chuckle...

"My wife wants to start doing chores and housework on a fixed weekly schedule. Funny thing is, I’ve been advocating that approach ever since we started living together, and she’s always flat-out refused. So apparently, I CAN win an argument with my wife, but only after 6 years of doing things her way unsuccessfully. I wonder what argument I’ll win in 2007?"

Answer? None. Maybe NEXT year...

'tis the fucking season...

First sighting of snow today. I'm kind of in denial about Thanksgiving being in three days. It's going to be a particularly bizarre and stressful one. Talking about it would break my denial-bubble, though, so I won't.

back from the Hamptons...

Gave my talk at the Old School yesterday. The lecture went over well with the students and there were lots of questions. (Turns out that one of the most questiony students was the son of Roy Scheider. "You're gonna need a bigger boat!" "Smile, you sonofabitch!" Chief Fucking Brody, Jr!!) Got to see a bunch of my old co-workers, many of whom greeted me with a "you look great", which I'll take to mean "you don't look too old, fat, or bald yet."

I was faced with an etiquette conundrum though. What do you think the proper course of action is when you run into someone who was only a casual acquaintence, whom you haven't seen in a year or two, and who has had DRASTIC plastic surgery? Do you ignore it? Do you say "you look great"? Or does that imply "you look great, now that you got your face fixed!"? But why would you get it and not want people to notice that you looked better? Or tell you that you looked better. The thing is, she was perfectly attractive before, and now she has crazy model-cheekbones and a pointy Michael Jackson nose that I couldn't stop staring at. It's odd to hear someone's voice you know coming out of a weird different face. I found the whole experience vaguely creepy.

HeNoBlogNoMo...

Poor neglected blog. It's not like I haven't been "writing". I write almost non-stop. Just none of it is HERE. I write book proposals and outlines and assignments and new course syllabi... When all you do all day is WRITE shit, it's hard to see the blog as "recreational" anymore.

Anyway, there isn't a whole lot of blog-worthy stuff going on. At least nothing I feel like going into detail about. My dad was in the hospital. My wife informs me that we are financially destitute. We may be pulling the Boy out of his school after Xmas. These are all things I would like to AVOID thinking about.

Classes are running smoothly. I'm a little behind on my grading. Nothing to see here...

I'm driving out to the Hamptons this week to give a lecture at the Old School. I really don't feel like it, but when you have a connection to a place run by an eccentric bazillionaire, you feel obliged to occasionally remind them that you exist. The puny speaking fee I'm being payed will barely cover my gas money, but you never know when someone there will want you to be involved in some crazy "project".

My wife hasn't had a job in weeks. All she does is KNIT all day, despite the fact that we are living in squalor. I mean serious, 11 o'clock news, take the kids, TLC-channel these-people-need-professional-help show SQUALOR. Every day I dread opening the door to see what new pile of crap will impede my entry into the foyer. I'm about to fucking lose it.

Let's see... what else? My play proposal is nearly done. I made the mistake of mentioning it in front of some colleagues at work, and one of the women from our theatre department cornered me in the hallway and basically demanded to co-write it with me. She scares me just a little. But she's a real playwright and will make my proposal look more compelling, so... why not. See, my secret is... I don't care about the actual plays. I just care about the IDEA of the play. I don't care who writes it, as long I get credit for coming up with the idea to have it written in the first place.

I'm doing a lab/activity thing with my relativity class today. It involves balloons and string and globes and protractors and 6-foot hyperboloids made of duct tape. I'll take pictures.

dark...

I think the darkness is depressing me.

At least I'm going to blame my lack of productivity on that for a while.

gettin' it done... or not...

Once again, I rocked the "guest lecture", to the point of having students asking afterwards what courses I'm teaching in the spring. Advertising! Gotta fill the seats.

The Slovenians never showed up. The Slovakians either. There were no Slavs or Sloves to be found.

The same cute chick is sitting across from me on the train this afternoon as was sitting across from me this morning. A less socially incompetent guy would find an opportunity to talk to a woman in such a scenario. "Hello again..." something like that... y'know?

video...

The lighting is bad, but hey... I was in an elevator.

as popular as ever...

This morning, I am told, there will be Slovenians visiting my class. I'm not sure why. In fact, it may have been Slovakians. But I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it was Slovenians.

This afternoon, I will be visiting a theatre class that is discussing Brecht's "Life of Galileo". I'm not sure what they want me to say about Galileo, so I guess I will just tell them what *I* think is important about Galileo. I assume that's what they want, right? Or they wouldn't have asked me.

physics ups and downs...

Two times in the past week, I've come across what I regard as confusing statements about the precise definition of the word "heat". Probably nothing that would interest any of you readers, but given that I'm about to start my thermodynamics unit, it was bothering me that these precise definitions conflicted slightly with what I tell my liberal art students. Well, a little research later, and it turns out that I've been telling a tiny bit of a lie to my students for several years. It's nothing major, but it's really fucking with my head. How can I have taken four semesters of undergraduate and graduate thermodynamics and still be carrying around misapprehensions about such a fundamental definition? Totally fucked up.

In other news, I made a two-minute long movie today about Einstein's Equivalence Principle. It required me to film footage inside of the elevator at school. Standing in an elevator with a video camera and a tripod violates all sorts of social contracts, and people feel the need to ask you what you are doing in order to alleviate their discomfort. The problem is, while I can explain the equivalence principle in a 2-minute movie, I can't do it in a 4-story elevator ride. I eventually settled on the mysterious sounding "Physics experiment..." non-explanation. The word "physics" generally shuts people right up.

Anyway, I need to finish editing it, then I'll post it to the YouTubes.

i've got your "advising" right here...

Registration is coming up, which means it's time for "advising". Let's see how many clueless students show up not having even GLANCED at a course catalog this semester. I have only one message for these students... take whatever you want, just stay out of MY class. I'm guessing that if the idea of a course catalog is over your head, Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" is probably going to give you a little trouble as well.

rhapsody..

TiVo has teamed up with music subscription service Rhapsody to let you stream music to your TV. I'm checking out the free trial now, and I have to say... it's kinda cool. I can't see a subscription service replacing OWNING music, but if I bought a little more music nowadays than I do, I'd consider the $12.99 a month worth it just for "crappy CD insurance". The opportunity to listen to a CD a couple of times from beginning to end before I bought it would save me from buying the occasional dud. And while I'll usually just p2p albums that I'm not sure about instead of buying them, this would be faster and more legal.

If you've got a TiVo, you should mess with it. You don't have to sign anything and they don't bill you when the trial is up.

(I just realized this sounds like a "paid promotional announcement". It's really not!)

LoShoWriPro...

I've decided that November is "Long Shot Writing Proposal" month. I found out yesterday while browsing Oxford University Press's website for their Very Short Introductions series of books (which are awesome, btw) that they DO NOT have a title devoted to the Theory of Relativity. I find this fact fairly perplexing, given that they have volumes on Galileo, Newton, Quantum Theory, and Particle Physics... as well as Cosmology. But even on their "upcoming titles" list - nothing on Relativity. So, I took a couple of hours, wrote a quick synopsis, attached a bio, and submitted a 2 page proposal to the address on the website. I can't believe they don't want someone to write a Relativity book for their series, so... why the hell not me?

Meanwhile, my proposal for the new play grant has been sitting untouched for a week or so. I need to finish plowing through these biographies for details and get the proposal in the mail by the end of next week. The end of November is just too crazy, so I don't want to still be working on it too close to the deadline.

Given that I'm up for "review" next summer - getting one of these gigs would go a long way towards making it look like I actually DO SOMETHING when I'm not teaching.

In other news, I've never succeeded in the NaNoWriMo endeavor, but I think this month I'll set a more modest goal of writing SOMETHING in my new collection of physics essays every day. (OK, maybe every weekday.) Maybe I'll even post some of the output here. Because WHO DOESN'T LOVE TO READ ESSAYS ABOUT PHYSICS?!?!

shindigs...

1) The work thing was very crowded and very loud. I'm finding it harder and harder to deal with that - crowds and noise. Time for "Miracle Ear". Had two JD's on the rocks and cut out kinda early.

2) The PBS panel discussion was fun and lively until it was punctuated by an Intelligent Design advocate who was determined to make an ass of himself in front of a panel who could intellectually snap him like a twig. Then it was lively and excruciating. Neither my "date" nor I was up for much in the way of schmoozing. It was hard to tell what sorts of people were there... not many of them looked like scientists. Maybe media types, or big PBS donors? Anyway, I didn't recognize anyone particularly famous there except for maybe Kathleen Turner. She got fat, right? I think it was her. I guess she narrates things?

One funny moment early on - we walked up to the front desk of this swank hotel and were greeted by the concierge with a fairly abrupt instruction of "Second floor...". What, do we have the word "SCIENTISTS" written on our foreheads? Maybe we're a couple! Maybe we want a room!!!! My colleague was unable to let this go all night. ("Second floor! We didn't even open our mouths!!!!")

Anyway - two parties in two days is MORE than enough for me. I'm sleepy.

why hasn't someone...

... invented a pumpkin-by-mail service? You specify the style (round, squat, tall) and the diameter or poundage that you prefer, and a nice fresh specimen is mailed to you on October 28th. Surely "Harry and David" or the "Fruit of the Month Club" could pull this off. I would seriously pay $20/gourd (plus shipping) to NOT have to drag the kids out today and deal with this shit.

In other news... I'm really starting to resent the fucking Girl Scouts. Between the piles of THEIR shit cluttering up MY house, and the fact that their activities and meetings and training exercises seem to fuck up at least TWO of my days every week (by demanding 8 hours of my wife's undivided, and I should add UNPAID time)... not to mention their annual contribution to my own morbid obesity...

Fuck the fucking Girl Scouts.

the good (....) and the ugly...

Physics midterm grades...

95
93
92
90
88 88
87
85
83
82
GAPING CHASM!!!
65
64
56


And I can assure you, a generous curve was applied to bring UP the lowest three grades as much as I possibly could. The difference between one side of the chasm and the other? Attendance!! Come to class... pass the exam. What a concept!

I need a drink.

maybe i'll get my picture in the "society" section of Seed magazine...

Now that I'm a famous radio personality, I've been invited to a PBS/Nova cocktail party at the Carlyle Hotel. Ok, everybody else in my department got an invite too, so probably every scientist in NYC has been invited... still... I'll be pretending it's because of my new life as a talking-head public radio expert. First NPR... now PBS... my plan to become the next Carl Sagan is proceeding nicely.

Perhaps I sould go shopping for a nice tan corduroy blazer...

sleep, fitness, hard drives, and other things...

I intended to blog this morning, but instead I slept - HARD. I mean, DEAD unconscious from the first stop after I got on until the next-to last stop from the end. Almost 2 solid hours of real sleep. Sometimes I doze off on the train, but rarely does it reach the drool-level.

I weighed myself in the morning today for the first time in more than a week, and... if I can believe my semi-focused eyes at 5:30 AM, the scale read 195. Which means that since September 1st I've lost 15 pounds. Which is great. Although there is a part of me that thinks I should look BETTER having lost that much weight. At least I know all this walking and starving is paying off.

I just got out of a dreadful work meeting. I can't even explain it. Let's just say it was the worst kind of corporate workshop you can imagine. You know... the ones where they give you handouts of the PowerPoint slides they are about to show? WHY?? WHY DO THEY DO THIS?!?!

Thankfully I got to leave early because I have some sort of family obligation that I don't really understand. All I know is, the wife needs to be somewhere at 6:00, so she is meeting me AT the train station with the kids and we are swapping. I get to put the kids to bed tonight, but it's not a bath night, so it should be easy. Frozen pizza, kids!!

I spent the afternoon making a major adjustment in my hard drive usage. I took nearly ALL of my music OFF of my laptop. I transferred it to the iMac at work. I will start syncing my iPod to THAT, so that I have all my music with me on my iPod, but I have 10 gig free on my laptop instead of 1.2 Gig. The reason? For one thing, I just hate having my hard drive be 79/80ths full, but for another... I want to be ready should I decide to "Leopardize" sometime in the next couple of months. I convinced the lab manager to buy a "family pack" of 5 licenses for the science lab, which only has 3 Macs, so... I will claim one license for myself. But I'm going to hold off installing until I read some reviews of other PowerBook G4 users' experiences with the new OS. My computer seems to be getting slower by the day. Unless the new OS is FASTER than the old one... and I can't imagine it will be... I may just skip it until next summer when I buy a new machine.

Anyway... how long before I want to listen to an album and realize that it's not on here and my iPod's battery is dead?

One final note - I made a very bad sock choice this morning. I think when I picked my socks I was planning on wearing a different pair of shoes, and then changed my mind without changing my socks... and so now I'm wearing brown socks w/ tan shoes and it just does... not... look... good. Not that anyone can see when I'm standing up, but it's the kind of thing that irks me ALL DAY LONG.

"sometimes, when i hear myself on the radio..."

The latest 15 minutes (ok, actually 8 minutes) of fame is up at the NPR website. Two things I have noticed - I need to learn to...

a) not start every answer with "Um..." and
b) not trail off so much at the ends of my sentences.

Other than that I thought it was ok.

very nearly a good day, and yet horrible...

What do you get when you take two awesome things, intersperse them with a bunch of irritating things, and then pack them all into the smallest space possible? A giant fucking headache and the worst night's sleep ever.

Awesome Thing #1: Rather than try to deal with unpredictable cellphone reception - not to mention the ridiculousness I would feel discussing nuclear energy very loudly on a train full of commuters - we decided to pre-tape my NPR interview yesterday. After my exam I rushed up to 42nd street to the studio. It was a very surreal experience... the whole glass booth, headphones, light up "On The Air" sign. As I got there, they were just finishing up interviewing David Cross. Therefore, I have decided that, by association, I am exactly as famous as David Cross.

Anyway, I think the interview was ok... not as awesome as my video-tesseract thing, but it should make a decent segment. They tried to get me to talk "policy", which I asked them not to. I basically dodged the question, so I'm hoping they just edit that part out. Oh, also I got a dig in at the President... not sure if that will make it in, but the one host said they may make that their teaser-quote. I'll let you all know when it hits the podcast.

Awesome Thing #2: Visited a colleague's English Lit class. They've been studying sea voyages and whatnot and the professor wanted me to come talk about the "Longitude Problem"... which oddly enough is a topic I'm very capable of talking about. I did a quick 45 minute lecture on the history of the intersection between navigation, astronomy, and timekeeping which actually drew applause at the end (which is always a little embarrassing, actually... but cool). When I asked the students for questions, the first question was - "Do you teach any freshman classes?" There were even a couple of those awesome teaching moments where you catch a student in this state of pedagogical bliss. So yeah - nice, right? And yet, packed into the same 3 hour block of time as the NPR interview, I was just completely fucking drained.

Irritating Thing #1: I had given a midterm exam in my OWN class earlier in the morning, and the ink wasn't even dry before I got an email from a student complaining that the exam was too different from the sample exam. Mind you - FOUR questions on the exam were taken VERBATIM from the sample exam, another four were differently posed questions on the same TOPICS as those from the sample exam, and maybe 2 or 3 more were what I would categorize as a "surprise". I informed him as much in a fairly terse email, and he STILL wouldn't let it go. His second email went so far as to say that an exam with too many surprise questions could "cost him an A and lower his GPA". I just LOVE the attitude that the DEFAULT grade that students are owed is an A. Here's an idea of a way to improve your grade. How about not undermining your professors' authority so they don't HATE YOU.

Irritating Thing #2: Another student missed the midterm completely, and emailed asking if she can make it up. And you know... emergencies happen and all, but this is a student with a history of this sort of behavior. Hell, she added the CLASS two weeks late. Fine, take the midterm late, get your C- and leave me alone.

Irritating Thing #3: Remember the very clear email about the online class? About how if you haven't posted anything to the class in a month, you should probably consider withdrawing? I had a student respond by saying basically - "Yeah, I know I haven't posted anything, but the online format isn't really working for me and I was wondering if I could do a separate project or meet with you individually or something instead of participating in the online forums."

What? Seriously? It's fucking midterm. Eight weeks of the semester have gone by and NOW you are going to decide that maybe the format of the class isn't what you had hoped? You did know that the online class was going to be... you know... ONLINE, right?? You have heard of a thing called Drop/Add... three weeks at the beginning of the semester during which this sort of decision can easily be made. But now I'm supposed to invent a some sort of personalized curriculum for you, in addition to trying to run this disaster of an online course? In a word... no.

I love how they refer to it as an "extra" project, too. "Is there some sort of EXTRA CREDIT project I can do?" Well, no see... it's not EXTRA credit unless you have done the ORDINARY credit. What you are asking for is CREDIT. Extra credit is for GOOD students who want to do MORE than the required work to get an A. What you are asking for is a special assignment that is more to your liking that will allow you to salvage a C. Show me you can do ANY WORK AT ALL and then we'll talk about "extras".

So you can see now where my headache is coming from, yes? I took 4 Advil when I got home, took a nap, and made a very lightly steeped Darjeeling tea at around 6:30.

Do not... not... NOT drink Darjeeling tea at 7:00 PM. Apparently it wasn't brewed as lightly as I had hoped, because I lay in bed at 11:00 and just... BZZZZZZ...my head would not stop. I think it was the nap, too. Nap + tea at 6:30 PM does not make for a restful night later on. I woke up on the hour and tossed and turned all night. And yet somehow managed to oversleep. And so - here I am, ready to start another one.

I really... REALLY need to get back to yoga. I could go for about 6 hours of Savasana right now. I've actually been trying to take a few minutes every day to loosen up my back... just doing a few deep forward bends and trying to get my hands to the ground again. It's nice that I kind of can still do it... that as tight as everything is, it feels like my muscles still sort of "know the way" and could get back into it pretty quickly given the chance. I should set up my mat in the guestroom and do just 15 minutes of downward dogs and simple stuff either in the morning or before bed or... well, that's the problem, is the WHEN. I want to get loose on my own before I head back to a real class and get my ass kicked, but when I'm "on my own" I don't have time to do anything but yell at kids and sleep.

I'm rambling now - this is like the longest post I've written in 6 months. I think I'm gonna go watch some computerTV now. Turn OFF the brain for a while.

no video this time...

Instead of a video extra for their podcast, the NPR guys want me to do a live on-air interview via phone on Wednesday morning. Which is fine, but I can't figure out how the hell I'm going to get to a phone by 7:30 AM. I may be taking the 5:15 in on that day. (Eech!) Or maybe I'll just sleep in the lab.

Anyway... I wore my nice Dr. McPhysics sweater today for nothing.

"bad cop" email...

If you are receiving this email, it is because my records show that you have not accessed the online astronomy course for 2 weeks or more, and that your posting has been infrequent or, in some cases, non-existent.

Monday 10/22 is the last day to withdraw from courses with a grade of W. If you plan to stick with the course, please email me and let me know what the situation is.

man at work...

I have a lot of crap on my plate right now, work-wise. And I am developing some really bad habits in the afternoons at work that involve 2-3 hours getting pissed away, 4 days a week. I need to make some changes. I need to find a quiet spot with NO INTERNET access to sit and WRITE and READ in the afternoons. I need to devote specific blocks of time to specific projects so that certain ones don't get completely neglected. The thing is... most of it is stuff I actually enjoy working on when it comes down to it. I'm just really mentally disoriented lately.

Blogging is, of course, included in the neglected chaos.

thoughts from the Apple Store...

* According to Google, the round trip walk from my office to the Apple Store in SoHo is 2.1 miles. Yay me!

* Every time I go to SoHo, I feel like a fucking hobgoblin. The entire part of town is like a big club that I am neither good-looking nor well-dressed enough to get into. I'm surprised there isn't a velvet rope at 6th and Houston.

* I played with an iPhone for the first time. The weird thing is... I've never encountered an electronic gadget and thought - "Gosh, I wish this thing was BIGGER".

* When I was there, it was shoulder to shoulder with people and there was some kind of hip-hoppy band setting up to play in the presentation area. I can't figure out if they were there to draw people in or to drive them away.

media star...

So the NPR guy called me again today. I am apparently officially "his guy" now. He wants to talk to me next week about nuclear energy, perhaps to make a 3-part series. It's only a matter of time before I have my own regular weekly NPR feature to take down "Science Friday".

I'M COMIN' FO' YOU IRA FLATOW!!! I PITY YOU, FOOL!!!

only 1 minute 40 seconds in...

...to the bootleg pilot of the "Sarah Connor Chronicles", and all I can think is... what the fuck would Sarah Connor be doing wearing a trendy little schoolgirl sweater and flouncy miniskirt?

Oh wait, it was just a dream sequence... maybe she was just fantasizing about dressing like the cheerleader from "Heroes".

So, it looks like this will probably suck. Which is fine, since Bionic Woman is turning out to be fairly watchable, and I don't really feel like I need TWO ass-kicking-babe shows on my weekly watchlist.

coasting...

I really have nothing to say, and not in a BAD way... now that the play is behind me, I'm sort of coasting towards midterm... busy by not overwhelmed... lots of little projects at once occupying my tiny little brain...

It's really weird that next week is midterm. I mean, I know we are just hitting the middle of October today, but it doesn't seem like the semester could really be half over. And yet.

Walked down to NYU today to pick up a big stack of biographies for research for my new play proposal (still keeping hush-hush on the plot!) so, I think I'll open one of those up and read on the train until I doze off. Forgot my headphones today, so the latest batch of bootlegged TV shows (Bionic Woman, Sarah Connor Chronicles) will have to wait until tomorrow.

OK... I found something to be irritated about. If you are going to plan a trip into Manhattan with your friend to go shopping, DO NOT take the train home between 4:00 and 6:00, or you will annoy all of the REAL commuters who have a REAL reason to go to the city with all your giant fucking bags and your talky-talk talking.

Better?

sorry honey... have to stay late at the "lab" again tonight...

Jesus, if I knew that THIS was a possible avenue of scientific research... I sure as hell would've picked a different major.

happy...

i'm supposed to be working. instead i am pissing away the whole day. it's my birthday dammit, and if i want to watch tv and dowload porn all day... why the hell not?

Dr. McPhysics...

It's raining this morning... one of those damp, foggy rains where the drops are so small they don't feel like they are falling... they just hang there in the air while you walk into them. My arthritis simply LOVES this sort of weather, and is throbbing in both fists and my left foot like a slow morse code signal. I'm pretty sure it's saying T...H...I...R...T...Y...E...I...G...H...T...

I'm wearing a sweater, which is really not like me. (It's brown, though... which IS like me.) I'm wearing it over a white shirt... collar out, sleeves unbuttoned at the wrist, maybe even a little untucked shirt-tail at the bottom. (I haven't decided if the shirt-tail is trying too hard.) It's the default outfit of Derek from Grey's Anatomy, actually, and while he IS around my age if not older, he is also a fictional character on a TV show for 24 year-olds. So, I'm not sure the look is age-appropriate. But it feels like England outside, if not Seattle, so... I'm sticking with the sweater.

I'm not sure I've mentioned it, but I've also dropped 10 pounds since the semester started. I'm down at least one if not two belt loops, and I even had to loosen my watch yesterday. The needle on the scale is dead on 200 now, and that's the cusp for me between "standard mid-30's guy waistline" and "fat guy". So, while I may not be looking "McDreamy" just yet, progress is being made. Five more pounds and I can hit the yoga classes again.

Here is my secret "Lose 10 Pounds in One Month" fitness plan...

DIET - between 7:00 AM and 6:30 PM, drink two enormous cups of highly caffeinated black tea, and eat nothing but one apple. Eat whatever the hell you want between 6:30 and 10:30 PM. (How much damage can you do in 4 hours?) But drink only water with meals.

EXERCISE - get off the subway 5 blocks early. Do not take the elevator at work, ever.

That's pretty much it. I'm not sure it's going to lose me any MORE. I seem kinda stuck for now. But at least I didn't have to do anything unseemly like eat vegetables or... sweat.

kid suck...

So I'm sitting here watching Kid Rock on Letterman, and thinking... is someone still letting him make albums? The production philosophy behind this new song "Rock 'n' Roll Jesus" seems to have been... let's keep adding percussion, horns, background singers, and rock clichés until it stops sucking.

It didn't work.

There's even a COWBELL for fuck's sake. There is no sadder last resort to making a song pretend to "rock".

theatrical debut...

Well, it wasn't a disaster, which is about how low I was aiming, honestly. In fact if you believe "people" (which I generally don't) the play was very good. And the reading as well. And I didn't suck. Not that anyone would have told me to my face if I HAD... y'know? Although, now that I think about it... all my students left BEFORE the Q&A was over, so... maybe I DID make a fool of myself. Thing is... usually I KNOW when I'm making a fool of myself. I'm not one of those people who makes a fool of themselves without realizing it.

(Wait... but if those people don't realize it.. then... maybe...!!!)

Anyway, I feel like it went well enough, I feel like people LIKED the PLAY, and asked the kinds of questions at the end to indicate that they GOT it. What the hell more do I want? And lots of people who "know" people were there, so maybe someday it will see a REAL staged performance.

Meanwhile, it took me long enough to pack up video equipment and to schmooze afterwards that I missed the 9:55 train, so... here I sit at 11:30 after a Penn Station dinner of a burger, Jack Daniels, and reheated-tasting fries. I'll get home around 2:30, and then wake up again around 6:30.

No wonder actors do so much fucking coke.

rehearsal...

...was very strange. Not in a bad way. I feel like I did a pretty good job of "absorbing" the other actors' way of speaking. Maybe even too much... because, I don't want it to look like I'm TRYING too hard. But I don't want to seem "out of place" either. Especially because the only actor with whom I have scenes is REALLY GOOD. Which is good. My co-author and I are excited, because we don't feel like either of the two earlier staged readings were very good at all. He blames the other director for not "getting" the play, unlike this director, who seems to. It was weird to BE directed... to be told how to FEEL when reading something. Actors and directors are weird people, I've decided. And yet it was pretty awesome to sit around a table and listen to actors talk about getting into the heads of these characters that WE created, and getting it mostly right, too.

Anyway, tomorrow night should be interesting. I want to get a good night's sleep tonight, so I SPRINTED for the 6:15 train home. (The next one isn't until 9:30!!) Tomorrow afternoon, I plan on picking up an airplane-sized bottle of Jack Daniels to throw down a half hour before the show starts. My first scene isn't until halfway through the play. I figure that should get me through the nerves, and yet still leave me able to read my lines.

I can't figure out if having a few dozen of my students in the audience will make me more or less nervous. On the one hand, I talk to these kids all the time, often reading the words of Galileo... some of the SAME words of Galileo... in the form of a dialogue. And yet, it feels more like... Come see your science professor make a fool of himself out of his element! Lose whatever tiny morsel of respect you have for him! From now on, every time you think of it in his class, you can snicker!!"

I exaggerate of course. Still...

Wish me luck tomorrow.

apocalypse parking lot...

nobody takes the train to the city on a sunday. i arrived at the station at 11:00 in the morning and the parking lot had 5 cars in it. the clouds were low and grey from the front that just moved through, and the wind blew the smell of creosote off of the old maintenance yard across the tracks, and i couldn't help but think... this is exactly what this place would look like if all of us disappeared in the middle of the night.

drama...

Three days before the reading of my play in New York City, and I've been stricken by an idea for my next dramatic work... almost fully formed... purely by chance... while flipping through a book on the bargain shelf at the bookstore. I have complete confidence that I'll get a Sloan Foundation commission for this, but I'm not blogging the plot, becuase I don't want it "out there".

I'm very excited.

balance sheet...

So, I'm teaching at the boy's school today, and I think I've mentioned that the reason I'm doing this is that I'm getting us a $2000 tuition discount. So on Friday's, I drive the boy to school and spend the bulk of the day hanging out in that neck of the woods... no sense making another 30 minute-each-way drive back home, right? Problem is... so far today I have spent $55 at Barnes and Noble and $88 at Kohl's. If I do this every week, I'm not sure I've really saved any money at all. (Although I guess I'll have a big pile of books and cool shoes to show for it.)

Anyway, sitting here in B&N, I'm supposed to be working, but couldn't feel less like it. I just wrote an email to a friend from college, and it has my mind wandering and feeling all nostalgic. Well, maybe that's not quite the right word... I was pretty miserable for most of college, and I don't think you can really be "nostalgic" for misery. But my mind is elsewhere.

I picked up the new Douglas Coupland book ("The Gum Thief") which probably won't help to improve my mood. Those are generally not particularly uplifting. What does it say about me if books by my "favorite author" kinda depress me?

I have a lot of book obligations this month. Next week, I'll probably wind up buying the new Stephen Colbert book. And then the week after, Oliver Sacks has a new book out about music and the brain. I'm not sure when I will be able to READ any of these books, but it's important to HAVE them.

It's after 12:00 now. Maybe I'll buy a sandwich.

right off schedule...

Courses have been going so well, it's been 5 weeks since I've actually bothered to look at my syllabi. Turns out that I'm five lectures ahead in one class, and two lectures behind in the other. And yet I persist under the illusion that everything is going just fine. That, folks... is what we call "confidence".

dr. dave: special victims unit...

I was sitting in my science lab this afternoon, working (or something) when I realized that I had been hearing the words "CUT!" and "ACTION!" being shouted outside my window on the street below. I walked over to the one open window in the lab, and looked out and...

"What... are they loading a BODYBAG into that van? Is... is that ICE-T?? Wait - THAT'S MARISKA HARGITAY!! And she's packing heat!!!"

Pictures...

The bodybag...



Ice T is tough, even when the camera is off...



Mariska Hargitay is kinda hot, actually...



Shooting the actual scene, for like the 15th time...

hey, einstein...

As of this week, I have officially hit the point in my relativity class where I can no longer come in and wing-it off the top of my head. If I do, I will turn into one of those fumbly, derivation-bungling professors, and I HATE those guys. So the only alternative is to actually start prepping for lectures. Which, quite honestly. takes all the fun out of teaching, because it makes it seem like "work".

On the bright side, though... there are some topics in relativity that I've never really understood on a deep, "gut" level, so maybe if I'm forced to teach them, they'll finally click.

Speaking of Einstein, I read an interview last week with the new director of the NYC opera, and he promises that the 2009-2010 season will include a full schedule of 20th century works, including a revival of Philip Glass's "Einstein on the Beach"!! I am so fucking psyched. Three and a half hours of arpeggios, counting, do-re-mi nonsense syllables, and schizophrenic-penned monologues?? I am THERE, dude.

look at me, i'm "collegial"..!

In the past month, I have volunteered to teach classes for three other profs. Two lectures on energy for the Sustainability class, one lecture on Galileo for a theater class, and one lecture on celestial navigation to a literature/history class.

Someone damned well better notice all this collegiality when the tenure review comes around. And some of the students better respond to the "advertising" and take my classes in the spring. I need to replenish the groupie stables a little before next year.

to-do today...

* photocopy practice sheet for Einstein class
* prep for guest lecture in Energy class
* fax parking pass application
* locate chapter on Copernicus for director of play
* post lecture video to astronomy class
* post lectures from yesterday and today to their respective classes
* find a good picture of a panda skeleton. (don't ask)

the new TV season...

Since it occupies so much of my time, maybe I should say something about all of the TV premieres that have aired over the past week.

Heroes: The premiere was... weird. The "Four Months Later" device is kinda lame. I take it to mean - "We will confuse you with flashbacks all season!"

Survivor: There is no indication that there is anyone even remotely likable in either of the tribes. Or even particularly hot, for that matter. (Ok, except for the black guy in the boxer-briefs). Oh, and speaking of underwear - how long has this show been on the air? 9 seasons? If you were a woman and were going to be on Survivor... would you not pack, like 14 sports bras? And fucking tennis shoes? Why is it that every season there is some idiot struggling through the first week of challenges wearing a lace demi-cup bra and high heels? You HAVE seen the show, right?

Reaper: Based on the premise, I had very low expectations for this show, but Kevin Smith really made the pilot work. It was pretty damed funny. Plus! You can apparently say "dick" on TV now! At least on the CW. (It's a whole new world. Thanks, Justin Timberlake!) Anyway, too bad Smith isn't directing the whole series. I expect it to go rapidly downhill.

Dirty Sexy Money: We watched this because it stars Peter Krause, and for no other reason. I don't know what it is about this guy, but I really, really enjoy watching him act. And not in a gay way, I don't think. As for the show... I found the premise pretty uninteresting.

Big Shots: I think we maybe only watched this show because Josh Malina was in it (Who was also on "Sports Night", with... Peter Krause!) The show is mostly forgettable, and can be summed up with the two words "Desperate Husbands", but I should mention one odd fact. Both this show and "Dirty Sexy Money" feature a subplot in which a rich, powerful man is found to be having an affair with a transsexual. What the hell is up with that? Is there some sort of cultural "moment" happening? Are transsexuals the new black?

Grey's Anatomy: I think this show has jumped the shark already. (Do people still say "jumped the shark"? Or has that phrase jumped the shark?) I have never bought for even an instant the whole Izzy/George thing. And the Lexi Grey thing just feels cheap.

Private Practice: I've lost interest in this one already. 40-year-old doctors are not as interesting or angsty as 20 year-old doctors. And what is the sense of holding a medical drama in a private clinic if every time there is a REAL emergency, they have to call an ambulance and take them to the REAL hospital?? There is a reason that doctor shows are generally set in emergency and operating rooms. Nobody wants to watch an hour of fucking strep swabs and pap smears.

Desperate Housewives: I only look up from my laptop when Eva Longoria is in her underpants. Which is fairly often.

Brothers and Sisters: I do like Rachel Griffiths, but only because she was in "Six Feet Under" with... PETER KRAUSE!! Aside from that, I usually suffer through the first 30 minutes of melodrama, then go take a shower. If I hated my family that much I would just move out of state and not talk to them. Oh wait! I did that!!

Bionic Woman: I think I can already write the Bionic Woman drinking game. Bionic Woman leaps between two buildings, or over a deep crevasse - DRINK!! Bionic Woman runs in fast motion - DRINK!! Bionic Woman uses super-Terminator-eyeball-scope-vision - DRINK!!! I mean seriously... how many different ways can she jump, run, and kick ass? What else is there for her to do? Didn't the original bionic serieses run out of ideas halfway through the first season too? (Steve Austin jumps over a fence!!! ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch...)

i really need to think of...

... something better to do on Monday mornings than to recap the weekend on the blog. It's usually not something I want to "re-live".

* Saturday: Garlic Festival. Sure it sounds good on paper, but the crowds at this place totally ruined any enjoyment we would have gotten out of the experience. The lines for food were like waiting in line for a ride at fucking Disneyworld. It took me 20 minutes to get a lemonade. Insane.

* Sunday: Yardwork. Mowed the lawn and cut down a half-dead 20' pine tree that has been creeping up on our pawer and cable lines for the past couple of years. I have to say - Lorax aside - that's a pretty satisfying feeling.

* Today: Suspense. Dave oversleeps! Should he wait for the later train? No, he's going to try to make it! Zooom! Screeech! Look at him go. He pulls in the the station in record time, plenty of time to get to the... BUT WAIT! Today is October 1st, and he forgot to buy his monthly ticket! He dashes into the ticket shelter. One of the machines is broken! (DRAMATIC CHORD!) He waits nervously for the other customers... one eye on the tracks. Finally it's his turn. Frantically, he pushes the buttons... beep, boop... "please insert card"... What's that? A light on the tracks! "Bank authorization in progress"... TOOT! TOOT!... "Your ticket and receipt are now printing" CHUGGAGHUGGA... TOOOOOT! He grabs the ticket... (damn the receipt!) and springs out the door to the platform as the train pulls to a stop. THE DAY IS SAVED!!

So, anyway. Here I am.

Things in general continue to go well. I have a little cold/throat thing, but it isn't amounting to anything debilitating, so I plan to just use it as an excuse to end class 15 min early.

(As if to punish me for saying that things are going well, the conductor just announced that the rear engine on the train just died!)

As the date of the reading approaches, I've decided to take advantage of my newfound fame and invite the NPR producer who interviewed me a couple of weeks ago. I figure, I don't have that many "connections"... might as well play the ones I DO have.

The first committee meeting of the semester is tomorrow. I will pretend to be inconvenienced while at the same time secretly enjoying the excuse to come home late.

(The helpful conductor informs us that yes... the engine is dead. He neglects to give any indication of what they might DO about this fact.)

I'm trying to teach myself Final Cut on the Mac at work. So naturally I did what any good nerd would do - I bought a $30 book. Then the next day I found an even BETTER book for $40!! There is no problem that an expensive enough book can't solve.

We're moving now, and they seem to be trying to make up for lost time. Because what I really need is the excitement of a DERAILMENT to really perk up the morning.

lessons from the first grade...

Before they learn about science, first graders need to learn that...

"Umm... one time... when we were... when I was... um... we were driving in the car... umm... and a DEER ran out into the road and we hit it right in the ribs but it lived"...

is not, strictly speaking, a "QUESTION".

we like it when nothing happens...

I was not asked to do any performance art, or teach any preschoolers, or cover someone else's class, or go to a meeting and pretend to know what I'm talking about today.

Finally.

mostly "fret"...

This afternoon, I met with the director of my play to discuss the staged "page-in-hand" reading next month. Few things make me feel like more of a fake than discussing this play as if I had something to do with writing it. I explained to her that basically what happened was... I thought of an idea for a play... I got a commission to write it... then I went to my friend who I drafted into "collaborating" with me and said - " Here... write a play about this guy and this guy, where this this and this happens" - and he wrote it. No more than 500 words of the script are written by me, and those that are written by me, I all but plagiarized from Galileo and Copernicus! She says that what I did was the hard part of writing, but it really doesn't feel like it.

Anyway, the reading is in less than a month and she has assembled most of the actors for the very small cast, but today she somehow latched onto the idea of having ME read the part of Galileo. And the more she talks about it, the more excited she gets.

This idea fills me with dread.

I don't know why. I don't know why reading a play in front of an audience is something different from reading Galileo's Dialogues in front of a lecture hall, but it is. Very much so. I'm kinda hoping my wife comes up with some reason that I can't make it to the rehearsal on Sunday.

Even if I can overcome the perspiration-inducing thought of doing a dramatic reading with a bunch of real-actors, it bums me out that I won't be able to SEE the play. Especially since I just found out that one of our music profs will be providing the incidental music and soundtrack live on piano using the music of Philip Glass! Shit... I'd rather be doing HIS job!!

I can't think of anything else to write about today, since now my brain is fully occupied by this new development. Stay tuned for more news about my dramatic stage debut and increasingly bizarre life.

(i'm an) old man, look at my life...

The astronomy lecture today kinda sucked. I blame the fact that only 5 or 6 students showed up. The smaller the audience is that I'm speaking to, the faster I talk. As a result, I packed what is often a 1-hour and 20-minute lecture into 50 minutes. Dr. Dave, now with more Zoom-Zoom!

Oh well, at least that means it will take less time to edit the podcast.

So, I'm heading home even later than expected today. I walked down to the PATH station after my late lecture only to find the platform PACKED with people, and the PA announcing extensive delays due to "a track condition". (Did it melt? Is it on fire? Has it been stolen? TELL US THE CONDITION OF THE TRACK!!) I wasn't in the mood to tangle with a crowd like that, so I went back to my office!

I'm in no real hurry to get home, except for the fact that the season premiere of "Heroes" airs tonite. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here yet, but the wife and I bought into the hype over the summer, and got our hands on the DVDs and we are HOOKED. We watched all 23 episodes of season one in a week and a half - no exaggeration. We're particularly excited about this season given that fucking "Lost" is not airing any new episodes at all until fucking FEBRUARY. So at least our supernatural-mindfuck TV-niche is filled with something for a few months in the meantime.

(Why, on a day like today, when I have forgoteen my headphones, must I find myself seated across from New Jersey Asshole Divorced Dad while he disciplines his 7 year old via his Treo?? If I stuck both ends of a USB cable in my ear, would it help?)

We still aren't 100% sure what new shows we'll be buying into. "Cane" looks good. I'll probably give the "Bionic Woman" an episode or two. The only thing we've decided for sure is that we are finally giving up on "ER", a decision which is, in my opinion, at least 4 years overdue.

In other news, over the past 3 months, my arthritis has advanced from a nuisance to a chronic condition. Many days I'm in pain from my left shoulder, through the elbow, all the way down to the fingers... and the first joint on my left index finger is stiff and painful all day pretty much every day. My ankles can now reliably predict the weather. I'm considering finally seeing a doctor about it... mostly just to get some official permission to take 2 Aleve at a time instead of one.

Thinking back to my Mom, I'm exactly the same age she was when I used to mock her for predicting the weather with her aches and pains. I'll be 38 in a few weeks, and... in the words of my wife... "OMG, That sounds SO MUCH OLDER than 37!!!". And somehow, it's true.

Anyway. This old man could use a train nap.

status? totally quo...

Still suffering from a real dearth of bloggable content. The semester is starting to really kick in... mettings are popping up all over the calendar... some weeks are starting to fill. My play is in a few weeks, and I got my annual invitation to visit the Old School to talk about the end of the universe. Busy.

Today I'm giving a lecture for my online astronomy class. I really only expect two or three people to show up. So, in addition to the astronomy kids, I invited all of the students from the Einstein class and bribed them with 5 bonus exam points. I expect at least FOUR of them to come. There are a lot more groupies/suckups in that one.

I plan on going all-out with the AV on this one. Not only am I recording the audio with my fancy new lapel mic / iPod setup, but I'll be recording the Keynote slides with Profcast, and setting up TWO video cameras - one on a wide shot, one on a tight shot. I want to experiment with Final Cut and see how long it takes me to edit down a 90 minute lecture with multiple camera angles. Not that I plan to do this often... but there are enough "pivotal lectures" that I give 3 or 4 times a year, that it would be really nice to say - hey kids... go online and watch this lecture!

Then tomorrow, I'm teaching a colleague's class, and giving a lecture on the Conservation of Energy. Hell, I should videotape that one too. But for now, I need to make some damned handouts for his class. I should really do that now.

can someone explain to me...

... WHY I am spending what should be my "day off" teaching 3rd graders about OWLS?? It was a long time ago, but wasn't my degree in PARTICLE PHYSICS??

all that, and he busts gender roles too...

I did not go to work today. I cancelled class and stayed home so that I could take a sick little boy to the pediatrician while my wife ran in circles at the elementary school running a fundraiser. Turns out, the boy does not have strep throat, and is not nearly as sick as I would have to be MYSELF to cancel class.

there will be no post this morning...

I overslept, and then spent half the train ride answering emails. The other half I plan to spend NAPPING.

to do list...

Instead of a post, I'm going to jot down all the things I need to do today.

* fax parking application
* call eTrac about a replacement card
* track down missing textbook in office
* post some stuff to the dreadful online astronomy class
* reserve a room for a special lecture next Monday
* borrow two funnels from the science lab (don't ask)

i'm sure something will piss me off soon...

Even though I'm back to my train-work-train routine four days a week, I don't feel like I've really gotten back to writing in the blog as much as I should. Today it occurred to me that maybe I'm never in the mood to write because things are going so well this semester. Could it be that the only things I enjoy writing about are those that make me miserable?

(Don't answer that!)

Classes are running like clockwork, with the exception of the online astronomy class, which is kind of stagnant so far. I'm not sure how to get things moving, really. This weekend, I switched tactics from "encouragement" to "threats". We'll see how that goes.

Things are relatively Ok around the house. The Boy is adjusting pretty well to kindergarten, although the elimination of his daily nap (which began over the summer) has been far from smooth. He can be a bit of an unpleasant asshole around 6:30 PM nowadays. Either that or he just passes out unconscious on the sofa around that time. Kinda reminds me of my Dad, actually.

The wife is going to be crazy this week, as it is "Book Fair" time. This is something she volunteers to be in charge of every year, despite the fact that it makes her a basket case for 5 days. She also may wind up as treasurer of the local Girl Scout council chapter. (She is already a troop leader.) This comes as a surprise, as she is barely able to deal with her OWN cookie money twice a year, and our house winds up full of scattered loose checks and twenties. At least the house will be quieter when she is in jail.

That's about it, I guess. I'm gonna go watch some TV now. I just discovered a Mac program called "Miro" that is an RSS aggregator a BitTorrent client and a media player all in one. Basically you tell it what shows you like and it grabs them from the P2P aether automatically as they become available. So I run it overnight on my old iBook and have it save the files to a 2 Gig thumb drive. Then every morning, I can grab a pocketful of TV on the way out the door! Today's pick... the semi-funny "Flight of the Conchords".

weather complaints... already...!

OK, I know it's mid-to-late September now, but I am really NOT ready to face the number "3" in the leftmost digit of my thermometer in the morning. I don't really want to be wearing a fucking scarf until at LEAST Columbus Day.

[title here...]

Heading home a little late. Long science meeting today. Exciting topic of the day? Changing the name of our major from "Science, Something, and Something" to "Science, Something Else, and Something Else"!!

Anyway, now that The Boy is in Kindergarten full time, I need to make myself STOP feeling guilty for coming home late a few days a month. I mean... the wife is stuck with the kids from 3:00 until 7:00 FOUR days a week? Big freakin' deal.

Good deed of the day... let a cute blind chick through the PATH turnstyle on my MetroCard when her card ran out. It didn't occur to me until today that those turnstyles have an LCD screen but NO sort of audio feedback.

what a strange week...

For any of you who happen to NOT read the most popular blog in the world (according to inbound links anyway) my 5 minute NPR thing got picked up by BoingBoing.net yesterday.

If anyone needs me, I'll be sitting by the phone, waiting for PBS to call and offer me my own series.

what else is going on...

Honestly, not a lot. This one-class-per-day thing is kinda nice. I come in everyday feeling like I'm ready for class and I know what I'm going to talk about. Imagine.

My online class is starting off really slowly. There have been a LOT of "drops". Luckily there have been almost as many "adds". But the conversations aren't going anywhere yet. I may have to change my tactics from encouragement to threats. POST SOMETHING BY FRIDAY OR YOU GET A BIG FAT ZERO FOR THE WEEK.

Of course, there is one kid who has posted 8 times in the past 2 days. I wanna say - "Ok, I get it... you're one of THOSE students. Fine. You get an "A".... take the rest of the semester off."

dave's 15 minutes of fame...?

...was actually edited down to about 4 minutes. Still, it's a first step along the road to media domination and my eventual ousting of that irritating Ira Flatow from "Science Friday".

The piece blows my anonymity, but long-time trusted readers can contact me for the link.

somewhere my school librarian is laughing in her grave...

My childhood disdain for fiction has finally caught up with me.

Our department got a call today from a journalist at NPR looking to interview a physicist about the recent death of Madeline L'Engle. Well, I'm the only physicist here. Problem is... I've never actually READ "A Wrinkle in Time".

(Aside: Nearly every week in elementary school, the librarian would bodliy drag me from the 500-600 shelves over to the fiction section and foist recommendations on me. I would dutifully check them out and then drop them in the returns bin on my way back to get a book about dinosaurs or black holes. I'm about 90% that "Wrinkle in Time" was one of her recommendations.)

Anyway, I talked to this guy on the phone and he claims he only wants to talk about 4 dimensional math and hypercubes, which I can do. Just don't ask me about a book that everyone else read in 6th grade, or I'll look like an idiot. The thing is... it's really a secret fantasy of mine to be one of thopse NPR-go-to-science-guys who Neal Conan call on the phone whenever something sciency happens.

He'll be here at 2:00. It's for a video podcast too, so I'm glad I wore my nice shirt.

food critics...

When the kids found out this morning that the wife had bought a box of Froot Loops with special "yogurt smoothie" covered loops.... I swear to you. It was like JESUS had come for breakfast. There was literally jumping and squealing.

Not three minutes later...

"These white ones don't taste like a smoothie at all... they're like...? Nasty yogurt or something..."

"Yeah... the smoovie ones are GWOSS..."

Guess I have a few weeks of picking-white-Froot-Loops-out-of-the-bowl to look forward to.

tech support is CLOSED... go watch TV...

How come when it's MY day to get up with the kds, instead of playing nicely until 8:30, they decide to fuck around with the computer so that I get TWO "tech support" DAAAAAAADYYYYYYY wake up calls BEFORE 6:50?

Fuck.

missing the point of "security"...

Like many universities, my school is becoming more and more draconian in its copying policies. I think officially we are not supposed to copy anything longer than 4 pages for our classes. (Jesus, my SYLLABUS is 8 pages!!) In order to help them police their copier, the Dean's office assigned everyone an individual 4-digit copy code, and the fancy copier keeps track of how many copies you have made.

The thing is... I noticed when I was given my 4 digit code, that they were handing them out IN NUMERICAL ORDER beginning with 1000. Which means, I forgot mine long ago, and now when I want to make copies, I just enter a random number between 1000 and 1100.

Great "system", guys!! Hope you didn't pay any consultants to help you come up with this idea.

it's what, day THREE...?

And already I've overslept once, and fallen behind on my classwork. It's not a HUGE deal. I'm writing a study guide with questions for the 700-page book that I have the students reading, and I haven't finished it yet. But I have questions and summaries written up to chapter 20 or so, which is well beyond page 400, so I'm just going to hand out what I hand out, and give them a revised version in a few weeks.

But I do want to finish as much as I can, so I'm going to spend the rest of my train ride with my nose in this book.

wait... where is the grouchy guy who usually writes here...?

It feels so good to be back to school/work. I haven't been in this good of a mood all summer. This morning there was a pink and yellow sunrise... with a RAINBOW for fuck's sake. It's all I can do not to jump up and kick my heels in the hallway.

back to school...

Well, it wouldn't be the first day of school without a little chaos. I was awakened at 5:05 this morning by a little digital *chirp* sound... timed just close enough together that you can't possibly ignore it, and just far apart enough that it takes you forever to figure out where it's coming from. I finally traced it to the smoke detector in the Boy's room, and decided to try to change the battery, since it was definitely loud enough to wake him up. I was worried about freaking him out... you wake up and it's still dark and you find a guy in your room up on a stepladder with a flashlight... y'know? But all he said when I (inevitably) DID wake him up was - "What the HECK are you doing?"

Anyway, the point is... I woke up before 5:30 today, and I didn't even need to use my alarm!

See, this is the thing about going back to school this summer... Something happened this summer that has not happened in almost 8 years. We slept in. Every day. Usually until AFTER 8:00!! Suddenly both kids are old enough to go downstairs when they wake up (6:20 - 7:00) to watch TV, to play computer games, to fix themselves breakfast... which means that neither my wife nor I needs to wake up until a) someone needs something they can't get/find for themselves... or b) someone starts screaming at someone else.

(Hint: it's usually b...)

Does this mean we've been getting more sleep? Of course not. It means we've been staying up until 1:00 or 2:00. Which means... this week will involve some pretty big adjustments for US. The kids won't have to change their morning routines much at all.

--- --- ---

How ready is Dave for the first day of school? As usual - ready enough, but not as ready as I would LIKE to be. My syllabi are done, but not printed. My semester-long assignment is done enough, although I would have liked to have given it one more look and added a few more problems. The stuff for my other class still needs some polishing, but I have all afternoon today to fuck with that. My online course has enough in it for kids to read and respond to on the first day. Basically, I'll be just barely ready to go. Typical.

It feels really good to be going back, though. It's kinda nice when you have a summer so disastrous that it reminds you that you really do like your real job.

Today's class is the Spacetime & Einstein class, which, last time I checked, had 17 students in it - 11 of whom I've had in other classes. I may just nickname this class "Dr. Dave's Posse". It's good to have a fan club.

--- --- ---

In non-school related news, my wife and I bought into the hype and picked up the DVD set for season one of "Heroes" so that we could catch up before the new season starts this month. We've been watching 3 episodes a night on average. It's pretty surprisingly good - at least as good as "Lost" was in it's first season. And given that they aren't airing ANY new episodes of Lost until fucking FEBRUARY, we need something to fill up our freaky-supernatural-mindfuck slot for the fall.

--- --- ---

There's probably more to say, boys and girls... but I need to open up some work fils and make sure everything is in order. Cross your fingers for me that I can find a working printer and copier this morning.

It's good to be back.

ow... fuck...

So, I went outside to play with the kids today, which I NEVER do. But it was a gorgeous day, and my daughter asked to play Frisbee, and summer is almost over, so I figured... try to be a good parent, y'know? Well, I was outside for 3 minutes, and...

AND THEN I GOT STUNG BY A BEE... IN THE EYE!!!!!!

Ok, not IN the eye. But in the puffy fleshy part under the eye, which is fucking bad enough. Basically it flew into my face, got trapped behind my glasses, and it panicked.

Moral of the story...? The outside? SUCKS

correct answer...? "nickel"...

More proof for Dave's beloved readers that, yes... he is, in fact, ninety years old... from this evening's game of "Taboo"...

Wife: Buffalo--
Girl: CHICKEN!
Me: ... GALS WON'T YOU COME OUT TONIGHT!!!

hour upon the stage...

Through one of the drama profs at my school, it appears that "my play" is going to get yet another staged reading at a theatre in Manhattan. Why is it that only the things I do on a WHIM wind up being successful?

"Dad, can we go to Mount Splashmore...?"

1) You know what the best thing is for arthritis pain in the feet and ankles? I'll give you a hint.... it is NOT "STANDING IN COLD KNEE-DEEP WATER ALL DAY"

2) The un-advertised bonus for Dads at the water park is, of course... chicks in bikinis. Thing is... and certain bloggers will berate me for admitting this out loud... but the bikini is really only a head-turning choice of swimwear for girls aged 15-17. There are some exceptions to be sure, but very few to be found in a lowish-budget family amusement part in Connecticut.

3) Why is it that EVERY TIME I have been to an amusement park... whether with parents, school, or family... the end of the day nears, the sun starts to go down, it starts to get cooler and breezier, and THEN someone gets the idea - "Hey! I know! Let's all go on the Wild White Water River Rafting Adventure Falls!!!" ?? Because the last hour at an amusement park MUST be spent cold, wet, and cranky.

on casinos...

First of all, I am bothered by the disparity between the image of a casino that exists in the advertising ("Woo-hoo! We're gambling in a casino! We're dressed up! We're having fun!!") and the reality. I saw a woman playing blackjack who was the most unhappy-looking person I think I have ever seen in my life. She smoked her cigarette, stared blankly ahead, barely glanced at her cards, and communicated with the dealer only in vague, barely perceptible hand gestures. There were a hundred more like her. I don't understand who plays the table games in casinos, but they do not look like the people who can AFFORD to play table games in a casino. And all the old people in front of the slots... they should just have a feeder on the front of those things that accepts Social Security checks. The whole place makes me vaguely sad.

Second of all... I know this makes me a party pooper or something, but... having even a rudimentary understanding of the basic principles of probability and statistics takes every bit of fun out of gambling. Basically, you stick a $20 in a slot machine... hit the button a hundred or so times, and then walk away empty-handed thinking... "Yup, that's pretty much how that is supposed to work".

Anyway... the vacation was fun!

(No... really!!!)

a pointless meme, courtesy of pippa...

RULES: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following…they have to be real places, names, things…nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

What is your name? Dave

4 letter word: Duck

Vehicle: Daewoo

TV Show: Doogie Howser, MD

City: Denver (I once nearly lost consciousness in the airport!!)

Boy Name: Damien

Girl Name: Donna (ex-gf. There is another name of which I do not speak)

Alcoholic Drink: Duff

Occupation: Desperado

Something you wear: Dungarees

Celebrity: David Hasselhoff

Food: Doritos

Something found in a bathroom: Disaster

Reason for Being late: Delayed train

Cartoon Character: Droopy

Something You Shout: DAMMIT, KIDS....!!

vacating...

I'll be outta here for a few more days. I know, I've been outta here for a whole week anyway, if not all summer... but soon school will be back in session and my daily train-ramblings will be back in force. For now, the rule for the 3-day trip to CT is "no laptops", so I'll be unplugged until Thursday night. Until then... nobody blog too much... I'd like to keep my backlog of RSS feeds down to something managable.

open mic... version 2.0...

So, last night I tried out a coffee house open mic, not 200 yards from the bar I went to a few weeks ago. It was better, but I think I need to find a place that's BETWEEN "Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind". Some of the people that played at this place were AWFULLY "folky". And I mean seriously "Canadian maritime music" folky. A few people were really good, though... and everyone seemed to know each other and was supportive enough (i.e... they clapped and said things were "great" even when they weren't) that I stepped up and did a few tunes myself. They mostly sucked (except for the third one, my patented acoustic cover of Iron Maiden's "Flight of Icarus"), but it gave me a good sense of what I need to do to improve. And by "improve", I mean only "not suck". I'm aiming low. I have no illusions.

The best thing about it? Where as the rowdy bar open mic STARTED at midnight? Last night I was HOME by 10:30!!

crush yoo-ah viruses... see dem driven befoo-ah you...

Google News is my #1 source for... well... news. But it's auto-aggregation programs sometimes make for some amusing juxtapositions of text with images. For example... this morning's story about efforts to contain the West Nile virus in California...



How will we contain the virus...? SWORD WIELDING BARBARIANS!!!

bits...

* Instead of the water park, we went to a local, low-budget zoo. There are no exotic animals... mostly wounded indigenous stuff. (Lotsa birds with wings stuck out at awkward angles.) It was a nice walk, though, and given the trend in "modern" zoos... it's kinda more interesting to see a beaver 18" away than a zebra 200 yards away behind a tree.

* Got my copy of iWork '08 yesterday. The animations in Keynote rock my world. But "Numbers" reveals only the sad truth that not even Apple can make spreadsheets fun.

*Actually I got TWO copies of iWork yesterday. Ordering glitch. Have to send one back.

* I submitted a proposal to give a talk at a conference in Baltimore in January. The proposal was written on a whim. Mostly I just did it so I could delete the link off my desktop.

* In the groecery store line today, I saw a tabloid headline that read "POTTY TRAINING FOR LINDSAY: Lohan forced to clean toilets as part of rehab". Hmm... that's funny... I'm forced to clean toilets too, as part of... oh, what's it called... you know... LIFE!!!!!

* If you would like to know what the inside of my head has sounded like for the past two days, just visit YouTube. I'm not sure how I avoided this meme for so long, but I may never forgive Pippa for pointing it out to me.

* The kids have somehow rediscovered "The Incredibles". They have watched it 4 times in the past three days. It should be pointed out that this is the LOUDEST CHILDREN'S MOVIE EVER!!! There is at all times all manner of yelling, exploding, and Samuel L. Jacksoning. The only saving grace is that the music kicks ass. (I'm a sucker for 5/4.)

* I'm trying once again to read Neal Stephenson. I am 100 pages into "Quicksilver", which is about where I lost interest in it the first time. For those of you not famililar... 100 pages is about 1/9 of the way through the book... 1/25th of the way through the trilogy of which it is part one. I'm not hopeful. But Isaac Freaking Newton is in the book, so I have to try.

change of plans...

From the website of the aforementioned amusement park...

"Please note: Thursday, August 9 & Friday, August 10 have the tendency to be busier than usual, due to the large number of group reservations we have already taken. Please plan your trip accordingly. You may wish to visit another day instead."

Amazingly enough, even the wife agreed that we should postpone our visit. When a place tells you flat out to STAY HOME, you know they mean business!

lake something-or-other...

So... we are going to an amusement / water park tomorrow....

I plan to be wet and unamused.

open mic...

Ok, well... I think I can probably cross this one off my list. This is the one that starts at 11:00 PM. Turns out it actually really doesn't start until after midnight. By which time I'm already ready to go home.

Thing is, it's not really an ACOUSTIC open mic. Or... barely anyway. Because everyone insists on backing themselves up with a drummer (of dubious abillity, I might add) which severs to make the whole thing... LOUD. And I don't have anything against "loud" per se, but the louder music is, the less of it you hear, and the louder people talk, and the whle thing becomes less about the listening. That's not what I expect from an open mic.

Which isn't to say that everyone sucked. There were some performers who were realy good. One amazing guitarist whose only fault lie in a too-fondness for reggae. (Ok readers, raise your hand if you can stand more than 3 reggae songs in a row... now put them down if you are a) Jamaican or b) HIGH right now. Anyone with their hand still up can leave.) There was an enthusiastic Lisa-Loeby girl who did some White Stripes and some Fiona Apple. One guy did a really good Ryan Adams cover that was marred by the aforementioned crappy drumming.

I had no intention of playing, just scouting, and I think it's just as well. My acoustic stuff is kinda dirgey... this was not the right crowd for it. There was dancing. I do not consider my playing conducive to dancing.

If anything good came of it, it's that I sat in the corner with a notebook and scrawled out several pages of lyrics, one or two of which may actually be usable. I won't be playing any gigs myself until I have 2 or 3 original songs that don't suck. In the meantime, I think I'll check out some coffee house open mics. The only problem there is that I will have to suffer the exact opposite of crappy 20 year-old-drummers... crappy 20-year-old POETS!

must have...

iLife '08 AND iWork'08 released on the SAME DAY?

Fucking Steve Jobs just cost me $150.

The sickest thing is that I'm sitting here reloading and reloading the Apple Store (which is down for the updates) like I'm just DYING to give them my money! The idea that someone's Keynote presentation might have in it a transition or an animation that is unavailable to me... this thought is simply too much to bear.

free...

I came in early today to finish my last dozen student evaluations, but they took away our card keys yesterday, so I'm doing it outside on a park bench. Luckily, a front came through last night, so it's kinda nice out (i.e., not oppressivley hot and humid) for the first time in a week or so.

Anyway, I'm DONE... finally. The closing ceremony is in a half hour or so.

I will never do this again.

Ok. I may teach again next summer. But it will be TWO classes, not four... and it will be for ONE 3 week session, not two. The thing is... I think I could have enjoyed it if I had had time to actually think about what I'm doing, and to plan, and prepare, and to make copies, and to give homework, and to set up activities, and to do a good job. Instead, it was all I could do to keep my head above water in the four classes and run around in circles getting robots and rockets set up. As much as I claim to do it in my college classes, I really HATE "phoning it in". And I think I was so stressed out and crabby, that I couldn't really enjoy the kids, either. It's hard to find an experience "rewarding" when you spend all day wanting to strangle someone.

Anyway. There is one month of summer left to "enjoy". This probably means time-consuming household projects and ill-advised family outings to amusement parks. I will do my best to keep in mind that it's an improvement.