off again...

... on another business trip. This time to DC via train. Well... from home to NY via train, then NY to DC via a DIFFERENT train. Which makes almost 6 hours of train today. Good thing I like trains so damned much!

All this travel is for the consulting gig. The last trip was for a 3-day meeting with a small group of teachers. This trip is a big two day "Institute" followed by a bigger three-day "Forum". I'm only being paid for the first two days, but they are paying my hotel for the additional two nights. Not a bad deal. Still, I feel like this consulting thing has stolen my fucking summer right out from under me. When I get back from this trip, it will be "mid-July", and I start teaching again in "late-August". Fuck. I have done NO WORK AT ALL on my classes. None.

I was supposed to be co-leading the science curriculum sessions at the two day "Institute" meeting, but the other science consultant pulled out, so I am running the show. Which... ugh... is not my favorite thing in the world. I mean, I don't mind standing in front of a room where I know everything and they know nothing and talking for 3 or 4 hours, but... being responsible for "facilitating group discussions"? About big open-ended educational-buzzwordy subjects? Blah.

But... free trip to DC, which is cool. Unfortunately I'll be booked until 4:30 or 5:00 most days, it seems, and all the stuff I want to do in the city closes at 5:30. Except for those parts of the Smithsonian I saw 100 times as a kid , and will probably see 100 more times with my own kids. Extended hours at the Air and Space Museum? Blah.

I brought all my running gear, so I plan to work out while I'm there. The running is going pretty well. I can do 1.5 miles without a walk break, or alternately - 2 miles with 2 minutes to rest between them. If I can manage to keep running through the hot weather (which hasn't come yet, amazingly, but I'm sure has to eventually) I should easily be able to run 5K by the end of summer. Meanwhile, the needle on the scale landed firmly on the 200 line the other day, which doesn't seem like a good thing unless you know that just a month or two ago, it was flirting with the 210 area. So, I'm fairly content with the direction things are going there.

Not much else to say really, which is why I don't blog much anymore. Nothing is going on in my life that can't easily be described in 140 characters. Hell, sometimes even that's a stretch.