transitions...

Sometimes I feel a pull to revisit old writings. I think it's a sign of pending transitions. I think it's a way of revisiting versions of myself that I used to be, to remind myself that I'm not that person anymore, and probably won't be this person forever either.

Anyway. I was kind of surprised to see that this even still works.

hello there, dried up husk of what was once my blog...

I'm thinking I may try to use the Google+ for things that are too long and boring for tweets, that I would once have blogged, but don't anymore.

Any blog readers who want into the "Circle" of internet people... let me know in the comments.

remember when...

...it looked like I was going to start blogging regularly again? I really had all of you fooled. And by "all" I mean "both".

(I blame the iPad. If I can continue CONSUMING internet while I'm on he train, there is no reason for me to take the time to PRODUCE internet.)

Also, I've been fairly good about using the train rides to actually prepare for my classes. They are going swimmingly this semester.More often than not, I walk out of class feeling like I nailed it. This is a big switch from last semester, when most days I walked out of class feeling like I succeeded in adding to students' confusion rather than their knowledge.

There's a lot going on right now… nothing I feel compelled to blog about. Upcoming conference in Miami… promotional review for Associate Professor… impending public performance art… all stuff that should make me nervous, but that I'm feeling pretty dismissively nonchalant about. Which means one of them is sure to blow up on me. Maybe I'll feel like blogging about THAT.

the student body...

An example of why I love teaching here...

(passing student in stairwell)

HER: Hi...
ME: Hey...
HER: OH! Dr. M! Before you go, I wanted to show you--
(begins removing her sweater**)
ME:...
HER: --the new tattoo I just got!

What is remarkable about this experience is how unremarkable it is. It's bizarre, but kinda sweet that students would want to share their science-tattoos with me.

(**Inside of her upper arm... nothing scandalous.)

swimming to carl sagan...

Those of you who follow me on the Tweeterer have probably seen me talk about the science monologue/storytelling event I've been attending in Brooklyn every month -- The StoryCollider. Well, I've sucked up to the organizers enough that they've accepted my submission for the April show. So I have three or four months to panic now.

The timing couldn't be better, since I'm up for review again this year. See, since I teach at a slightly-flaky liberal-arts school, here aren't enough scientists to fill up a tenure review panel, which means that the scientists have mostly slightly-flaky liberal-arts people reviewing their work. And humanities and arts professors can't really be guaranteed to understand how or why the science education stuff I do is different or necessary or important, but if they see that I performed a 20-minute one-man flaky-artsy-monologue in Brooklyn, they can look at that and go "Ooh! We understand what that is!" So, that's good.

The story I'm telling is about the time I sent a fax to Carl Sagan pointing out an oversight in one of hiss books. I'm not sure I want to get into the details, because I don't want to spoil the story for everyone. (By "everyone" of course, I mean the 4 people who read my blog.) There will be a video online eventually. For now I need to spend a couple of months figuring out the perfect balance between "too nervous to talk" and "too drunk to talk" so I know exactly how to time my liquor intake on the night in question. (Bad Idea: "Hey! Maybe I'll practice on my Astrobiology class!"

snow day...

Do you people have ANY IDEA how hard I work on a syllabus? Day by day... in some classes minute by minute detail. Daily lecture topics, readings, due dates...

Second day of class the city gets 19" of snow, school is canceled, and suddenly both of my syllabi are a day behind BEFORE THE SECOND FUCKING DAY OF CLASS.

This is making me very angry. Very angry indeed.

The students better hold onto their fucking seats on Tuesday, because I swear to God, I'm covering 3 hours worth of material in 90 minutes if it fucking kills me.

winter...

I'm so fucking done with this winter. The other morning when I left for school it was -9.6º. I'm sorry, but negative temperatures belong in Antarctica and science labs, not New York. And then after getting pounded repeatedly with a foot of snow or more, I was nearly killed yesterday by the inch and a half that fell at 6:00 AM, since it was apparently a surprise and nobody bothered to try to salt or plow the roads. And of course the driveway didn't get shoveled, because I had to leave the house at 6 AM, which means now it's going to transform into a glacier that will last until May.

And I'm sending job applications to schools in VERMONT? What is wrong with me?

the mentor role...

The other day, a bit of random Googlage sent me down a path that eventually landed on a YouTube video of a talk by my undergraduate mentor. This particular professor was one whom I had for no fewer than SEVEN courses as an undergrad. Well… depending on how you count. One was actually the same course I took twice because he gave me a "D" the first time. And in a very real way, that D was responsible for my success as a physicist. Because it was a line in the sand, really. "Are you going to do this? Or are you just fucking around?" And I decided the next semester, yeah… Ok… I'm really going to do this. And I never got anything less than a B again for the next 6 years. So I owe him a lot for that wake-up call.

When you have one professor for 7 courses, that person can become the anchor of your entire academic experience of college. So, when I watched this YouTube video the other day (which was a colloquium he gave on the occasion of his retirement) the sound of his voice and his laughter was like a time machine. I was instantly 20 again. And apart from the feeling of nostalgia, it really underscored something for me, which is -- I AM THAT GUY for a certain group of students. And it makes me really wonder… am I living up to that job description? I really wonder. Especially after having a kind of shitty semester last fall, and after really failing one particular student in a particularly spectacular way. It's kind of an important job -- not all the time, of course… it's clear that some students forget me the second they turn in their final, but sometimes… for those other students… I wonder… am I doing things for them that will still mean something in 20 years? Because I'm not 100% sure what those things look like. They are probably all the things I'm worst at. But it occurred to me while thinking about all this… I'll probably be doing this for another 2 decades… which puts me at only 1/3 of the way through my college teaching career. There's no reason not to get better before I get worse.

born under the sign of The Curmudgeon...

I'm starting to get pretty pissed at how badly the media is butchering this zodiac story, as if some dude who runs a planetarium in Minnesota discovered the precession of the Earth's axis last week. Try Aristarchus of Samos in the third century BCE. Those traditional astrological birthday cutoffs haven't been right for CENTURIES. Besides, constellation boundaries are arbitrary anyway. It's a total non-story. And yet I heard a newscaster today say, "Several other researchers have come forward to say the theory is false." Theory? False? What "theory" are we talking about? Precession of the equinoxes? Or the theory that any of this is even remotely meaningful?



I wish I could go on NPR right now and set this whole thing straight!

u n s l e e p n i a...

If I go to bed at 12:30, I'm asleep by 12:45.

But if I try to go to sleep at 11:30, I can't fall asleep, and so I'm up until 2:30.

I hate my fucking brain sometimes, I swear.

aww...

People said nice things!

I'll see what I can do.

communication breakdown...

Wife: (reading Facebook) Wow, my friend's dog apparently came home covered in porcupine quills.

Me: Eek. That's weird. I've never SEEN a porcupine. (beat) Where do they live?
...

Wife: Umm, mostly in TREES, I think...?

Me: ...? No-- THE PEOPLE! Where do THE PEOPLE LIVE??

new year...

revive the blog?

or kill the blog?

revive the blog?

or kill the blog?

revive?

kill?

revive?

kill...?

undecided.

"i feel a little better when i think about joe walsh...."

I had a dream last night that, in the periphery, featured Ryan Adams singing a sentimental ballad (as Ryan Adams is wont to do) featuring lyrics such as "We can stay right down the road from Joe Walsh..." and "I feel I can go on if I just think about Joe Walsh..."

It was a pretty song, and the imaginary Ryan Adams seemed really sincere, but it strikes me odd that my subconscious would generate song lyrics featuring someone who has absolutely no resonance for me as a "symbolic" reference whatsoever.

What does Joe Walsh mean to YOU?

at home with the materialists...

TV NEWS: "According to a study focusing on 450,000 Americans and how they evaluate their happiness, a salary of $75,000 a year is the magic number after which people's day-to-day happiness no longer improves."

ME: Well, fuck.

WIFE: Yeah. I heard that earlier today. At least we know we're happy.

ME: Yeah, but there is no room for improvement? Sorry kids - THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS!

WIFE: Maybe they meant $75,000 EACH.

ME: You'd better fucking get busy, then.

so it shall be written...

...so it shall be DONE.



I clipped the last corner this afternoon. Of course there are still some edits and figures and references to sort out, but the WRITING part of the writing is done as of today.

I feel no sense of accomplishment or relief yet. I think that may have to wait until I'm holding a finished, bound book in my hand.

progress...

I have a stack of index cards for my book. Each chapter has its own card where I write notes about things that need to be fixed, or references that need to be checked, or graphics hat are still missing. When the actual WRITING of a chapter is done, I snip the lower left corner off the card. Here is the stack as it stands...







Not bad, right?

Today I finished 2 chapters that were lacking decent conclusions, wrote one chapter from scratch, and just flat-out cut an un-started one from the book.

The end is in sight.

very brief lollapalooza recap...

... which has little to do with the music.

* Took the train in. It was raining. Had a PizzaHut Express pizza and a bourbon at Union Station waiting for the rain to stop. It lessened a bit so I walked .8 miles to the park. The rain was drizzly but not enough to bother me. And it takes VERY LITTLE rain to bother me. It was a nice walk that would seem more like 80 miles that night at 10:30 PM.

* I was dressed for the day in a pair of holey-almost-to-the-point-of-unwearable shorts and a ratty brown-faded-to-basically-colorless t-shirt. I also had my hair down most of the day, which I NEVER do anymore. In the name of Seattle-grunge-nostalgia, I was definitely partying like it was 1992.

* Caught the band "Company of Thieves" in the drizzle. The lead singer is fucking adorable. Started feeling old until I saw someone dancing in the VIP area who looked about my age. Then I realized she was probably allowed back there because she was the bass player's MOM or something. Anyway, it was kinda cool to see a really SMALL band at a small stage on a rainy day. (The person who shot this was probably standing right in front of me, judging from the angle.)

* Looked at the arty tents and clothes and stuff. If I was a skinny girl, I would have bought all kinds of cute stuff. Unfortunately, I am neither, so I just bought a sorta plain if vaguely retro Lollapalooza-branded t-shirt.

* Met up with Cute Alumna and hung out for a while with her friends and, briefly, her DAD. (Who is WAY older than me, thank god.) Sat in the shade on the outskirts of Yeasayer and Mutemath, but didn't really pay any attention to the music. This is why I usually go to concerts ALONE. Why pay $300 to stand in a crowd of people you DON'T know and chat with people you DO know while music you KINDA know plays in the medium-distance? Anyway, Cute Alumna and her friends were all tired from days 1 & 2 so they bagged Sunday by like 4:00. LAME!

*All the fancy food places looked really good but had crazy long lines, so I had a cheap hot dog for "dinner".

* I decided I need some tattoos.

* I found a pretty decent spot to the right of the stage for Wolfmother, and was determined to KEEP that spot so I could slide forward when some people left during the hour between Wolfmother and Soundgarden. Which means I was standing in the same place for almost 5 hours. My feet took DAYS to recover! Also - for me not to pee for 5 hours? UNHEARD OF!!

* Wolfmother was everything I expected - derivative, unoriginal, enthusiastic, and fun.

* I had smuggled 2 tiny airplane bottles of JD in my bag to make the evening concerts mildly more enjoyable. (Life would be way easier if I could convince myself to enjoy beer... and coffee.) Didn't really get much of a buzz going. But now that I know how lax security is, if I ever go again, I'm bringing a FLASK of something GOOD.

* While waiting for Soundgarden, I struck up some occasional chat with a cute, moderately-tattooey, bikini-top-wearing 26-year old chick. While we were talking about music, I made an excuse about liking something she didn't by saying "Well I'm older than you" and she asked how old, and when I told her she kinda wrinkled her brow and took a half step back and said - "No WAY do you look 40 at all!" I believe I may have told her I loved her. After feeling pretty old and irrelevant all afternoon, sometimes the universe gives you what you need. Not often, but sometimes. It certainly karmically makes up for the cute chick at the Rush concert a few weeks ago who ignored me in favor of some 20-something, chinstrap-bearded, hipster-doofus. I'm actually still kind of in a good mood over it.

* Soundgarden was intensely plodding and dismal and awesome, I was maybe 15 feet from the railing right up in the crowd-surfey action, and I got to rub up against a sweaty bikini-clad chick for 2 hours, so... not a bad evening. I was tired and a little sore the next day, but nowhere NEAR as wrecked as Rage Against the Machine in '02. Maybe the (occasional) running and yoga have me in better concert-shape than I thought.


So - that's my one day Lollapalooza adventure. Maybe if I train a little beforehand, I can try TWO days in 2011!

oh and hi, Dad...

I went out last night for drinks at an insanely upscale place in Tribeca where I tried seven different types of bourbon and rye, not counting sampling the "Creole-Fashioned" of the person I was with. It was decadent and awesome. And tonight I'm sitting here thinking about the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in the cabinet...

Oh hey look, I can see Alcoholism from here!!

(I made myself some tea.)

dear quality auto service...

The free wi-fi is nice, but...




Three fucking chairs? In a room this big? Are you fucking kidding me?