December 2009 12 of 12

The semester’s been crazy, so I haven’t updated in a very long time.  Nonetheless, here’s my December 2009 12 of 12.

9:37 a.m. Let's hop in the Way Back Machine, shall we, and start our Saturday morning with an episode of Saved by the Bell. This was the episode where the students switched places with the teachers and administration. Ah, Kelly Kapowski.

10:11 a.m. Hopped online to order one of Xan's Christmas presents. The yearly fee for Amazon Prime: TOTALLY worth it.

10:15 a.m. Our little Christmas tree. Cute, huh?

3:13 p.m. I got WAAAAY behind in my grading toward the end of the semester. Here's the sea of papers in which I almost drowned.

3:56 p.m. Staying hydrated is just as important during the winter as it is in the summer.

5:07 p.m. Our new blu-ray player can stream Pandora...wirelessly. It's pretty kick-ass!

6:58 p.m. Grading is done! This is the stack of papers that I graded this afternoon. As you can see, it's taller than BOTH my gradebook and my pen stacked on top of each other. Yikes!

7:03 p.m. As a reward for finishing my grading, I play IMPLODE!, an addictive little game in which you try to demolish various structures. I accomplished my goal of getting A+'s on every level. Go me.

7:26 p.m. After beating IMPLODE!, I play MGMT's "Electric Feel" on the bass. Man, I love that bass line.

9:24 p.m. Making the Aural Skills 3 dictation final key.

10:15 p.m. Getting directions to a party.

10:49 p.m. It was an "Edward Fortyhands" party. I decided to go "Christopher Twelvehands." Hooray, beer!!!

Bonus pic: Oreo cuteness!

Happy 70th!

My car passed a milestone today.  Happy 70th, Jeannie.  70,000th mile, that is!

And for this momentous occasion, I got you some bad weather.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yup, you guessed it: that’s snow.  In the middle of October.  What…the…f***?!?  Not cool, Mother Nature..  Not cool at all.

The way I see it, it’s the perfect end to a pretty crap-ass week.

October 2009 12 of 12

In all its glory, my October 2009 12 of 12, with pics taken using just my iPhone.  It’s good to be back.

9:01 a.m. Good morning, world. Thanks, Christopher Columbus, for discovering America and subsequently providing us with a day off.

9:32 a.m. 43 degrees outside. Not cool, Mother Nature. Not. Cool.

11:54 a.m. In the elevator at school, headed up to my office to get some work done.

4:35 p.m. Grading Friday's Uninflected Interval Quiz. Fun times.

5:37 p.m. While taking a break, I beat a Hard level on GeoDefense Swarm.

5:47 p.m. It's a GD Swarm two-fer! I beat another level just 10 minutes later. It's a good day, indeed!!

6:31 p.m. In the elevator, headed home.

8:34 p.m. Grading part-writing. Yup, that's four-voice writing on notebook paper. This is the kind of crap I have to try to decipher every day. Ugh.

8:52 p.m. Making some delicious chianti braised beef & rigatoni. God bless dinner-in-a-bag.

9:45 p.m. For tonight's entertainment: F.R.I.E.N.D.S Season 4.

11:00 p.m. Some hot chocolate to cap the evening. Delicious!!

11:33 p.m. Getting ready for bed, about to brush our teeth with the Sonicare. Xan's being silly.

BONUS PIC: Oreo with her new toy, Swan Valdez.

A Tribute

This changes everything.

First-day Jitters

The first day of school always makes me a little nervous.  It’s a good nervousness, though, the kind that’s mixed with the excitement of possibility.  In less than an hour, I’ll be in front of the first class of the new school year–class of freshmen, nonetheless–so the nerves for that class are extra jittery.  I’m not quite as nervous as I was last year, probably because it’s not the first day of my first year as a professor.  But I liken this nervousness to the feeling one gets right before going on stage to perform or before going out onto the field to play a big game.  I get these nerves just about every day that I teach, but it’s especially pronounced on the first day of school.  The slate is clean (on both sides of the desk), there’s new blood in the building, and the school year is rife with opportunity and untapped potential.  I know that once classes get rolling the nerves will fade away.  But I enjoy being nervous before school.  The way I see it, it means that I care.  Here’s to hoping I always have first-day jitters.

Baker’s Dozen

Tomorrow begins another school year.  So, on the precipice of my second year as a full-time faculty member, and in honor of my move up to Lowell exactly 13 months ago today, I thought I’d pass along 13 lessons I’ve learned over the past year and one month.  In no particular order:

1. BALANCE is key.
2. Being a CUBS fan really really sucks a lot of the time.
3. At school, my REPUTATION has started to precede me.  And I think that’s awesome.
4. Politics exists EVERYWHERE.  And I think that sucks.
5. I miss my FRIENDS.  That being said, two of my closest friends have moved up to Lowell, so I can’t complain too much at all.  It’s just that I also miss my other friends from Tallahassee and Chicago.  Badly.
6. The way I see it, OREO is certifiably the gentlest, sweetest, cutest, most loving dog in the world.
7. To quote The Fray, “Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the SAME.”
8. I do what I LOVE.  And I love what I do.
9. I miss the CITY, Chicago in particular.  I’m going to make it a point to get to know Boston.
10. More and more I’m discovering that being spiritual and being religious are two very DIFFERENT things.
11. The importance of a good TEACHER, at whatever level and in whatever subject, cannot be overstated.
12. As much as I’d like to consider myself a moderate, I’m beginning to lean more and more to the LEFT.  Or perhaps it’s a reaction and I’m just leaning further and further away from the right.
13. COMMUNICATION is key.

August 2009 12 of 12

9:01 a.m. - Good morning world.

9:23 a.m. - Oreo on her perch, watching the outside world as she waits for a trip outside.

9:39 a.m. - Xan burned her arm yesterday reaching into the oven. Ew.

9:45 a.m. - Mmm, morning coffee.

12:41 p.m. - A nice, healthy lunch...with some beautiful flowers.

2:00 p.m. - At the driving range, doing the world's worst Tiger Woods impression.

2:25 p.m. - A three-way selfie, after two jumbo buckets of balls.

2:45 p.m. - We switched to the batting cages and humiliated ourselves there, too.

5:23 p.m. - Xan and me, ready to head out to dinner and a movie.

6:02 p.m. - Mmm, dinner (and dessert!!).

7:38 p.m. - Our tickets to the 7:45 showing of "(500) Days of Summer." It was a cute movie.

11:29 p.m. - Ahh, a little nightcap to end the evening.

BONUS PIC...5:46 p.m. - Parking fail.

July 2009 12 of 12

9:07 a.m. - Good morning, blogosphere.

9:31 a.m. - My earring fell out the other night and I only just found it this morning.

9:36 a.m. - Pre-shave, mid-haircut, and lookin' rough! (Man, my hair grows a lot in one week.)

10:15 a.m. - Post-haircut/shower/shave. Note the "reinstalled" earring.

10:55 a.m. - A little DD coffee (OK, a large one) helped get me to campus before 11 to grade and lesson plan for tomorrow.

11:43 a.m. - The new-and-improved office desktop. Dual monitors is the only way to go.

5:20 p.m. - I returned the Pre (pictured earlier) and got a new iPhone 3GS. (Thanks for the photobomb, Mike!)

8:24 p.m. - New phone, meet the old phone.

8:55 p.m. - Mike brought over another electronic peripheral that should help launch our rockstardom.

10:31 p.m. - The Cubs' Sean Marshall pitched to one batter, played right field for one batter, then pitched to another batter. All the switching around gave some needed excitement in an otherwise uneventful game.

10:40 p.m. - The Cubs' Reed Johnson makes a great catch in left field--while stumbling--to keep the Cards' lead to 2 (although replays showed he may have trapped the ball.) The effort was all for naught, however, as the Cubs went on to lose 4-2.

10:50 p.m. The obligatory Oreo pic.

TraveLog: The last two days

Hallole! I’m typing this update from about 36,000 feet. Marty and I are headed back to the States after a great trip. Here are some highlights from the end of our time in Germany.

• The last couple of days of our trip were quite relaxing. On Friday, we got up relatively late after our excursion to Austria and Munich the previous two days.

• After breakfast (brunch, really), we headed south to Switzerland to meet some family friends and see some sights.

• We hung around Schaufhaffen for the afternoon, window shopping and visiting a local waterfall.

• Switzerland was nice but VERY expensive. I was hoping perhaps to get a nice Swiss watch with automatic movement, but was flabbergasted at the prices (not that I really expected to get one, but still…).

• The waterfall was cool. Not very big, but still quite scenic. Makes me want to visit Niagra Falls.

• Saturday was an even slower-paced day. We stuck around Burladingen and had an afternoon snack (cake, coffee, and mimosas) with some of Marty’s relatives. The weather was so nice that the two of us just walked to the house.

• Marty and I returned to Sofie and Gerd’s and stuffed our faces with a variety of grilled meats, salad, schnapps, and (of course) beer.

• The meal was delicious but a little on the indulgent, unhealthy side. To give you an idea, at one point I put a garlic cream sauce on top of buttered, cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped sausage. Yup, you read that correctly: garlic cream sauce on buttered, cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped sausage. My aorta hurts just typing that. It’s a miracle we didn’t keel over and die from a heart attack right then and there.

• The alarm didn’t go off so we had to rush a bit Sunday morning.

• No worries, though, as we made it to the Frankfurt airport with plenty of time to spare.

I’ll post the next (and final) TraveLog update from Long Island, including some of post-trip reactions, pictures, and things I learned along the way. ‘Til then, guten Tag!

TraveLog: Munich

Guten Abend!

• Another full day lie ahead of us.  We left Bad Reichenhall for Koenigsee.
• One thing I’ve discovered about my travels these past few weeks: bad weather follows me around.  It rains in San Diego, like, eight days a year, and I happened to go there during three of them.  Then, I get to Germany and it’s cold and rainy here, too.  Marty, Sofie, and Gerd are also sad about this fact:

The rain I bring makes people sad.

• The weather was crazy.  First, it started out cold and rainy.  Then, as our boat ride on the lake (GORGEOUS and AMAZING, btw) came to end, the clouds parted, blue sky appeared, and the sun came shining through.  Of course, right?  The weather clears up after our boat ride to St. Bartolome.  Nice.
• While riding the boat, there was group of about six or seven older women singing and drinking schnapps.  Awesome.
• We then drove to Munich, for an afternoon in the city.
• On the way, we wanted to stop in Chiemsee to check out another church, but the weather got crappy again.  Boo.
• By the early afternoon, the weather, thankfully, with the 25 mph wind gusts blowing the majority of the clouds out of the region.  Seriously, it was crazy gusty.
• Ah, Munich.  My first observation: holy tourists, Batman!
• We managed to find the big church in the middle of the city, Frauenhirchen.  Wow, this place is huge.
• We also climbed a 14-story church tower to get a glimpse of the city from above.  The staircase in said tower was very narrow (reminiscent of the world’s narrowest street), and we had to stop frequently to let people by or to pass people ourselves.  It got quite cramped in there, to say the least.  Amazing views, though–worth getting slightly felt up by the weird looking Japanese woman.
• Then, we found the Hofbrauhaus.  I’d wanted to visit this place for a while, so it was nice we got a chance to go.  The food was pretty good, but the service was terrible, even by my adjusted European standards.  Oh well, I can now say I’ve dined and drank at the famous Munich HB.  Prosit!

We originally ordered half liters, but our server extraordinaire failed to mention to us that after 4:30 they only serve liter sizes of the original brew. Damn, that's a big stein!

• With full bellies, we trekked back to the car and drove back to Burladingen.  Marty and I had a good chat (read: serious subject peppered with incessant teasing and poking…SOP, really) while Gerd graciously sped along the Autobahn and got us home safely and soundly.
• Of course, we ended our night with a little drink, an Italian concoction of champagne and liqueur.  Ah, Germany.

Guten Nacht!