Perhaps the second most awesome thing ever?

Once I got over the initial pre-judgement "this is gay" hurdle, I realized that this may just be the second most awesome thing ever (behind this, of course)!


Seriously, I'm going to use this with my class on Monday.
The clip comes courtesy of Teachertube. I can't believe I've never heard of this site before!
In other news, I think I'm changing the focus of my doctoral study from professional development for teacher retention to development of international learning communities, but more on that later. I have lunch, then another session to go to.

Fundamentalism is the bastard child of Imperialism and Nationalism

Man, I just spent the last hour and a half reading one of the links from my last post, all about Zionism and the 6 day war. All I can say is, Holy Shit! I've learned more about the Middle East in the the last hour than I did in the 37 years before, and I am having a hard time believing how poorly our government interacts with the governments of the region... it makes me say "Aah!"

Perspectives

Our keynote speaker today was Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners: a Story of Friendship and Terror. The topic was "Bringing peace to the middle east: an impossible dream?" There are several colleges within Walden University here for their residencies, so I wasn't particularly excited about this plenary presentation. I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. This guy was amazing! I'm too tired (or lazy) to go into detail about his whole series of stories, so I'll put this link (be sure to read all 5 pages of corespondence!) and this one (which is probably the best one) for you to check out. Basically, he just recounted some of his amazing story for us, emphasizing the usefulness of tolerance and the ability to live with uncertainty as ways to bridge the gap between Jews and Muslims. What was really interesting though, was that during the Q and A session, nearly every questioner was either from an African country where "rebels" have been labelled as terrorists, or Muslims who were so emotionally attached to the conflict that they couldn't hear his message. There was one pertinent question about terrorism by an irate man, who it seems had a personal vested interest in Lebannon (I think he was from there.) The questioner pointed out that in some cases, organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas were at least somewhat representative and military in nature, and therefore legitimate in a way that Al Quaida, for example, was not, and he wanted to know why Jeffrey referred to them as terrorist organizations, but not the Israeli or US armies. Jeffrey responded by saying he considers Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations because they target children. The questioner then asked about "collateral damage" by the US military, but by this point his emotions had gotten the best of him and he was shouting, quite agitated. Jeffrey actually handled things remarkably well, in that he simply told the man not to judge him or his positions until he'd read his book (which I decided I had to have!), though I'd like to have heard his take on the collateral damage, which he didn't offer.
Now remember that all 900 plus people here are working on either PhD or EdD degrees... so what happened next is all the more surprising...
The final questioner went on a tirade about Zionists (Jeffrey is an admitted Zionist; I had to look it up to understand exactly what it meant; its a long read but an interesting one!) and was shouting "Shame on Walden for it's biased support of Zionism!" He was so outraged by Jeffrey's invitation to be keynote speaker that he renounced his affiliation with Walden, presumably quitting the doctoral program.
I really felt sorry that he didn't hear what I heard, which was a (mostly) humble accounting of one Jew's experience in trying to gain perspective on the war between the cultures of Arab and Jew. The outburst was a perfect demonstration of how difficult it is to look at your "enemy" as human... which was the whole point, I think.

Existentialists rejoice! (or beware?)

Man, what DOES a doctoral program with a minimum investment of three years and 30 thousand dollars have to offer? Well HERE IT IS!

...and I offer it to you for free.

(You can thank me later!)

... or maybe I'll over-sleep 'til noon

Well, when I hit "snooze" this morning at 7:20, I "snoozed" until 11:50. I guess sleeping only 2 1/2 hours yesterday afternoon caught up with me.

I'll get my schedule in about an hour, and hopefully I'll have a morning off tomorrow or Saturday, otherwise I may not get down to the national mall after all. I may have to play hookie if I can get away with it, I just don't know yet.

First Impressions of Virginia

I caught a red-eye out of Vegas last night to come to my first Residency for my doctoral program, and I had hoped to sleep on the plane, but had no luck.




I arrived at 7:30 local time, which was 4:30 my time, and though I originally intended to do the DC tourist thing today, I couldn't find a locker to stash my bags so I decided to go to the NCC (where I'm staying) to catch a few hours sleep.




This place is pretty cool, though it is the most confusing building I've ever been in; it has no windows, 3 buildings connected in the center that fan out radially, and cement hallways remniscent of a soviet gulag you might see in a 60's era James Bond flick.




So after literally 2 hours of walking around trying to get oriented, I finally found the dining hall. All meals are included with room prices, and I wasn't expecting much, but found myself pleasantly surprised.




I had a sweet potato bisque, fish, boston cream pie, and ice cream, which was great, because aside from the kick-ass cookies Erin sent me off with, I hadn't eaten in about 20 hours.




So impressions...




Not many so far. After dinner I walked around a bit, and the cherry trees are blossoming.










Aside from the cool trees, and seeing several diplomats at the airport, I haven't got much to go on. Tomorrow I am going to catch a 7:30 am shuttle to the National Mall, and I plan on seeing a few things. Unfortunately, the Museum of American History is frickin' closed for renovations, which really bums me out, so it looks like the National Air and Space Museum, and beyond that, I'm not sure what.
I'm thinking maybe the White House. Since the Pope happens to be in town, I figure I can give both him and Bush a piece of my mind...
Or maybe I'll go and visit some memorials to presidents who didn't totally suck, like Jefferson, Lincoln and my favorite, FDR.
I'll post more tomorrow.

Chicken Story Redux

For some reason, one evening Tim brought home several baby chicks, a duckling, and a full-grown rooster. He said we would eventually BBQ and eat them when they were full grown, but I had my doubts.
Well, the chicks died during a thunderstorm, leaving only the duckling and the rooster. The duckling was very cute, as all ducklings are, but it grew into a very large duck very quickly. The rooster was a pain in the ass, making noise and drawing attention from the neighbors. We found this out when the police showed up at our door to inform us that we couldn't keep "livestock" within the city limits. We were about to move anyway, but the cop told us we had to get rid of them that day.

There was a little old lady down the street that Tim somehow knew, and she'd been eyeing the duck hungrily for quite some time. The last we ever saw of the duck was his little black eyes, as he cocked his head, looking backward over the little old lady's shoulder at us as she waddled down the block with him.

The rooster was another matter. I tried to take him to a farm out near where our trailer had burned down, but the process of putting a chicken into a milkcrate, strapped onto the back of a motorcycle, is much more difficult than it sounds. So the chicken stayed. We were afraid of the police coming back, but they never did, and a few days later we were moving out the last of our things. Tim still hadn't found a home for the rooster, so he decided that the humane thing to do was to "euthanize" it.

Our back yard was full of dead branches that had been cut from a tree which had grown into the powerlines overhead, and as such it was very hard to navigate. For a human.

For a chicken, on the other hand, it was quite easy to get around, affording all kinds of nooks and crannies to hide in.

Anyway, the time had come, and Tim had originally intended to just shoot the rooster with Rodney's shotgun, but we convinced him that gunfire in the back yard was likely to draw the attention of the nasty neighbors, and eventually, the cops. So Tim decided he could just kill it by whacking it with a 2x4. The problem was, that rooster was fast. Much faster than Tim, as it turned out.

After several misses, with the rooster running in and out of the debris in the yard, Tim finally connected with it. Only he didn't hit it in the head; he hit it right in the side. The rooster went flying sideways across the yard as the result of the blow, but the blow didn't kill it. Far from it.

It was definitely messed up though, and at this point so was Tim. You could tell right away that the rooster was badly injured, but because of al the debris in the yard, Tim had to chase the thing for several more minutes and hit it 3 more times with misplaced blows before the thing finally died.

All in all, what makes for a funny story in a short retelling was a gruesome episode of good intentions evolving into violence. Not a pretty sight.

If the lady across the street ever decides to do for her chicken, I'm going to be somewhere else, thinking of puppies or some other happier thing.

There's a chicken in the tree across the street, and he's pretty

Yup. A CHICKEN.

Erin saw it a few day ago, and yesterday I had to go over and check it out.

The lady who lives there doesn't know where it came from, but she's been feeding it and it looks like he's here to stay. He's pretty cool. And very pretty.

Other things are happening around here, but I kind of put the cool story out there first, and the rest would just be even more boring by comparison, so I'll just leave it at that.

COOL
CHICKEN.

Oh, and if any of you read this and you haven't called or sent me an email with your phone numbers, please do; I lost all my numbers when I lost my phone a few weeks ago.

This is why I love the internet

Seeing's how I've been low on inspiration and stuck in self-pity-land the last several days, it's nice to know that there are strangers out there who can still make me grin. For example, as you all know, I just LOVE Dinosaur Comics. Ryan North, the comic's creator, is a linguist. So naturally, he has other linguist viewers who occasionally get into heated debates (well, as heated as a debate about linguistics can be anyway) over content of one of his comics. Usually I just read the comic, but today I was scrolling down to read the blog part, and I came across this link which is in reference to a days-old debate about the lyrics to the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. The blog, which offers commentary on Chinese culture as it relates to US culture through the lense of linguistics, is simply awesome. Just read this post, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Pure Gold.

Ah, the internets... Gateway to different worlds.

The manic, surface part-of-me

There is some stuff that makes me happy in my daily life, and not just the obvious stuff, like Erin or Nick, or any of our too-numerous pets.

What stuff, you ask? Well, for one, there are a few webcomics that are literal hi-lites during my day. Dinosaur Comics, XKCD, Questionable Content, and A Softer World are a few. Do yourselves a favor and spend a little time going through their archives... I'll be surprised if you don't find them entertaining. These people write with such wit that it makes me envious. If I could hang out for a day or two with anyone, these writers would top my list, along with Trey Parker and Mat Stone. How they can sustain such cleverness is beyond me, but it's uplifting.

Other things lately include this picture

and the story attached to it. I mean, how cool is that?

What else?

Well, aside from Battlestar Galactica, The Office, Reaper, and My Name is Earl all coming back with new seasons here in the next few weeks, there's the fact that after 8 years, I am finally switching campuses and moving to teach 5th grade at our Middle School next year. While it isn't exactly what I wanted, I am ripe for a change, and I'll have opportunities to put some of the leadership practices I am studying in my doctoral program to use.

Another cool thing lately was our climbing trip to Red Rocks last week. Nick, while I love him, has terrible couch-potato tendencies, and a general lack of enthusiasm typical of an 8th grader, so I was delighted with how excited he was to climb, and even more so with his efforts. The climb was a frictiony 5.8 , and he was totally determined to climb well, he took instruction, and he was way more persistent in his efforts than I could have imagined. We'll be going again on Thursday where we will climb something a little more traditional, and I'll post more pics. In the mean time, here are a few of from Red Rocks...

And finally, I got a cowboy hat. Yes, a cowboy hat.... and I LIKE it.

The inner turmoil part-of-me

My brain has been all over lately, and hence, no posts. I mentioned in my last post that I am suffering from a possible mid-life crisis, and that is still true. But rather than dwell on my own mortality and the what-ifs of squandered youth, I am trying to focus on how to make life more exciting and beautiful and substantive. It isn't easy, but I am hoping that that will change once I can just accept the fact that I am no longer a kid.
Anyway, I've always been the type of person who walks the edge between introvert and extrovert. When B and I were first rooming together 17 years ago, I remember taking a personality test in which I scored as an INTP. About a year later, I took the same test and scored as an ENTP. I seem to go through phases in which I bounce between really liking the world, people, and social interaction and really being disapointed in the world and people, preferring instead to duck my head and pretend they don't exist. I just took the test again, and am currently an INTP. Take the test yourselves and post your results...
Anyway, I think that I have become increasingly isolated these last few years, and though I'd like to blame it on the culture here in Vegas, or on getting older, I am not entirely convinced those two things are solely to blame. Though, to be fair to myself, I am not the only one who feels this way. And being back to Texas for Christmas and seeing old friends reminded me that I am not incapable of feeling comfortable and connected to people other than Erin.
I often get caught up in my head in trying to determine if my lacking connectedness is because of my age, and wondering if I'd be able to be friends with any of you if we didn't have history. I know it's a pointless mental exercise, but sometimes I can't help it. I AM grateful to have you all as friends, it's just that I wonder at my inability to find others like you in the 8 years we've lived here. Is it really THEM (meaning the 2 million or so people in the Las Vegas Valley) or is it me?
It's not like Erin and I don't socialize; we do, albeit infrequently. It's just that it always seems so shallow. Or, we'll meet people we really seem to connect to, only to have the relationships evaporate. It's something that I can't figure out, and is definitely a part of the larger package of mid-life issues I'm dealing with.
Bleh. I feel like I'm getting all whiney now, and that's not what I wanted to do. I'd intended to just briefly mention my whole nut-job obsessive thought-processes and then move on to more interesting things, but since I've used up so much space already, I'll save the various fluffy bits for my next post, which will be immediately after (or above) this one.

Some realizations, in no particular order.

I feel wiser now, having turned another year on the calendar. Here are some of the things I have come to realize lately, in no particular order:

1. The years of 1992-1996 were THE BEST for independent films, when they truly were independent, and not mainstream-fashionable, as they later became. This group of films includes, but is not limited to, The Last Supper, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and a movie that featured a trio who killed a guy then had to dump the body; they drew straws to see who had to hammer out the corpse's teeth, and the loser eventually moved into the attic where he went kind of nuts, drilling holes in the ceiling to view what was going on in the apartment below. I can't remember the name, but Brannon will help me out by remembering for me: we saw it in Austin and it was awesome!
Anyway, this morning as I was grading a Science Test, I realized that the actor who plays geeky professor-guy on this season of lost is the same guy who played the lead in Spanking the Monkey (which definitely goes on the list). I haven't checked yet to make sure, but I'm 99.9% positive it is him. The movie had an awesome soundtrack, particularly the song that played as the credits rolled, and after more than a decade, I finally found it.

2. No limit Texas Hold 'Em, which holds the top place (in a tie with fly fishing) as chief among my obsessions, might actually not be the greatest poker game ever. That title may ver well belong to the game of Pot Limit Triple Daw Lowball, Deuce to Seven. Don't ask why... there's not enough spaceon my blog if you get me started... just trust me on this!

3. I'm actually filling up (slowly) with relevant reflections and witty comentary about things these days, but I'm not yet up to the task of presenting them to the world; I think I am suffering a bit of a mid-life crisis, and, as usual, I prefer to suffer alone until I get things figured out; that's just the way I am. I AM figuring things out, at least a little, and when I'm ready, I'll actually post something I feel is important or worth-while.

4. You should bug Erin to post more; she's easier to push around.

passing the buck

I haven't blogged much lately, so for those few of you who check here hoping for something, I'm posting my friend Michael's blog... He's a funny motherf*cker.

http://michaelrossmayer.blogspot.com/

We miss you Popo.

Uuuhhnngghh.

There's been an epidemic at my school involving a bug that for many has led to pneumonia... I was hoping to dodge it, but it finally caught up with me. The sucky parts are

a. I can't keep any food down so I've been surviving on pedialite and Ensure, which are both gross.

b. We have to drive to Phoenix tonight for Nick's 14th birthday gift of going to the Rennaisance Festival tomorrow (our hotel and stuff is already reserved)

c. My first doctoral course ends on Sunday, and I have to write a paper between n0w and then.

d. Today is my 19th AA birthday, and I can't go to a meeting to celebrate it.

I tell you, I hate hate HATE being sick, especially when it involves throwing up, which this bug does. I went to the doc yesterday and got an antibiotic shot and some amoxicillin, so hopefully it will clear up in a few days.
In other news, our new dog Charlie is cool, and I'd love to post some pics and tell you all about him, but I'm headed back to bed. Get onto Erin for dog updates; she's better about posting lately than I am.

Ugh.

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. We just had to put Sebastian down, and I'm completely bummed. You just don't realize how much you love a dog, or cat, or whatever, until you're missing them and they are gone. I'm just very sad right now, so I'll write more later.

... and for you harmonica fans

This just made me giggle. Alot.

Being a guitar aficionado

I just love kick-ass guitar solos, so I decided to share this Gem with you guys. Woot!
And check out Ozzy's rhythm!
When you're done there, click here for more guitar kick-assery.

Update

First, let me begin by saying sorry for not posting or inviting you guys until today. I've been busy, and as usual, haven't had much to say. If I've left anyone out that you know of (like Brannon) send me his email or tell whoever it is to send me their email, and I'll invite them.
Anyway, let me fill you in on the story of why I had to go private.

It's Wednesday morning and I get an email from the president of our school. It is vague, and only says "Can you come up today so we can meet about an important sensitive matter." Hmmm. I spend about 15 minutes grading papers and wondering what on earth this could be about when I decide to call him. He just says "we need to meet as soon as possible," which is a giant red light to me, because no one EVER has good news when they tell you, "We need to discuss this in private." I wonder, "What have I done that might warrant such a meeting?"
So I go through the next 45 minutes of teaching Science before I get a break. I go down to ask my boss if I can leave early to go to the other campus to meet the president, and I explain to him about the mystery email. I go back to my room, and get on with the day.
About 15 minutes later my immediate boss comes to my room and tells me that all he could find out was that I have "some sensitive matter on the internet," and that our campus president is not happy because the president of the entire corporation found whatever the sensitive stuff was, and is not happy about it.
Shit.
Immediately the paranoia sets in. I am racking my brain to figure out what it could be, because I can't for the life of me figure out where my name in relation to my current life might possibly come across the computer screen to the eyes of the head honcho.
Now, there are maybe a half dozen skeletons in my closet that I'd sooner no person I work with ever find out, and as unlikely as it was, those few of the worst started to seem likely candidates for what was happening now.
Without getting into the details, suffice it to say that certain parts of my private history would absolutely shock most people, and would certainly be hard to explain. I began to feel literally sick to my stomch with worry.
On the other hand, everyone has skeletons in the closet that they would rather pretend never existed, and I couldn't imagine how any of mine could be so bad as to negate the positive things I accomplish at work every day.
So I wander through the rest of the school day like a zombie, doing my best to teach while the phantoms in my head get larger and larger, until I am seriously wondering if I am about to get fired.
Lunch rolls around, and as I am heading back to my class, my boss catches me again, and asks if I've come up with anything yet, and all I tell him is that there are maybe half a dozen things in my past I'd be worried about, but I can't imagine how any of them pertain to my job.
Then he says, "Do you keep a blog? Because apparently they found it while doing a web search, and they aren't happy about how critical you are."
Sudden relief flows over me. All of this is about the blog post I wrote when I was venting about them cancelling my professional development day. And while I could still be in some trouble, I at least was prepared to explain. In fact, despite what my immediate boss was saying, I would have been very surprised if the president of our school, or the president of the corporation, didn't at least on some level agree with what I was saying in that post.
So I re-read my post before going for my meeting, just to make sure it wasn't too critical (it wasn't) and then I headed up to my meeting with him. The short version of the events afterward were that
1. I should use better judgement in posting a personal blog with critical opinions of my employment situation on it, and
2. I was pretty much right on track as far as my actions were concerned in relation to improving my career.

The prez had printed out the entirety of my blog, "just to make sure there was nothing so bad as to cause us legal problems," and aside from suggesting I make it private, he was very encouraging about expanding my career opportunities. He did say that the two heads of school (we have a campus headmaster, my immediate boss, and a school-wide headmaster, who is in charge of all academics) were probably not going to be too happy about what I had to say, but also that there are many places where my drive and hard work would eventually pay off. He even gave me the emails of 2 other school presidents, one in Phoenix and one in Houston, and suggested I start plying them for job opportunities. The corporation is buying about 15 schools this year, and will continue to buy schools into the near future, and I should start agressively pursuing opportunities all around the corportation now, so that when I finish my doctorate, I will have connections beyond just here where I live.
So. Here I am. I doubt that any real opportunity to move into administration here at my school is going to present itself in the next few years, but I am pleased (and incredibly relieved) that things went so well with my meeting.
I went from worring about being fired to being told that I was an asset who has good things for his future, and I was even provided personal recommendations to two other school presidents. All in all, not bad.

Yikes!

It's late and all I'm going to say now is that I'll give you all the full story later about why I had to make my blog private. G'night.

It comes and goes

So last night I read over my blog. I haven't done this for some time, and it was nice. I like having a record to remind me of the life I've lived. That being said, I realized that lately I haven't really had much to say, and I'm not sure why. I think part of it is that most of my thoughts have been consumed by the mundane; that I haven't thought much of interest lately. But another part of me feels like that is a cop-out. So I'm going to try to be more diligent in writing. In one of my previous posts I wrote about the joy writing brought me when I was younger, and I know that writing begets more writing. It's like going to the gym; you just have to make yourself do it until you want to do it. So... here I go again.
I started my doctoral program this week. It is an online university, Walden, which at first cracked me up because Walden is the name of the totally mediocre university in the Doonesbury comic, but who am I to look a free degree in the mouth? Actually I have been surprised at how thorough the online classroom is, and I am looking forward to it. I am totally convinced that I will be an excellent administrator, if for no other reason than that I will be a leader. That is what is lacking in my school. For example, the curriculum professional development day I spent two months working on was cancelled by our headmaster at the last minute, and he didn't even have the courtesy to offer me an explanation. Hell, he didn't even tell me; he left that to my immediate boss, 3 days before I was to present. Now, I'm not really surprised, and not really even pissed off anymore. What I am is enlightened; for I finally see that it is more often the norm in the field of private education for the administrative leadership to be of the type running my school; aloof, evasive, and separate. My bosses are not bad people, but they certainly don't lead their staff towards better practices. I am not being bitter. It is simply the truth. through the last two years I have done everything I can to move our school in the direction that our parent corporation wants to go, and at every step the real work I've done has been either ignored, credited to someone else, or minimized by my boss, while at the same time he's telling me ""yes, yes... it's a great job, etc."
What can I do though? The short answer is nothing. I can keep making myself available, and I can keep doing things set before me without worrying about their outcome. For example, I've been appointed the leader for our campus to get together a team to do a video-conferencing collaboration with a school in Mexico; cool, I can handle that. Of course, when I've sent numerous emails to my boss asking for information like the dates, time allotted, etc. he has done the same thing he always does, which is ignore me; no response from him whatsoever. So I'll just keep plugging along and hope he doesn't cancel things again at the last minute. My main hope is that some of the higher-ups see what I am doing (I know they do) and that sooner or later they will present me with an opportunity to work where I can have some real authority. Worst-case scenario, I work in 4th grade for 3 more years, finish my free doctorate, and get employed by someone who appreciates my ability to lead.
OK, OK... I'm hopping off my high-horse now. I realized after proofing this post that I sound kind of whiny and conceited, but the truth is I will be much better at being an administrative leader than my own administrators because as a teacher I know that the key to success for a whole school is strong and involved administrative support. And we just don't get very much of that at my school.

Anyway, aside from the job/school stuff, all else is well. Nick's doing fine, and he's starting to make some friends, and some girl has a crush on him, which has improved his spirits greatly. He asked me if he could take her on a date, to which I replied "Hell no!" Well, I didn't exactly put it that way, but I did say if he wanted to go out with a group of friends, I would unobtrusively chaperon, but a one-on-one date was not going to happen just yet. He's going to get back to me on that.
Otherwise, it's been mostly work, swim practice, and TV. Since we finished with Lost, we've been kind of floundering around looking for another good show to watch. Among our current playlist are the Showtime shows Weeds and Californication. These are great shows, but not for when kids are around. With Nick we watch Reaper, The Office, and Aliens in America.
Oh, and books... Well, I'll post on books later; we had our school bookfair last week, and as usual, I got all the books on my wishlist. Lots of goodies!