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I think LJ just jipped me. Maybe not, but just in case...I'm here at 4:43 a.m. after a night of recording attendance. Yes that's right, attendance. That's because we record the 200 kids by passing around a notebook for them to sign. This leaves me to hunt out all the names, find them when they are in no logical order and record their attendance ( Read more... )

As I sit here the victim of some insidious virus, I wonder what happened to my iron constitution of yore. There have been periods of years in which I have been the paragon of health, and now I'm layed low by a simple flue. Oh, the indignity, but on the plus side it give me time to write an update. Let's see, midterms are coming up, which means ( Read more... )

Five years ago I had the inestimable honor of a brief conversation with Rick Husband on the occasion of John Glenn’s return to space. I asked him about how he had come to be an astronaut and he told me what has now become common knowledge, that the power of his dream carried him through three setbacks before he finally was accepted to the program ( Read more... )

The end of the Semester comes nigh, and I find I'm much the better for the wear. As busy as I've been and will continue to be for the next 10 days, it has been an intensely interesting experience and one that I have proven myself a match for. Nevertheless, I shall be glad of some time for rest and revisiting the entertainments of my youth. ( Read more... )

Let’s see, what have I been up to? As has been the case in most of my recent and now infrequent entries, not tremendously much has happened. Actually, I've been up to an obscene amount of work, but those details make for lousy journal entries. I've been grading midterms for my undergrads and true to form they are almost universally atrocious. ( Read more... )

No time to relax. No time for friends. No time for this. The books beckon. Bound in them are not pages of text but days from my life. Days I could be playing, singing, seeing the world. Days I could meet new people and build a life. Days of my youth slipping away page by page. I should return to them, but I refuse. I've done enough today ( Read more... )

I just returned from one of the most perfectly fun, exciting, and in all ways enjoyable weekends in my life. I returned to Fargo to go to Valley Con and shared with my long neglected college friends a weekend of gaming, revelry, and abandon. I had always enjoyed my friends, but I do not think I fully realized what a special group they were until ( Read more... )

If I've been remiss in maintaining my journal, it is because my supply of free time has dipped to an all time low. Between teaching my own classes and taking graduate level classes that require obscene amounts of work I find that often time the last thing I want to do with what little is left over is to sit in front of a screen and type. ( Read more... )

I taught my first class yesterday. One would think that years of speech combined with a thorough knowledge of the subject would be sufficient to leave me feeling prepared and comfortable with the prospect of teaching. I found that this was not the case. I was nervous, clumsy in my presentation, and all in all not so impressive as I would have ( Read more... )