Today was the first day since February 23rd that I haven’t had a bunch of stuff on my calendar. I have been running five calendars since about that same time, and I checked them all, in disbelief, to make sure there was nothing doing today.
This meant that I spent a few hours grading, a few more hours working on a brand new lecture, and a little more time watching a documentary. I have, this week, been answering the last 48 questions poised in my online class. Across the semester they are tasked with reading various articles and chapters. In these six assignments they must make annotations. There’s a certain formula we employ. One element of the formula is to ask a question that the reading has inspired. I figure, since I’ve instructed them to ask I should try to answer the questions. This is a lot of fun. For one thing, you see the wide range of ways that students are thinking about the reading. For another thing, you can challenge yourself to write interesting and creative things. For still a third thing, you can try to predict questions that will come up a lot, and thus create some form answers. The downside to this, and it’s not really a downside, is that it is time intensive.
The good news is, this was the sixth and final annotation of the semester. This also means that the big project is boring down upon us. Feedback there matters a great deal, over the stage process, and that is certainly time intensive.
I have been working on a lecture today about unhealthy traditions. The challenge here is going to be in trying to sound neither obvious, nor a hallway monitor.
And tomorrow I’m screening a documentary that’s a little too long, so I have to find parts to cut out of it, for time. It’s not as easy as skipping the beginning or cutting the end. You have to make some deliberate choices, hopefully, without losing too much context.
And that is what I did on the first day when I didn’t have anything to do.
Also, I went for a bike ride. It’s still early enough in the outdoor part of the year that this feels hole-in-corner. And my lovely bride is out of town at a conference, so I was riding on my own, which felt even sneakier, somehow.
That’s how it felt, for a little over an hour. And down this road I flew.
It was tee-hee sneaky version of the feeling. The “I can’t believe I’m getting away with this” style.
If it somehow makes it feel appropriate, I didn’t go out until after hours. And I only got above 30 mph three times.
I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?
https://www.kennysmith.org/wordpress/blog/2026/03/17/cuan-na-haisleime-and-keem-bay/”>This is Keem Bay.
