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adventures / Ireland / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
Mar 26

Almost not sleepy, but definitely bleary eyed

We are in Dublin, Ireland. It rained, as it does. And then the sun came out for a while, which is still a seasonally new thing, I gather. There is a conference going on at Dublin City University, which is next door to our hotel. My lovely bride has been in and out of the conference today. (More on that tomorrow.) I have spent the entire day, I mean the entire day, in our room doing school work.

There was a lot to grade, midterms, and write, the usual, and prepare, presentations, and it took all day. All of this was part of my plan to stay ahead, or on par, but certainly not behind, over the next three weeks. It was an effective day, and it was a full day. I was fetched for dinner, at a charming little cafe right across the street. I grabbed my sunglasses on the way out the door of the room. It was something like 8 p.m. and pitch dark. I had no idea. It was a great way to waste a day in Ireland, though, which was always the plan. Get work done, drain the jet lag out of my weary eyes and limbs. Be ready to present as a human being should at the conference tomorrow.

I had the fish and chips. I think that was the only meal I had today.

So I have nothing for you here. Except these two little photo fillers.

Sunday night, before this trip began, we got a bit of ice cream. Mine was not good. I did not get this, which looks gross, but it might have been better.

Equally unimportant, but much closer to where I am right now: there’s an electrical panel on one of the walls in the DCU building where the conferences are underway. A little sticker graffiti is fun. Custom stickers are cheap and easy to make. Eventually some maintenance or facilities person will come by and peel these off. But no paint or other serious labor needed. Until then, though, have a little character on an otherwise spartan wall.

Tomorrow, I’ll join the Sport and Discrimination conference and see a lot of research done by brilliant scholars, some of which are our friends. And a few more will be by the end of the weekend. Friends, I mean. They’re already brilliant scholars. On Friday and Saturday I’ll pretend to fit in with presentations of my own.

adventures / friends / Ireland / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
10
Mar 26

So where are we?

We have arrived at our intended destination. All went according to plane. Onto a plane quickly and easily. Flight departed on time and landed on time. Plane landed at the right airport. I actually slept a bit on the plane. You can’t count on all of those things, particularly the last one. But it happened — sleep, I mean — and now I am cured of jet lag.

I am a notoriously bad flier. I can feel jet lagged by staying in the same time zone. It also takes me a two or three days to feel like a human again after a trip begins (or ends). Some of this is surely about how much I sleep in the days leading up to a trip. Usually that’s not a lot, but I usually don’t sleep that much anyway. Then there’s the travel. The moving stuff around, making faces at the airport, dealing with luggage, the dehydration of the whole travel experience. The miracles of modern travel, whatever. And then I’m just not sleeping on a plane, even when you’re supposed to. Too much noise. Sleeping as you perceptibly move is a weird idea. I have stuff to read, or work to do. And there are movies and things. Then there’s that seat, which is not designed for someone with a spinal column. And always the guy in front of you. And the noise associated with the perceptible travel. Oh, I can make a lot of excuses for it all, but I’m just a lousy traveler. I just hope I can remain decent company.

And to stay awake the next day, which is today. This, Tuesday, Dé Máirt, or Purplasday or whatever day this actually is.

Never mind the when. You had to figure out the where. Here’s one more hint.

We walked around with friends, people from other states and from other countries as we all assembled and were trying to keep each other awake. I ran across one more hint on our pedestrian journey.

Later, we walked by this building and everyone pointed and laughed at this mural. I was too tired to understand the joke, so I took a photo so that I could figure it out later. I still have no idea why it was funny, but many smart people thought it was.

And we have successfully stayed awake on our first full day in Dublin. We are here to attend two conferences, which start tomorrow and Friday. I will be networking and presenting research and grading. I have a lot of that to do tomorrow. And that, somehow, will be how I bleed off the last of the jet lag.

adventures / Monday / photo — Comments Off
9
Mar 26

We’re going on an adventure

You’ll have to guess. And this will take some doing. Here are all the hints you are getting. Look carefully, and maybe you’ll be able to figure this out from context clues.

We are going back to 2020!

Or at least dressing our faces that way, because germs, man. So you see a mask. And if you look near the top right corner there’s a hint. I’m wearing an overstuffed blue hint. Also there’s another hint covering my ears.

It’s a plane, yes, congratulations. But to where? You have until tomorrow to figure it out.

photo / Rowan / sports / Thursday / video — Comments Off
4
Mar 26

Shiver spring?

Here’s the deal I, a southern boy, have made in my decade of living in northern climes. Below a certain temperature, I don’t go outside if I don’t want to. At the same time, I acknowledge that life has brought me to a place where winter happens. (Items one and two here generally take of each other.) If winter is going to happen, it should stick within certain calendar confines. (I never get my way on this one, really, I mean look at us.) Anything after February 14th won’t do, because, back home, trees are budding and the lilies have burst through the soil and the jonquils aren’t far behind. Winter is going to happen, though, and so I will accept days that are cold and bright, or dull and warmer. The wrong combination there is unwanted. And, somewhere in February, because I can’t have spring on schedule, I begin to think things like “Oh this feels awfully warm!” and it is 51 degrees. This is the Stockholm Syndrome that comes in the last third of winter.

The last third, because we’re not done yet.

There has been entirely too much of this in the atmosphere for March.

Walking into our building on campus today I could see my breath. This wasn’t so much about the cold, but the dew point. It was one of those days where everything felt like it would be cold soggy forever.

In Rits and Trads we wrapped up the student presentations of traditions they found. Someone actually showed off the Red Wings thing. While they love it in Detroit, where it is presumably gray until May, this strikes me as problematic for a lot of people.

Another student showed a video from his high school, which was cool, but I’ll never find again. The idea was how they integrated the marching band and the football team taking the field. It was simple, and neat.

Someone discussed the Red Sox playing Sweet Caroline. Fits the bill. Crowd loves it.

And the Buffalo Bills do a Mr. Brightside thing now, which is on its way to becoming a tradition, it looks like.

Admittedly, these guys right here aren’t the best singers, but this is all about the choreographed stadium atmosphere. The Buffalo snow probably helps.

I wonder if they’ll take this song, and emerging tradition, next door to the new stadium this year.

In Criticism, we watched this documentary, which I thought was fascinating, as it takes on issues of gender, politicization, culture, history, and colonization. It’s a slow start, which allows the whole story to breathe, but most of the last half hour feels like a sports film. Also, it shocks the sensibilities a bit to see 8th and 9th and 10th graders having to fight to play a sport they love.

We talked about those things, and a few others, after the film, which is now 10 years old. Apparently not a lot of people have seen it, but maybe more should.

It’s a good way to avoid a bit of winter, I’d say.

cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan / site — Comments Off
2
Mar 26

The month of lions and lambs

Happy Monday, and happy March! We have survived the brutal months. Now, the month that makes the difference. All of the snow has mostly melted. Spring, overdue, has been promised. It has not yet been received here. It will be received with great interest when it shows up. And we’re getting close. We’ve had some mild temperatures. We’ve had sunny days, like this weekend. Now we just need to put it all together … and we will … and then keep it that way, until late November or so.

I better not be writing paragraphs like that very much longer.

It was a productive weekend, all spent right here at my desk. I did the monthly cleaning of the computer, updated the monthly spreadsheets, created new subdirectories and updated some boilerplate code. I put the February page of my master assignment calendar behind me. (I have several task-specific calendars running and when the stress of things hits my move is to make another calendar. Late last month I made the master panic calendar, filled it out through May, noticed almost every moment between then and March 28th was spoken for and then set about marking things off the list. Nowhere on that calendar is there a note to make another calendar. Five is sufficiently silly.)

I settled on two new documentaries for class. One of them will be a midterm, and I finished writing that today. The other we’ll watch in class. I’ve had it on my radar for some time, wanted to watch it, want to write something about it. About 14 minutes in I knew it was going into my Criticism class, too. I’ll pretend like this was all by design, because it should fit perfectly.

Also, I finished the draft of that work packet. Presently the thing clocks in at 29 pages, with all of the appendices to go. I wrote the service and research and professional development sections last week. I detailed the teaching section, filling up the maximum seven pages. I have two years of classes, peer observation, student reviews and subtle notes about the future to get into just seven pages. It took some doing to make it fit. Happily, all of the scores from my teaching evaluations are good. The lowest score I’ve registered in the last two years was about the difficulty of a class. Message received: that class will be more demanding and challenging if I get to offer it again.

I’m taking today off from that packet. It’s time for a break from thinking about myself. Besides, I have to think about tomorrow’s classes. Tomorrow evening I’ll do a dead tree edit of the packet, and then send it to a colleague who has generously offered to make sure I’m not omitting anything. After that, final corrections, final assembly, PDF the thing, and send it in. All of which takes place by mid-March. Not the longest thing I’ve ever written. Not the most tedious thing I’ve ever written. But it is a lot of me. Call it … maybe 60 or so pages? I can’t say yet. The checklist, though, tells me I have to have TWO tables of content. That’s always a signal.

On to more important things. We need to do the weekly check=in on the kitties. Phoebe would like you to know that she is not on the table. She is on the runner. And nowhere in the contract does it say she can’t be on the table runner.

Poseidon, himself no slouch when it comes to jailhouse cat lawyering, finds the argument a bit tiresome. Though you can be comfortably certain he’ll be doing much the same thing tomorrow.

So the cats are doing great. Lots of cuddles and big purrs over the weekend. Everyone is doing great.

I did manage a few quick rides. On Saturday, I was in Switzerland! This is just to the northeast of Zurich. I rode up and out from the small rural, forested village of Mosnang and over to the equally small and wonderfully charming Kollbrun. This route was part of one stage of the Tour De Suisse in 2024 and, while I did not see that particular race, I can see why.

I only wish that the person who recorded that route had done so on a brighter day. Switzerland is stunning most everywhere you look. Beautiful lakes, mountains a plenty, gorgeous values, and a huge array of glorious architecture. You can see ancient Roman, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau. But there’s just a little too much Modern and Post Modern architecture, some of which is bordering on Brutalist. Much better to be among the trees and the hills and the rivers and streams. Even if it’s just my basement.

Anyway, here’s that route.

And this evening I rode in Corsica. (But still my basement.)

The last four rides have felt really nice on the trainer. This is notable because everything prior to that, since November, has felt bad or worse. I was getting demoralized. Now, though, I want to see what kind of trouble I can get into riding uphill on Rouvy. I did that tonight. I found myself a little Cat-2 climb that let me climb 1,110+ feet over 3.82 miles. Saying I rode in Switzerland on Saturday, and tonight in both Corsica or Mallorca, where I powered up that hill, is nice, but I’d also like to go outside. I’m ready to not be in the basement.

If for nothing else because I’m kicking myself by how little I’ve done down there this winter.

But spring is coming in now. That’s what the top of this post told me, anyway.