Today began with a 3 mile run with Tyler. Now, I’m not much of a runner on the best of days, so deciding to go out running with a 14-year-old who has been training every day is probably not the best decision. I survived, anyway, although my hips are both a little sore now. It’s an odd place to ache, too. I’m not dealing as well with getting back into running as I did a few years ago when I trained to run a marathon. Or so I think. I’m unwilling to go look at my training blog from those days to see.
After lunch, the whole crew drove to Oroville to help Lisa get her class ready for tomorrow’s first day of the school year. I felt bad because Lisa seemed a little overwhelmed and had a hard time prioritizing the to-do lists, and we weren’t really able to help until she gave us directions. But we eventually got things put on the walls, or put away, or otherwise managed, so I think we didn’t waste her time.
When we got home, I fixed the flat tire on my bike and did a couple small modifications to the brakes on two of my munis. I’ll be ready to bike commute this week. I think I’ll accompany Tyler on his bike commute tomorrow, as we’ve been giving him rides to school the last two weeks, and I don’t want to throw him to the wolves, as it were. There can be some scary drivers out there at half seven in the morning in Chico.
Chico State starts classes tomorrow, but I don’t teach until Tuesday. I’ll be meeting with Suzanne about some NCWP business tomorrow, and (I hope, anyway) will also get things settled for the first day of teaching, too. I haven’t had any “naked dreams” yet, and have actually felt pretty calm about the start of the school year. I hope that the calmness carries through the week, but I’m a little doubtful.
I still have some things I’d like to do. Such as … doing a quick little video that shows how to find my office (most students don’t know the Research Foundation building exists, much less how to find it!), and getting a couple of extra copies of the course texts that I can give away on the first day just for fun. I’ll get done what get’s done, I suppose.
So I’m not sure I can reproduce cat grammar all that well, but I do love the funny (and sometimes quietly disconcerting) pictures on the Lolcats website.
Todd Finley, over at the English Education Prof blog, has once again pointed me to something provocative. This time, it’s another video by Michael Wesch, the cultural anthro prof who made the very cool “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video about Web 2.0. In this video, students contribute information about their practices as students, and it’s both enlightening and disturbing.
It was finally a pretty day in Chico; sunshine, upper 90s, and an air quality rating in double digits (50 or lower is “good”; we were at around 90 today, a big drop from the mid- to upper 100s last week). Last night, when I was cooling off in the pool around 10 pm, I could see constellations in the sky; the previous night, I could see 3 stars; the night before, only the smoky orange moon.
I spent a few hours on the article Rochelle and I are writing, and it’s almost a complete first draft. I’m guessing another couple hours will finish it. I think Rochelle and I are going to have to do a little Skype tomorrow (she’s in Chile, poor thing …) to get it all sorted. I want to send a draft of some type off to the editors before I head to Oregon on Wednesday.
We’ll be picking the children up in Oregon, too; they’ve been staying at Lisa’s parents’ lake cabin,four-wheelering, jetskiing, pedal-boating, lake swimming, inner-tubing, and other gerunds that are far more interesting than what I’ve been doing. It will be good to see the boys again, but it has been very peaceful here lately, too.
The Summer Institute has been going well. Friday, though, was a tough day. We had a great presentation first thing in the morning, and then read a cool article on reflective teaching (article by Patti Stock, discussion led by Rochelle Ramay), and then did a “working lunch” afternoon with writing groups and multimodal projects. All of this was fine. But there was so much smoke in the air from the hundreds of fires in the north state region that everyone felt somewhat out of sorts. I think the news said that our air quality was around 280 ppm, when 35 ppm is the upper limit for acceptable particulate matter in the air. Even with air conditioned air in the building, it smelled smoky and was overall just nasty. The air is a sickly orange, and doesn’t look natural outside. It’s a little clearer out today, but nothing like blue sky.
Weather forecast calls for a little more breeze, which may help us to clear out some smoke, but there may be more lightning strikes (which is what caused all the fires here in the first place!). I’m crossing my fingers.
