This 'n' that
Oct. 13th, 2002 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupModule writing is DONE, finally. I am looking forward to getting back some semblance of a life, for the first time in about ten months. To cajole myself into finishing I bought Myst III: Exile, which I enjoy tremendously. The thing I like about this series of games is that half of the challenge in the puzzles is figuring out what actually is a puzzle and what isn't.
I also bought myself a hat and a raincoat; together they make me look like a G-man from the 1940s, or something. I'm contemplating getting a digital camera--recent hints to the 'rents about how easy it would make it to send photos of their granddaughter have failed to work their trick. Other recent purchases: a book on liturgy that I've been jonesing after for a while, and a 3-pack of MST3K. I bought it for Sidehackers, but we spent yesterday watching The Creeping Terror, which is one of the great all-time bad ones. Supposedly the dialogue accompanying the film was lost in production, so there are long scenes of people conversing, with a narrator voice-over: "Barney said that the monster had to be hard to find. Gil agreed with him." Some great lines, too, though the movie, even if it would have had dialogue, is very, very slow. And that whiter-than-white dance music we can't get out of our heads.
Many other low-scale things rolling around. One to mention is that this semester has been just about my best teaching experience ever. The students in my classes are Continuing Ed., meaning that many of them are over 35. They come to class actually having done the reading, and they actually enjoy discussing the material. They ask so many questions that I can basically throw away my lecture notes and speak off the cuff for 3 hours, basically like a seminar. For one class 2 weeks ago I literally scrawled 3 or 4 points on a paper 5 minutes before class, and we still used the entire 3 hours. There's no tedium with a textbook; I'm not sure whether a lot of what I'm saying is over their heads, but they seem to be enjoying it, and I certainly am. This is going to ruin me for regular teaching-- the routine of 9 am classes with 35 (well, 20 actually show up) students, half of whom are asleep and only 2 or 3 of whom ever say a word.
Not quite as social lately, but still pretty busy. Our Baltimore friends are up here with their 1 year old; we're going to brunch with them in a few minutes. It's been so long since I've conversed with real friends as opposed to ersatz work friends or in-the-process-of-getting-to-know-us friends. There's a whole backstory to these particular friends that I'm not going to go into here, but suffice to say that for a lot of my time in Baltimore I would have been surprised to consider Josh a close friend, and yet that last year we were there we became quite close with them. So ersatz friends can become real friends, of a sort, I suppose.
Amazingly we did meet a nice young couple at the shul -- he's a part-time cantor there; they're both in their mid-20s. Alas they come down from Boston, but in general seem really nice and fun to hang out with. So, wow, the social life in process here is coming along nicely.
Days are getting shorter. We enjoyed our first "normal" Saturday night out here last night -- went to an indifferent Greek restaurant. "An era draws to a close," Mrs. puts it.
I also bought myself a hat and a raincoat; together they make me look like a G-man from the 1940s, or something. I'm contemplating getting a digital camera--recent hints to the 'rents about how easy it would make it to send photos of their granddaughter have failed to work their trick. Other recent purchases: a book on liturgy that I've been jonesing after for a while, and a 3-pack of MST3K. I bought it for Sidehackers, but we spent yesterday watching The Creeping Terror, which is one of the great all-time bad ones. Supposedly the dialogue accompanying the film was lost in production, so there are long scenes of people conversing, with a narrator voice-over: "Barney said that the monster had to be hard to find. Gil agreed with him." Some great lines, too, though the movie, even if it would have had dialogue, is very, very slow. And that whiter-than-white dance music we can't get out of our heads.
Many other low-scale things rolling around. One to mention is that this semester has been just about my best teaching experience ever. The students in my classes are Continuing Ed., meaning that many of them are over 35. They come to class actually having done the reading, and they actually enjoy discussing the material. They ask so many questions that I can basically throw away my lecture notes and speak off the cuff for 3 hours, basically like a seminar. For one class 2 weeks ago I literally scrawled 3 or 4 points on a paper 5 minutes before class, and we still used the entire 3 hours. There's no tedium with a textbook; I'm not sure whether a lot of what I'm saying is over their heads, but they seem to be enjoying it, and I certainly am. This is going to ruin me for regular teaching-- the routine of 9 am classes with 35 (well, 20 actually show up) students, half of whom are asleep and only 2 or 3 of whom ever say a word.
Not quite as social lately, but still pretty busy. Our Baltimore friends are up here with their 1 year old; we're going to brunch with them in a few minutes. It's been so long since I've conversed with real friends as opposed to ersatz work friends or in-the-process-of-getting-to-know-us friends. There's a whole backstory to these particular friends that I'm not going to go into here, but suffice to say that for a lot of my time in Baltimore I would have been surprised to consider Josh a close friend, and yet that last year we were there we became quite close with them. So ersatz friends can become real friends, of a sort, I suppose.
Amazingly we did meet a nice young couple at the shul -- he's a part-time cantor there; they're both in their mid-20s. Alas they come down from Boston, but in general seem really nice and fun to hang out with. So, wow, the social life in process here is coming along nicely.
Days are getting shorter. We enjoyed our first "normal" Saturday night out here last night -- went to an indifferent Greek restaurant. "An era draws to a close," Mrs. puts it.
