LATE night

B2Keno 12.7

So, yesterday was more like it, weather-wise. I had my meeting on Phinney Ridge in the morning and biked a little bit going to and fro; when I got home, Otis was already back from her doctor's appointment, so we loaded up the scooter and headed over to Carkeek Park with a little lunch. There was a spectacular veiw of the Olympics to be had, the sky was clear, the sun was warm - it couldn't have been better.

In the afternoon, Otis gave a massage to the woman who bid on her services at the Phinney Neighborhood Auction; the visits will hopefully result in some future business.

Scotty Tuxedo came over in the early evening and we all went up to the Crest to see V for Vendetta. At the theatre, we hooked up with Soapy and Slim Pickens *(I could never get straight who was Slim and who was Pickens), busker pals of Scotty. (It seems Jimbo-5 was in the audience as well, but had to flee back to real-estate woes and never met up with us.)

For afters, we headed to the grand Lake City Starbucks to meet Johnbai and Dingo for lies and reminiscences. At about 11:00, Slim Pickens and Soapy bailed out, but the rest of us soldiered on, winding up at A Pizza in the U-District, where we held court until about 1:00 am. (They close at 4:00!) Yowza!

Withal, I was still up at 6:30 this morning to take care of business. Sheesh.

Now, as promised: Annoying Animated Gif Week continues, highlighting one of the chorus boys from yesterday's feature in his very own solo:

Yes, it's Spider-man, doing, the... the.. the whatever-the-heck-that-is!

*Slim Pickens is actually the delightful Annie and Jake, who perform in the Pike Place Market and elsewhere. Check them out and look for them at the market or at shows.

@#$%&*!

Ah, the life of an adjunct: I just got word today that the Rhetoric of Comics class I was scheduled to teach this summer has ben cancelled because of low enrollment. Prep time spent to no good end, materials purchased for no point, kiss about two grand goodbye. Grrrr. I just wanted to share that with y'all.

But, to lighten up the mood a bit, here's a picture of the stray kitty who has adopted us:

Awwwww.

Short week shorts

Y'know how there's that common phenomenon for people with regular jobs that after a Monday holiday "Tuesday feels like Monday" and so on, causing disorientation for the week? Well, it's a little like that for this member of the League of the Underemployed as well, except the confusion lies in remembering whether I have to go to work or not. (I don't, except I do have a meeting.)

I do have to go to work tomorrow, and then do some responding on Thursday, as on Friday Otis and I head down to the Willamette valley to see Just Jon.

Yesterday, in addition to being a somewhat somber holiday (which I marked mostly by listening to NPR), was also the occasion of the fifty-percent sale at Value Village. Otis had to work for Hi-Lai (entrepreneurs don't take holidays!), so Dingo and I raided the Cap Hill and Crown Hill stores. Well, raided isn't quite the right word - at Cap Hill, Dingo scored some drapes and I got a new jacket for Otis, but that was pretty much it, and at Crown Hill, we actually got nothin'. I think it might be a function of not really needing or wanting much more than I already have, maybe a little of VV (at least Cap Hill) not actually having a lot of good stuff, and my intolerance for crowds growing, but I just couldn't get into the whole scene as much as I have in the past.

Otis gave a swap-massage to b in the afternoon, and then c came over and we all went out for yummy Indian food down the street. I love my neighborhood!

Just because I can, I am making this Annoying Animated Gif Week here at HKC. But don't worry, it's a short wek, cause although this feels like Monday, it's already Tuedsay. Without further ado, here's the first piece of weirdness:

That's right, it's Spider-Man, a djinn, a mecha, and a ballerina, all doing a line dance. God bless the internets!

Sunday waning

This has been a pretty weird day. I got up early, even for me, and have been pretty busy, but besides going out to Whole Foods for a bagel, I haven't even left the house. I have been reading and blogging and researching and all kinds of stuff like that; I just haven't gone outside. Not that outside was beckoning very much anyway - it has been gray and wet since last night almost without a break. Otis did head up to Tamarind Tree to have lunch with her brother, and we were going to go out for a game night at Kris-10 and Rye-N's tonight. But Otis isn't feeling that well, so we're staying in, and she's doing a bit of art and I'm doing this.

I did do something halfway interesting today - I put together an application for a teaching job at Kwantlen University College in B.C. I am more interested in seeing how they respond to an application from the States than I am in moving to Canada right now. The application instructions told me to "Please forward a current curriculum vitae, copies of transcripts and a list of referees." Now, we have been over the CV vs. resume business (see the comments section here), and a transcript is clearly a transcript, but I am guessing that referees are references or recommendations. What do you think? The great and mighty intarweb was of no help to me on this one.

While rather homebound today, we did mount an expedition to Folklife yesterday, even in the rain. We didn't actually go to any performances, but just walked around and soaked in the ambience and the random music. It was pretty cool, maybe getting a little long in the tooth, but still with a nice vibe. I can only say that roasted corn on the cob should not cost $3 an ear. (But the falafel pita were great.)

Kwiki-wiki

I've been up for two and a half hours and I need to get something to eat before I blog anymore, but I wanted to make sure I referred y'all to the Events Blog for the Big Summer Activities Poll, since some of you may be waking up in an hour or so.

Heh.

Xtra edition

So, the gang (comprising me, Otis, Mighty Mel, Johnbai, Cair-uhl, Dingo, and Made-his-Mark) went to the premiere of X-Men 3: The Last Stand at the Cinerama last night, and enjoyed a decent Mexican meal up on Cap Hill afterwards. It was a great night; here are some observations:

I dunno about the others, but we scored nearly-free parking downtown. Yay!

The Cinerama is big. Nice to see a movie in a big theater again.

The lines for concessions were so long that we bailed out and skipped the popcorn (including delicious buttery-flavered oil) so we wouldn't miss the trailers. It turned out they didn't start the projector until 20 minutes late anyway, which was also annoying in its own way.

There was a new Superman trailer (which looks even better than the internet one), a trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (which looks like great fun); one for Jet Li's Fearless (which Johnbai was all over and which does look pretty good); one for Nacho Libre (which Dingo thought, and others agreed, might be a little third-gradish, but which Johnbai loved), and one other for My Super Ex-Girlfriend (about which others were hopeful for its (a) genre-squishing (superheroes-chick flick-comedy), (b) for Luke Wilson's hipness, and (c) for Uma Thurman's Uma-ness, but which I think is going to (a) fall flat).

(enough parentheses for ya?)

People are cranky! A baby cried about 20 minutes into the movie, and the bad energy (and foul language) on both sides of the issue was nastier than it had any right to be. Man!

Oh, and the movie itself? Pretty darn good. Everyone was happy with it, and the conversation at dinner was pretty much like this, except without the costumes.

A little X-cessive

So, last night we had a Big Wall Spectration to do our homework for X-Men 3 tonight: Scotty Tuxedo, Dingo, Invisible Adam, and Mighty Mel showed up to watch the first two X-movies and consume copious amounts of pop and popcorn. (For those of you who missed the screenings, here's a convenient primer.)

It was a whale of a time, and it was good to see Scotty back in the neighborhood. He has posted his upcoming gigs on his blog; check 'em out.

Scotty isn't the only newsmaker in the group: word is that Dingo has found a home for her massage practice on the cusp of Wallingford and Fremont, working on Saturdays starting June 3. Go-go, Dingo!

In other news, I guess since Johnbai is a JFS-zombie, I won't be linking to stuff like this anymore.

See y'all tonight!

Blue plate special

B2Keno = 12.2

Go check the LotU blog for x-citing movie news, if you haven't already checked your email.

Hunh - it feels like I am missing a post - I could have sworn I did more yesterday than just post a (very funny) movie. Well, anyway...

Back on the bike today! Even though it was raining and cold when I left, and although it turned hot-sticky-muggy halfway to Bothell, I was back in PPC (people-powered commute) mode today. I must admit (as you can tell from the B2Keno above), I have fallen off pace for B2K - I have over 400 miles in the jar, but at this pace I'll only hit 1500 or so. While that is not chopped liver, it's not what I have as a goal, so I'll have to ramp up the effort a bit. In the three weeks I have off between quarters, I hope to get a lot of riding in.

I had a great lunch with Invisible Adam yesterday. We actually had a chance to tell each other some lies as we enjoyed Thai food, and he gave me some good ideas for Blockhead Rhetoric, too.

As exciting as that was, it was not the most exciting thing to happen yesterday: Otis had her first real-live, totally new, never-before-seen massage client! A woman saw Otis's listing on a local web directory, called, made an appointment, and came over the same day. And so it begins in earnest - yay!

Funny stuff...

... and in an idiom that I love.

10 Things I Hate about Commandments

Rainy Monday

Well, shortly after posting yesterday's agenda concerning piper-paying, Otis and I took off for a bike ride! What a pair of shirkers. We rode south through the U-District Street Fair site to watch them set up and ran into Scotty Tuxedo, who was on hand getting ready to do some magic and tricks and busking and whatever. We caught up a bit on things, and it looks like he'll be in town for a while. Cool beans!

We just made a little trip around Gas Works and Fremont, and then did come to home to do some work in earnest. Although it took a while, we both got all of our work done, and I finished the application for the faculty position at Shoreline CC shortly before midnight.

Today was a crappy kinda day, and it was full of dropping stuff off (app, completed papers) amd work (meeting, classes, graphic design) and commuting and all that typical stuff. I don't think I got enough sleep and I think it will be an early night for me.

There's a piper to be paid

So, yesterday started out yucky and we decided to do some errands and work, but then after the errands it got nice so we decided to play. And then we watched a movie. So as a result, not a lot of work got done. So, today, you can imagine the agenda...

Among the distractions yesterday were Otis's rising earlier than usual; breakfast at the Sunlight cafe; finding a great deal on a used Mac Keyboard; hitting Value Village and some bike stores (in a continuing fruitless search for an old-school frame bag); spending some time with a new neighbor-cat; and visiting the University District street fair, which was surprisingly expansive.

We also watched The Princess and the Warrior, the second teaming of director Tom Twyker and lead Franka Potente of Run Lola Run. Both movies are imaginative, powerful, and mesmerizing. Twyker is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors, and Franka Potente is to kick-ass Teutonic relentlessness what Audrey Tatou is to whimsical Gallic eccentricity.

Just imagine

Imagine a Hollywood movie about a group of volunteers who, faced with government ineffectualness, take up arms against nasty, murderous poachers in order to protect an endangered antelope. They are led by a handsome and charismatic ex-army officer; they are joined by an idealistic reporter; their ranks include a young rake whose dedication to the cause interferes with his love life; a chubby, good-natured fellow; a bookish ex-teacher, and so on. Against the backdrop of a stark, brutal landscape they doggedly pursue their foes at great cost, until a final confrontation is had.

Imagine the tropes that Hollywood would employ: the shots, the soundtrack, the story arc, the character bits, the love interest (did I mention the leader has a beautful daughter?). I mean, it practically writes itself, doesn't it?

Now imagine a movie with these precise elements that does just the opposite of everything a Hollywood movie would do, and you have Mountain Patrol: Kekexili. This is one of the more despairing, dark, and difficult movies I have seen in a long time; it makes Icelanders look cheery and gay. There is some attempt to inject hopefulness in to the mix, maybe with some long-term, zen perspective, but overall it it just a hard, hard movie about doing the right thing. It is well worth seeing.

Otis and Mel and I saw it last night. Afterwards, we went to the late-night 'bucks and tried to re-invent higher education. Talk about despair.

Yesterday was also my walkin' day. While Otis was lunching with Ms. Macha, I found out just how close we are to the heart of the U-District, as I handled all my errands afoot - and made some new discoveries to return to, such as Sidecar, the vegan store. After whiling some time away at the comic book store, I also had a chance to join Dingo and Johnbai for a walk around Green Lake, which was particularly fortuitous since they couldn't make it to the Crest with us later.

There's other news about Otis's new ad campaign, but maybe she'll have a guest-post on the topic, so we'll leave it for now.

This talk of Iceland has reminded me to post a link to the Bjork Goes Wild video, so here it is.

Sorta summer II - the adventure continues

B2Keno = 11.8

Man, the good times have just kept on a-rollin', at least weather-wise. The almanac says we have been running about ten fdegrees above average for the past fur days or so. Whatever the numbers have been, it has sure felt good! (JustJon says they hit 100 in his neck of the woods.) Whether I have been biking to Bothell or scootering around town (which is how Otis and I spent most of Tuesday), it has just been grand to be out in the world.

Things have settled down a bit here in the RD. Otis is trying to establish a balance among her various enterprises. She's had a couple of massage appointments and is trying out different marketing tacks while at the same time juggling her paper-reading and her counselor-tending gigs. I have three weeks of class left, but I have been getting busier with meetings and such at Antioch as I prepare for teaching the overwhelming (to them) four-class load this summer, and wonder what will happen after that.

One of the things we scootered to on Tuesday was an impromptu meeting of the League of Underemployed. In recognition of Johnbai's upcoming change in status, Otis, Dingo, Mighty Mel, and I had lunch with him at Pho Cyclo to celebrate the joys of working less than full-time, or of working more than full-time at several less-than-full-time jobs. There was very little bitterness involved (at least at this meeting) and we decided that all anyone needed to maintain the shreds of pride in their identity were business cards and website. Cheap enough.

In any case, I hope to make some headway to day in developing some alternatives for the future, but it is still wide open and I have no idea what it will eventually look like. Maybe like this or this?

Sorta summer

B2Keno = 11.9

Man, has it been great out or what? We did manage to start off with a bike ride on Sunday - a nice 18-miler that included Matthews Beach, Gasworks Park (I always forget the great views from that park), and the UW campus. We sure live in a pretty city. The rest of Sunday was given over to puttering and bidness until we went up to LFP for a Mother's Day dinner with the Putnam clan.

Yesterday was a Monday with a capital-Mon. Otis worked for Hi-Li most of the day, and then gave her first-ever actual professional massage, in her new space, to Rye-N. Yay! I rode up to Bothell and back, and had a decent class, and got to spend some time with Kris-10, so I'll put mine in the win column, too.

It's looking to be pretty glorious again today - hope to get in some biking as well as completing a bunch of job apps and paper responding and lesson planning. Happy Tuesday!

Bureau of Vanity Department

I have updated my profile photo with a picture that Otis took while we were getting ready for the open house. While it was accidental, I think it looks like one of those stylized New York Times Magazine type photographs they would use to illustrate a story on an up-and-coming new chef or something. I fancy it, it any case. Here's a BIG version.

Openings

What a glorious day it was yesterday! It was just like the song says. We didn't get out on the bikes, however, because we were busy getting ready for the Rising Bird Healing Arts Open House!

Otis did a grand job kicking off her new enterprise with a celebration. From her massage room design to her new website (ready just in time for yesterday) to her promotional materials, she has really infused her business with her personality and intention. All we can say now is hurrah and good luck!

Here's a little slide show of the festivities yesterday. I'm sure if you want brochures or anything, Otis can be persuaded to give some up.

As for me, I'm chugging along into the last third of the current quarter - just seven more class sessions. Then I have over three weeks off before Summer quarter starts - and that will be a heavier load than this Spring has been. Strange are the ways of adjuncting...

The full-time Shoreline CC position doesn't close for another week or so, so I won't know about thaty for a while. The SPL job I applied for has been withdrawn and is going to change from a general programs and events position to a position directed at immigrant and refugee populations, so that one is no longer on the table for me. The traditional persusal of job opportunities this morning was rather fruitless. I anticipate another opening at North Seattle CC, but have seen or heard nothing yet.

But that doesn't matter so much right now - because it is a beautiful day again and today should have time for a bike ride in it! have a great one everybody.

And best to anyone who is or has a Mother.

Early times

Y'know, no matter what my schedule is in regard to the outside world, I can't seem to break the habit of getting up early. I have been up for about two hours now. I find that I am most productive in the early morning: in addition to reading emails and checking blogs, I have been doing stuff like paying bills and updating syllabi for the summer. It's not even just computer work: I often do dishes and clean up and all that stuff, too. Sometimes I wish I could sleep late and luxuriate and all that, but it just doesn;t seem to happen.

Anyhoo, we had a lovely night yesterday with J-Force and Dar-Dar Binks, who came over from their respective liberries to join us for vegetarian chili, some drinks, and conversation. (Oh, and let's not forget the totally crappy yet 100% vegetarian ice cream drumsticks that Dar brought.) Good times!

A splendid cap to a day that started with coffee at Septieme with JJ, who had gone too long without gracing us with her presence in any way, shape, or form. Not that working and taking courses (over now in a few weeks) at the You-Dub to develop a whole new career in wine-spying isn't a valid excuse, but I'm just sayin'.

Actually, the day began even earlier with bagels and OJ at Whole Foods with Otis, before she ran off to be worky and massagey all day, returning just in time for dinner.

So yeah, swellness all around, except that the weather report misled me into thinking it would be milder than it was, and it got pretty chilly scootering around in a kilt, lemme tell ya...

She's crazygonuts!

Well, I feel better (and a little like a whiner) since whatever it was in my head didn't last long and is already bye-bye. I rode into Bothell today and felt great. But I didn't ride back because Otis came and met me up north. Why? Because she's crazygonuts!

In the past few days, in preparation for her Open House, she has been cleaning and detailing and fussing and setting up and taking down and setting up again and designing and printing and so on and so forth. Today, I was going to do some stuff for her at school but it didn't work, so we went to Kinko's but it didn't work there, and she just tried to do it here at home and of course that didn't work either (which is why we were going to do it somehwere else in the first place). All this on top of running errands all yesterday for last minute stuff and having a whole sheaf of to-do lists for various things. So you can see why she's crazygonuts!

Me, I'm fine.

Level three diagnostic

So, I was up a while ago, but the internets were broken - at least the parts that have Blogger in them. It still appears a bit creaky.

I got all the teacherly things done, although, as is the nature of things, I have plenty more to do today. I can't complain, except that I have this nagging cold -sinus - headache thing starting up. It's nothing at all compared to JustJon's vertigo or the Wheylona Wheeze, but it might be enough to keep me off my bike today. Maybe it will make me more productive, in a counter-intuitive sort of way.

We made a little trip down to Ikea last night, not for furniture but for furnishings: Otis is putting the finishing touches on the Rising Bird room. Hope to see y'all at the Open House Saturday!

I saw this article on Wired today and while it is a bit uber-geeky I think it was a great use of on-line publishing, combining animation with text. (It is also on-topic, since this group has several members who are or have been frequent flyers.) So, check out the article, watch the little cartoon, and take the poll in the sidebar. You know you have tried to figure this out yourself.

Work avoidance techniques

Well, there are still many teacherly things to do before I get to call it a weekend, but I think I can stave off the inevitable a little while longer by posting a blog here.

Pix:

By request, here's a picture of the sheepified scooter fairing for Wheylona:

In her own work avoidance endeavors, Otis has been gardening. Here's her latest triumph:

Since so many people responded with interest, here are the dubba (the containers) from the tiffin (the Indian light lunch).

In India, instead of picking these up at the food court, a dubbawallah would come to your place of work and drop a meal off; another would come by later and pick up the empties (and take your order for the next day, I imagine).

I think I will use Dubbawallah Tiffin as my alias.


Webbings:

Here's a favor I ask: I have a new website, Blockhead Rhetoric. I want to make sure Google knows Blockhead Rhetoric exists. I have linked to Blockhead Rhetoric on the sidebar. The favor I ask is not that you necessarily link to Blockhead Rhetoric on your sidebar, but just that you publish a post that uses the words "Blockhead Rhetoric" together (like I just did there) and links to the Blockhead Rhetoric site. This way I can get some exposure for Blockhead Rhetoric, if someone searches for it specifically. Thanks!

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Soapy has joined the blogosphere with a MySpace site. You have been warned.


Wishes:

Go wish JustJon a swift and happy un-Vertigo.

Doings:

Mighty Mel joined Otis and I for Transamerica last night. Felicity Huffman was robbed at the Oscars. Much carousing followed the flick at the Lake City Starbucks when we were joined by Johnbai and Soapy. Yippee-ki-i-ay!

Traffic and tiffin

So, yesterday Otis and I decided to get out of town, just for a change of scenery. For no particular reason, we thought we would head up to Vancouver for a bit of Canadian fun. No plan, really - just a day trip oat and back, eh?

It was a beautiful drive up and there wasn't too long a delay at the border (where Otis got to officially announce herself as a "massage therapist" for the first time). As we headed up into Vancouver proper, Otis said she'd fancy Asian food, so we headed off to 99A in order to hit Chinatown.

Traffic got a little messy as we made out way in (Chinatown is in northeast Vancouver), but after circling a few times we found a parking space (we carried no Canadian specie, so we couldn't use metered spaces). We walked around a bit and discovered that (a) there was little in the way of vegetarian food on offer and (b) Chinatown was a pretty sketchy neighborhood to walk around in. So, we got back in the car and headed west a bit, into a sort of Italo-Japanese neighborhood. Less sketchy (reminded me of Brooklyn, actually) but still no place that seemed worth eating at after a two-and-a-half hour trip. We decided to try Gastown (the Vancouver equivalent of Pioneer Square) and made it near that area, but by then we were jammed in traffic and never really found a way out. We next aimed at Robsonstrasse, the kind of upscaley downtown, figuring we would just find a parkade, but never quite made it there because we missed a turn and got lost. Traffic was really getting bad so we angled off toward Stanley Park, getting more hungry and more frustrated. I knew there some nice restaurants in the Beaches area adjacent to Stanley, but when we got there we found that the entire neighborhood seemed to have been converted to permit parking and couldn't find a spot within ten blocks. Ack! This trip was starting to look like a Very Bad Idea, as we got hungrier and crankier.

Suddenly, I was inspired. With renewed vigor, I jumped across the bridge to south Vancouver and headed straight into Granville Island (sort of like the Pike Place Market, only bigger) and paid to park. This is what we should have done in the first place! Lots of arts, crafts, farmers' markets - and food!

Our reward was finding an Indian place in the food pavilion that sold tiffin! This is apparently a word and a practice stemming from the colonial period in India. It was a totally cool way to have lunch: You get a little kit with two little metal containers; each one gets a different dish in it; you pack it up and carry it off. You bring your kit back the next time and just have it refilled. We met some women who had older kits, which had three small containers that got filled with curry, curry, and rice; ours only had two larger containers, so the curry and rice were mixed. I got mango potatoes and lentils; Otis got lentils and mixed vegetables. It was yummy good! Here's what the tiffin boxes look like:

and here's what Otis looks like eating her tiffin:

After this delightful interlude, our mood brightened considerably. We hung around the island for a while, watched the boats on False Creek, and listened to some street music; it was pretty cool.

We didn't stay long; not wanting to push our luck, we headed back south pretty quick after lunch. We had to fight out way through vancouver traffic again as well as a longish line at the border, but we made it through to Bellingham in time to do some sightseeing and bookstore browsing and such. (Although it doesn't seem to be in the cards right now, I wouldn't rule Bellingham out as possible place to live in the future; it seems like a thriving little city, with lots of culture.)

We made it home just as it was getting dark, to find Otis's license certificate and news business cards in the mailbox. A happy end to a long day.

Wiki-wiki

B2Keno = 11.4

Headline news:

Wall Street Journal:

Walaka Back on the Saddle

33 Miles Yesterday
(Re)start Heartens Market

USA Today:

ScottyTuxedo Back on the Continent

Seattle Times:

Local Site Provides Comic Strip Metaphor


Props to J-Force for the link; props to Bill Griffith for the strip

Rootin'-tootin'-substitutin'

Today I need to head into CCC and work on my usual day off - well, on one of my many usual days off - and by "work" I mean "show a movie in a class outside of my subject area and have students discuss it in groups." Ah, the life of a substitute.

Had a heaping plateful of puppet action last night, as Johnbai, Dingo, and JagGirl came over for spectration and we wound up watching Team America: World Police, because, in Johnbai's words, "it'll make EVERYBODY laugh... whereas Donnie Darko will make everyone confused and a little depressed" and we wouldn't want that. It was coarse, juvenile, over-the-top, and occasionally very witty, and everybody did laugh. Just for old times' sake, here's some of the old-school "supermarionation" that inspired this movie and the showcase for one of my earliest heroes, Steve Zodiac - Fireball XL5.

Instead of bicycling, I have been...

um, not bicycling?

I didn't ride to work yesterday cuz I had too much crap to haul (students are doing binder-sized projects).

And I didn't ride today because we went out for bagels for breakfast, and then we walked down to the U-Bookstore for some stuff, and then I did syllabus-writing, and then we scootered to Antioch and some other places, and then I got a Rising-Bird massage (yay!), and then I responded papers, and now it's late.

I need to get back on the saddle before I am so far off-pace that I need to do the RSVP to get even!

Speaking of getting even, the playing field in the Net Neutrality contest might have just gotten a little more even. It looks like Big Finance, eager to preserve its online functionalities, is weighing in on the side of a Free Internet! Check it out - strange bedfellows and all that.

Something else to check out: even though I try to keep the comics stuff here to a minimum, I can't resist giving you this. Let it load, and watch it through to the final, final zinger.

A case of the Mondays

So, here we are at the very dawn of another work week. In some ways it actually started yesterday, as Otis and I both spent most of the day reviewing student papers, each to our own stack. (The day was highlighted by a grand pizza break with Dingo and Johnbai up on the hill - thanks for letting us crash your party, guys!) But now the grind (such as it is) starts in earnest. I have my usual (and light) teaching week ahead, but it is increased by my having to respond to some late final portfolios from Antioch last quarter as well as by substituting for two classes on Thursday. Otis has papers to drop off, and papers to pick up, and Hi-Lai work to do, and Rising Bird work to do. Gee, almost like real folks!

And speaking of real folks, there is an honest-to-goodness, full-time tenure-track English teacher position open at Shoreline CC. Yowzah! I'm a-going after this one.

Bloggo-go-round:

JustJon shows off his mad haxxor skillz with an embedded video in his latest post. Kewl.

If this pinging and ponging between Wheylona and Ned continues, we'll have to move them to MySpace.

Speaking of Wheylona, here's a site I found following links from one of her recent green posts. I'd like to try this someday, or at least investigate it further.