Oh, my aching knees! I’m back in the saddle, gang, and it sure ain’t pretty. But in keeping with the quotidian diary-blog nature of this site, let’s fade back to Monday morning, -ing, -ing, -ing...
Otis had her standing writer’s date, so I busied myself around the house while she went off and was writerly. When she came home to start an afternoon of appointments, I took the car and schlepped four bankers boxes and four grocery bags of books and files up to my office in Cascadia.
I have a different office than the one Stella and I shared when I was adjuncting (she’s still there). Full-time faculty are supposed to have a private office according to the contract, but space is at such a premium right now that we have doubled up, and I am sharing with a poli sci instructor who is new to the college (she commutes from Bremerton!). I packed everything away (with Stella’s gracious help), got my computer login all squared away (they just rebuilt the network over the weekend), and completed other administrivia. It was nice to get a bit of a jump on things.
I gave a ride home to a colleague and got back just in time to pick Otis up for to head out to an impromptu invitation from O for dinner. Johnbai was there to fetch and tote, and Dingo and the O-Mom, Char, was there to help enjoy the food. O made a great traditional antipasto, grilled fennel, and a lovely main dish of pesto spaghetti and zucchini. Nummers were had by all.
After an expansive evening of food, wine, and company, I had no trouble falling asleep when I got home; this was a Good Thing, because I was up at the crack and in the saddle by 7:00 am to ride up to Bothell. The morning spirit must have moved me and I flew like the wind! Bothell is not far enough away for a triple-dipple, but I did manage a single-tingle: 15.2 miles in 61 minutes for an average speed of 15 mph. It’s nice to know I can still dig it out after being such a slug all summer.
I spent the morning at an actually-not-bad orientation session with my “tenure cohort” – the seven newbies who will be going through the three-year process together. I am the only boy in the group, which includes my aforementioned office-mate from the Peninsula, a Developmental English instructor and a Speech Communications Instructor, both from North Carolina, a Japanese Instructor from Atlanta, and two other former adjuncts, one in Economics and one in English. We seem to be forming a pretty good esprit de corps, and I’m actually looking forward to the rest of the week.
Then I rode home. It wasn’t quite as happy as the ride out: I wasn’t going as far, since I was meeting Otis at Magnuson Park, and that was lucky, because my knees were really complaining the whole way. The final stats were 12.7 miles in 54 minutes (14.2 mph), but that does not capture, as Dr. Smith would say, the pain, oh the pain!
When we finally got home, I misted myself with the hose (it's HOT again today, innit?) and took a shower and then a nap. I’m just feeling human again now.
At O's dinner I described this video and everyone seemed to think it was funny, so here it is:
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