wiggolation

Been gone a while from blogville. Lots of school work at Columbia to do, teaching, and playing with visitors to NYC.

T had a good time here, seeing the sites and pigging out with me on dishes from Vietnamese to Cuban. We watched Lost Highway, which I'll just have to watch a couple more times to figure out.

Massart is here this weekend. We were out in the East Village Saturday eating Ukrainian food and walking around. Quite a cool area, though there seem to be two types of places here, at far as I have seen: places that are fun and different and places that want to be. Anyway, I popped into St. Mark's Bookshop for a look and was delighted to find a great bookstore. They have all the books I like and not much I don't like. Lots of fiction, poetry, philosophy, criticism, culture, theory, and so forth. I picked up a small book on Vico. It includes his autobiography, which is short at about 100 pages but interesting.

With Thanksgiving on Thursday I have only three days to teach this week. Off to Chicago Wednesday till Sunday. Nice to have time off to read a little, see family and friends, and be in the Chi for a while. No class at Columbia either....

Am suffering from a fat toothache and the daily grind that is teaching and studying. Not much else to say now except that I am looking forward to my day today--I called in sick. I plan to relax and visit the dentist.

Otherwise, T is in NYC and having fun. There's only so much she can take in her luggage though so she'll have to ease up on the shopping if she's to get on the plane.

Sart called and said he's coming next weekend to visit. That should be interesting. Let's hope he's in a good mood the whole time. Eh, cheif?

Got my letter from NIU saying I passed the comps. What a relief!

Unfortunately, I will have to wait to graduate officially until May 2003. At least I'm done and don't have to be concerned with it anymore.

The Museum of Radio and TV was pretty cool. We got a sweet breakfast, an intro to the museum, which is more a library than a museum as you cannot borrow from it, an opportunity to search their databases, and watch just about anything ever shown on TV from the medium's beginning, circa 1937. I watched an interview with Carl Sandburg. It was a meet the press kind of show (probably pre-50s--??) in which he ripped on conservatives and philistines and consumerism and praised Ezra Pound and Abraham Lincoln and art. Funny, the first thing I looked for was an interview with Pound, which was not available. The next thing I came across was the Sandburg interview. I think I'm going to use some of his poems in my classes sooner or later. Sandburg, that is. Pound is hard enough even for skilled readers.

Must run off to the library.

It's very cold here now.

Just back from the dentist. By far the most painful visit to date. That's the fourth, with one more to go. I'm paying for years of dental neglect and I deserve this. My whole face is numb! I'll have to dine late tonight:(

Mondays are so slow for my students. They know the answers or have responses to our discussion but are almost lifeless. I just do my best to ease them into the week. However, tomorrow is staff development day and they are off, so the week will kind of flop I think. Momentem is so hard to get yet so important. I've been trying to pay attention to it and other things like lesson cohesion in which your lessons are a series of threads that make up the fiber of the course, etc., etc. Easier said than done, for sure. But it is interesting to toss these ideas around.

Students are off because teachers get to coverge on the Museum of Radio and Television. This could be an interesting "day off." The little of their Web that I have looked at so far looks cool. If not, at least I get to stay in Manhattan and don't have to trudge out to Flushing. Of course, I heard a couple snide remarks from teachers about having to "go all the way to Manhattan"! Don't talk to me poeple--I go out to Queens from Manhattan every day! With any luck there will be some interesting things going on at the museum that I can steal for my students.

In any event, I found a new bike shop today which really rocks. Bicycle Renaissance has a ton of great cycling stuff and caters mainly to racers and other "serious" bikers. Yay. Got some leads there on customizing my old Paramount. I'm excited as I need a project like this for winter, or I'll risk going nuts from too narrow a lifestyle, i.e., working all the time. Also picked up some new tape for the Agilis to complete the color scheme, i.e., titainium and black.

Vive le hypertext!

Been a while since I got time to blog.

I was able to catch up on all the Columbia work I was falling behind in. That's a relief. I took off Friday from Queens. It was nice to have the day off the rest some and get things organized at home and in my paperwork life--yes, there's that much paper I have to push either at Columbia, Peace Corps, Americorps, and Queens.

Of course, this weekend was spent with the brothers, who have come and gone in great style. What a fast weekend that was though. We got out to the Guggenheim on Saturday, it being the highlight of our cultural outings. We also walked around Little Italy, Soho, and Greenwich Villlage, stopping to shop and eat some pasta (surprise). Friday and Saturday we went out for dinner and drinks and music--the live music being the band Black 47, an Irish-American group named after the worst of the famine years in Ireland. They rocked. Otherwise, we had a good time hanging out together and going round Manhattan. Three men in a studio means you get to catch up fast!

I just realized I am really too tired to blog so I'll have to report on this weekend properly tomorrow. Got to rise early in the morn.

Congrats to Gregg, a.k.a. diggerblue, for passing the MA exam with distinction!! Way to go! A pitcher or two is in order. (My results, by the way, have not arrived yet....)