Monday, December 18, 2006

I've been neglecting to write frequently, and I am sorry about that. However, I am hoping to build it into my schedule for next semester. In fact, my schedule as a whole is looking pretty good. Here are some of my major ideas:


  • I will teach on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I am going to try to load all of my administrative duties, office hours, etc. onto these days, and hopefully schedule most of them on Mondays and Wednesdays. This will leave me Tuesdays and Thursdays to get a lot of research done.
  • I will continue to come in early on MWF, but I will use the mornings for running instead of research (which I really wasn't able to do successfully these mornings this semester).
  • I will also try to update the weblog before class on MWF.
  • I might give myself a "web embago" at work (thanks to Emilie for this idea). I'm not sure about this one, but I might.


Today is the last day of class, and that is sad. I am really liking both of my classes.

Snoop sent this to me; I like it:



I think that I wanted to write about a couple of other things, but they can wait. I go on vacation tomorrow, so I can get my thoughts organized then. I am hoping to write more over break, but one never knows.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Today is Basketball Christmas. Merry Basketball Christmas.

I have been treated to books, bars, The Office on DVD, money, cards, an answering machine, and a gift certificate to amazon.com. Thank you all.

I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was decent.

I also watched another of my favorite West Wing episodes: "Noel." Great.

My students gave their lesson from lesson study last night. We gave it to some adult learners, and they were great. I am guessing that this could be really challenging at times, but they were fun.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Happy birthday to Bernard King, one of the greatest scorers in the history of the NBA.

Skye and I joined Sparkpeople.com. This is a free website that allows you to keep track of everything you eat, thereby keeping track of all Calories and nutrients. It even takes into consideration exercise. I think that this is a lot of fun for the short-term, but I doubt that I will keep it up in the long term. This is because it is a decent amount of work to enter the food, but also I don't think that it is good for me to obsess about this stuff for too long.

One thing that I am learning about is why I am thin. Being vegan, people will often ask me if I am thin because of my diet. My response thus far has been, "No, it is mostly due to genes." I said this because I don't want to make false claims about veganism. However, I have been thinking recently that it probably isn't due to genes: none of the males on either side of my family are particularly thin, so it is probably something else. I exercise a lot, and that is probably the main thing. However, I am also finding by tracking my food intake that I typically consume only 1800-1900 Calories per day (this is about 500 fewer Calories than I am "supposed" to be getting; so I am only eating 80% of the Calories that I should be getting). This is largely due to diet, since it is difficult to eat enough fruits and vegetables to add up a huge number of Calories.

I got Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid from Netflix. I have heard good things, and am looking forward to it.

This week is rough. Between writing an exam, watching mad videotape, and running a lesson study, I won't have a lot of time to research until Thursday. I'm going to do my best to leave Tuesdays and Thursdays free for research next semester.

Studio 60 is on tonight. I watched a little bit of season 2 of The West Wing to warm up. Season 2 is not as good as season 1 (yet), but that isn't saying much.