So Thursday was just a second Monday which meant that I was all grumpy and such, but it’s okay because since then it’s been happy, whether an overenergetic kendo keiko to a much better today with the wonderful din that is project-based work to reunion with both Mark and Rob and new dishes at the old Mexican restaurant.

So midweek being over and all, I find myself up again at an inopportune time trying to will myself back into sleep, as usual. It’s been hard, this getting up at odd times, but overall I’m more than rested enough, I must say. Time, however, to update the resume given all of the things which are going on in my life now. I need to get serious about my research and I don’t think I’ve blogged before about the extent to which I’ve considered living teaching and cobbling together a life and income out of adjunctships, fellowships, and the like. I guess I should apply for this AERA minority thing, since I’m actually eligible and go from there. I should also capitalize on the days off I have in the coming weeks. Indeed, it’s probably time to get a little serious on several of the projects I’ve let wander off.

It was restful this day, that began somehow in Flushing for brunch, followed by BBB in Queens and such and then home for a remarkably bearable Two Weeks’ Notice before a rainy errand-walk to coffee, bp, and dinner, followed by some tv and passed-out Blade Runner. My netflix, at least, is doing quite well.

So somewhere I missed a post. I think it’s because yesterday was so damn lethargic, because there was nothing to really do, other than the usual workout routine amidst the watching of the second Musashi flick amidst reading Musashi and finishing off the Twigger, and the taking out of new CDs at the 5-year RFR. Then I ended up somehow waiting with Mark as for his iPhone which was also my bday present to him (at least he’s clear on what he wants), which involved waiting with him and Rob at the shiny glass cube by Central Park. The Korean food, though, was worth it, as were the beers and MGS3.

So somehow I ended up in the village with Rob for lunch again, and again failed to end up at the GC for work. But it’s okay because I’m back in the saddle cookingwise, at least, even if it’s too spicy for Mark…

So yesterday was deeply relaxing, what with Mark and I going off to the Korean spa again, for what must have been over four hours, even though we didn’t quite make it into any of the novelty saunas, but did have two angry Korean men scrub several layers of dirt off of us with their scratchy mitts. The funny thing about this place is that the scrub/massage combo is done by men in swimsuits in a tiled room, so there’s much bucketing of water all around and plenty of gruff nudges. It’s clear that my kendo muscles are too tight or even overgrown (if that) and that I need to relax a great deal more in my shoulders, even though it’s my “personality” or “nature” depending on which sensei you ask.

Taiwanese food all day–who knew that Guinness is an ice cream flavor?

The Dark Knight was most satisfactory: it’s hard, meanwhile to imagine a joke which tops Rob’s, about a mixed Nash equilibrium. Hrmm… I guess that counts as a spoiler…

So today was a lazy day with Mark, including a brush with de mole and its target audience, followed by an impossibly sweaty landlord/broker out in Woodside who showed a decent apartment, with plenty of afternoon lazing, the tail end of La mala educacion, a shared pizza and some juicy fruit, plenty of barley-based hydration, a sweaty keiko, some Minca and ice cream. The weather has been largely unbearable until the late evenings when a breeze picks up.

I’ve been avoiding the A/C because of the added expense, but was just informed that I’ve been assessed around $400 for the increased energy prices, so I’m tempted to buy one, just to take advantage of the extra $80/mo bump! Damned global warming.

Other than that, lethargic and unproductive through and through. I need to set some goals for this next week–it looks like the completion date for this paper is now August…

So today was busier than normal, a complete workout before hopping off to “research”, two interviews without me bursting out by saying, ‘well, can we hire somebody who isn’t white for once?’, some catch-up pints with Laser, Japanese with Mark, and now unwinding quietly at home.

So somehow I neglected to commemorate in full splendour my five-year bloggiversary which was sometime last week, as like Friday as not. As you might be able to tell, I’ve been doing my best summer to resume my daily pace now that the usual excuse of not having consistent access is gone. I won’t bother now to revisit in detail where I was at five years ago–such exercises are moot at such an intermediate distance. More sobering, perhaps, is that this is the year of my tenth high school graduation anniversary, or somesuch. I be getting old.

Today was a leisurely morning with Mark as he made coffee for me and the fungus gnats and we browsed various titanium rings and their associated diamonds from past and present and then my new routine of morning calisthenics before digging up call the CST books which I’ve been leaving by the bed|wayside in order to try and make some headway this week. Making my way to Rob Chin’s for some carne guisada y pernil was the right taken, as somehow on that blacktop roof of his I managed to make some progress on how I way join that faux-cult. In particular, I think that the ways in which this will help what I’m trying to write about (social justice curriculum and course for Latino immigrant students and Spanish speakers) is to re-envision discourse in terms of limits and forms rather than the process of production. That is, looking at “what can be said” in the context of such an academic course, as opposed to affinity grouping or somesuch; looking then further at the notion of the “archive” as a methodological question: how will this ed research be conducted, while keeping in mind the injunction to ever pluralize–to see discourses, discontinuities, and resistances. The irony in all of this might be the ways in which social justice curriculum seeks to convert an informal set of practices into a more scientific or rationalized process–just add the water of our discontent? So maybe not that much progress, but at least I’m working on it.

The GC, meanwhile, is surprisingly hopping during the summer, or at least the library is as most of the faculty is on vacation and no one has summer classes. I’m rewired here and will be glad to use this as a bonus office, even though I will need to deal with MS Office 2007.

So today should have been lazier, given that we got back from Hellboy around 2am after dodging some drunken mics on the train who trampled poor Mark’s sandal to the point where it snapped and I had to step in and walk half-barefoot all the way home, and then lingered online for a while before hitting bed, but it felt good to hit keiko and then Rob Chin up for some authentic Frisco-beer bought in USq and spicy pickles to boot, though City Bakery ought not to smell like barf-cheese, I’m just saying. I should do more planks as my glutes need a good deal more work than they’ve been getting, perhaps. And then off all the way to Flushing for the usual 359 goodness plus even red mango, though mochis distressingly bear 62.5 calories per serving, which of course is irregular given the vicissitudes of serving size.

I’m glad that Mark and I are enjoying different wines. In the past week-plus, Mark West Pinot Noir 2006, Charmee Pinot Noir 2006, Rock Rabbit (the house white). All right, I guess it’s not that many, but at least there’s variety!

So I don’t know what it is about PIXAR movies, but they always make me cry. Mark and I enjoyed WALL-E, though I was a little confused as to why so few Chinese people actually made it into space.

Today’s trip out to Brooklyn College was a success–my students are amusing, and very young–they still call me “Mister.” But my interactions with the Taco Truck guys was less successful, partly because Mark was ordering tacos with his whole arm again:

Maestro, tengo una pregunta. En tu idioma que dices cuando quieres comer.
Pues, los chinos no se dicen nada antes–solamente comenzamos a comer: los japoneses, pues, los japoneses siempre se dicen “itadaki-masu,” pero nosotros no tenemos tiempo para esto.
Y como se dice “novia”
Uhhhh… niupengyou.
Ah, chino es mi idioma, porque dos de mis amigos estan casados con chinitas

I can only look uncomfortably at Mark.

So last night we were out late with Mark’s future roommates at what had to be the worst places to eat or drink in the W Vill–sangria like blood and Guinness, well, still like Guinness. We got home late but happy, and today I was relieved not to have to go all the way out to Brooklyn College for unappreciative Asian girls with bad Bronx accents and doughy thighs–today was just half a workout with myself, a greasy Chinese lunch with Mark, and a longish wander no place in particular, but always in the direction of Red Mango.

So three pilsners (urquell if lukewarm) with Rob are just about enough to cure what it was that was ailing me. Which is not to say that I wasn’t a little moonish earlier, but after a late-night session discussing crossword puzzles for mathematics learning with graduate students, a little levity is quite overdue.

Pendant lamps, meanwhile, are quite overdue to alleviate Mark’s persistent complaints re: the want of a overhead lighting in my apartment’s living room. That and a recentering of the new TV. Meanwhile, the flypapers have yet to fully exterminate the gnats.

I should really do better to reread Monkey or rather Journey to the West, Waley notwithstanding.

It remains to be seen if I can meet Rob for a paella lunch tomorrow.

So the exciting news is that Mark is temporarily moving in to save up on commuting and other expenses as he saves up for his own place with his college buddies. It’s only for two months, but it will be a good run and nice to have him around. The problem will be what to do with the dating log I’ve been faithfully maintaining.

There are worse dilemmas.

So I miss Mark even though it’s been a day after our nine-day streak, as he’s all sniffly-like, and I sympathize with the sudden wall-hitting exhaustion. Rob is also off to Taiwan for a family thing.

The exciting thing at work is not so much the mysterious baby that was bornded on Monday even though we’d heard or seen nothing about it, but the possibility that I could move into a more adminstrative role next year, with a focus on data analysis, presentation, and management. I must say that after almost six years in the classroom, I do need a change of pace, or at least a chance to teach older students and harder material than I have been–I feel this all the more as I’ve benn recycling verbatim my work from two years ago…

So spring break is over but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made on my floors and such

The long roadtrip with Mark upstate was a smashing good time, I’m just sad and unable to sleep still because it and all of braek is all over, but I suppose there are plenty more good days to come.

The only question is how to account for the date number when it’s a 72+ hour thing. I guess there are worse dilemmas for a math teacher…

So it’s now spring break and I should give some small update as to what it is what I’ve been up to.

The conference went off rather well, all things considered, without much of a hitch, to rave reviews and people were generally quite pleased, with a promise of a future reprise. This is encouraging, the more so because it makes me almost care about graduate school again.

Despite my embarassing, hyper-aggressive behavior, travel schedules that don’t quite synch up, and just general business, things with Mark and I are going smashingly well.

Less promising is my typical spring-break project, which this year is tearing up the carpet in the living room and working on the floors underneath. Tricky, that, and I’ve been buying more power tools than any faggot really needs. No drum sander, though.

Anyway, here’s your Asianboi roundup

AllRick is back on the market.
EnDee is safely home.
HoEn has found hope in dating.
RoChi is back in Cali, Culver City, at that.

So Mark (clever, handsome devil that he is) has managed to find this blog by googling some of the SIPs which were in a month’s worth of posts I sent him. So, hi, honey. I won’t go back and sanitize the silliness, drama, sadness, flippery, and so on, but now blog with perhaps a bit more discretion and a little less gushing.

I’ve been really phoning it in in terms of work of late, but that’s okay, I think, because it’s very phone-in-able, although I would say this week is rough given the parents coming in, and that entire report card mess, which involves all sorts of paperwork–it always astounding to me how people just don’t get this thing called mail merge.

That aside, it’s been a good week as far as the dating and so on are concerned (do you hear that, Mark?–Okay, I’ll stop the shout-outs, it’s annoying), but it’s odd to think how quickly the sharp snappiness in kendo can leave you with just a week off. Saturday was also extremely pleasant weather-wise (with eventual facebook photos to follow), but it’s sad how the Manhattan girls find ordinary people’s ordinary lives so damn “festive.”

So here is my life after 5 today.

Ran downtown for my presentation. A/V problems like mad. Mac Minis are cute and wireless keyboards are hot, but the lack of hotkeys renders GSP almost stupid.

Did some adlibbing, made some jokes about cravats and the Siamese. Rob and Laser were mostly appreciative of my jokes, which were hedges against something or another.

Several choice moments include the following jokes: (I did not tell any jokes about what’s green and really far away? What’s really far away and hard to wash off?) A teacher complains her kids can’t even draw parallel lines and I’m like, “What, their rulers have only one side?” “Why did the parabola go to the guidance counselor?” “Because she lacks direction!”

I’m told the best joke I told was about how the vanishing point moves whenever you turn around. This joke cannot be transcribed.

We didn’t make jokes about urban kids are already familiar with traintracks, thankfully.

Some pints later, I try to stagger Midtownward for Mark, sadly leaving Rob in the lurch and Laser a bit confused, but somehow got lost by heading into Battery Park City, but the ruins of the WTC made me further and further away from the subway, so I took a cab (thank goodness for ExpressPay) to near the dojo, whereupon then I hopped on the train to Mark.

It was good seeing Mark. It was great seeing Mark. It was necessary and overdue seeing Mark. I’ve missed him unreasonably. Tonight was reasonably light and relaxed and just catching up, shooting the breeze, and flirty, retracing our first date steps somewhat on this our tenth, talking about the headlong, heady pace and how much we can see a future together, as much as we are leaving our own lives intact as possible (just don’t ask me how many times I’ve skipped practice in the past few weeks). It’s almost enough to make me revive that old song, “When My Boy Walks Down the Street,” but that was another country… And this time it’s somehow much more reciprocated, nourishing, and sustaining and there is longing which is not based on what is not but what we don’t have right now because of work, life, family, and such. Happily in love.

So seven dates later Mark and I are still going strong.

The funny thing, however, is desire. Desire is when you can’t have exactly have what you want–when you long and yearn and crave it at a distance, growing ever fonder, and storing up the things you say, or interrupting your hum-drum day with cheesy affectionate emails which push the envelope of what is work-appropriate but well enough because the days just become distance between the next encounter whcih in public is so aggressively flirtatious and with body language which if anyone in New York City were ever to pay attention would warrant at least a bashing or two or the more intimate and private moments about which I won’t even blog because the silences are so pregnant and full.