So it’s ridiculous, the rebound, the reelection of Michael Bloomberg, and all of the other things that happen on this summerish Tuesday…

So I thought that it might be fun to post before this two-day vacation a laundry list of things I want to get done/enjoy before I go back to work on Thursday:

laundry (heh)

kendo

sitting in the park

my full core conditioning routine

abwork without planks (to spare my elbows)

finish cleaning house (bedroom, kitchen, fridge)

drink

catch up on readings

turn in this proposal

TeX some project notes

design my swansong project

We’ll see how I do on the other end.

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 it’s now official that I’ve moved the old blog to wordpress, as I knew I should have years ago, but you figure that what with all this folksonomy and better templates and widgets and so on, I’m all newly retagging all the old posts–working it from both ends, as it were. Which is interesting, as five years ago, even though I promised not to look, I was in much the same place, but without the kendo to guide my development. My idea of fitness was pieced together from the backs of sugar packets and cast-off Men’s Healths. Still, it was nice to have a midwidth olympic bench and a chest.

So summer is so nice and lazy but at the same time I feel the danger of it. I should promise myself this week to finish this long-overdue paper. Or at least something. I can feel the summer slowly slipping, dripping away, and already vaguely dread yet another school year–#7. I guess that’s not completely fair: Friday’s interview was deeply encouraging in terms of the possibilities presented by good leadership at the new school. One more year before I jump ship.

I feel these entries have gotten all to straightforward, not with none of the old glib incisiveness. Or maybe just that things were always better way-back-when.

So I’m descended back into idleness after a week of three-hour commutes and a modicum of planning. It’s summer, for real, now, and I don’t know what to do with myself, as tempting as it was to go and buy a bat and ball the other day, fetching said ball is still rather tedious, all by yourself. I guess I can always exercises, one way or the other, but it’s good to just relax–I really can’t fully remember what I’ve done in summers past, though I suppose I should finish some of this overdue work before it’s too late, but I know that it’s a matter of my personality–no deadline means no completion, not ever.

I really should start on the whole cardio thing again, but it’s just too tedious for me: I need some sort of project, somehow, and I’ve been putting finding one off for way too long. I remember having this sort of thing in college, where I would long for whatever breaks I could find and then promptly squander them once they arrived. Even during spring break I had the floors project… and now look!

So the problem with this vacation is that there’s nothing to do msot days, other than watching some good old Kurosawa films on the exercise ball. “I’m smarter when I’m drinking” as Sanjuro says.

I really do need to set more and better goals for myself before the weeks just melt away.

So it’s been a good long while, and year six of teaching is over, but I can’t say that I’m very relieved. Today at least, I’m trying to kick the third quarter off right, but I’m a little ill at ease when it comes to that mix of career and school. In part this is because I’ve still not finished this paper on the ways in which critical social theory (no capitals, e.g. Foucault, Bourdieu, Gramsci, et al.) can inform educational research. For that, one would need an actual question or context–the exercise, without the data to frame it is just an exercise. It also doesn’t help that every Latino I sent to take the Regents failed. What does that say? Sure, maybe I’m not preparing them enough for the tests, but what am I really accomplishing? Two half asses don’t add up to one.

Things to think about as I do my best to build new summer habits.

So my throat still hurts, but less so, after some chicken from the Chinese place, which was embarassing, as the entire family was sitting down chatting about their next meal of dog in the dining area when I walked in, and so they hurriedly rose to serve me, which was a bit strange, to say the least, and these excellent vitamin C drops that Halls makes which have made it possible for me to swallow without my entire torso performing the peristalsis, though the pain is still a little nagging.

I really do need to get into college early if I ever hope to make any headway on this math–there are some things I need to look up and some novels I need to check out, and the new Nation should hold me over just fine until I get to the library and new material: but so far it is a blank sort of day, having lost the push to produce comics, my letters stand there, languid, accomplishing nothing. And my summer dribbles away.

I really should try and write a comprehensive manifesto as regards math education as directed toward the aim of democracy. Yes. That would be nice. But maybe I should read a bit more before going off.

Didn’t sleep terribly well, and probably not just because of dreams of role-playing boardgames with most of the pieces (except the undead ones) missing–I’ve gone back to a college lifestyle in many ways, with the strange hours, but much less whiskey–it’s this lack of deadlines that has been the adjustment, the lack of a routine, which has let my fingernails grow back. It’s strange having no fucking formal responsibilities, just the ones I choose–and I don’t function well with that amorphousness–I’m not good with making plans, I hate following recipes to the letter–somehow, and this ought to have been the title, I fancy myself with a certain slapdash omnicompetence. Sure, I write drafts and all, but the best stuff is all off the cuff, immediate: just get it done.