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 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 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 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 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.

So I need a plan. I’m here between classes, having finished an exam early, retrieving a lost disk from the computer lab. I wonder if this is legal for working in this lab. Who’s to say? I guess I just feel the schoolyear approaching all-too-fast, without having really done anything to prepare myself, after a fashion. And this scares me more than a little bit, somehow. Certainly my new nocturnal rhythms will not in the least mesh well with next year’s requirements. This just annoys me. But with only two more weeks of classes (even though Joephet goes back to school next week, at least in some sense), and then two weeks off, I wonder if I shouldn’t take a trip someplace, but of course I have failed to plan ahead enough: we’ll see, but I am restless, and this is not a good thing.