Take a Walk!

As a kid, I was pretty active, although I was never especially athletic.  I grew up out in the country and my family had a firmly-held belief that small children were best kept out of trouble by frequent weeding of v-e-r-y long garden rows.  We also kept horses throughout most of my youth and I could curry a pony before I was taller than said pony's ears.  Further, my mother grew up in the mountains of southwest Virginia and instilled a love of hiking in me.  So it's reasonable that I grew up being quite happy tramping through the woods, roasting marshmallows over campfires and shivering in my sleeping bag knowing that the awful ghost stories probably weren't true, but still feeling my heart jump at every snapped twig.

Then I got older and More Responsible, which seems to involve spending a great deal of time in a stuffy office, hunched over a desk.  It's a funny thing, but after a certain height is achieved, it seems acceptable to "work out," but not to just "play outside."  Everything needs a goal, I suppose.  So, over the years, I've tried to have goal-oriented workouts, usually involving trying to get to that magic mark of ten thousand steps a day.  But I'm cheap, so I always had lousy pedometers that (a) didn't work, (b) broke easily, and/or (3) weren't especially accurate.  The pedometer would give up the ghost and, soon afterward, I'd quit, too.

About two weeks ago, I had the brainstorm of looking into whether the App Store had a free (I'm still cheap, you know!) pedometer app.  I don't have an iPhone, but I have an iPad through the school's technology initiative and I have to say, I've found it to be a very useful tool, although I still don't think it's the end-all, be-all. Not having an iPhone meant whatever I chose, I was going to have to carry the iPad with me so it could count my steps.  Would there by anything out there that could convince me to lug the iPad with me while walking the dog or turning laps on the college's walking track?

Turns out yes.

Let me recommend (and my technical services support guru is going to beam at the very idea of me recommending an app!) a lovely free app called Striiv.  This app not only counts your steps, it gives you frequent encouragement and points.  You can accept little challenges like "take 100 steps in the next 10 minutes" to earn points (more on that later) and when you figure out how easy it is to win a challenge, you grab the next one.  I've been using Striiv for not quite two weeks now and my average step count is over 8,100 steps (I've cracked 10,000 daily steps once).  It's not a race, but I have to admit that I like seeing the numbers go up.

What to do with those points?  Well, Striiv also comes with a game where you build an island.  I admit, I thought this was just lame, but now I'm hooked.  I've never gotten hooked on a game - I enjoyed video games Way Back When, but I've never been a real gamer.  (Exception noted for the movie quote puzzle game Enscripted, which I play every day over my first cup of coffee.)  But with this, I find myself forming strategy - what can I plant or build to earn enough coins to buy a Fire Maple?  Now how can I earn enough points to grow the Fire Maple to full size?

See - you start with just a hut and a tiki torch (OK, it's a "Prometheus Torch," the game has a certain Classical Greek vibe) that generate some coins.

Where I started - a hut and a torch!

You can save up the coins and buy other plants or structures, but you have to build/grow your new stuff through three additional stages before it's finished and will then generate more coins to buy more stuff.  And some things come with critters to roam your island.  Tap on those and they wave at you, the tiger swipes at you with a paw, and I now have an ostrich who (you guessed it) buries its head.

Plants, a fishpond, a vineyard, and a half-built Fountain of Youth!

Might be crazy, but for me, it's working.  Oops!  Gotta go - I need to earn enough points to build the next stage of my Fountain of Youth!

Personal Development Days

A (Big) Apple for the Teacher

There's a story I need to tell you.  Please - pull up a chair, hunker down, and hear the tale.

So things have been going well here at the Nest.  Life is full and maybe a little overly busy, but it's with Good Stuff.  My classes are up and running and seem to be going well - that includes my online one which has its own set of challenges as I try to get students to interact with the material and with each other - the Breaking Bad book is chugging along, and I'm working to throw a conference in June that seems to be mushrooming into something a little bigger than I had originally envisioned.  FryDaddy and I are getting a handle on the commuter marriage/grad school situation, as well.

That's a lot of plates to spin.

In late September, I worked and worked to get my classes prepped for the couple of days my classes wouldn't meet due to a conference I was presenting at in Nashville but still felt I needed to check in while I was gone.  Now my students are full-growed adults; not fragile baby pandas, and I know I have tendencies to "helicopter teach" sometimes.  But that's only because I want them to do well, right?

Envision the scene, if you will.  My loving, handsome, funny, and talented husband and I are in this luxurious hotel for the conference (seriously - robes and slippers, twice-a-day maid service, and an espresso machine on every floor in case you ran out of coffee.  Country mouse was in high cotton, indeed!). Nashville is a majorly fun city - for one thing, they have the world's only full-scale model of the complete Parthenon (not even Athens has that!), complete with 42-foot-high Athena covered in eight pounds of beaten gold.  We're seeing old friends and promoting "Joss In June" and perusing book tables.  Only I'm also madly checking e-mail and Blackboard morning and night, even though I'd told students I'd check in only once a day.

See, I'm that indispensable.

In the middle of this, my sister calls.  My lovely, accomplished sister who never calls.  (We get along just fine, we just don't usually talk much outside of family functions.  I'm very busy, you know.)  In my family, there's a tradition that the grandchildren plan a special trip with my mom (their grandmother, so it's called the "grandmommie trip") when they turn ten. These trips sometimes take a while to plan, and my niece is quite a bit past ten. She finally settled on New York City as the destination. "Right, uh-huh," I say, all the while looking over at the laptop screen.  They're going to go over Veterans' Day, because the school system has that Monday off.  "Yeah, sure," I mutter.  They want me to go.

"Go?  To New York? But I have school that Monday! I can't miss that.  I mean, I'd like to, but, but, but . . . I'll have to call you back."

I am, on occasion, about a thick as a brick.

Readers, it took me two days to figure this out.  TWO DAYS.  Bless his heart, FryDaddy let me suss this one out on my own, although after I explained my non-dilemma dilemma, he looked at me as if I was something that people ought to be paying two bits for a gander at inside a tent at the carnival sideshow.

This is how it is:  My mother is in her mid-seventies, quite capable of making and enjoying such a trip, but the future is always uncertain.  My sister and I finally get along well, after a childhood of thinking the other was a complete pest.  My niece is just about to hit the age where she doesn't want to have much of anything to do with adults of any stripe, much less the ones she's related to.

A trip with just the four of us - my mother, my sister, my niece, and me - to New York.  Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Broadway show, Museum of Modern Art, etc.  And it took me two days to figure this out?  Sheesh.

It seems that maybe I ought to switch which side of the desk I'm on sometimes.  With my job, we're expected to rack up a certain number of "professional development" hours each year - generally in the form of workshops and seminars that enhance our skills in the classroom.  I've decided I need to have a few personal development hours as well - time devoted to enhancing my skills as a human being.  From what I see in this little episode, I probably need to start in the remedial classes, but that's okay - at least I'm starting.

I called my sister back.  We fly out on that Friday.

Remembrance & Resolve

Eleven years ago today, my world - along with the worlds of many - changed forever. And as strange as it is to say, I think we need to be sure to pause and remember. I realized that need existed when it struck me that many of my students were in elementary school when the events of 9/11 unfolded.  I was a full-grown adult and I couldn't fathom what my eyes were taking in - and I have days in which that is still true.

Readers of this blog know the great admiration I have for Father Mychal Judge - I've written about his life on the last two 9/11 anniversaries (here and here) and I encourage you to learn a bit more about this incredible man who rode with "his boys" to the fiery Towers and whose name adorns the first death certificate issued for that terrible, terrible event.

For some things, there is no logic, there is no reason. Seeking one will drive you around the bend.  So what do we do? How do we go on in a world which can seem to be driven by madness and chaos?

We stand. And we stand tall.

J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) considered the cosmic questions raised by the horrors that we now call "9/11" and he, along with the artists John Romita Jr. and Scott Hanna, issued his answers in an unusual format.  At the time, Straczynski was writing The Amazing Spider-Man. It makes sense - Spidey is a hero closely associated with New York City; he always has called the Big Apple his home.  But how could a comic - a child's plaything - make sense of or find order in the midst of Hell?

Beautifully.

I've included only a few panels here - you really should find the story for yourself.  I'll freely admit to tearing up as I read it and I can be a hard case sometimes.  Go seek it out - it's The Amazing Spider-Man, issue #36. You can find it in the trade paperback "Revelations" for about ten bucks.

It's so worth it.

Spidey arrives at the Twin Towers.

"Only madmen could contain the thought, execute the act, fly the planes.  The sane world will always be vulnerable to madmen, because we cannot go where they go to conceive of such things."

"Whatever our history, whatever the root of our surnames, we remain a good and decent people, and we do not bow down and we do not give up.  The fire of the human spirit cannot be quenched by bomb blasts or body counts.  Cannot be intimidated forever into silence or drowned by tears. We have endured worse before; we will bear this burden and all that come hereafter, because that's what ordinary men and women do. No matter what. This has not weakened us. It has only made us stronger."

"We stand blinded by the light of your unbroken will. Before that light, no darkness can prevail. They knocked down two tall towers. In their memory, draft a covenant with your conscience, that we will create a world in which such things need not occur. A world which will not require apologies to children, but also a world whose roads are not paved with the husks of their inalienable rights. They knocked down two tall towers. Graft now their echo onto your spine. Become girders and glass, stone and steel, so that when the world sees YOU, it sees THEM. And stand tall. Stand tall."

On this day of somber remembrance, be at peace. Heroes walk among us. And they don't wear Spandex tights or masks.

Resolve to be worthy of them.

Labor Day Weekend

Well, the Road to Hell has another paving stone, as I meant to post all last week.  However, the fall semester is just now getting into full swing - classes started two weeks ago, but my online just went live Thursday - so it's been a wee bit busy around the Nest.  And now it's the long Labor Day weekend!

I enjoy Labor Day, but I think it deserves to be more than the last day you can wear white without guilt.  Begun back in 1882, Labor Day is supposed to be a day to commemorate "the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being" of the United States.  Seriously, it's without a doubt the most "commie" holiday we have and most people don't even know it.  You should probably wear red instead of white, if you know what I mean.

Labor, especially union labor, gets a bad rap these days and I, for one, think it's about time to knock that off.   In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal that I live in the least unionized state in America (that's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012).  I do not belong to a union; in fact, state law prohibits public employees from unionizing in my state - see NCGS Section 95-98.  However, I realize the benefits I reap that have come from union activity.  Unions brought us the five day work week, the 40 hour work week, safety regulations, an end to child labor, workers' compensation, and a host of other improvements to the workplace that we take for granted these days.  I mean, you didn't really think the robber barons of the 19th century and the titans of the Industrial Age just woke up one morning and said, "You know, the words of Charles Dickens really got to me.  No more five-year-olds working the looms and the mines!"  Nope, improvements in society come because enough people band together and demand change.

That's the lesson of Labor Day.  Beware those who try to sell you snake oil labelled "trust those in charge to do the right thing" when profits are threatened.  Stand strong and stand together.  Labor is not the enemy.

So go enjoy your cookout - I know I will - and let me suggest the following to add to your playlist and movie queue for this weekend:

10 Songs that Still Power Social Change

Movies about the Working (Wo)Man - ever think about Alien as a Labor Day movie?  It works when you think about why that crew is off in the middle of nowhere.

Notes from Abroad

Well, not really abroad so much as not here.  You see, FryDaddy and I have just returned from vacation - the first one we've taken in quite a while that didn't also involve taking work with us.  (We cheated on that just a little, but no hard core writing/research was done.  Promise.)  How strange is it to feel like you're playing hooky when you're on vacation?  But such is the life of the typical American.  And nuts to it, I say.

It's true.  As a society, we work more hours than the rest of the developed world, have fewer days off, and rarely take all of the one we have.  Even then, we tend to be wired into the world, so we check e-mail, the office has our phone number, etc., etc.  I'm telling you, this blurring of home and work is not healthy.  Many workplaces don't quite trust working from home (how can we be sure they're not just goofing off?) but nearly everyone I know does it, they just do it for free.

This is why we need vacations that are actually vacations.  Speaking only for myself, it usually takes me a good, solid 24 hours to unlock enough to realize that I don't have to go in the next morning.  So here are a few things I learned this time around - and I was quite surprised by them.  Let's call them "beach epiphanies."

1. I've been going to the same beach for (gulp!) 35 years and in that time, I've been the sun-bleached kid who thought lifeguards were practically God on a tall chair; I've been the teenager hesitantly trying out flirt moves; I've been the "too cool to be here" college girl; I've been the young adult using the beach to escape adult responsibilities I wasn't quite ready for; and now I'm the older, more certain of herself woman looking at the lifeguards thinking, "They're just kids."  Life is transition.
2. You know what?  People just aren't that bad.  I had gotten in a very bad habit of starting my day with the news, which - let's face it - is driven by ratings, so the stories tend to be sensationalized and awful.  On top of that, I had gotten in the even worse habit of reading my news online, and taking in the comments.  I'm all for letters to the editor, but anonymous comments are atrocious.  Far from elevating the conversation, they disintegrate nigh-instantly into name-calling, political posturing, and cut&paste festivals.  The human race doesn't come out too well there.  My fall resolution - I'll keep reading the news, but no comments, and not first thing in the morning.  (By the way - this is going to be hard for me.  Encouragement is welcome.)
3. Walking on the beach with no particular goal to reach in no particular time is a Very Good Thing, as Pooh-Bear might say.  It's also a great place to people watch.  It makes me feel better about the human race to see so many people reading.  (I don't really care what they're reading, as I subscribe to the idea that good books are what you make of them.  Personally, I'm hip-deep in an English murder mystery right now and I'm loving it.)  It's also great to see hulking teenage boys carefully guide their football practice around the little kids splashing in the tidal pools, oblivious to the NFL tryout four feet above their heads.  It's charming to see teens trying on adulthood and gaggles of colt-like girls giggling in the surf.  And I am reminded that most people are hard-working folk who just want to provide for their families and be happy in their work and lives.  We're not so different as the political spinmasters would like us to think.  Oh, and I also enjoy catching up on local news, such as discovering that "AMBER LUVS HUNTER 4 EVER."  Or at least until high tide washes away the evidence.
4. I got married for some very good reasons and a bone-deep belief that God gives us chances, but it's up to us to seize them.  Work brings value to our lives - it may be up to us to find it somedays - but just as all work isn't equally valuable, not all idleness is equally useless.   FryDaddy and I needed some unstructured time to spend together and remember a few things.  We succeeded.
5. Pencil in - on second thought, use ink - some time for you and yours over the next two weeks.  Yes, you can do it.  No, time spent snarking over bills and chores doesn't count.  Whatever it is, it has to be fun.  Nothing work related.  Remember why you work so hard in the first place.  And remember that you, too, need to be cared for.  Think of it this way - sometimes idleness is sacred.  When's the last time you went to church?

Lifestyles of the Frugal & Anonymous

I've always thought that Jimmy Buffett's song "Cowboy in the Jungle" was a cautionary tale.  I don't want to find myself being one of those people "tryin' to cram lost years into five or six days," so I'm working to build more down time in to my everyday life. As you know, one of those steps was to step back from this blog for a bit.  Posting twice a month here is my goal, but remember that you can always go over to Unfettered Brilliance to see what I'm up to with movies, television, and publishing.

While I've recently been all caught up in presenting, networking, and a touch of mentoring (Slayage 5 in Vancouver was a blast!) and the Breaking Bad project (all of which you can read about over at Unfettered), I wanted to spend some time and energy on the "Down Time Project" instead of falling into the trap of just giving it lip service.

So this past week, my gal pal Barefoot and I took our moms to a spa.  A real, honest-to-goodness spa.  The kind where you drive through the gates onto meticulously manicured grounds and are given plush robes at check in.  Hmm.  I don't know if a girl could get used to this or not, but I'm willing to try!

As a result of one of those Groupon type deals, all of us had luxurious facials in dimly-lit rooms performed by soft-spoken professional estheticians.  We spent all day hanging around the indoor saltwater mineral pool, had our shoulders pounded by warm water flowing off an artificial waterfall, and talked while sitting in large whirlpools.  I caught up on tawdry celebrity gossip from glossy magazines (Tom and Katie - tsk, tsk!).  A lovely lunch was brought to us poolside and we also indulged in gigantic chocolate-dipped strawberries.  I discovered that I quite like cucumber water - which in no way is to be confused with pickle juice!  In short, we treated ourselves and it was marvelous. It's so easy to get pulled into the riptide of doing for others (an important and valuable thing to do) and forget that we also need kind treatment to recharge our own batteries.

With that in mind, FryDaddy and I are fitting in a few days at the beach this week at my family's place.  My sister and her family go down for an extended vacation during July, but there's room for us this week and we jumped on the opportunity with both feet.  After all, once we come back, it'll be Busywhirl Central as we both get ready for the start of the academic year.  There is also a book to finish drafting and papers to prepare for presentation at the end of September.  Those obligations will be there whether we take the time to dig our toes in the sand or not.

So there's really no reason not to, is there?

That's what I thought!

And I encourage you to do the same - maybe a spa or the beach in August isn't your thing, but find out what it is and build some time to enjoy it into the next two weeks.  As a wise, wise woman once said, "Life is meant to be enjoyed, not saddled with."

Good Night!

It's time for this Mockingbird to have a rest.  I've been occupied with (too) many projects lately and something's gotta give.  Don't misunderstand me; I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had come my way over the last year or so, but they're demanding a large share of my time and attention lately and I've been either neglecting this blog or posting here has seemed like a chore.  And that was never the reason I started it.

I'm weary of feeling like a Baked Bird, but no fear - I'm not going away for good.  I like writing this too much.  But I'm going to take some longer breaks between posts.  My goal right now is to cut my posting here down to twice a month rather than every week.  I'll see how that works and adjust accordingly.  It may be that, after a few months with a lighter schedule, I'm ready to come back more frequently; we'll just have to see about that.  So I should be back here just after FryDaddy and I return from Slayage 5 with a pocketful of tales to tell.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to post twice a week over at Unfettered Brilliance - mid-week, the "Walter White Wednesday" post focuses on Breaking Bad  (Season 5 premieres on July 15!) and there's a weekend post that discusses movies - sometimes new releases, sometimes an old gem, sometimes something else entirely that just happened to catch my fancy.  Please join me over there.

And be kind to yourself this summer.

Back soon!