Spring and Summer

It's been busy here. 

Hey guess what I learned?  Teaching in quarters is actually harder than teaching in semesters.The quarters feel so much shorter than semesters.  I am very much looking forward to not teaching for a couple of months.  Biking to and from work every day.  Hanging out with my boys in the evenings.  Picnics at the Lake. I have even made my list of things I want to do this summer.  It's pretty crazy. I think in the next couple of weeks we might be able to go strawberry picking.  STRAWBERRY PICKING!! 

The good news is that summer is ramping up a bit.  The weather has been nice-so we've been outside a lot more.  We got a new law guy and got the grass cut for the first time since last summer. We were totally those people.  Meh. 

Nico is getting pretty funny lately.  I know I have said it every age since he was born, but THIS age  is my favorite.  We're getting to the age where it isn't all about him all the time.  Case in point: we have started reading The Little House in the Big Woods.  Which is kind of a departure from most books he likes... there aren't many pictures, and its not about super heroes or fireman or police men.  So that is nice.

Also, we have started trying to broaden what he watches... he still likes Lego shows and such.  But he's starting to sit down for things like Ken Burns' The West.  He's also starting to get into playing a lot by himself.  Of course, he is also starting to get very dramatic.  His new thing is lay on the floor and claim to be too tired to ________________.  It's not annoying.  At all. 

Other than that, I have started to do olympic lifting at my gym.  Remember when I had three knee surgeries in college?  Remember when I also had an ankle surgery in 2010? The result was that I hadn't gone down into a full squat (hips below knees) in like 15 years.  And when I started CrossFit, I skipped any day that had snatches (taking the bar from the floor to overhead) or cleans (taking the bar to shoulders).  The full movement results in hips below knees (which was a no fly zone for me).  But then I found out I could modify the movements to the power position (which is standing mostly up) and love them both now.  One of our coaches has been doing a fundamentals class once a week which is pretty great. 

I'm terrible at them.  It's largely a function of the way I approach mastery of movements... which is to do something thousands of times not till I get it right, but until I never get it wrong. I think my movement is getting decent with cleans, but snatches are an absolute disaster.  In fact, last week, I racked myself in the chin with the bar.  And then about 10 minutes later I caught myself on the top of my own head.  My own head.  I don't even understand how that happened.   

But it's pretty fun.  Now that the weather is nice, Dave and I are looking forward to playing outdoor soccer again.  Just gotta find a team. 

Oh good, just what I didn't want...

So, its that time of the quarter.  Where we begin the downward slide (some might call it a spiral or a tumble) to the end.  The final is on Monday the 17th.  The thing I had forgotten when teaching as a grad student is that time when I had created all of the course material and so therefore my "teaching" was really posting stuff on Blackboard and then grading. But since I have never taught this class before, I am preparing things on the fly.  ON. THE. FLY.  Seriously, that is some real non JBR shit going on there.

It could be worse- since I am doing the experiment with the flipped classroom, I have to edit my powerpoint slides, then record them, then edit the recording, then upload.  But it sure as hell beats the process that would have happened with me doing live legit lectures every week.  Uggh.  As it is now, we run through the lecture and I touch on the high points and clarify stuff that needs to be clarified.  Because I hate listening to my voice.  I hate it even more when it says things like, "I don't know."  So there is that.

So needless to say, I have been working my ass off.  Seems like all I have been doing lately is working, working out, and teaching.

Plus, my gym is doing the CrossFit Open.  It's definitely a big hullabaloo.  CrossFit HQ will release 5 workouts, once a week for the next five weeks.   Everyone who has signed up for the Open are supposed to do.  You have to do it on video and upload it, or you have to do it during a set time, so that a coach can count your reps and judge.  It's supposed to be all comraderie and such, like, "yay, we're doing this with 432095094580934 people around the world!!"  For elite athletes, it is the first step to get to the games (people with the highest scores are invited to regionals... if you do well there, you go to the real games).

I have no hope of going to the games, and I am not being modest (so don't get on my back JJ about the power of positive thinking).  It's just not in the cards for me right now.  But maybe some day.  Regardless, I will be spending a lot of time shooting in the next couple of weeks, which is great.  I'm just really busy now.

I requested vacation time yesterday, which is cool.  We are planning to take our postponed New Years trip to Miami in April.  I am hoping to run 7 mile bridge in the keys.