Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, February 02, 2009

Wow, it's been a long time since I updated this thing. It's been a busy month and, somewhat unfortunately, that doesn't seem like it'll be slowing down any time soon. The biggest contributor has been the addition of one extra class to my teaching load this semester. Over the last three semesters I've had a three class+lab load (as all my classes have labs). Last year this was due to being Chair of our Faculty Senate and Fall 2008 was the first semester of our new 3/4 load scheme. Now before I get any hate mail telling me what a cushy job I have one should first understand that adding a course represents a 33% increase over the load I've taught for the last 18 months. The addition of 6 contact hours plus class prep and, more importantly, lab prep is really taking a big chunk out of my schedule. I've found it pretty hard to adjust and get back into the swing. What amazes me is that I used to do this all the time. No wonder I felt like i had no time for scholarly activity and little time for course or curriculum development.

Here's a brief update on my New Year's resolutions. While I've read (in several places by several different authors) that most resolutions have been abandoned by this point, I'm still trying to go strong on mine.

I've lost eleven pounds to date, which puts me about 2 lbs ahead of goal. This is very encouraging to me but it means that I still have a long ways to go. This was made abundantly clear this weekend on our annual Pine Mountain Challenge double metric. I was able to stay with the team for the first 100 miles or so and even did the one climb reasonably well but I had to use a lot more power on some of the short, steep climbs to get my fat "blork" up and over the top and it cost me near the end.

I'm making progress on the organic/whole food eating thing. I'm not sure I'm at 30% but I'm thinking a lot more about it. I've eaten fast food exactly once this year (I got an order of Wendy's fries and a Frosty yesterday) and have really focused on thinking about what goes in my body. What's really hard is making time to cook when I'm crunched for time. It's amazing how much easier it is to just eat crap. I have to admit that my wife and I are still allowing bad food in on our official "Crap food Fridays". I'm guessing we'll eliminate even that when Lent gets here.

I made good progress in the simplification of my life for a time but have stalled a bit of late. Still, we have a good batch of stuff to take to Goodwill and I'm near an effort of attack all of the old cycling stuff I've accumulated. That closet is a mess and I expect I'll have a lot of old jackets to give out. I was struck recently by a saying of one of the early church Fathers. If I remember the quote correctly, "If you have two coats in your closet, you have stolen one of them from the poor." I'm pretty sure I have some returning of property to do.

I've started growing some food. Granted it's only some simple lettuce and greens but it's the start I've been looking for. Part of this effort has included getting more plants into the house. I really think having plants makes a house more healthy but I've not done a good job maintaining them. Hopefully I can do that and create that environment I'm looking for. I'll start working on building the garden later this month. I've already got some ideas of what I want to do and I have some interested helpers so I'm pretty excited. I really hope than before the end of April that we can be providing some part of of our community's weekly meal from teh garden in my back yard.

Finally, I'm making some progress on the class that need the most work but I've got a long ways to go. This is a resolution that may have to wait until summer to make a lot of headway on. There's just too much going on to have much time to do the serious creative work to really finish off the courses. I'm not giving up but I do think I'll focus on my new course of the elementary ed program in order to make that as exceptional as I can this semester and then finish the polishing of the physics class when I have more uninterrupted time.

So that's the update, I'll try to write again soon with a few other things that are going on and some thoughts I've had about fear and how relevant it is in our relationship to God.

Thanks for Reading.

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