The Rev

It's official. I am now an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. It took about three minutes to complete the online form and $9.60 to ship my certificate. I don't plan to put my powers to use until this July when I marry my sister and her fiance, but I am trying to stay in tune with the universe in case it calls me to duty before then. Like yesterday when I had to bless that guy on the plane after he sneezed.

Job One

On Monday I began one of three summer jobs -- teaching English to adult learners. I am their third teacher in a six-week session, so you can imagine their excitement when they saw me at the front of the room Monday night.

"Are you my teacher now?" one man asked.

"Yes. I am," I replied.

"Oh. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for coming," he answered as he looked around at his fellow students.

Each of them welcomed me in a similar manner -- absolute kindness with a hint of frustration. Actually, one woman offered more frustration than kindness but even she seemed to turn around by the end of the evening.

They are a smart group, and I can't blame them for feeling tossed aside. We had a good evening together and successfully worked through the difference between always, usually, often, sometimes, rarely, and never.

When we finished, they seemed surprised to hear that I'd be back for the next four weeks. And I can't tell you how nice it feels to have people thank your for teaching them as they walk out the door.

I feel a heavy pressure to not disappoint. They deserve more than just my presence each week. ELL is not my area of expertise, but I plan to match their dedication as best I can.

Sacrificing Quality Left and Right

I just finished editing the worst paper I think I've ever written. Twelve hours ago I was so pleased with my page and a half an hour rate, but now I remember why I write slowly. So that sentences make sense and apostrophes go in the right places. When I began revising four hours ago I had 19 pages of text. I sent the paper off minutes ago with just over 15 pages of text. Turns out the faster I write, the more crap I have to say.

Quid Pro Quo

I really respect and admire the work of a classmate who asked to exchange our 12-paged, double-spaced papers for tomorrow's peer review. I am flattered that she would think my feedback useful in her fascinating project and related dissertation work. I just received her 24-paged, single-spaced document with attached review questions and I'm not feeling so flattered any more.

Retraining the Gluteus Max

Rickie the Running Specialist is working hard to cure me of my running woes. She has me on an eight-exercise-and-stretch routine, and I have been a very good patient so far (meaning I've actually done the exercises every day since the beginning of our relationship). I can tell that the program is going well for two reasons: 1) the exercises that at first promised to kill me are now getting easier and 2) the karma gods placed me next to Rondell White during my session today. He doesn't seem so big on the baseball field, but in person he's quite impressive. We exchanged a pleasant "Hey. How's it going?" and then I stared at him and eavesdropped stealthily for the next twenty minutes. I wanted to dazzle him with some Twins trivia, but I figured that recognizing him was pushing my luck with sports knowledge already.

The Wrong Way Rubber

Today it was my group's turn to give instructions for the class session we are leading next week. Like the professor does every week, we wrote our instructions on the bored and offered further explanation for the upcoming reading. One class member -- who has sort of been rubbing me the wrong way for a while -- followed up my explanation with, "My brain is really full right now with all you've said. Could you send the instructions in an e-mail?"

As I looked around at the rest of the class writing down our instructions LIKE THEY DO EVERY WEEK, I pointed to the bored and said, "No. They are right there."

"Yes. But I'll probably lose them."

WTF? You are getting your PhD and you can't hang on to the instructions that we are asking you to write down right now?

Luckily, Adam, a groupmate jumped in. "Yeah. Well. Don't lose them," he offered.

Very logical to me.

Unfortunately another, kinder groupmate offered to send the same instructions (that everyone else had already finished writing down) through e-mail.

Sometimes I think the problem with the wrong-way-rubber lies with me. That I'm just not kind enough or that I'm too self-centered to realize that she just sees things differently.

But seriously. "I'll probably lose them." Call me cruel and narcissistic, but that's bullshit if ever I heard it.

Herons, Beavers, and Turtles . . .

With only a couple of weeks left in the semester and four large projects to complete, naturally I took Dave up on his offer to spend the weekend at the cabin. There's a state park and visitor center not too far from the lake, so we spent part of our Saturday afternoon with Rod the Park Ranger. He quizzed me on the skull display, offered up bear hunting regulation pamphlets, and directed us to the Circle Trail Hike where we'd be able to see a heron rookery. We impressed Rod with our 2 and a 1/2 hour Circle Trail return rate and assured him that we had spent at least ten minutes observing the herons. Dave wanted to tell Rod that there were a couple of spots on the trail that needed a bit of trimming or restoration, but Rod had turned his attention to a handful of young boys who needed to know how to identify a poisonous snake. I dropped a dollar in the donation box, but the afternoon was certainly worth a lot more.

. . .

Been thinking hard about what to write in the blog so that I can avoid the paper I'm working on for a little while. But, I'm drawing a large blank. Just been reading and writing and reading and writing and then sleeping sometimes. Not very exciting at all.