Into the thick of it

Wow, class is going to be intense! Two sessions in and the reading assignments are quite extensive. The topic of the class is Shakespeare for Teachers, which is a very useful topic. The professor is less of a jackass than my first impression of him might have given but it's still early. The idea is to give us useful ways to teach the Bard in our own classrooms. Most of my classmates are already teachers so we'll see if that serves as any sort of disadvantage as we proceed. Anyhow, reading is eating up almost all of my time, especially on the days between the Tuesday and Thursday afternoon class. On the upside, this is looking like one of the classes that will prove most valuable when I begin teaching as many of the things we'll do will be directly portable to my class. And I'm getting to read a few plays I've not read before, I am enjoying that so far. Death to the boring linguistics classes, bring on the literature!

Also this weekend, I decided I wasn't hot enough in this scorching weather so I decided to run in a 5k in my town's summer festival. It was not as early as I would have liked, starting at 8:30 am. It was flipping humid so I fully expected it to be a tough go. I was planning to try and beat the 10 minute mile mark, which is essentially what I ran in my race earlier this spring. Instead of fighting 18,000+ runners, this one was only 448 people strong.

I set off and did my first mile way too fast, clocking at about 9:23. I decided I needed to slow it down a little so I didn't find myself dying in the last half of the race. I was able to find some people to keep pace with, which was very helpful. That stretch from 1.5 to 2 miles seemed to take forever! I get to the mile marker where the dude calling out the times yelled something around 17 minutes and 50 seconds or so. What???? I thought I slowed down, not dramatically sped up? This was not going to be good.

I started to feel it and definitely slowed down significantly in the last mile. The last 1.2 miles took about another 11 minutes, so I did slow down, but not too bad from my pace I was hoping to keep. Final time came in at 28:57, or 9 min 20 second miles. I think that's a personal record so I'm happy about that. I've set a nice high bar for me to try and surpass in my future races, awesome! Hopefully I can get under 9 minute miles by the end of the summer, we'll see. I'll need to be much more diligent about running between races if I want to do that. My next race is in late July in the early evening, hopefully it won't be outrageously hot. It has a Grateful Dead theme and while I'm not a big Deadhead, the tie dye shirts with the dancing skeleton are just too cool to pass up. More to report on this in the future!

Song lyric of the day "And I ran / I ran so far away" A Flock Of Seagulls

Until next time.

Ace

Back home

The big trip to Rocky Top was a success, albeit a very tiring one. Didn't get in until very late Friday night, annoyingly keeping our gracious hosts up half the night. Big thanks again to B & D for hosting and letting our children run amok and teach their little guy the fine arts of crazy kidness.

Saturday found us heading to the big family reunion. I could literally see kid #2 trying to translate the thick Southern accents mentally. Hadn't really heard anything like that before. It was really great to catch up with the aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, cuncles and other assorted relations. And the weather couldn't have been better. The scenery was also beautiful, the reunion was held at a local church tucked back in the hills and there were trees everywhere. Oh, and according to my unofficial poll, I believe Tennessee has the highest church per resident ratio in the world. I'm pretty sure there are 3 or 4 churches for each resident.

Anyhow, we cruised back home Sunday, arriving right around 11:30 or so. We got in about 23 hours of driving or so in a 60 hour span, really quite sweet. But all in all, the kids did great. I'm beginning to think they're pretty good at this road trip thing after this trip and our great New York expedition last year.

Not much else to report on at the moment, class starts a week from today. Tick tock, eight weeks of madness about to ensue...

Song lyric of the day "Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin'/into the future" Fly Like an Eagle, Steve Miller Band

Until next time.

Ace

Road Trip!

Packing up the fam and heading to the beautiful Smoky Mountains this weekend. 10 hour drive is the best case estimate I've heard, we'll see how it goes. #1 has the last day of school on Friday, early dismissal and straight into the car for the trip. We're going to visit family on my side as well as a friend who recently moved to the area. It should be fun, although it's going to be quite short.

I've been trying to keep myself in shape for my next run coming up in a couple of weeks. They're fairly short (5k) so I don't really need to train per se, but would like to improve on my times as I make it through the summer. Hopefully dealing with a run in the size of about 200 runners will go more smoothly than dealing with 18,000+ in my last run. Last time I did this race it was quite hot so I hope that can also be avoided!

I'm enjoying my last few days of break. Class starts up in about a week and a half, it promises to be a race since it's only 10 weeks long. It's been a pretty nice break.

Song lyric of the day "Good old rocky top / Rocky top Tennessee"

Until next time.

Ace