Yesterday morning we woke up to a little scare. T-- was having trouble with her stomach and pain in her lower back, and at bleary-eyed seven in the morning, it seemed a little too much like labor pains. So she curled up on the bed trying to find a comfortable position, and I called my boss and told him I'd be out for a while -- a couple of hours or a couple of days, depending how things turned out.
Things turned out to be a stomach bug, but it incapacitated T-- pretty bad for the day. I hung around the house long enough to see her feeling a little better, and then drove AB out to the babysitter's so T-- could take the day off. Then I went from there to work, and shortly after I got in, I got a call from T-- saying she was really starting to feel better. By noon, we were sure there was nothing to worry about.
Still, a tense morning.
Then in the afternoon I got home from work and locked myself in the office to put finishing touches on my class lecture. I'm still wrestling with technical issues, since last week, but I got the podcast recorded and saved, at least, and I'll post it to the website sometime this afternoon. I was able to get them a text tutorial on time, though, and I've already had a couple students finish and submit their assignment (due next Tuesday) based off the material there.
I gave up on the podcast at 6:30, because I had social writing plans for the evening, and I hadn't eaten dinner yet. I gulped down some chicken fried rice that T-- made (which was delicious), and finished it just before D-- showed up to give me a ride to Full Circle.
When we got there, we found the coffee shop packed. At first we assumed it was a book signing, but several people were wearing name tags, and as we lingered in the other room we heard frequent bursts of applause. That doesn't sound like any book signing I've been to. Probably some sort of...I don't know, corporate event.
Anyway, it was a nuisance, but we found reading chairs elsewhere in the bookstore, and D-- spent his time working on a project for the weekend, and I spent mine working on Ghost Targets: Restraint. In the first fifteen minutes I filled two pages of my scribblebook (or about 500 words), and I turned to D-- and said, "I just doubled my word count for the week." That was more a sad commentary on my week than a boast about my productivity.
Before the night was over, though, I had two thousand words, and was well into chapter eight. That's a boast. It was a great night, and I'm climbing into the part of the novel that I'm really excited about, so I expect it to get a little easier from here on out.
We got back to the house at 10:00, and T-- had the Steelers game on, so D-- hung around to see how that turned out. It was a tense game (and just fun to be watching real NFL football again, even if it wasn't one of my teams). Definitely a good time.
That took us past eleven o'clock, though, and then when I stopped in the office to check my email before bed, I had a message about my podcast and realized what I'd done wrong earlier in the afternoon. So I stayed up for another hour wrestling with that, fixed my earlier error (re-recording the whole lecture in the process), and then discovered I still didn't know how to make it available to my students.
So, as I said earlier, that remains unresolved. And I was up late last night, and the RDO I should've had today got split so I could have time off for my Tuesday classes. So I'm at work, and tired, and ready to be home.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Journal Entry: September 10, 2009
Yesterday was relatively quiet -- at least, the way my life goes now. A year ago, yesterday's events would have seemed positively newsworthy.
Anyway, I had a busy day at work, I wrote 600 words on Restraint over my lunch break, I got a call from my mom and we talked about teaching, I wrote a detailed blog post about Tuesday's experience, I played some WoW, and then I mixed up some of my famous salsa to go with the fantastic quesadillas T-- made for dinner.
And all of that was before D-- showed up with his own copy of the new The Beatles: Rock Band. We got the instruments set up, figured out how T-- and D-- could both do vocals (and me playing Ringo front and center), and then we played that for two hours. Then AB went to bed to sleep, T-- went to bed to read, and D-- sang all his favorite songs while I logged back into WoW to play a couple battlegrounds before bed.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Anyway, I had a busy day at work, I wrote 600 words on Restraint over my lunch break, I got a call from my mom and we talked about teaching, I wrote a detailed blog post about Tuesday's experience, I played some WoW, and then I mixed up some of my famous salsa to go with the fantastic quesadillas T-- made for dinner.
And all of that was before D-- showed up with his own copy of the new The Beatles: Rock Band. We got the instruments set up, figured out how T-- and D-- could both do vocals (and me playing Ringo front and center), and then we played that for two hours. Then AB went to bed to sleep, T-- went to bed to read, and D-- sang all his favorite songs while I logged back into WoW to play a couple battlegrounds before bed.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The OC (Week 2)
Someday, one of my students is going to call me "Professor Pogue" (or maybe someone who really hasn't been paying attention will even call me "Doctor Pogue"), and I'll say, "No, please, call me Mister Pogue. Professor Pogue is my father."
I'll be the only one who laughs at that, but I will find it hilarious.
Seventy-five Minutes
As I mentioned before, my first week of classes probably felt like a wild success to my students, but I came out of there shocked and terrified about how I was going to fill seventy-five minutes with lecture every week.
And, of course, the answer I got repeatedly from seasoned professionals was, "Don't." Gail Nash recommended a short twenty-minute lecture to start the class, a half-hour in-class assignment, and then another twenty minutes at the end of class to discuss it. Dad recommended mini-lectures, no longer than fifteen minutes each, broken up with other activities and discussions.
One thing everyone told me, when I was panicking about how poorly that first class went, was that it would get easier once I got the students talking back to me. The problem I was running into was lecturing. It's always difficult to deliver a message to a silent, unresponsive crowd, and especially so for somebody with no experience in public speaking whatsoever. One and all, they told me that if I could get the students to talk to me, it would be a breeze.
Getting Them Talking
Dad even told me how. Drawing on years of experience and a nuanced understanding of the student psyche, he said to start off your class by asking, "Okay, how do you guys feel about last week's assignment (or lecture)? What didn't you like about it?" That gets them talking, because everyone is more interested in complaining about something than in praising it. Give them a chance to vent (and provide what will be useful feedback to you as the teacher), and then follow up with, "Okay, and what did you like about it?" Then the students who had a positive experience with the assignment (or lecture) but otherwise would have remained quiet will chime in, partly because they've spent the last however many minutes listening to their classmates bash on it, and they feel a need to defend it. By that point, though, you've got everyone in your class talking, and comfortable with each other, and you can launch into new material and get good responses.
That advice struck me as so sound that it directly increased my confidence going into that class. I bragged about my dad's genius to several people, for days before the class started. Then I showed up, put it into practice, and got...nothing. Not a word. No complaint, no praise. Nothing.
So I looked around the room, shook my head sadly, and said, "Guys, you're going to have to talk to me. Otherwise it's just me sitting up here at the front of the class, lecturing you about writing for seventy-five minutes. And you don't want that. You know why? [Brief pause.] Because it's seventy-five minutes." That got a laugh, and it worked. After that, I got answers when I asked questions.
Business Letters
For their first assignment, they were to write me a Letter of Introduction, telling me a little bit about themselves and following the standard business letter format. To facilitate that, I prepared an online lecture (that ended up being just an illustrated tutorial, for technical reasons) going into detail on how to design a business letter.
So I started out the class lecture by talking to them about business letters, and why they're useful. One of the things I discovered last week is that none of my students (not a one) has any intention of becoming a professional tech writer. That doesn't bother me, but it means I've got to spend the semester demonstrating to them why this material matters to them.
For a first stab at that, I led off with three short stories, from my personal experience. I told them about the time I bought my first house, and along with it came the high pressure sales pitch to renew the security system that the previous owners had used. We'd initially agreed, but when we looked at our budget and saw how much they actually wanted per month, we called up to cancel it. The person on the other end of the line said, "I'm sorry, but we're going to need that in writing."
So I wrote a business letter.
Then, a few months after we moved to Tulsa, someone stole a bill for our Best Buy credit card out of our mail, and used it to ring up several thousand dollars in fraudulent claims. Freaking out, we called up Best Buy's customer service and said, "Hey, someone's stealing your stuff and trying to charge it to us, and you've got put a stop to it!" and the guy on the phone said, "I'm sorry, but we're going to need that in writing."
Then I told the students a little bit about the writing experience, the process of trying to make it as a novelist, and the unending string of query letters -- every one an invitation for rejection. I told them about the importance of presenting the richness and beauty of a lovingly-crafted work of art in a sterile, one-page business letter. And then I told them how I'd finally landed a literary agent, and then had to fire her a year later, and when I contacted her to let her know I was no longer interested in working with her, she said, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to need that in writing."
That got a big laugh. I really think it got my point across well, too. I told them that in each of those situations, in different ways, I was stressed out, and needed to communicate specific information clearly and quickly. And already having a set format, an easy template that just required me to fill in the blanks, made it far easier for me to do exactly that, and save my energy for the other things I needed to be worrying about.
Due Dates
We talked briefly about our class schedule -- my plans for Thursdays and Tuesdays, and how the individual documents they're producing fit into the document packets that I'm going to be grading. In the process of that, I discovered my timetable doesn't work at all. I stumbled over that a little bit, thinking out loud, and that got some laughs. I think that's a good thing. I do need to get the details worked out before next class, though....
Group Work
Next we moved into the in-class assignment. I said, "Okay, we're going to work in groups now, and to divide up, I think we'll use a method that I found to be very effective in grade school." That got groans and chuckles, but they obediently counted off in threes, and then divided up into three groups per my instructions. Then I had everyone (for the first time) introduce themselves with name and major. Then I admitted why I'd had them count off in three -- because my three English majors were all sitting right next to each other. As a result, I had three groups with each one consisting of four Computer Science or Information Science majors, and one English major. Or, in other words, four technical people and one writer person.
Not entirely fair to the English majors, but that's how technical writing goes. I don't think I've ever worked with another English major. I told them as much, and paused to double-check myself, and then nodded and said, "I've worked with a Journalism major, but never an English major. Don't work with a Journalism major!" That got a laugh.
Technical Writing
Their assignment was deliberately vague. Every student at OC is issued a laptop, so I told them, "You've got twenty minutes. I want you to write me step-by-step instructions for how to do something useful on your student laptops."
Then something amazing happened. I'd guess that half of my students probably work with OC IT, and most of the rest of them are computer people. So in each of the three groups I heard the computer people tossing ideas out. "We could do this." "We could do that." And in each group, I heard the English major say, "Wait, what? What is that?" And then the computer people explained it to them.
And then the English majors wrote it down.
Or, in other words, Tech Writing happened. It was a thing of beauty.
Graded by the Ridicule of Their Peers
I did warn them, just after they'd divided up into groups, "We're going to go over these once you're done, so you'll be graded by the ridicule of your peers." That got a laugh (which was a very good thing), but we all followed through on it. As they finished, they emailed their tutorials to me, and I put them up on the overhead.
We briefly analyzed each one, pointing out what was done well, and what needed work. I talked a little bit about audiences, and I told them about Mark at my first job starting off every software manual with a section explaining how to use a mouse and what "click" and "double-click" meant. That got astonished, disbelieving stares, and I think I was able to make a good point there.
Out of Time
I had a lot more to say about the usefulness of written tutorials, with some heavy emphasis on all these computer people who had to give family and friends instructions on simple tasks all the time. By the time we were done critiquing, though, I was down to five minutes left in class, so I rushed through that material and let them go.
What I didn't get to was another personal anecdote, a story demonstrating the popularity and usefulness of tutorials, especially online. I was all prepared to tell them how I achieved some level of fame because of a short tutorial online. (If you search Google for "Alexpoet," my onetime web moniker, my website is the top of the list because of a tutorial I wrote for XBMC Python scripting -- which is another phrase that points directly to my page on Google.) I didn't get to that, but next week's class is about formatting technical documents, and most of what I did with that tutorial was take a flat text tutorial some Canadian dude had written, clean up the English, and apply the formatting rules I'd learned in my Tech Writing class. So, in other words, the material I didn't get to this week becomes the object lesson next week.
The Teaching Experience
When I talked to Dad about my rough experience last week, one of the things he pointed out was that my sheer terror when I stepped up to the podium was caused by an acute awareness of myself. He said that would happen to anybody -- even the most experienced public speaker, the most outgoing teacher -- if he stepped in front of a crowd and spent the whole time paying close attention to what he was doing right or wrong and analyzing it. We're too good at recognizing our own faults, we blow them out of proportion, and if that's what you're thinking about, you're going to shut yourself down.
Dad said everything I described about my first experience fell perfectly into that condition, and I couldn't argue with him. He said the way to fix it is to think about the students instead. Think about what they need to know, what I can tell them to make their lives better, and focus on their responses. I had my doubts about how easy it would be to follow through on that, but I spent the whole class trying to put it into practice, and it worked.
And I think it worked for everyone, not just for me. I mentioned the laughs I got, as often as I could, because they weren't nervous laughter. I can be a funny guy, and when I made a sarcastic comment and the students laughed at it, I could tell they were at their ease. I think that happened as a direct result of my being more at ease, and it built on itself, so by the end of the class we really were just talking back and forth. I spent two days before the class wrestling with intense anxiety, and it was brutal right up until I cleared my throat and stammered awkwardly, "Umm, okay, I guess we should get started." Then I took a breath, started with Dad's question, "What didn't you like about last week's lecture?" and instead of feeling nervous that I'd asked a question they couldn't answer, I just got irritated at them for not speaking up.
And from there on, I was fine. It was a great class period, and I think the lives of everyone involved are better for it.
More next week.
I'll be the only one who laughs at that, but I will find it hilarious.
Seventy-five Minutes
As I mentioned before, my first week of classes probably felt like a wild success to my students, but I came out of there shocked and terrified about how I was going to fill seventy-five minutes with lecture every week.
And, of course, the answer I got repeatedly from seasoned professionals was, "Don't." Gail Nash recommended a short twenty-minute lecture to start the class, a half-hour in-class assignment, and then another twenty minutes at the end of class to discuss it. Dad recommended mini-lectures, no longer than fifteen minutes each, broken up with other activities and discussions.
One thing everyone told me, when I was panicking about how poorly that first class went, was that it would get easier once I got the students talking back to me. The problem I was running into was lecturing. It's always difficult to deliver a message to a silent, unresponsive crowd, and especially so for somebody with no experience in public speaking whatsoever. One and all, they told me that if I could get the students to talk to me, it would be a breeze.
Getting Them Talking
Dad even told me how. Drawing on years of experience and a nuanced understanding of the student psyche, he said to start off your class by asking, "Okay, how do you guys feel about last week's assignment (or lecture)? What didn't you like about it?" That gets them talking, because everyone is more interested in complaining about something than in praising it. Give them a chance to vent (and provide what will be useful feedback to you as the teacher), and then follow up with, "Okay, and what did you like about it?" Then the students who had a positive experience with the assignment (or lecture) but otherwise would have remained quiet will chime in, partly because they've spent the last however many minutes listening to their classmates bash on it, and they feel a need to defend it. By that point, though, you've got everyone in your class talking, and comfortable with each other, and you can launch into new material and get good responses.
That advice struck me as so sound that it directly increased my confidence going into that class. I bragged about my dad's genius to several people, for days before the class started. Then I showed up, put it into practice, and got...nothing. Not a word. No complaint, no praise. Nothing.
So I looked around the room, shook my head sadly, and said, "Guys, you're going to have to talk to me. Otherwise it's just me sitting up here at the front of the class, lecturing you about writing for seventy-five minutes. And you don't want that. You know why? [Brief pause.] Because it's seventy-five minutes." That got a laugh, and it worked. After that, I got answers when I asked questions.
Business Letters
For their first assignment, they were to write me a Letter of Introduction, telling me a little bit about themselves and following the standard business letter format. To facilitate that, I prepared an online lecture (that ended up being just an illustrated tutorial, for technical reasons) going into detail on how to design a business letter.
So I started out the class lecture by talking to them about business letters, and why they're useful. One of the things I discovered last week is that none of my students (not a one) has any intention of becoming a professional tech writer. That doesn't bother me, but it means I've got to spend the semester demonstrating to them why this material matters to them.
For a first stab at that, I led off with three short stories, from my personal experience. I told them about the time I bought my first house, and along with it came the high pressure sales pitch to renew the security system that the previous owners had used. We'd initially agreed, but when we looked at our budget and saw how much they actually wanted per month, we called up to cancel it. The person on the other end of the line said, "I'm sorry, but we're going to need that in writing."
So I wrote a business letter.
Then, a few months after we moved to Tulsa, someone stole a bill for our Best Buy credit card out of our mail, and used it to ring up several thousand dollars in fraudulent claims. Freaking out, we called up Best Buy's customer service and said, "Hey, someone's stealing your stuff and trying to charge it to us, and you've got put a stop to it!" and the guy on the phone said, "I'm sorry, but we're going to need that in writing."
Then I told the students a little bit about the writing experience, the process of trying to make it as a novelist, and the unending string of query letters -- every one an invitation for rejection. I told them about the importance of presenting the richness and beauty of a lovingly-crafted work of art in a sterile, one-page business letter. And then I told them how I'd finally landed a literary agent, and then had to fire her a year later, and when I contacted her to let her know I was no longer interested in working with her, she said, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to need that in writing."
That got a big laugh. I really think it got my point across well, too. I told them that in each of those situations, in different ways, I was stressed out, and needed to communicate specific information clearly and quickly. And already having a set format, an easy template that just required me to fill in the blanks, made it far easier for me to do exactly that, and save my energy for the other things I needed to be worrying about.
Due Dates
We talked briefly about our class schedule -- my plans for Thursdays and Tuesdays, and how the individual documents they're producing fit into the document packets that I'm going to be grading. In the process of that, I discovered my timetable doesn't work at all. I stumbled over that a little bit, thinking out loud, and that got some laughs. I think that's a good thing. I do need to get the details worked out before next class, though....
Group Work
Next we moved into the in-class assignment. I said, "Okay, we're going to work in groups now, and to divide up, I think we'll use a method that I found to be very effective in grade school." That got groans and chuckles, but they obediently counted off in threes, and then divided up into three groups per my instructions. Then I had everyone (for the first time) introduce themselves with name and major. Then I admitted why I'd had them count off in three -- because my three English majors were all sitting right next to each other. As a result, I had three groups with each one consisting of four Computer Science or Information Science majors, and one English major. Or, in other words, four technical people and one writer person.
Not entirely fair to the English majors, but that's how technical writing goes. I don't think I've ever worked with another English major. I told them as much, and paused to double-check myself, and then nodded and said, "I've worked with a Journalism major, but never an English major. Don't work with a Journalism major!" That got a laugh.
Technical Writing
Their assignment was deliberately vague. Every student at OC is issued a laptop, so I told them, "You've got twenty minutes. I want you to write me step-by-step instructions for how to do something useful on your student laptops."
Then something amazing happened. I'd guess that half of my students probably work with OC IT, and most of the rest of them are computer people. So in each of the three groups I heard the computer people tossing ideas out. "We could do this." "We could do that." And in each group, I heard the English major say, "Wait, what? What is that?" And then the computer people explained it to them.
And then the English majors wrote it down.
Or, in other words, Tech Writing happened. It was a thing of beauty.
Graded by the Ridicule of Their Peers
I did warn them, just after they'd divided up into groups, "We're going to go over these once you're done, so you'll be graded by the ridicule of your peers." That got a laugh (which was a very good thing), but we all followed through on it. As they finished, they emailed their tutorials to me, and I put them up on the overhead.
We briefly analyzed each one, pointing out what was done well, and what needed work. I talked a little bit about audiences, and I told them about Mark at my first job starting off every software manual with a section explaining how to use a mouse and what "click" and "double-click" meant. That got astonished, disbelieving stares, and I think I was able to make a good point there.
Out of Time
I had a lot more to say about the usefulness of written tutorials, with some heavy emphasis on all these computer people who had to give family and friends instructions on simple tasks all the time. By the time we were done critiquing, though, I was down to five minutes left in class, so I rushed through that material and let them go.
What I didn't get to was another personal anecdote, a story demonstrating the popularity and usefulness of tutorials, especially online. I was all prepared to tell them how I achieved some level of fame because of a short tutorial online. (If you search Google for "Alexpoet," my onetime web moniker, my website is the top of the list because of a tutorial I wrote for XBMC Python scripting -- which is another phrase that points directly to my page on Google.) I didn't get to that, but next week's class is about formatting technical documents, and most of what I did with that tutorial was take a flat text tutorial some Canadian dude had written, clean up the English, and apply the formatting rules I'd learned in my Tech Writing class. So, in other words, the material I didn't get to this week becomes the object lesson next week.
The Teaching Experience
When I talked to Dad about my rough experience last week, one of the things he pointed out was that my sheer terror when I stepped up to the podium was caused by an acute awareness of myself. He said that would happen to anybody -- even the most experienced public speaker, the most outgoing teacher -- if he stepped in front of a crowd and spent the whole time paying close attention to what he was doing right or wrong and analyzing it. We're too good at recognizing our own faults, we blow them out of proportion, and if that's what you're thinking about, you're going to shut yourself down.
Dad said everything I described about my first experience fell perfectly into that condition, and I couldn't argue with him. He said the way to fix it is to think about the students instead. Think about what they need to know, what I can tell them to make their lives better, and focus on their responses. I had my doubts about how easy it would be to follow through on that, but I spent the whole class trying to put it into practice, and it worked.
And I think it worked for everyone, not just for me. I mentioned the laughs I got, as often as I could, because they weren't nervous laughter. I can be a funny guy, and when I made a sarcastic comment and the students laughed at it, I could tell they were at their ease. I think that happened as a direct result of my being more at ease, and it built on itself, so by the end of the class we really were just talking back and forth. I spent two days before the class wrestling with intense anxiety, and it was brutal right up until I cleared my throat and stammered awkwardly, "Umm, okay, I guess we should get started." Then I took a breath, started with Dad's question, "What didn't you like about last week's lecture?" and instead of feeling nervous that I'd asked a question they couldn't answer, I just got irritated at them for not speaking up.
And from there on, I was fine. It was a great class period, and I think the lives of everyone involved are better for it.
More next week.
Journal Entry: September 9, 2009
Last week, before my first day of class, I mistook a respiratory virus for anxiety.
This week, there was no mistake. Anxiety shut me down. I didn't sleep Monday night, and I didn't eat anything yesterday until hours after the class. It was a miserable experience.
Also, as anxiety tends to be, it proved irrational and unfounded. My class went really well, but I'll wait to go into real detail in a separate post. The good news is that, after exhausting my prepared comments within the first fifteen minutes of class last week (and panicking about it afterward), I managed to run out of time yesterday. And, even better, the (significant amount of) material I had to skip works perfectly in next week's lecture, too.
Anyway, I took the afternoon off yesterday, and it proved to be a good thing. I went home for lunch and instead spent forty minutes lying on the bed in a dark room, trying to calm down. Then I packed up my laptop, hugged AB goodbye, and drove up to the school.
Class went really well, and afterward I headed to the offices to report as much to Cami, and found her speaking with Peggy Gipson -- my creative writing teacher when I was at OC, and easily one of my mentors. Apart from emails, though, we hadn't spoken since I got back from Tulsa, so we dismissed Cami and I took a seat in Peggy's office, and we caught up. For more than an hour. It was awesome.
I got home around 3:30, and T-- asked me to watch AB while she went grocery shopping. We watched part of a Sesame Street, then I suggested we got play outside and while AB played on her slide and climbed on her house, I mowed the back lawn. AB behaved really well for me while I did that, so when I finished I pushed her in her swing for a while.
We were still doing that when T-- got home, so she took over for me and I went around front to finish mowing. It was almost three weeks of growth, after the Velezes' visit two weeks ago and my sickness this last weekend, so the front yard especially was a lot of effort, but we've got guests coming in for a baby shower this weekend, and it needed to be done.
Once that was finished I grabbed a quick shower, and it was already six o'clock. T-- told me her friend Becca was coming over, and I owed Becca a character design worksheet (that I'd discussed at one of our earlier writing groups), so I spent half an hour searching through my old high school Creative Writing notebooks, but it was nowhere to be found. I settled for copying her a Dungeons and Dragons character record sheet, and a copy of the custom ones D-- and I made up for our fantasy project.
Then I emerged from the office for a much-needed dinner, which consisted of some Dominos pizza I paid for out of my allowance (because I'd had a rough day, and I deserved a treat). I just finished eating before Becca showed up with her two boys, and we talked shop for half an hour or so, going over some sticking points in her novel as she rushes toward its climax. Once she felt more comfortable with that, I left her to talk with T--, and went to play WoW.
That took the rest of my night, but it wasn't really as much night as I'd hoped for it to have. Maybe two hours, and then I was in bed so I could make it to work on time this morning.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
This week, there was no mistake. Anxiety shut me down. I didn't sleep Monday night, and I didn't eat anything yesterday until hours after the class. It was a miserable experience.
Also, as anxiety tends to be, it proved irrational and unfounded. My class went really well, but I'll wait to go into real detail in a separate post. The good news is that, after exhausting my prepared comments within the first fifteen minutes of class last week (and panicking about it afterward), I managed to run out of time yesterday. And, even better, the (significant amount of) material I had to skip works perfectly in next week's lecture, too.
Anyway, I took the afternoon off yesterday, and it proved to be a good thing. I went home for lunch and instead spent forty minutes lying on the bed in a dark room, trying to calm down. Then I packed up my laptop, hugged AB goodbye, and drove up to the school.
Class went really well, and afterward I headed to the offices to report as much to Cami, and found her speaking with Peggy Gipson -- my creative writing teacher when I was at OC, and easily one of my mentors. Apart from emails, though, we hadn't spoken since I got back from Tulsa, so we dismissed Cami and I took a seat in Peggy's office, and we caught up. For more than an hour. It was awesome.
I got home around 3:30, and T-- asked me to watch AB while she went grocery shopping. We watched part of a Sesame Street, then I suggested we got play outside and while AB played on her slide and climbed on her house, I mowed the back lawn. AB behaved really well for me while I did that, so when I finished I pushed her in her swing for a while.
We were still doing that when T-- got home, so she took over for me and I went around front to finish mowing. It was almost three weeks of growth, after the Velezes' visit two weeks ago and my sickness this last weekend, so the front yard especially was a lot of effort, but we've got guests coming in for a baby shower this weekend, and it needed to be done.
Once that was finished I grabbed a quick shower, and it was already six o'clock. T-- told me her friend Becca was coming over, and I owed Becca a character design worksheet (that I'd discussed at one of our earlier writing groups), so I spent half an hour searching through my old high school Creative Writing notebooks, but it was nowhere to be found. I settled for copying her a Dungeons and Dragons character record sheet, and a copy of the custom ones D-- and I made up for our fantasy project.
Then I emerged from the office for a much-needed dinner, which consisted of some Dominos pizza I paid for out of my allowance (because I'd had a rough day, and I deserved a treat). I just finished eating before Becca showed up with her two boys, and we talked shop for half an hour or so, going over some sticking points in her novel as she rushes toward its climax. Once she felt more comfortable with that, I left her to talk with T--, and went to play WoW.
That took the rest of my night, but it wasn't really as much night as I'd hoped for it to have. Maybe two hours, and then I was in bed so I could make it to work on time this morning.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Journal Entry: September 8, 2009
Friday
In my blog post last Friday I went into great detail concerning a slow-build head cold I'd spent a week developing, but then never really talked about it. I talked about how I confused it with social anxiety for a couple days, but never said how I knew that was a misdiagnosis.
I knew by Thursday, though. It hit me hard on Thursday, and then kept me home from work on Friday. I went in in the morning to pick up my school laptop that I'd left behind on Thursday, and then went back in for a short teleconference in the afternoon, but apart from that I stayed home and convalesced.
Between medication and lots of rest, I felt up to going over to K-- and N--'s for dinner Friday night. We had hotdogs and watched the last preseason Cowboys game. It was entertaining, but mostly just left us wanting the regular season to start.
Saturday
Saturday morning I watched AB while T-- went shopping. Just before she got home, I got a phone call from a guy selling a $2,500 camera on eBay letting me know I'd won and asking me about shipping and payment arrangements.
This entire phone call came as a complete shock to me, of course, and I got to spend the rest of the morning dealing with eBay's fraud department and getting my account re-secured. Turns out somebody had figured out my login credentials and made purchases in excess of eleven thousand dollars. Luckily (hah!) the check card associated with the account was stolen when we were robbed last December, so it had been canceled and no money changed hands.
Then around eleven T-- went out again to go shopping with my little sister, and took AB with her that time, because I headed up to Vintage coffeehouse for some social writing with Courtney before T-- planned to be home. Between worry over the eBay thing and a growing fuzziness from my lingering cold, I didn't actually get any writing done. I chatted with Courtney and ate a remarkable turkey sandwich, and then begged off early and headed home.
I deteriorated from there, so when six o'clock rolled around and we were supposed to head out for some OU football at K-- and N--'s place, I decided I just couldn't handle it. I called and offered my apologies, and then went to my room and took a nap. T-- went over to hang out at my sister's place and scrapbook, and I eventually woke up to grab some dinner and play some WoW. From what I heard, it was probably a more pleasant experience than watching the game would have been.
Sunday
I wasn't up terribly late Saturday night, even with the mid-evening nap, but I still managed to sleep through church Sunday for no other reason than that I forgot to set an alarm on my clock. I was up and dressed when T-- got out of service, though, and we went to Taco Cabana with D-- and my sister's family for lunch. Then I took AB home for a nap and T-- went over to my sister's place for more scrapbooking and some maternity photos.
AB woke up a couple hours before T-- got home, but we entertained ourselves with books and puzzles and counting poker chips. Then I spent most of the evening worrying about my class on Tuesday and playing WoW.
T-- picked up some Chinese takeout for us for dinner, and after AB went to bed we spent a couple mostly-depressing hours watching Sunshine Cleaning. It's got a happy ending, but it takes a pretty miserable path to get there. It's like Uncorked for girls. Anyway, after that T-- headed to bed, but I stayed up and watched I Love You, Man to cleanse the palate.
Monday
Monday morning we woke up early for a date! D-- came over to watch AB, and T-- and I grabbed some breakfast at Sonic before heading up to the mall for All About Steve at 10:05. The movie was...fascinating. It was good. It was Joe Dirt for girls. We had fun.
Then we stopped by Sears on the way to the car, and ended up buying my birthday present from T-- a little bit early. She got me new shoes and a new watch (both badly needed), and I walked out of there looking dapper.
We picked up D-- and AB for lunch at Chilis, then T-- dropped D-- and me at Best Buy to pick up some XBox games on sale while she ran to my sister's place to drop off some stuff. Turned out there was no sale, though, so D-- and I ended up wandering the aisles aimlessly until T-- got back. It wasn't too long, though.
After that D-- went home, and AB went down for a nap. I settled in to play some WoW, and T-- took advantage of my babysitting to go do some grocery shopping. She got back just as AB woke up, and we all watched TV for a couple hours. AB watched Nick Jr. videos on T-- laptop, and T-- and I watched a homemade marathon of season 4 of Newsradio.
T-- heated up a frozen pizza for dinner, and other than that our evening looked exactly like our afternoon. At nine AB went to bed, and then I put away the computer and T-- and I watched a Leverage. As soon as that was done I headed to bed, sick with anxiety over class tomorrow.
Which is to say, today. I've over the cold, but not the anxiety. It shouldn't last much longer than five hours, though. So at least there's that.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
In my blog post last Friday I went into great detail concerning a slow-build head cold I'd spent a week developing, but then never really talked about it. I talked about how I confused it with social anxiety for a couple days, but never said how I knew that was a misdiagnosis.
I knew by Thursday, though. It hit me hard on Thursday, and then kept me home from work on Friday. I went in in the morning to pick up my school laptop that I'd left behind on Thursday, and then went back in for a short teleconference in the afternoon, but apart from that I stayed home and convalesced.
Between medication and lots of rest, I felt up to going over to K-- and N--'s for dinner Friday night. We had hotdogs and watched the last preseason Cowboys game. It was entertaining, but mostly just left us wanting the regular season to start.
Saturday
Saturday morning I watched AB while T-- went shopping. Just before she got home, I got a phone call from a guy selling a $2,500 camera on eBay letting me know I'd won and asking me about shipping and payment arrangements.
This entire phone call came as a complete shock to me, of course, and I got to spend the rest of the morning dealing with eBay's fraud department and getting my account re-secured. Turns out somebody had figured out my login credentials and made purchases in excess of eleven thousand dollars. Luckily (hah!) the check card associated with the account was stolen when we were robbed last December, so it had been canceled and no money changed hands.
Then around eleven T-- went out again to go shopping with my little sister, and took AB with her that time, because I headed up to Vintage coffeehouse for some social writing with Courtney before T-- planned to be home. Between worry over the eBay thing and a growing fuzziness from my lingering cold, I didn't actually get any writing done. I chatted with Courtney and ate a remarkable turkey sandwich, and then begged off early and headed home.
I deteriorated from there, so when six o'clock rolled around and we were supposed to head out for some OU football at K-- and N--'s place, I decided I just couldn't handle it. I called and offered my apologies, and then went to my room and took a nap. T-- went over to hang out at my sister's place and scrapbook, and I eventually woke up to grab some dinner and play some WoW. From what I heard, it was probably a more pleasant experience than watching the game would have been.
Sunday
I wasn't up terribly late Saturday night, even with the mid-evening nap, but I still managed to sleep through church Sunday for no other reason than that I forgot to set an alarm on my clock. I was up and dressed when T-- got out of service, though, and we went to Taco Cabana with D-- and my sister's family for lunch. Then I took AB home for a nap and T-- went over to my sister's place for more scrapbooking and some maternity photos.
AB woke up a couple hours before T-- got home, but we entertained ourselves with books and puzzles and counting poker chips. Then I spent most of the evening worrying about my class on Tuesday and playing WoW.
T-- picked up some Chinese takeout for us for dinner, and after AB went to bed we spent a couple mostly-depressing hours watching Sunshine Cleaning. It's got a happy ending, but it takes a pretty miserable path to get there. It's like Uncorked for girls. Anyway, after that T-- headed to bed, but I stayed up and watched I Love You, Man to cleanse the palate.
Monday
Monday morning we woke up early for a date! D-- came over to watch AB, and T-- and I grabbed some breakfast at Sonic before heading up to the mall for All About Steve at 10:05. The movie was...fascinating. It was good. It was Joe Dirt for girls. We had fun.
Then we stopped by Sears on the way to the car, and ended up buying my birthday present from T-- a little bit early. She got me new shoes and a new watch (both badly needed), and I walked out of there looking dapper.
We picked up D-- and AB for lunch at Chilis, then T-- dropped D-- and me at Best Buy to pick up some XBox games on sale while she ran to my sister's place to drop off some stuff. Turned out there was no sale, though, so D-- and I ended up wandering the aisles aimlessly until T-- got back. It wasn't too long, though.
After that D-- went home, and AB went down for a nap. I settled in to play some WoW, and T-- took advantage of my babysitting to go do some grocery shopping. She got back just as AB woke up, and we all watched TV for a couple hours. AB watched Nick Jr. videos on T-- laptop, and T-- and I watched a homemade marathon of season 4 of Newsradio.
T-- heated up a frozen pizza for dinner, and other than that our evening looked exactly like our afternoon. At nine AB went to bed, and then I put away the computer and T-- and I watched a Leverage. As soon as that was done I headed to bed, sick with anxiety over class tomorrow.
Which is to say, today. I've over the cold, but not the anxiety. It shouldn't last much longer than five hours, though. So at least there's that.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday, September 4, 2009
The OC (Week 1)
Class Begins
I got to the school half an hour early. That gave me time to figure out how the projector worked before I got around to realizing I didn't really have anything to project. My students started filing in fifteen minutes early, and kept on filing until about ten minutes into the class.
Ten minutes into the class....
Public Speaking
Okay, as a long-time Tech Writer and successful co-host of a couple Writer's Groups (forgive me, Courtney, for bestowing the title on myself, but it was a source of some confidence), I was confident I could just show up and talk, and that would fill up the class. Whenever we get together for one of our Writer's Groups, I try to come up with a topic or two worth discussing, and somehow two hours disappear and I've barely even gotten started!
Technical writing isn't quite the same, as far as discussion goes, and I wanted to come off professional so I felt like I needed a little bit of organization to it. To that end, I drew up a list of topics I wanted to hit. Just a little outline. So one o'clock rolled around, and I stood up at the front of the class, and my well-behaved students immediately fell silent....
And I discovered that nothing has changed since college, as far as my public speaking goes. And, no, being the professor made no difference whatsoever. My heart raced, I couldn't form a coherent sentence, and every third word out of my mouth was "umm." Dad would've been mortified.
Introduction to Technical Writing
Somehow I got through that, though. I gripped my outline for dear life, and launched into my first topic. I asked them about their majors -- three English, four Computer Science, and six Other. I asked how many of them thought they might want to be Tech Writers someday, and the answer to that was an easy zero. I told them a little bit about myself, my time at OC, my experience in Tech Writing class, the sudden, desperate realization on graduation day that I'd never thought about getting a job, and then my two jobs (and seven years' experience) in Tech Writing.
I told them a little bit about what Tech Writing is like -- interacting with engineers and programmers, constantly working behind deadline, researching things you know nothing about in a desperate effort to make the inscrutable make sense. At one point, trying to stress the collaborative challenges of Tech Writing, I told them that one of the hardest parts is that you're always trying to get information from a programmer or an engineer, but everywhere I've ever worked the engineers are just constantly hammered.
And then I stopped, and said, "And by hammered, I mean busy. Not drunk."
That got a good laugh.
I got nods from the CS students when I said that software isn't finished until it's documented. I got nods from the English students when I said most of all the writing they'd ever done so far was either creative or academic, and (except for hobbies) that mostly ended at graduation. I got nods all around when I suggested, offhand, that most of them probably had no idea what Tech Writing was, or why they were in this class.
Scheduling Issues
So I was trucking along through my outline, doing pretty well, and all I had left to do was go over the syllabus (including the homework schedule). Curious, I glanced up at the clock to see how much time I had left in my seventy-five minute class session.
And the answer was sixty-five minutes. Give or take one. I'd never intended to keep them for the full class on the first day (nobody does that), but I sure thought I had more than ten minutes' worth of material!
So I started doing what I could to stretch it out, borrowing desperately from topics I intended to discuss later in the semester, expounding on things that didn't need expounding on, and making my already-flustered speech even more so. I somehow dragged the class out to twenty-five minutes, and then I let them go. Of course, none of them complained.
Post-Mortem
As I was packing up my stuff, I spotted Gail out in the hall -- the professor who'd taught my Tech Writing class way back when, and a friend of ours from church. She asked me how it had gone, so I ducked into her office and told her all about it.
She was sympathetic. She later told me the first day of teaching is always BRUTAL, and she had some good, specific suggestions for dealing with the big block of time. After that I seriously considered slipping out and going home, but I'd spoken with Dr. Agan (the department chair, and the one who'd hired me) before class, and I was pretty sure she was expecting me to stop by again. So I slunk up to her office, and she asked, "Well, how was it?"
And I said, "About a third as long as I expected it to be."
She was just as encouraging as Gail had been, but I still drove home feeling miserable. Partly it was my physical response to standing up at the front of the class -- I'd somehow convinced myself it wouldn't be like that, so when it was...that was devastating. Not just for those ten minutes, but because it means I have that to look forward to for the rest of the semester. That's daunting.
Then...well, to fill time, I'm going to have to do a lot more work than I'd realized. That's not a terrible thing on its own, but I've been dreading how busy this fall was going to be for months, and that was before I learned how much more effort I'm going to have to put into my classes. I spent my drive home trying to figure out how I was going to even manage it, let alone find the time for my writing, for catching some football games, for playing a little WoW to unwind....
More next week.
I got to the school half an hour early. That gave me time to figure out how the projector worked before I got around to realizing I didn't really have anything to project. My students started filing in fifteen minutes early, and kept on filing until about ten minutes into the class.
Ten minutes into the class....
Public Speaking
Okay, as a long-time Tech Writer and successful co-host of a couple Writer's Groups (forgive me, Courtney, for bestowing the title on myself, but it was a source of some confidence), I was confident I could just show up and talk, and that would fill up the class. Whenever we get together for one of our Writer's Groups, I try to come up with a topic or two worth discussing, and somehow two hours disappear and I've barely even gotten started!
Technical writing isn't quite the same, as far as discussion goes, and I wanted to come off professional so I felt like I needed a little bit of organization to it. To that end, I drew up a list of topics I wanted to hit. Just a little outline. So one o'clock rolled around, and I stood up at the front of the class, and my well-behaved students immediately fell silent....
And I discovered that nothing has changed since college, as far as my public speaking goes. And, no, being the professor made no difference whatsoever. My heart raced, I couldn't form a coherent sentence, and every third word out of my mouth was "umm." Dad would've been mortified.
Introduction to Technical Writing
Somehow I got through that, though. I gripped my outline for dear life, and launched into my first topic. I asked them about their majors -- three English, four Computer Science, and six Other. I asked how many of them thought they might want to be Tech Writers someday, and the answer to that was an easy zero. I told them a little bit about myself, my time at OC, my experience in Tech Writing class, the sudden, desperate realization on graduation day that I'd never thought about getting a job, and then my two jobs (and seven years' experience) in Tech Writing.
I told them a little bit about what Tech Writing is like -- interacting with engineers and programmers, constantly working behind deadline, researching things you know nothing about in a desperate effort to make the inscrutable make sense. At one point, trying to stress the collaborative challenges of Tech Writing, I told them that one of the hardest parts is that you're always trying to get information from a programmer or an engineer, but everywhere I've ever worked the engineers are just constantly hammered.
And then I stopped, and said, "And by hammered, I mean busy. Not drunk."
That got a good laugh.
I got nods from the CS students when I said that software isn't finished until it's documented. I got nods from the English students when I said most of all the writing they'd ever done so far was either creative or academic, and (except for hobbies) that mostly ended at graduation. I got nods all around when I suggested, offhand, that most of them probably had no idea what Tech Writing was, or why they were in this class.
Scheduling Issues
So I was trucking along through my outline, doing pretty well, and all I had left to do was go over the syllabus (including the homework schedule). Curious, I glanced up at the clock to see how much time I had left in my seventy-five minute class session.
And the answer was sixty-five minutes. Give or take one. I'd never intended to keep them for the full class on the first day (nobody does that), but I sure thought I had more than ten minutes' worth of material!
So I started doing what I could to stretch it out, borrowing desperately from topics I intended to discuss later in the semester, expounding on things that didn't need expounding on, and making my already-flustered speech even more so. I somehow dragged the class out to twenty-five minutes, and then I let them go. Of course, none of them complained.
Post-Mortem
As I was packing up my stuff, I spotted Gail out in the hall -- the professor who'd taught my Tech Writing class way back when, and a friend of ours from church. She asked me how it had gone, so I ducked into her office and told her all about it.
She was sympathetic. She later told me the first day of teaching is always BRUTAL, and she had some good, specific suggestions for dealing with the big block of time. After that I seriously considered slipping out and going home, but I'd spoken with Dr. Agan (the department chair, and the one who'd hired me) before class, and I was pretty sure she was expecting me to stop by again. So I slunk up to her office, and she asked, "Well, how was it?"
And I said, "About a third as long as I expected it to be."
She was just as encouraging as Gail had been, but I still drove home feeling miserable. Partly it was my physical response to standing up at the front of the class -- I'd somehow convinced myself it wouldn't be like that, so when it was...that was devastating. Not just for those ten minutes, but because it means I have that to look forward to for the rest of the semester. That's daunting.
Then...well, to fill time, I'm going to have to do a lot more work than I'd realized. That's not a terrible thing on its own, but I've been dreading how busy this fall was going to be for months, and that was before I learned how much more effort I'm going to have to put into my classes. I spent my drive home trying to figure out how I was going to even manage it, let alone find the time for my writing, for catching some football games, for playing a little WoW to unwind....
More next week.
Journal Entry: September 4, 2009
Big week for me, so yeah I should have been posting regularly. But, then, it was a big week for me, so I had other stuff to do.
Starting with getting sick.
Sunday
(Yes, I already did Sunday, just bear with me.)
Sunday morning I woke up with the sniffles and a severe, sinus-related headache -- harkening back to the Sunday only two weeks before, when I went through the same thing. That one was short-lived, though....
This one has lingered. And grown.
Monday
So, yeah, Monday morning I woke up feeling pretty out-of-it and miserable, but I just assumed (with my big first day of school looming) that it was a social anxiety thing. Every now and then I'd stop and think, "Wait, this feels more like a head cold than an anxiety attack," but then I'd just call myself silly because, after all, I had a big terrifying Event looming. Of course it was anxiety!
I went to work Monday, and then got home to an empty house because T-- had AB at the grocery store with her. D-- came over, and T-- brought a pizza home with her, and we all had a pleasant dinner. Then T-- took AB to go shopping with my little sister, and D-- drove me up to Full Circle Bookstore for social writing.
It was just the two of us this time, and we both got a lot done. We wrote about a thousand words each, in two hours at the coffee shop, then headed down to the restaurant for an hour of good conversation. I got home a little after ten, and went straight to bed.
Tuesday
Tuesday morning I went in to work, and spent most of my time there answering coworkers who started conversations with, "Today's the big day, huh? Are you ready?" And my answer was always, "Sure I'm ready! I've been doing this for seven years. All I have to do is show up, and start talking. I'll fill an hour like that!"
Noon rolled around, and I headed home. I took the afternoon off, so I wouldn't have to rush hither and thither on my first day of classes. Had lunch with T-- and AB, grabbed my laptop, and headed up to the school. I'll tell you all about my first class session in a separate post.
In brief, though, it didn't go well. And, on top of all that, I was sick. I still suspected at the time that it was a response to the stress of the day, but that certainly didn't lessen after class was over. I drove home, desperately glad I wasn't supposed to go back to work, and crashed on the couch, and did nothing else for the rest of the day. I did watch AB while T-- went grocery shopping, but that consisted mostly of stretching out on the couch, one arm over my eyes, and half-heartedly saying, "Don't make a mess" while she watched TV and played with her puzzles.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning I woke up early and went to work, then slipped out halfway through the morning to see my doctor for my annual physical. I haven't gotten any of the lab results back yet, but for the most part everything's good. He's got me back on Benicar for my blood pressure, but even that is much better than it was a year ago. He said if I can get my diastolic down by ten points, I can probably go off it altogether. So that's my six-month goal.
Anyway, after that I went right back to work. Mid-afternoon I was chatting with T-- and asked her about dinner plans and she reminded me that she was going out with Becca, and I was watching AB. So that was that.
I got home, and she left, and AB and I played in the living room for an hour or so before D-- showed up. Then the three of us ran up to Taco Bueno to grab some dinner. Afterward AB crawled up next to me on the couch while I was poking around on Facebook, and she jabbed a finger at the screen, at my little profile photo, and said, "That's you, Daddy!"
And I said, "It is!" and opened the photo up larger so she could see it. Then she started looking through all the little thumbnails on the screen, trying to spot people she recognized, and we played that game for fifteen minutes or so.
When she got bored of that, I set her up on T--'s laptop watching really, really old episodes of Sesame Street, and D-- and I played WoW. That carried us through to AB's bedtime.
Then D-- left and T-- and I watched some Lie to Me, and then it was tomorrow.
Thursday
My Tuesday-Thursday class is what we're calling a "hybrid online course," which means we're meeting in class on Tuesdays, and then on Thursdays the students go to the school's e-classroom website and watch a recorded lecture, get an assignment, and work on that over the weekend. Next Tuesday when we meet for class, we'll go over the assignment before I launch into my lecture.
Anyway, that meant I didn't have to go out to the school on Thursday, but I did have to get the online lecture put together. That...didn't end up happening, for technical reasons. I posted the assignment, and I put together a heavily-illustrated tutorial (How to Write a Business Letter) that I made available, and I sent them an email saying, "Sorry, but I'm having technical problems so your lecture won't be available until tomorrow. If you're in a hurry to get started, check out the tutorial posted online."
Not the best way to get started. In the process, though, I came up with a really great process for developing my online lectures. I was able to convert the illustrations in my tutorial directly into PowerPoint slides for the lecture, and use the text as a script for my voiceover. That lets me develop the lecture to my strengths (that is, tech writing), produce a useful lecture, and also have a well-made tutorial document left over when I'm done. That seems like a good thing all around.
Anyway, I took care of that yesterday, finishing it up in the early evening. T-- made sloppy joes for dinner, I played WoW, and after AB went to bed we watched the last episode of Lie to Me. It was intense.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Starting with getting sick.
Sunday
(Yes, I already did Sunday, just bear with me.)
Sunday morning I woke up with the sniffles and a severe, sinus-related headache -- harkening back to the Sunday only two weeks before, when I went through the same thing. That one was short-lived, though....
This one has lingered. And grown.
Monday
So, yeah, Monday morning I woke up feeling pretty out-of-it and miserable, but I just assumed (with my big first day of school looming) that it was a social anxiety thing. Every now and then I'd stop and think, "Wait, this feels more like a head cold than an anxiety attack," but then I'd just call myself silly because, after all, I had a big terrifying Event looming. Of course it was anxiety!
I went to work Monday, and then got home to an empty house because T-- had AB at the grocery store with her. D-- came over, and T-- brought a pizza home with her, and we all had a pleasant dinner. Then T-- took AB to go shopping with my little sister, and D-- drove me up to Full Circle Bookstore for social writing.
It was just the two of us this time, and we both got a lot done. We wrote about a thousand words each, in two hours at the coffee shop, then headed down to the restaurant for an hour of good conversation. I got home a little after ten, and went straight to bed.
Tuesday
Tuesday morning I went in to work, and spent most of my time there answering coworkers who started conversations with, "Today's the big day, huh? Are you ready?" And my answer was always, "Sure I'm ready! I've been doing this for seven years. All I have to do is show up, and start talking. I'll fill an hour like that!"
Noon rolled around, and I headed home. I took the afternoon off, so I wouldn't have to rush hither and thither on my first day of classes. Had lunch with T-- and AB, grabbed my laptop, and headed up to the school. I'll tell you all about my first class session in a separate post.
In brief, though, it didn't go well. And, on top of all that, I was sick. I still suspected at the time that it was a response to the stress of the day, but that certainly didn't lessen after class was over. I drove home, desperately glad I wasn't supposed to go back to work, and crashed on the couch, and did nothing else for the rest of the day. I did watch AB while T-- went grocery shopping, but that consisted mostly of stretching out on the couch, one arm over my eyes, and half-heartedly saying, "Don't make a mess" while she watched TV and played with her puzzles.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning I woke up early and went to work, then slipped out halfway through the morning to see my doctor for my annual physical. I haven't gotten any of the lab results back yet, but for the most part everything's good. He's got me back on Benicar for my blood pressure, but even that is much better than it was a year ago. He said if I can get my diastolic down by ten points, I can probably go off it altogether. So that's my six-month goal.
Anyway, after that I went right back to work. Mid-afternoon I was chatting with T-- and asked her about dinner plans and she reminded me that she was going out with Becca, and I was watching AB. So that was that.
I got home, and she left, and AB and I played in the living room for an hour or so before D-- showed up. Then the three of us ran up to Taco Bueno to grab some dinner. Afterward AB crawled up next to me on the couch while I was poking around on Facebook, and she jabbed a finger at the screen, at my little profile photo, and said, "That's you, Daddy!"
And I said, "It is!" and opened the photo up larger so she could see it. Then she started looking through all the little thumbnails on the screen, trying to spot people she recognized, and we played that game for fifteen minutes or so.
When she got bored of that, I set her up on T--'s laptop watching really, really old episodes of Sesame Street, and D-- and I played WoW. That carried us through to AB's bedtime.
Then D-- left and T-- and I watched some Lie to Me, and then it was tomorrow.
Thursday
My Tuesday-Thursday class is what we're calling a "hybrid online course," which means we're meeting in class on Tuesdays, and then on Thursdays the students go to the school's e-classroom website and watch a recorded lecture, get an assignment, and work on that over the weekend. Next Tuesday when we meet for class, we'll go over the assignment before I launch into my lecture.
Anyway, that meant I didn't have to go out to the school on Thursday, but I did have to get the online lecture put together. That...didn't end up happening, for technical reasons. I posted the assignment, and I put together a heavily-illustrated tutorial (How to Write a Business Letter) that I made available, and I sent them an email saying, "Sorry, but I'm having technical problems so your lecture won't be available until tomorrow. If you're in a hurry to get started, check out the tutorial posted online."
Not the best way to get started. In the process, though, I came up with a really great process for developing my online lectures. I was able to convert the illustrations in my tutorial directly into PowerPoint slides for the lecture, and use the text as a script for my voiceover. That lets me develop the lecture to my strengths (that is, tech writing), produce a useful lecture, and also have a well-made tutorial document left over when I'm done. That seems like a good thing all around.
Anyway, I took care of that yesterday, finishing it up in the early evening. T-- made sloppy joes for dinner, I played WoW, and after AB went to bed we watched the last episode of Lie to Me. It was intense.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
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