Vacation?

Well, I have a ton to do this Spring Break. I need to get caught up on my grading, that is the first thing. I need to prepare a couple of lessons for after Spring Break as well. I have to read Rinconete y Cortadillo. También necesito leer Lazarillo de Tormes. Later, I have to read about ten short stories. Truly, I have more than enough to keep me super busy this week. (Thank God for the week off, ufgh.) I have a lot to do to get ready for some exams next week. Luckily, I got a 90% on my Portuguese exam last week.

Maybe the most pressing thing that I have to do this week is re-write a paper that I am planning on presenting at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, April 16-18, in Lexington, Kentucky. I will be presenting a literary analysis entitled ¿Está(n) loca(s)?: Una reconsideración de las ideas de Julia Kristeva en Balún Canán. I am pretty nervous about it all because this is pretty new to me and I think that I could have done more research for this. I really should have more sources than I do, but it should still be okay if I can get my re-write done the way that I want to.

Still, it is really nice to be able to sleep in until 9 am and then to sit around in what I sleep in because I am the only one home. It is nice being lazy.

I watched a couple of movies last night. One was Cidade de Deus. It was pretty good; it was all in Portuguese with English subtitles and I was surprised by how much I could understand. I am telling you, even though I got an A- on my Portuguese exam, I don't feel like I know anything. The other movie that I saw was Carne trémula de Pedro Almodóvar. It was really good. It is a complicated love story, the way love sometimes is. I really liked both of the movies.

I am in the process of getting a whole bunch of Pedro Almodóvar's movies. He is a Spanish director who made Volver with Penelope Cruz. That is probably his most recognizable title here in the States recently but he is huge and a lot of his movies have won awards. I will probably be taking a 20^th century Spanish film class next semester and I thought that it would be good to get some of his stuff because it is impossible that we don't watch at least a few of his movies.

Anyway, that is enough of an update for now. Now I need to get back to the busy work of being on vacation.

me

Monday's Music

What can I say? It has been in the mid-70's here for a couple of days (after snowing only a week ago), I start spring break today, we changed the clocks yesterday... summer is coming. Summer, not spring, is my favorite time of year. For my whole life that has been the case. I can take the heat - heck, I even like it. I had a good summer last year - travelling, studying, learning new things... - and this summer should be at least as interesting, but we will have to wait and see.
I am on a week long vacation starting today, but I have a ton of work to do this week. Becky takes spring break in two weeks. She will be in San Francisco, CA - and, depending on how things go there, my summer plans could become really, really busy.
Anyway, there will be more than enough time to think of all that when summer really gets here. For now, let's just listen to a song that if you know it, well, you are old-school (aka - you could be getting old). This is a hit from a time when rap and hip hop were still basically the same exact music. This is the #1 rap single from 1991 (yeah, I remember it - 'cause I'm just that cool):



Good times!!
love,
me

uh-huh

I like it!

4.2 - Cuando llego a casa….

Stem Changing Verbs: e  ie, o  ue

Cuando llego a casa quiero descansar. Trabajo mucho. A veces, mi día empieza antes de las cinco de la mañana. Siempre desayuno, pero muchas veces no almuerzo. Después de trabajar todo el día, no pierdo tiempo en ir a dormir. Sin embargo (~nevertheless), no duermo bien. No entiendo por qué. Pienso que esto (this) tiene mucho que ver con mi día. Pienso mucho, recuerdo todo lo que tengo que hacer y a veces no puedo dormir. Cuento ovejas (sheep) y eventualmente comienzo a dormir. Pero al día siguiente, vuelvo a hacer todo lo mismo otra vez. Sólo tengo un pasatiempo durante los fines de semana: prefiero dormir mucho.

 
 

(note to my blog readers: this is fiction that I have written to use as a classroom activity)

El verbo IR

Después de mis clases hoy, yo voy a ir al gimnasio. Hacer ejercicios es uno de mis pasatiempos favoritos. Voy al gimnasio cada semana. Me gusta levantar pesas, correr y jugar al baloncesto. Me gusta ir a la piscina, pero no me gusta nadar. Prefiero tomar el sol al lado de la piscina. Este fin de semana, yo voy a ir al cine para ver una película. Voy a la iglesia casi todas las semanas. En el verano, yo voy a enseñar dos clases pero si tengo el tiempo y el dinero, también voy a viajar. Mi esposa va a ir a España. Yo tengo ganas de ir a España con ella. En España, vamos a visitar muchos museos, vamos a comer en un café o en un restaurante, y vamos a ir a la playa donde vamos a bucear. Si nosotros vamos a España, mi hijo va a ir con su abuela. Si no voy, voy a escribir una carta o un correo electrónico a mi esposa.

fluir de consciencia

I don’t know what to write. I want to write. I enjoy writing. I would like to be poetic, meaningful, profound, interesting… anything.
I would like that connection that good writing – good poetry and good music especially – can create.
Graduate school is exhausting. I enjoy it all, but I would like to saborear más. Todo lo que hacemos es engullir. No hay tiempo para disfrutar nada. Pues eso no es exactamente cierto, pero a veces este rito frentico de leer me exhausta.
I had two exams yesterday. I got up at 6 am today and it feels like I slept in really late.
Anyway, I have an idea for an opinion piece that I am thinking about writing for the University newspaper.
I will try to get that up later today.
me

Monday's Music

Okay, this is a very late post. I have been busy today. I got started today at 3 am. I read about 130 pages in Don Quijote. I also prepared a class today (that worked great in one of my classes and TANKED in the other one - argh!).
Anyway, I am not anywhere near done with my day yet, but I remembered that I forgot this post today. The songs that I am putting here today are both part of the playlist that I listen to the most on my mp3 player. They are also both in French (as far as I know). I really love the sound, but I don't know French. So, I don't expect you to know the words - just sit back and listen. I hope you enjoy.

Africando - Aicha


Kate Ryan - Ella elle l'a

(I like this song a lot)

me

Una entrada para los hispanohablantes

Yo sé que de vez en cuando recibo visitas aquí en el blog de personas de Latinoamérica. Yo subscribo a algunos blogs de gente hispanohablante, también. Aquí, en esta entrada sólo quiero decir un poquito sobre mí mismo para que los que vean mis entradas por medio de un enlace en Desarmándonos o cualquier otro sitio saben algo más de mí.

Primero, español no es mi primer idioma; no obstante, yo hablo español y leo en español todos los días y creo que manejo el idioma con una fluidez casi nativa. Soy un estudiante posgraduado de la literatura española (tanto peninsular como hispanoamericana). Lo que me interesa más que todo son los cuentos latinoamericanos, especialmente los de los cuentistas argentinos – Borges, Cortázar, y Quiroga. Actualmente yo llevo un curso de cuentos hispanoamericanos y un curso de literatura peninsular del Siglo de Oro. También, estudio portugués.

He viajado muchísimo por todo México. Viví dos años en la República Dominicana, y estudié un semestre en la Universidad de Costa Rica en San José. Tengo muy poca experiencia en las otras partes de Latinoamérica. Nunca he viajado a Sudamérica. Si mi horario este verano me lo permite, espero ir a España. Si no puedo ir a España, tal vez vaya a México o Guatemala. Tengo ganas, pero vamos a ver. En realidad, creo que voy a estar trabajando este verano.

Ahora bien, yo no pretendo saberlo todo. Estoy totalmente dispuesto estar equivocado en cualquiera cosa que pongo en mi blog y sé que muchas veces cometo errores cuándo hablo y cuándo escribo en español (pues, en verdad, yo pienso principalmente en inglés y yo sé que eso va a afectar mi español). Les invito (les pido) que me corrijan siempre cuándo yo cometa errores. Quiero aprender y quiero mejorar mi español y si nadie me enseña lo que hago mal, pues no voy a aprender.

Pues, si Uds., hispanohablantes, quieren dejar comentarios aquí en español (aun cuando las entradas estén escritas en inglés) está bien.

Gracias,

El autor

My Nightmare

I thinking that you can tell what your obsessions are by the things that show up in your dreams. I have previously discussed my haircut obsession, now let me tell you about last night's dream:

In it I was at my mom's house. Becky was there. I was sleeping on the floor and very uncomfortable. When I got up (in the dream) I decided to give myself a haircut. I didn't want it to go too short so I was using the scissors. This was really hard to do so I asked Becky to help me but somehow my mom convinced us to go where she gets her hair done. So with the haircut most of the way done, and done well, we are suddenly somehow in a salon and somebody else is sort of styling my hair (notice the alliteration). Anyway, I was almost done but now I had some woman cutting my hair and ruining my haircut - leaving everything uneven with some parts longer and some too short. I asked if I could just fix it and she wouldn't let me touch any of the clippers or scissors and when I tried her boss physically restrained me. It was terrible and I felt pretty panicky. AND they were charging me $81 for it (and that was their cheap price!).

I actually had a major, uncomfortable night-sweat last night and had to change my shirt and my pillow case; it was like I had a fever or something. I don't know if the physical reaction was a cause of the dream or if the dream was the cause of the reaction. It was weird. It was also the second time this week (second time in a very long time before this week as well) that I have had a pretty bad night-sweat. I don't know if it is from some of the vitamins that I take before bed or if I am just dealing with some sort of sickness. I did recently switch allergy medicines and I take that right before bed as well. One other possibility is that the sweating is insulin related. I don't know that much about that, but there is some diabetes in my family and I have seen how it makes those family members sweat - and I had a big bowl of ice cream right before bed. Really, I don't think that that is what I have, but it crossed my mind because I have seen it make other people sweat. Still, I don't think that the dream caused it because it wasn't the first time it happened but it was the first time I have ever had that dream. Hmmm.

I hear it

Created by Train Horns

Ni bueno, ni malo

Today has been one of those days. Nothing particularly bad happened but I don't want days like this most of the time:

• The day started at 3am with a loud thunder clap that woke up everybody in my house. It sounded like the house was struck by lightening. It was pretty scary and Rosco came into our room - not to protect us, but so that we would protect him. There was a hard, fast thunderstorm and by the time I was leaving for work the only things that were left of it were the puddles on our lawn.
• The puddles... and the garbage. Fridays are trash day so and I had put the trash out on the curb the night before thinking that I was making life a little bit easier on whoever was the person who left first in the morning that way. Well, I was the first one out the door and so I had the honor of picking up wet garbage before I could be on my way to work. Yuck!
• I was observed by my supervisor at work. This wasn't too bad, but the lesson that I had planned was not that great. I am/was a day ahead of where the syllabus puts us and what I had planned today was just a sort of free day/chapter review it was a super lax day today - not stuff that I really wanted to be supervised doing.
• My main workout partner got to the gym about an hour late so I spent my legs day doing an extra chest workout with another guy who goes with us. That is fine, but I really would have preferred to spend that time on the legs. A good thing - I lifted 250 on the flat bench today. I was lifting 200 on flies. It was a good day for the chest. The bad thing - When Legs got there, I felt pretty weak. My back felt too tired to get heavy on the squats. I did get pretty heavy (400 lbs) on leg-press. It was just my back was not there for me today. The other bad thing was that the leg workout was cut pretty short (we only did two exercises) because Chest had to leave (I can't blame him - Legs was an hour late) and I had stuff at his apartment that I needed to get when he left.
• Leaving the gym, a guy I see at the gym all the time asked if I had jumper cables, and I do. So I went and dropped Chest off and then went to the parking lot to jump my friend's battery. Even after I left Chest at his place, I forgot some stuff at his apartment and then the guy who needed a jump left his gym clothes and back pack in my truck. None of this is that bad, but it was all pretty frustrating.
• At this point, I needed to come home. On the way home, I had to pee really bad. I was speeding; I am always speeding. This time I was speeding to get to a bathroom before my bladder exploded. Anyway, I got pulled over. When the officer came up to my window he seemed like he was in a really good mood when he said "I clocked you a little over," and I told him "I know, I have to pee really bad." He said, "I understand your situation. I will just give you a warning." That was so cool, but I still had to pee really bad! The cop brought my licence back with a warning for me to sign and I was back on the road. It was all faster than anybody has ever been stopped by a cop. Not something I want to happen everyday, but pretty cool anyway.
• And, finally, today I got a link on "The New Gay" for something I blogged about.

So, that has been my day so far, but it is not over yet.

Running Journal

Okay, I know that I just made one of these entries this morning. This is not a repeat. This actually is a new entry.

Two hours after saying that this class isn't a challenge for me, it kicked my butt. On Tuesday, the teacher told us that we were running for a distance – two times around the grassy area that goes along the train tracks on the south side of campus. I asked her if I could run on the track today so that I could measure my run and she said that we are running for time, 20 min, not distance.

Okay. So that is what I did. I went out and ran four times around the designated area. I can safely say that I ran the furthest in the class. It was a good run, too. I really felt my lower back from the dead lifts yesterday. I was sweating from every part of my body. Just guessing from how I felt, I would say that I went more than 2 miles but definitely not close to 3 miles. I was running at a pace that I know that I can maintain for long distances and I only ran 20 minutes. I am okay with that, but I think that I would have a really hard time speeding things up. I want to get faster, so I am just going to have to start out at a faster pace and see how I do OR I could just do a day of speed work. I don't think that a speed work out would work though because the teacher wants us all engaged in the same activity. We will see.

After the running, we went inside and did some stretching. I am really, REALLY glad that we did the stretching – more because of yesterday's workout than from the run today. The run was good for warming things up but it also tightens up the same areas that I worked yesterday (the lower back) and the stretching felt so good there.

Tuesday we have a mid-term in there. :(

Running Journal

It has been a while since I wrote a Running Journal. Let me try to get caught up.

Today is Thursday. I will be running today but not for about two more hours. The last one of these journal entries that I made was on the 12^th – a Thursday two weeks ago. I didn't run on the twelfth, but on the 16^th I did show up and work out. It was raining that day and we stayed inside doing a variety of ten minute workouts – jumping rope, pushups, abs work, and lunges. I did like 120 lunges – six lengths of the basketball court. Let me make just one comment on the jumping rope – I have done that a lot in the past. I don't claim to be the best, but at least I know what I am doing. A lot of people don't know how to jump rope. I say that as a simple matter of observation. There were a lot of arm flappers in there trying to jump rope. To all the readers out there who don't know, when you jump rope your arms really shouldn't move much at all. All the spinning should come from the wrists and the bouncing. Nobody should look like they are trying to fly away when they jump rope. Doing the pushups was really difficult for me. I did a really hard chest workout in the gym the day before (I worked out with 245 on the bench on Monday). I didn't feel like doing any pushups that day.

I actually went back to the doctor that Tuesday afternoon because I didn't feel totally recovered from the sickness the week before. I didn't know that the five day antibiotic that they gave me actually takes ten days to work but the nurse prescribed me a pulmonary steroid anyway. I don't know if it helped at all. I didn't feel much difference but I feel better now so I guess that that is the important thing.

On Thursday the 19^th I didn't go to my running class because I was busy reading and I just didn't get out of here fast enough. Right now I can't think what I was actually working on; all I know is that I didn't go to the running class.

This past Tuesday, I went and the class went outside to run along the train tracks. It was an interesting change but I worry that somebody might sprain an ankle. I don't have much to comment on about Tuesday. I don't feel challenged in this class right now. I prefer track running for a specific time because then I can try to go further in the same amount of time. The running along the train tracks means that we all run the same distance and I can do it in the same amount of time as most of the students without even working. Today we are going to run the train tracks again but I might ask the teacher if I can stay and run on the track so that I can measure the distance (and probably go further than the train track running).

Even though this is a Running Journal, I want to put something in here about my workouts in the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I lift weights those days. Monday is a chest, triceps, and anterior deltoids day. Wednesday is biceps, back, and posterior delts. Friday is mostly just legs. Yesterday, I had one of the best back workouts I have ever done. I was WIPED OUT afterwards. I was lifting some heavy weight and I felt really good. I was there for a little more than 90 min with my workout partner and we started with dead-lift. Normally, we start with pull-ups and then move on to more lat work. Anyway, sorry – I know that that is pretty boring stuff but I just want to say – I was stupid tired afterwards. I wasn't sleepy, I was just stupid. My brain didn't work. I had to grade papers but I don't think that I understood the words that I was looking at. It was a great workout. I feel everything today – my lower back especially, but also my lats feel really good today. Again, I felt really strong yesterday and lifted some heavy weight (for me).

Sorry about the boring post.

Later,

me

Monday's Music

This is something that I was listening to recently. I don't know what made me want to post this here. Maybe, '... it's not always rainbows and butterflies...." Well, you can just listen to it yourself. Enjoy! (Yeah, yeah, I know this is radio stuff.)

Maroon 5, She Will Be Loved



"I know that goodbye means nothing at all...."

me

This is humiliating

I refuse to re-post this picture, but here is a link for you to follow to see how my sister has embarrassed me on the internet.
I might never leave my house again.
I might shave my head and wear sack-cloth.
I might go live with the monkeys at the zoo.
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Actually, I think I am hilarious! I love my monkey face.
me