That was easy...

Thanks to being a student with kids, I qualify for the free weatherization program. Initially, I'd assumed it meant the usual stuff that the power company used to do, like give out a bunch of compact fluorescent bulbs, a blanket for the hot water heater, etc.
No, it's a bit more involved than that.
So to make a long story short, it's a couple of days of somebody making a survey of the house, running a blower to measure air leaks, gently suggest that you shouldn't have installed halogen track lighting all over the place, and yes, swap out your incandescent bulbs for CF bulbs.
(As an aside, I wonder what happens when people start throwing out all those dead CF bulbs, since they contain mercury and other kinds things that are not cool to have in the groundwater... I don't even know where to drop them off other than the trash, so I have a growing pile of them in the garage.)
They offer to put more insulation around the house, which I ok. So next thing I know, I have work crews over at the house, drilling holes around the sides, blowing in insulation, and doing the same in the attic. Even crawling into a hole in the attic stairs to insulate that as well.
Blown insulation, well, blows. Anywhere you have an airspace between you and where insulation is being blown in, you get insulation blowing out. Around the medicine cabinets, into the bath tub, you name it. Places you had no idea hadn't been sealed against the outside world. This means having to re caulk the tub, since you wouldn't want water going back in the way the insulation blew out, for obvious reasons...
During which time, my daughter's little friend shows up for a play date.
And in the middle of all this, my brother shows up. I kind of forgot I was taking him to the airport. So I quickly finish up the caulking, thinking about the shower I'm going to be able to enjoy in about 24 hours.
Luckily, going to the airport is easier than parking at Target. On the way back, I stop at Staples to return something, and finally give in to my 4-year-old boy, who's been wanting the Staples button. After a total of an hour, I'm back at home with his car.
The problem with the Staples button as a toy is that it only does one thing. When you push the button, it says, "That was easy". Every time you push the button. Fortunately, that never gets old. Unlike the commercials, though, the mess at hand does not disappear when you push the button. I'd remortgage the house to buy a button that could accomplish that.
So when my son and I get back from the airport, it's been decided that the play date has become a sleepover. Another unproductive weekend... But at least the work crew finished up, and so far it seems that they did a very thorough job.
But it's gone relatively well. The kids entertain each other, and I actually get a few minutes to do other things, though a little too noisy to actually concentrate on anything difficult, so I did my taxes instead.
And I'm starting to wish the Staples button would wear out after a finite number of re playings of "That was easy..."

It's semester #6 now

It's officially semester #6 now, though I haven't started a single class of my own yet. But I've already started teaching again, my 5th (and 6th) class alone. And I'm co-teaching for the second (and third) time. I'm involved at least partially in four classes this semester.
This is absolutely nuts.
I'm pretty comfortable with the material. The matter of slicing and dicing it into little bite-sized pieces suitable for undergraduate consumption is getting a little more routine. I definitely find I prefer teaching Grad students, but that's a cake assignment in comparison. You don't have to engage Grad students. They've already decided they want to stay in school and engage themselves.
And last semester, I gave a failing grade for the second time in my brief teaching career. And a third, a fourth, a fifth... you get the picture. I failed about a half-dozen or so, after a lot of agonizing over Winter Break. Does the world become a better place if students get an F? Do the students who already got a D suddenly become lessened in some way if some F students get a D instead? Maybe, maybe not. I didn't fail anyone with a 58.75 average who tried. I did fail people who didn't show up, do work, and pulled out a 30 or a 40 for a final grade.
It's been a lot of soul-searching to understand the point of teaching and grading at times. What's the goal of teaching at a community college? A teaching college? A research university?
Do you teach differently? Do you lower or raise your standards? Or hold everyone to the same standards? Where's the line between setting realistic expectations and compromising your standards? For me, it's making a realistic set of learning objectives and sticking to them, until I find something better than that.
But I'm way overbooked for time, since I'm doing all this and still (theoretically) a full time PhD student. Something has to give. Unfortunately, my own coursework and research has really suffered this year. And I don't get academic credit for all the teaching, though I'm learning more from that than from the courses I take as a student. After all, you can't cut up things into nice little bite-sized pieces if you don't even know how to use a knife properly-- how to take the subject matter, reduce it to bare essentials, and reconstruct the essentials in a coherent way. Kind of like understanding the nature of information, and how the human brain absorbs it and uses it. Like there should be a science of information. Or something like that...

I have to go to bed now. Those half dozen cups of coffee or so are starting to finally wear off.

Break is over. Back to work...

In two days, I start teaching again, at a new (to me) college. It'll be the third local college I've taught in, which is a little unnerving in a way. I really wish I'd gotten more work done over break.

What else is new?

These questions three...

While putting Scott to bed tonight, I had this strange thought: getting the PhD is starting to feel more and more like the Quest for the Holy Grail. There's the continual hardships, the pursuit of leads that will lead me closer to the quest. The perilous peril...

I should mention here that I'm thinking of the Monty Python version of the Holy Grail.

Ok, I didn't make it across the Bridge of Death the first time through, largely for not knowing the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, and was forced to Run Away and regroup. I've had my share of things flung at me from castles, though not by obnoxious Normans.

But I've got my five ("three, sir...") milestones before official Candidacy. Then starts the long journey through the scary forest (dissertation) and the epic battle at the end (dissertation defense) before reaching the Holy Grail of PhD-hood.

I'll just stop with the analogies now.

But sometimes I do miss my old life, of a normal career, weekends, vacations, and the amenities of life in New York. Assuming I do survive this, I ask: then what? Back to the churn of jobs and promotions which are just another set of ladders to climb?

Nobody ever "gets" the Holy Grail in the various stories, though there are plenty of PhD's running around. Maybe the PhD is just one of the intermediate obstacles before some bigger prize. :)

How quickly it goes by...

It's Friday, and Winter Break is over in less than two weeks. Is this the midpoint of break? Seems like it went by in a couple of days...

I've completed about 0 of the 5 critical tasks I needed to accomplish before the semester started. But at least a few things are partially done. (I never learn, apparently.)

Off to the library to borrow some kid DVD's for the weekend-- nothing like the electronic babysitter to get a couple of extra hours of work in! Ah, let's see how many I can wrap up before Monday. Now that my wife might have to make a last-minute trip to Japan during break, it'll be me and the kids-- and I need to find a babysitter, too.