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January 20, 2007
Random fragments...
I've been feeling rather unbloggy lately--Trying to Figure Out Things That Shouldn't Be Blogged About In Public + the busyness of the beginning of the semester. So, here are just a few bits and pieces to try to get back into a bloggy frame of mind...
*I dressed up nice to try to make a good impression as I taught my first class a couple weeks ago. When I drove to school, one of my shoes felt rather loose--I figured it had come untied (a perennial problem for me). When I got to school and went to tie it, I realized that I was wearing one of my shoes and one of Tim's shoes. So much for being all put together!
*Teaching has been really fun this semester. I'm teaching "class piano"--to very beginning students. There are twenty keyboards that I can hook into my keyboard at front. So far, though, I've been fairly low-tech in the way I've taught it. They're a fun group of students, many of them seniors looking for a low-key, fun class to finish out their college careers.
*I finished a round of grant/fellowship applications for next year, and one job application. Phew, I'm glad that's over for now--it's time to get back in dissertation mode.
*I want to cook more this winter, fun unusual foods when I can. Now that Tim has finished his degree (woohoo!), he's no longer gone for night classes (more woohoo's!). The other night I made a middle-eastern chicken stew with preserved lemons and olives. It tasted exotic and perfumey. Maybe I'll post the recipe...Next week I want to try my hand at a beef curry.
*We've gotten hooked on BBC renditions of Dickens novels. And the novels themselves. I'm reading Pickwick Papers for the first time, and I've fallen madly in love with Samuel Weller--he's a cockney Sam Gamgee--and with dear Mr. Pickwick.
"I never heerd, mind you, nor read of in story-books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights and gaiters - not even in spectacles, as I remember, though that may ha' been done for anythin' I know to the contrairy -- but mark my words… he's a reg'lar thorough-bred angel for all that; and let me see the man as wenturs to tell me he knows a better vun."--Samuel Weller, Pickwick Papers
Tim just finished up reading Martin Chuzzlewit, so we're watching that together.
*We've had a lot of fun with the high school group at church. We've been teaching them about some of the nineteenth-century attacks on Christianity--Nietszche, Marx, Darwin--and tomorrow we're going to wrap up by having them find pop culture references to the ideas we've studied. We found a great clip from Hitchcock's Rope dealing with supermen, a short bit from Firefly that contrasts rational modernism with postmodernish neo-orthodoxy, possibly a segment from The Simpsons, maybe a bit from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and of course, John Lennon's "Imagine." They're such a fun, bright group of guys (
*Christmas was really fun--we went down to Atlanta this year, and I stayed for almost two weeks. Here's a picture of one of our fun presents--once I get the gumption up, I'll make some nice chocolat chaud pour deux.
Jo | By Tim and Jo | 10:47 PM
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Comments
Oh, Samuel Veller and his old dad are great! And Snodgrass is my favorite name. Ever.
And oh. my. goodness. in response to your Sunday School class. I want to come! You are so wonderful at integrating "pop" culture with the more "serious" ideas.
Posted by: funke at January 20, 2007 11:30 PM