Yea i'm late

sorry i haven't posted all month. school is cranking and i find that any energy i have when i get home i want to siphon (why is this not spelled with a y? can anyone tell me this?) into other outlets. pathetic i know. Of course, at this point, who really reads these things anyway? :^)

Lot's of updates, so I am going to brush over them all, and then, hopefully, just start posting regularly. That's the plan anyway.

• I joined an ultimate team! I played at sectionals this past weekend in Austin with Red Angus, a club team in Houston. They are pretty good, but definitely not Machine caliber.
• Austin is awesome. It beats Houston in every single possible category. If anyone is thinking of a move to Texas, Austin is my recommendation. And, the fields at UT were pillow soft. I layed out a lot.
• I caught a lay out huck for a score at sectionals. Go me. I also THREW a scoober score! Hah! And of course, I had the requisite "I'm tall and going to D you" action. Those are the highlights.
• This summer I hung out with this girl who is awesome. There was mutual attraction. But she was in GR. I left. Now she's dating some one else. Figures. :^)
  
• I started a Bible Study. Actually, I was prompted to start a Bible study after attending a small group from my church and being thoroughly disappointed and thinking "I could do at least 8.354 times better than this myself! And I will!" And I did.
• Our fourth roommate finally moved in! We now have 4 guys living in the most fly house ever possessed by TFA members in the history of the world. Seriously. Our place should be on cribs. We have a pool. It's a three story townhouse. We have a gourmet kitchen with a two level dish washer, wine fridge, double ovens, industrial gas range, and custom cabinetry. Not to mention the chandelier that hangs over the third floor bath tub!
• School is going sooo much better this year. Really there is no comparison with last year. It's like going from T-ball against 2nd graders to playing 1AA (I'm definitely not in the pros yet). Still, extremely good.
• I still don't know if teaching is for me. A friend of mine told me that she did not really start loving teaching until her 3rd year. That baffles me. Who knows.
• I am currently eying Denver, CO and Portland, OR as my next likely stops. They both rock, and they both have a Big Picture School. Assuming I want to teach. They also have engineering of some sort, since they are big, with Lockheed being in Denver, and I have no idea what, in Portland.
• I am still 6'7"
• I bought a mountain bike. I love to ride it.
• We are throwing kickin parties at our place fairly frequently.
  

Yea, that's about it, I guess. Umm...more later.

Environmental Activism - Another Soapbox?

That questions is targeted at me. I wonder if I soapbox. Or rather if I soapbox too much. But then I realize that this is my blog and while readership (oooooh so snooty! I might have people who read this, but definitely no readership) is great, well, I'm talking here.

So anyway. I've loved the outdoors for a while now. My family went camping every summer since I can remember, and while I did not really take to the fishing aspects that well (they were kind of boring, and usually really hot), I loved the tent part and the playing part and the trees part and definitely the hammock part. My passion for the outdoors continued in Boy Scouts, where I eventually found myself doing "High Adventures" to places like the Adirondacks and Boundary Waters, and loving every minute of it. I now would describe myself as a backpacker, who aspires to be a rock climber, mountaineer, mountain biker, canoer and maybe kayaker (that's lowest on the list of priorities).

Thus, in the current debate about climate change, I have a vested interest: I want to continue to play outdoors. I can't say however, that I have done anything in particular to *be* an environmentally aware person. I mean this past year I started walking to the grocery occasionally, and using my backpack instead of grocery bags occasionally, and I rode my bike to church once, but that was because I wanted to ride a bike, so that doesn't really count. I have also carpooled somewhat frequently, but again that doesn't count because I did it to save on toll money. But I've wanted to recycle. And I've felt guilty for not.

So it was interesting when, as I sat in my last day of Curriculum Theory & Development class on Friday, one of the groups presented on recycling and called it "Solely a moral decision." I expected them to say it was a stewardship issue, or an ethical issue (as in 'you should recycle unless you have shoddy ethics'), but it wasn't. It was a personal moral issue. So they said. And their reasoning went something like this. First, there are hidden costs in recycling. More trucks come to pick it up. More roads break down because of the heavy trucks. More tires are wasted. More gas is consumed. Then the recycling begins. Well it might begin if someone wants the materials, otherwise it just gets shipped to the landfill anyway. But if someone wants it then the recycling begins. Well sort of. Because only parts of the material can be recycled. It is not a 100% yield enterprise. You don't get all of the material back as useful new stuff. There is waste. And to top it off, the process is very energy expensive. This means it burns more coal or whatever to power the transformation that doesn't even recycle *all* of the junk.

So, one *could* argue, that in the current environmental and ecological landscape, the ethical thing to do is trash everything. Well, everything that can't be composted. Everyone should have a compost pile. That *was* agreed upon.

The recycling bit was news to me. I hadn't really thought about it before. Although, it is somewhat incomplete, because processes only improve if there is an incentive to improve them. It is almost impossible for the process to improve if no one is recycling at all. So having recycling around might spur more efficient recycling centers. Hopefully. So that is a reason to recycle.

But that's not really the point. The point then, is that the other 2 "R"s of the 3Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, are that much more important, and if you notice, they come first. So, as an individual, I can choose to purchase a huge tub of Gatorade powder instead of the 36 individually packaged Gatorade bottles because that reduces my waste. And then I can reuse the huge tub for...uh...something. Okay, I would still throw it away, but there would be less trash. The point is, people are starting to be environmentally conscious about food production (organic and whatnot) but the packaging is just overlooked.

Then, adding to all that, church today had the author of the book "Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action". The author, J. M. Sleeth, talks about how conservation is a Biblical imperative and that every person can do their part to help preserve the world around us. Then there is the website for his organization, called "Serve God, Save the Planet." It has lots of information, from religious textual examinations to church statements to next steps. Here is a list of questions and hints that he provides concerning a lot of the things that an individual could do to help cut down on their own environmental impact.

Summatime

Not much is going on in Michigan these days.

But really, that's just the affects of having the semblance of a routine and no extraordinary things breaking it. I have actually been busy, living this summer for play.

I am no playing basketball and ultimate regularly (2 to 3 times a week). Last night was my first night back at ultimate since final semester at Purdue. I was nervous (I always get nervous before unknown competitions), but ended playing pretty well. Since it was pick up and not a club team, summer league or college team, the offense was pretty selfish, and defense was one dimensional, but it was still fun. I played third handler which is definitely not a typical position for me. I handled at sectionals during my last year at Purdue, but that was only because no one else was there who could do it. And with our offensive stack moving all over the place, I took it upon myself to be the anchor for lining up and setting up our O. As a result, I did not have any huge catches for scores, but I did throw some hucks. Granted they were in general pretty floaty, but for the first time back, very solid.

I also got a climbing membership for the month that I am back. Apparently, Houston has pampered me in this regard, because the Texas Rock Gym is *significantly* better than Higher Ground. Really, higher ground has a much cooler location, but the location's limitations dictate a three room layout, each room being the size of my living room. Its tiny. The size makes me very self-conscious if I am there late in the evening, when it is busy. Because of the nature of the climbing sport, there usually are large numbers of really experienced climbers and not that many newbies. So while there is not any judging going on (I have never heard "man you suck!" or anything akin), I am watching what other people are doing, and they are watching me and everyone (I assume) is mentally grading themselves in respect to everyone else. Maybe this doesn't happen, but I imagine it happens.

Speaking of imagining things into reality, I started reading this book called "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls". My aunt lent me the book last summer after she found out I would be teaching middle school. Accompanying the book was some disclaimer about how crazy adolescent girls are. Well, I decided to start reading the book, finally. One of the things that really struck me, and explains a lot of the behavior I noticed over the past year, is that adolescents (specifically girls, but probably boys as well) are developmentally just beginning to be able to think critically/abstractly. As a result, they generate countless faulty syllogisms that originate from "I feel so therefore its true" or from "Here's one example so it must be true".

Let me give you an example. Students in my class say to me things like "You never call on me for ______". This is a case of the first faulty syllogism. The student has one example, or maybe even a couple examples of me calling on other students instead of him/her. They *feel* like I am purposely ignoring them. Since the feel it, it must be true. I *am* ignoring them. This state of disregard on my part then necessarily stretches infinitely backward and forward in time. I have *never* called on them and I *never* will. Which really, if you think about that feeling, is pretty serious, albeit completely based on falsehood.

Students in my class also say things like "Other math classes don't get homework every day! Why do we?" This is the second faulty syllogism. The student usually has one friend who doesn't have homework. They then extrapolate that to everyone. For a more concrete example of this mistake think: "That famous actor bought his 16 year old daughter a brand new Mercedes CLK for her birthday. Therefore ALL parents buy brand new Mercedes for their children's' 16th birthday. Therefore I should get a brand new Mercedes for my 16th birthday."

Ahhh, youth.

Vacation

I am officially on vacation.

There are many projects going on at my house, but I feel I have no duty or obligation to involve myself with these mere trivialities.

For I am the seasoned (tasty!), accomplished (more on the accomplishments later) warrior back from battle in far-away-lands. And by battle I mean, sword fighting. With swords.

So while my brothers toil on re-tiling our laundry room, I am sitting back and healing from the mental and physical afflictions that now accost me.

For example, I am still recovering from the two severe scrapes I received by diving for a volleyball a couple of weekends ago.

But then on a more serious note, I am forgetting and remembering this year, so that hopefully I can approach this coming one with a little more wisdom, a little less tentativeness and a lot more sandwiches.

Play

On Friday I was really tired. I had stayed up until 2:30 am finishing this book I was reading. It was a good book.

Even though I was tired, I still made plans to have fun on Friday. I heard that my church was having a game night from 7:00 until 10:00, and earlier in the week games sounded theoretically like a good time, so some TFA folks agreed to go.

After school on Friday was a different matter. I had no energy to move, so even though I had some work to do in terms of putting my classroom back together (it's like an explosion went off in there at the end of every day), I just couldn't do it. Hoping that motivation might come, I sat at school for half an hour while I read espn.com. I almost fell asleep.

I made up my mind to leave school at 4:35. I debated between going home and sleeping forever, and following through on my plans. I went rock climbing as a compromise.

I really like rock climbing, but I am not very good at it. My strength to weight ratio is not high enough to make me capable of all the really cool stuff that rock climbers do, like dyno-ing. A dyno is what Tom Cruise does at the beginning of Mission Impossible II, in that part where he jumps from one ledge to another. I'm just not strong enough to do it. Or I weigh to much to do it. Either way.

Another observation, is that rock climbing seems to be gaining acceptance as a trendy spot for youth birthday parties. Maybe kids don't go to arcades anymore since everyone under the sun has some video game platform, but it seems like every time I am over at Texas Rock Gym, there is a herd of 7 year old children running around and screaming their heads off. Part of me laughs and enjoys watching the abandon with which these dervishes approach their play (getting to the point here soon) but another part of me recoils from the screaming, twisting, running, bouncing, here-I-am-but-now-I-want-to-do-that-give-me-a-cookie-now-I'm-done-bathroom-or-else energy. It ruins my controlled, purposeful brainwaves.

Mr. Beuthin, his roommate and I ended up riding bikes over to church. Do you ride bikes? You should. It's grand. We stopped at Pei Wei for dinner, and marvelled at what we currently believe to be free beverages and unlimited free fortune cookies. How do they make money? Seriously. I could probably live (for about 3 minutes) on beverages and fortune cookies. At least I would live a very knowledgeable life right?

Game night was held in the children's area of my church. When we got there I immediately started playing with the blocks. They had all sizes, but there were some 2 by 4 size blocks that I was using to make a giant something awesome. Someone commented that it looked like Jenga, and bam, giant super Jenga was born. We played giant super Jenga for about 20 minutes. It is very satisfying when a 4 foot high tower of 2 by 4s falls crashing to earth. Slightly dangerous though. Luckily, there were no casualties.

After game night, we rode home. We attempted to hold on to the back of this SUV, but that didn't work, so we raced him. He went home and cried to his momma after we smoked him. We rode by this big fountain and decided to climb some trees. At the top of the trees we had a tree shaking contest, an animal noise contest, and a peeing contest. I eventually decided that I was Rafeekee from the Lion King, and started chanting some mumbo jumbo, that unknown to me at the time, was actually the key to turning on the fountain. Marvelling at my power, I attempted to chant the fountain into spitting fire, but sadly, this never panned out.

We continued to ride our bikes around, travelling to this little park. On the way, I rode down a big hill and hit a giant mud puddle, effectively transitioning from clean-but-sweaty-Mr.-Blair to did-you-get-in-a-fight-with-a-wild-boar-Mr.-Blair. At the park we rode around on the basketball court running over cockroaches. They crunch and squish, squish and crunch in a very satisfying way. At the play ground we were secret agents infiltrating a compound, and we were careful not to set off the motion and pressure sensitive floors. Or to fall out the window and land in the lava. Both would have been a sad way to go. Home.

We wrapped up the night by attempting various gymnastic exercises on the crossbeam of the swing set, and by throwing a football in the parking lot.

Apparently, little kids are contagious.

Wrap

I'm not sick anymore.

Actually I haven't been for a while, but I have been really busy.

I had the flu for 5 days basically. I got sick on Tuesday night, Jan 30th, went home early on the 31st, and then missed the 1st and 2nd of February.

I went to school everyday the following week, and my kids were really cute and missed me and I felt good.

This past weekend I went recruiting TFA style to the campus of the Old Gold and Black. I'll talk about that in a forth coming post.

Also, I almost got fired (sort of), got really angry about it, had a meeting about it on the day I was sick, got angry again, forgot about while wanting to die (while I was sick), and then came back and found out it wasn't that big of a deal. More on that later.

I played in my first YMCA basketball game tonight. I think I was definitely eligible for BWS status. That's Big White Stiff for those of you scoring at home. Props to the sports guy.

Conversation of the day:
Oscar - "Fresh cut, Fresh cut! Hey Ivan, Fresh cut! Come here so I can slap you"
Mr. Blair - Hey Oscar, we are going to play "Being a jerk" and everytime you are a jerk to someone I'm going to call out "Being a jerk" and then I get to hit you in the head. You're being a jerk right now.
Oscar - Bending down his head. Come on Mr. Blair, give me a good one.
Mr. Blair - Oscar, I don't want to hit you. Go sit down and quite being mean to Ivan.
JurRonn - laughing hysterically Mr. Blair, that's the funniest thing I have ever heard!

The lesson, as always, kids like hitting things.

SB II - How Not to Freeze to Death in the Woods

So, now that a week and some has passed since spring break, here comes the second installment.

When we left our intrepid explorers, they were not even explorers yet. They had just left Atlanta at around 4:30 pm after winning the sucky bracket (We're the best suckers around) and eating some Wendy's.

We drove to North Carolina, which involved traveling on the worst roads I have driven on, as far as road markings go. We would hit intersections and the highway we were on would turn both left and right, with no other markings. So of course we guessed.

We eventually made it to Fontana Village, which was going to be our entry point into the Great Smokies. I had read that there was a shelter at Fontana Dam, but aside from seeing it on one map, I had no other confirmation it existed, much less that we could stay there. This lack of planning worked out perfectly however, as the shelter did actually exist, and the night was so pleasant that we just slept under the stars anyway.

Monday morning we awoke to lots of birds chirping, the sun rising over the mountains of Appalachia, and an itch to get on the trail. The plan was to hike 13 miles the first day, and stay at the Russell Field Shelter on Monday night. We got on our way at about 9 am, hiked passed our car, hiked to the visitor's center, registered, and crossed Fontana Dam. At about 9:30 we officially entered Great Smoky National Park.

On this part of the Appalachian Trail, the Fontana Dam is located at about 1500 feet above sea level. The first two hours after the Dam consisted of an immediate gain of 2000 feet. An hour into the trip I explained what 'Hot spots' were (the beginning of blisters) and the importance of foot health, which prompted Adam to have some. Well, maybe he had them already and didn't know he should care. Regardless, we stopped and I told Adam how to use Mole skin, except I gave him the wrong directions and ended up making his soon to be blisters worse. (I make an awesome leader.)

We hiked and rested and hiked and rested and hiked some more. Adam, Andrew and Nick were all really tired from the Ultimate tournament, and were pretty down about the trip, until after lunch. Then things got a little flatter, and I promised them a moving walkway like they have in airports for the second day.

We reached Mollie's Ridge shelter at about 5:00pm and it was beginning to get cold and foggy. We had traveled roughly 12 miles at that point, but still had 3 to go to get to Russell Field, so I called a halt and we decided to stay at Mollie's. That night intense rain battered the shelter and woke us up 3 or 4 times. Temperatures dropped from about 45° to some where in the 20s, (and then add in wind chill!). All of the rain ended up freezing on to everything, coating our bear bag (you have to hang all your food from trees so that bears don't come and eat you), the trees, bushes, everything with ice. Due to the cold and fog we discovered in the morning, the early start we had planned did not pan out.

Tuesday we did not get started until 10:30. We cooked breakfast at a Snail's pace, and Adam spent at least 10 hours bandaging his heels (were the blisters were). When we finally got moving, we knocked out 5 miles of trail in just over 2 hours, which was by far the fastest pace we had kept yet. We ate lunch and started on thestretchh from Spence Field shelter to Derrick Knob. This stretch of trail was 6.2 miles of steep ascents and descents, and climbed over Rocky Top and Thunderhead Mountains, both of which were in the 5500 ft range. They offered amazing views, and lots of soreness.

We got to Derrick Knob at 6pm. The sun was starting to set, and with its fall the temperature was dropping quickly. We had nearly 6 more miles to get to our scheduled shelter location at Siler's Bald, but that would put us in at 9:30 or 10pm. To add to our problems, the Derrick Know shelter was full, and there were about a dozen people sitting around outside trying to decide whether to stay or continue. We all decided to stay. While Adam and Nick went to get water, Andrew and I rigged up a wind-block in the lee of the Shelter using a tarp, seven tent stakes, a tree and some rope. We stacked all of our backpacks in one of the openings that the tree made in our little haven, rolled out our pads and sleeping bags, and got in bed by 7:30.

It was really cold. By 3:30am I was wearing all of the clothes I brought. The wind caused the tarp to flap, making noise and also hitting us in the head repeatedly. Nick was wearing socks on his hands to help stay warm. Some time in the night his nose was running so he wiped it with his socks. He eventually discovered that his nose wasn't running, but instead was bleeding! He proceeded to die. Okay that wasn't serious. In the morning we all sat up and said "That was horrible. I don't think I slept at all, but there is something about being in bed for 13.5 hours that makes me not tired anymore. And Nick got a bloody nose because it was so cold! This is ridiculous! Let's turn around and go back."

So that's what we did. We were roughly 23 miles into the park when we turned around and headed back. Wednesday night we stayed at the Russell Field shelter we were supposed to stay at the first night. Thursday we hiked the entire 13 mile stretch to the Fontana Dam in 6.5 hours, setting our new personal land speed record. We reached the visitor's center at 2:30, and then ran around in our boxers for an hour while we took showers. We left Fontana Village at about 3:30 and headed to Louisville.

Totals:
4 days
4 nights
46 miles
1 ice storm
1 sub freezing night under a tarp
2 blisters (both Adam's)
2 optimal ways to kill a bear
1 optimal way to kill a cougar

Spring Break - Ultimate

So six weeks until this experiment called college comes to an end. What sort of end it will be, I do not yet know, but let us hope that it will be a good one. For now, let me wow what ever audience I may have with tales of intrigue, danger, adventure and romance, otherwise known as Spring Break! Okay, there was not any romance. But the rest happened!

Adam, Nick and I left on Friday for Louisville. New Albany would be more accurate, but who knows where New Albany is? I sure didn't. Anyway, the plan was to drive to New Albany, meet up with Andrew, Beth and Rachel, trade my car for Nick's van and then head to Atlanta. We got out of Lafayette at about 2 pm. Traffic was pretty good all the way down, and we cruised at a pretty steady 73ish until we got to Nick's exit. As I applied the brakes on the exit ramp, my right front tire started making the "Thump thump thump thump thump" sound of a flat. I groaned. The car really did not want to brake, nor turn, but we coaxed it the 2 miles to Nick's house.

When we got out, a quick inspection revealed that the tire was not flat. I called my dad (always a good course of action with cars). This led to use of the jack, rotating the tire, and then eventually taking it off. As it turned out, one of the bolts that secures the brake shoe to the car had fallen out. Awesome. Well, Andrew's dad volunteered to see if he could find a new bolt, so I thanked him profusely, we ate some dinner, traded cars, and took off for Atlanta (aren't parents great?).

So the girls were planning on coming down to Atlanta to watch the Ultimate tourny (Terminus) that Adam, Andrew, Nick and I were playing in. The were then going to visit people in Atlanta and generally enjoy the warm weather. Adam rode with them in their car, while Nick Andrew and I were in the van. At about 10:30, we got a call from Adam saying that their car had overheated. We stopped, got coolant, filled the reservoir back up, tested the car, had it fail, and then pushed it 3/4 of a mile down the highway to the next exit. Adam and the girls decided to stay at the Day's Inn and wait for morning when a guy named Charles might be able to help them. Andrew Nick and I left for Atlanta. The time was 11:30 pm.

We got to the north side of Atlanta at about 4:30. We decided to drive straight to the fields because game time was so close. Nick combined our directions to the hotel with the directions from the hotel to the fields to make some directions directly to the fields. We got there and peed on the fence. We got back in the car and left in search of food. The time was 5:30 am.

We ended up sleeping for an hour and a half in the van before the rest of the team showed up and we commenced with the festivities. While I didn't play much, the weather was great, and there was some good ultimate on Saturday and Sunday. I slept for 11.5 hours on Saturday night (which set the tone for the rest of the week).

Next installment: How not to freeze to death in the woods.

Let's jump

Yesterday I had double confirmation that the leg workouts Mr. Hunt and I have been doing are paying off.

Firstly, while playing kickball and wiffleball with the LUM kids yesterday, I took it upon myself to dunk the kickball a few times. And this wasn't "I'll try and dunk and not really dunk" or "I'll try and get rejected by the rim", this was "Hey! I just dunked!" I know that this should not be a new and fun experience to someone of my physical stature, but well, like I always tell myself, "I'm white." Not much of an excuse, I know, but there ya go.

Second, (and is firstly even a word? What is the point of the -ly? What adjective or verb is that adverb modifying? This is why I need my own personal intern.) the ultimate team had its first indoor practice last night at an indoor soccer field. I thought the fields worked out okay, and playing with traction was a pleasant change from the gym, but the point is that I was definitely jumping well. Of course I still have a hesitancy to jump when there are other people around, and, I cannot really estimate how high I should jump, and as a result, I still mistime my jumps quite severely. So really, I am not sure how far jumping by myself at the wrong time will get me, but at least I am jumping higher when I do it.