Welcoming Julie (too) Smith to the Fam.

So my little bro. got married this weekend, and now he's on his way to Hawaii for his honeymoon. Must be nice to have money. His wife is a wonderful woman who is pretty right for him. Her name is Julie, and since I already have a sister-in-law Juli Smith, Julie is sometimes called "Julie too." So she's great and she's a pro with MS Excel. She had like the wedding guests and who was coming/wasn't coming all spread-sheeted out and pivot tabled in some crazy cool ways that I can't even dream about doing. That wedding ran like clockwork (of course, Al had a lot to do with that too). It's the only wedding I've been to that actually stuck to the time table laid out for it. And she wore red shoes under her dress in a Catholic Church (Gasp!). W2G J2.

Except she checked her registry like daily, and so she knew exactly what Jen and I got them even before opening it. Grrr. What's the fun in that? I'll have to stump her at Christmas.

Jen is on her way home! Yay!

Well, Jen is in her car and headed home. By my calculations, she's somewhere in eastern Montana or Wyoming right now. Last night, she must have stayed either in Butte or Billings, MT or somewhere in between. Here's where she is, roughly. (http://www.mapquest.com/maps?1c=Butte&1s=MT&2c=Rapid+City&2s=SD). At least I hope she is. There's no telling, since there's absolutely no cell service there. In fact, I have a feeling that she is right now driving through the Crow Nation reservation, which is probably the size of, say, Vermont and Connecticut combined. And there is nothing there. There is a road and then there's grasslands on either side of the road in every direction. I don't even remember any towns, or any buildings for that matter, when we drove out, for like 100 miles.

I just sent her a text message, and I hope she gets it by, like 4:00 central. Basically, it's a waiting game until she gets around Rapid City, South Dakota, which I'm hoping is sometime in the next few hours. Actually, though, I could be way off. Last time I talked to her, she was in Seattle, about to pick up her dad from the airport. That was two days ago. But with my early mornings, the time-zone difference, and the virtual lack of cell service through Eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana, it's pretty tough to find time to communicate.

Okay, so I'm a book snob

I've been a little mopey lately, since I learned that one of my favorite authors died.: David Foster Wallace. It's been in the news, and I'm sure you've probably heard of it, if you roll in English Department circles. (Do English Department circles roll?) It's been neat listening to stories about him from people who knew him - stories about tape on walls, where he taped the manuscript of Infinite Jest when he was working on it and stories of arguments over dangling modifiers in thesis titles.

Wallace had quite a bit of influence over my life, even though I only met him once and briefly. And yet, despite never really knowing him, I would say that he helped me determine, in a small way, the trajectory of my life. One of the biggest reasons I chose to attend Illinois State was because he was there. And so my conversion into Rhetoric and Composition and the wonderful life experiences and education that I received at ISU are connected in a small way to his life.

I got interested in Wallace's work when I read some of his short stories for a class in college. From there, I delved into Infinite Jest. The first time I read it, I needed a dictionary to make it through. But I remember sitting in a cubicle at my job as a student worker, stifling giggles and laughing myself to tears over that book, especially the eschaton debacle and the HALSADICK math lesson.

The last time I talked with someone about the book, I have to admit that I sounded a little pretentious and maybe talking about IJ at all is a little pretentious, but I said something like, "Yeah, the first two times I read it, Infite Jest was really funny, but the third time I started to see some new an interesting things." Even as it was coming out of my mouth, it sounded to me like I was bragging. Who the hell reads a book that long three times??? I have to admit that I bought it with pretension in mind. It was the "next best thing" at the time. But during that first time through, it quickly stopped being about fitting in with the ironic, hipster Engilsh types in my department. As I read it stopped being about reading something because I was supposed to read it and turned into reading it because I had fun reading it. In fact, the first time through, when I finished the last page, I seriously considered turning back to page one and starting all over again. And now I find that I pull it out in transitional times in my life and consider starting up again, maybe because I enjoy reading it and I enjoy how it makes me look pretentious, a physical sign that I fit in English Departments defined by back-breaking and will-cracking fiction. Who knows.

I guess you could say that I'm a little bummed that there won't be any new DFW novels out there, and while I can still go back to IJ (and probably will some day) there's no more anticipation of the next thing that he might produce, and that's where the mopes sink in.

State Street Jimmy John's: Smells will cost you a nickle

I think I found the most expensive Jimmy John's on the planet today. If not on the planet, then at least in the tri-state area. I just spent $10 for a frickin' vegetarian sub, a drink, and some chips! Yesterday, I had a plate full of sushi and California rolls for cheaper.

I suppose it's my own fault for eating at any restaurant located on State Street. But 10 bucks??? For Jimmy John's? It's good but come on.

Man, what a beautiful morning. I'm growing to appreciate being awake at 5 a.m., which I can't say I ever saw coming. But you can't beat a clear sunrise, where the whole eastern horizon slides through a spectrum of oranges, reds, and pinks. This morning, while I was driving into that sunrise, it was just cold enough for the air to draw droplets water out of the warmer lakes and streams and snare them, suspended in delicate sheets of mist.

There was a man I used to know, who every morning would awake and - rain or shine - go on a short walk, whistling "Oh What a Beautiful Morning." Today made me think of him.

I wish I had pictures, but imagine me driving along, one hand on the steering wheel, one holding my cell phone out the window. Not such a good idea, I suppose. And sometimes a scene like that gets lost in a picture, as if the world and its aura are too big for such a small frame.

Caught in the Rain

Having lived in Wenatchee for the last few years, I guess I kind of forgot what rain was like in the Midwest. I forgot that just because it's fairly clear in the morning doesn't mean that you shouldn't take an umbrella with you.

Welcome to Chicago, campus for the school of hard knocks, where lessons are learned the hard way or aren't learned at all.

Long story short, I got soaked in a matter of blocks and hailed a cab to get back to the train station. So starting tomorrow, I'm going to bring along some sort of rain-stopping device. Even when I was prepared last week, the umbrella didn't seem to do too well with the wind blowing off the lake, so I'm thinking some sort of coat or sweatshirt is probably the way to go.

Learning New Stuff

Well, I started teaching today. I'd love to say that the first day went off without a hitch; but if I did, it would be a big, fat lie. Late last week, I got a brief tutorial on how to use the AV carts for our dumb rooms on campus. And I thought I understood everything. I came back to my office and told my office mate that it was a piece of cake. But like our tech manager says, "it's not that difficult, but it's not that easy." And so I found a way to screw it up in both of my classes. The first class I had a simple problem with a simple solution. I had just forgotten that the tech manager had explained that I overlook a certain security warning. So I called him; he came in and clicked "okay" and left. So of course, I felt really stupid. Then for my next section, using the same cart, I had a different problem. This time, there was no wireless network available. Earlier, it had connected automatically. I really didn't feel like calling the poor guy again, only to have him click one button and walk out again--this time, probably rolling his eyes. So I used a backup plan, which was to pull my syllabus off of my thumbdrive and show it to the class that way. (Apparently, printing copies of your syllabus takes about a week, this time of year.) That meant that I didn't get a chance to help students look at our LMS, but I think most of the students are at least sophomores and should have experience using it.

So now that I've been humbled twice by the AV cart, I'll show it a little more respect in the future. And maybe if I'm nice to it, it will work for me.

Otherwise, classes went okay. Today, I had one class that seems pretty talkative and one class that isn't. We'll see what tomorrow brings.