Into Each Blogger's Life...

...a little distraction must fall. I will specifically say two things.
1) I am less of a fruit ninja and more of a fruit smasher.
2) After shoving the English, French, and Industrial Revolutions into 20 slides with 4 short video clips and one really cool game called Who Wants to Be a Cotton Millionaire, I decided to push Russia's slides to another day.

Since I got distracted and cheated you out of a post, I am also shoving my blog posts this week to Monday, Wednesday and Friday before returning you next week to your regularly scheduled memoir.

Right. My magazine problem.

The editor-in-chief of one of my favorites, Sunset magazine, had this to say in the February issue:
"Long, meticulously planned vacations to far-off places are enormous but rare pleasures. It's the short trip, maybe just one night, that keeps us sane."

I totally agree with her, and I am happy to say that this past weekend, I was able to ride along on an overnight trip to see my favorite baseball team, the Cubs, lose to the San Francisco Giants in a spring training game.

Here it is:

You can see that the stadium is small and intimate, therefore completely making up for my annually neglecting to go see any Cubs games.

I was surrounded by happy Giants fans wearing sunglasses. I bought a totally-neutral t-shirt. I celebrated having survived the apocalypse by doing something ostensibly non-zombie-related, and hopefully, my sanity will reward me by sticking around to fight for another day.

On the way to Arizona, I flipped through my recently acquired copy of Cooks, Clowns, and Cowboys, but I made quick work of it. It's filled with full-page glossy photos of "101 skills and experiences to discover on your travels." I give it a thumb-to-the-side, which is my way of being noncommittal. There is no way we can ever do all 101 things. The skills are interesting and include survival classes in Utah, cheese-making workshops in various countries, dance lessons, etc. They are the kinds of adventures that are "enormous and rare." If I ever go on one of the suggested journeys, I will share the full report.

In the meantime, what short trips have you recently enjoyed that helped keep you sane?

Blogger's Block

Here at the end of my year, which has been an academic instead of a calendar year ever since I was five years old, I am in full ADD mode, and I do not know if this is due to a lack of blog fodder or an overload. I specifically try to post on Tuesdays, Thursdays and sometimes Saturdays, because my friend Krista and I started our themed blogs at about the same time. You will know this is not shocking because if you read both of our blogs, you know we have some of the same good ideas, and you know what they say about great minds.  Krista posts the Wannabe on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays each week. Therefore, in my quest to fulfill my New Year's Resolution of usefulness, I like to give you something to read every other day so that you can dedicate the off days to the wannabe. This week I am hideously late. Why?

1. I have a magazine problem. At a recent professional development, I picked up an old copy of Archaeology magazine and learned that Europeans were using guns as early as the 15th century. I decided to dedicate a post to the fact that guns in the 15th century were likely to blow up in the user's face, since they were such new technology, and they were more of a fashion statement than a useful weapon. I wonder if the same might not be said today? The author interviews a scholar who compares the 15th century gun (the article was about the Battle of Towton) to driving onto a contemporary battlefield in a Ferrari.

2. I was going to link my comments about this article that I read to my comments on another article from the current issue of Discover magazine about the history of human warfare. Problem: I didn't read the article due to becoming distracted by the fact that Barack Obama is on the cover of the current Rolling Stone, of which I read half (distracted again by the need to choose multichoice questions for my departmental common assesment) whilst dancing around singing the old Dr. Hook song. So, there went yesterday's post, and I still haven't read the article.

3. Not finishing the 2nd half of my blog homework means that I will fail in my ambition to move Global Thermonuclear Warfare to the top of the Doomsday Dashboard.

4. Next, the discovery of some Maya glyphics that were older than the oldest discovered Maya glyphics prompted two of my friends on facebook to post links to articles stating that the world will not end at the end of the year. Problem thus solved, I decided to try again to move Mario into another world.

There is a fine line between a reason and an excuse. In the words of a French proverb, "He who makes excuses accuses himself." Hopefully I will be back on track again next week to update you on Discover magazine and any new developments. In the meantime, look forward to a special Sunday post dedicated to the West Rim. Until then, my loyal readers...