September 2009 Archives

Eighteen years ago today, I became a father. It's a startling thing to turn into a new noun, and there are times when I'm still astonished by the fact, but it's perhaps even more startling to realize that as of today, I'm the parent of a legal adult. I've always referred to him as Thing One here because he was a minor (and I'm sure I won't stop doing so just because he's 18), but now I don't feel as though I have to avoid calling him by his name any more.

Here's hoping Ian handles his adulthood as well as he handled Old Rag Mountain back in August.

I'm very proud of him.



8:18 PM

Living where I've lived, I've kind of gotten over the shock of the cardinal; they're ubiquitous, and despite their bright colors, pleasing song, and friendly demeanor, they don't usually command my attention. It's the state bird in both my home state and my adopted state, so there's just not much novelty there anymore.

The same is true of the flowering dogwood, which is the state flower of both NC and VA. Pretty little tree, interesting bark, attractive blooms and berries. Not a big deal.

But the great big dogwood in our backyard is making a plea for attention that I can't ignore.



My lord. Look at the berries on that thing.



And compare it to the wall of green behind our house. And this is only mid-September.

What will it look like when the fall colors peak?


5:44 AM

A wonderful phrase, that, whether it's used in a Snickers commercial by the end zone painter for the Kansas City Chefs or by Frank Zappa describing an attack on a fur trapper by a hostile eskimo.

Also a good one to use when you've been stretched thin over a period of weeks and are only now starting to regain some semblance of normality in your schedule.

Yes, it's been a solid two weeks and a few days since I last posted here. What, pray tell, have I been up to?

1) Preparing, organizing, writing, rehearsing, and presenting our school's Civility Orientation program for our faculty, our new students, and our returning students--three separate presentations, each with small-group discussion to follow the large-group session. Worth it to see our D1 football prospects standing in front of the student body and stating plainly that gay students deserve the same respect as any other student.

2) Shopping for college supplies, then driving down to Richmond to take Thing One to Virginia Commonwealth University, then driving down again to take him some of the stuff he didn't get the first time, and then driving down once again to live up to our promise to our friend Carrie to play pub trivia with her at Richmond's Penny Lane.  (We won; Carrie kicked butt in the Robert de Niro movies, her brother Daniel and I were on top of the Star Wars factoids, and I got us through the music segment by recognizing a Sun Ra song from a fragment of song and the clue that the singer was from Alabama.)

3) Celebrating Thing Two's 16th birthday with a viewing of Inglourious Basterds and a Thai dinner, then packing him up for his second year at Woodberry--new dorm, new classes, new roommate (he was in a single last year), you name it.

4) Picking a script for the fall play (Catch-22, which has 41 speaking parts), auditioning a dozen-plus actors for a week, and finally managing to arrange them so that they can play all 41 roles without having to perform any scenes with themselves.

5) Reading our school's community summer reading text, Tony Earley's The Blue Star, which was apparently a sequel to his Jim the Boy (which I haven't read).

6) Driving to Charlottesville for three separate doctor's appointments, plus one follow-up trip to the optometrist to get Thing Two's new glasses.

7) Attending three days of faculty meetings, department meetings, and duty master meetings.

8) Writing three separate syllabi.

9) Meeting with the school newspaper editors to plan the issue that's coming out on the Friday of Parents' Weekend.

10) Having my student advisees over to the house for snacks and opening-of-the-year conversation.

11) Conducting two more fantasy football drafts.

12) Getting a new work computer, which necessitated transferring all my data from the old one... MOST of which transferred successfully.

13) Discovering that the data that did NOT transfer successfully included most of my music, which has meant ripping my CDs onto my new computer one by one; I started at the back end with ZZ Top and am now halfway through Van Morrison.

14) Discovering that our theater's rigging system has not been inspected for safety in a very long time, necessitating a temporary exclusion from the stage until an inspection is made, necessitating a significant change in all my blocking plans.

15) Desperately trying (and failing) to finish one more draft of Student Exchange before school started; I'm targeting Thanksgiving break now.

16) Setting up a Facebook page and discovering dozens of old friends stretching from California to Winnipeg to Mississippi to Yorkshire to Denmark.

17) Pulling two days of dorm duty.

18) Cleaning the guest room for our friend Q.

19) Singing a couple of songs (Nick Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind" and Magnetic Fields' "All My Little Words") at the school's first open mic night.

20) Teaching the first week of classes.

Other than that, not much.

What's up with you?


7:04 PM