Walden - Chapter 1 & 2

So here in the class I'm teaching about interpretative methods, I asked the students to read one book that interpreters would read (I try to make a point that people who do tours or lead walks, read, they read many things however there are a set of books that interpreters just read or have read to seem like they know stuff, even if they do not). One student wanted to read Walden so I agreed to also read Walden (a book I never really wanted to read) and then I opened up the club to other students who wanted to read the book. A total of six students indicated interest however I told them that we would only do "book club" outside of class.
So, on Friday we were supposed to meet over at the local coffeehouse and talk about the book. Here's where the fun begins.
First, of course no students were over at the coffeehouse. I left the coffeeplace and walked over to my office and lo and behold two students showed up about five minutes later. They mentioned something about a meeting and I asked about the other students and they just mumbled some stuff and shifted around. Then I noticed one of the students looked as high (puffy red eyes and a constant "yeah" when I asked him questions) but since I'm not the local constable, I accepted the situation and decided to actually do this book club. Next, the two of them told me that they had read the first chapter but did not understand it (I guess I believed them and will from now on). I pulled out my notes (yeah, I took notes) and dove in and we went over the parts of chapter one and two that I thought were cool and meaningful.
Here's the bigger point, I never wanted to read this book (not sure why) but now that I read it and was thinking about the book as I read it (I got an annotated copy which explained some of the writing and gave me some history of "T" as it related to the writing) I loved it. What a great read for someone like me.
Chapter One: loved the live simple mantra ("life is not a hardship but a pastime") and the sense of being closer to the Earth (even I believe that this is close to impossible for me "Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things"). I thought the chapter really spoke to me and had arguments that I can use in the future whenever I am doing tours/talks in a park.
Chapter Two: unbelievable. Had on paragraph that I will put on a notecard and use at the drop of hat ("I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what is had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion"). Was totally worth putting in the time to read and think about it.
Wow.

13 Days

A library movie (I'm always a tad less harsh on the movies I get from the library not entirely sure why but I guess since it is the place for the "have-nots" of society, where they can gather and stay warm or have something to do and by using "they" I mean "us", I guess it means I'm usually gonna cut the library some slack which means I'll cut everything that relates back to the library some slack, whatever).
Love goof-ball Costner when he is all about a role. Loved it. Is it a movie for everyone, no. The wife got up after five minutes and left the room. She came back twice and both times sort of gave me a look and then went back to the computer. Thus, if you are a big history fan or like the Kennedys or think the Cold War was interesting, then this is a movie for you, ha ha.
(I have been slowly working my way through the Costner film history for some reason. I watched JFK a few weeks ago, The Big Chill recently, and the Untouchables right after the election {the Chicago way, ha ha}, not sure where this is leading but will most likely watch one Costner movie a month for '09)
One small note on Costner's Boston/new England accent. It took a few scenes to fully appreciate it and then it seemed natural (like when you watch his Robin Hood movie and realize that he does not have an English accent after a couple of scenes, just saying).

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

The wife's turn on the Netflix.
Here's the deal, I laughed a whole lot, I mean serious chuckles here, having said that, not sure how I feel about the movie.
The wife thought there was a lot of nudity (and I even had to close my eyes at one point although the amount of male nudity was funny), the story was pretty weak (it's hard to by the love story with Kunis & Segel), some individual people were good (Brand) others were not (the Superbad guy), the pop-ins made for entertaining moments (since this was a Judd Apatow movie there were many people from other Apatow movies that make either brief pop-ins or have small roles that were supposed to push the film along).
I would watch it again.

Messenger Bag

So late last semester I went to a messenger bag to haul my stuff around (I had been using the backpack I got while finishing school at UWM however I was informed that it stunk in a really bad way, a way no amount of washings seemed to alleviate).
I'm not so sure how much I really like it. I sort of always wanted to try the side bag since it seems to be the way many people have gone. Just call me trend-follower.
Here's my main problem, the weight of all the junk on one shoulder cannot be good.
I know this is not right. I'm used to having the weight spread out over two shoulders and my upper back (I like having the weight right on top of me not hanging down on the end of my spine).
There should be more here but maybe I'm just not liking it so much.
Call it my ode to fashion and trying to keep some cred with the kids.
Or, I'm a dope.

Grizzly Man

We watched this movie because I was thinking of using it in one of the classes I'm teaching (a part of it anyhow). By the end of the movie I decided to move in another direction as it concerned my class.
Here's the gist of it, I sort thought our hero of the story was a goof. Hew was hard to root for (he seemed like a whiner & a weeny although the one person in the movie who thought he was a true goofball almost made root for him), he was breaking some major tenets of Leave No Trace (don't be messing with LNT), he was anti-park service (his swearing rant was classic) and he was a narcissist and he was all about himself (this point bothered me the most, he used the word "I" so many times I had to occasionally pause the movie to give myself a break, I couldn't imagine watching this movie straight through).
There was a lot to learn from the movie (land management issues, interpretation techniques and environmental behaviors/attitudes to name a few) but our hero was hard to watch after a while I found myself not feeling bad that he was taken down at in the end (he violated everything he knew about grizzlies, he came later stayed late, ignored signs and dragged another person to their death that in the end, he got what was coming to him, he ignored his knowledge and led someone else to the grave).
Usually at the end of a movie (even if it is bad) I like to mess around with the special features. After this movie I placed the disc back in the case and thanked whatever is above for just getting the disc from the library. I felt better knowing I did not contribute and money to this (although to be fair, the documentary was great, well made, edited well, good cast of characters to either make fun of or say "good point" and the director's narration was pleasant when compared to the main character, so I might be making a judgment about the person and not the movie, hummmm.)

North Dakota Wind

I got this picture for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This explains one of the ways North Dakota envisions a way to bring money into the state. Notice how I said money and not people.
This state suffers from a lack of people (one of the big concerns is the emptying of the small towns, ND will be one of only two states to experience a decrease in population in the 00's. Louisiana is the other) and the leaders are always looking for ways to either keep people (the biggest problem is that people encourage kids to go off to college and then they never come back) or attract new people (one of my favorite moments being here was when the number three person power-wise at this school heavily encouraged the misses and I to start having kids "you know, that is one of the reason we hire young people like you two, to re-populate the state", ha ha).
This wind power thing will bring some money, but it will not bring many (if any new people here). What this really shows is that if ND can keep its current population, it may ride the coming depression better then most states (I imagine Nevada, Montana or Indiana doing this same thing, good luck migratory birds).

What a Walk

We are in the middle of the best ice rain/sleet storm I have ever seen.
Maybe when it has done this in the past, I guess I never left the house.
But today the school did not close classes (my personal theory is that they are saving time for the big flood headed our way, but I was told this morning there is not enough moisture in the snow to flood like it did in '97) and we needed to get into our buildings (I still need to grade some quizzes and finish preparing for class today).


After leaving the building we made it four steps before realizing that our walk was slippery and sort of dangerous (we are old and tend to fall). We barely made it down the slight downhill entrance to the apartments (we had to step into the snow to make it down the pavement part was much too slick and I was sliding on my second step and sort of leaped into the snow to save myself regardless if I got some soakers).
We started walking to school when we saw the students line up to take the bus and since we are nothing of it opportunistic, we jumped into line and took the bus (which was fortunate since we were already soaked and wet and we would have fell at least twice during the walk, so hooray for the bus).
The bus ride was a real campus experience we had not had before (the best conversation I overheard was about a fraternity house we is now on probation due to poor GPAs, the quote was "I guess the good times are over", ha ha, loved it you could feel the pain of not having awesome drunken parties in their voices, classic stuff).
Looking out the window and knowing I need to be on the south side of town later is starting to feel me with dread.
Good times. Ha.

A Walk in the Woods

For the class I'm teaching this semester about interpretative methods I presented the class with a list of books interpreters read to increase their knowledge and to relate to some park visitors (books included: Dakota, Sand County Almanac, Silent Spring, Desert Solitaire, Reflections from the North Country , and The Outermost House to name a few).
Included on this list was Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Since no one choose it, I saw it in the library and reread it over the past week (one student choose Walden and I agreed to read it with him which led to five students forming a book club and now we meet once a week to discuss this book, yeesch, this was never a book I wanted to read but now I'm reading it and trying to help the one student who acts as the leader when we meet, yeah).
Love Bryson, the first book I read by him Lost Continent which I thought was great and spurred many drives by me which turned me off the interstate and onto rural roads (which always made drives take three to five hours longer).
However for me, WITW is this flash-back to my great outdoor adventure and I get to relive some of my adventures through the book (some of the stories are eerily similar or I now have forgotten my thru-hike completely and maybe I never really did it, ha).
Three weeks ago someone I hiked with for about a month sent me a DVD of their hike and in the middle of this wonderful walk down memory lane are real pictures of me (looking either like a dope or a clown) in the outdoors, hiking my hike.
Bryson's book (which when added to other long-distance hiking books I have read) gives a nice telling of the history of hiking the Appalachian Trail (I read Earl Shaffer's Walk with Spring when I hiked and I remember it as a tale of a loner who bush-whacked the woods and survived with an axe, canned foods and regular fires, none of which are used today).
I forgot what a good read WITW was and it reminds me that rereading some books may help my enjoyment of new books (I am currently trying to read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, whoa).
Cool.

Sweeney Todd

The misses is in charge of Netflix list and she must have made a mistake since Sweeney Todd was another of my choices.
My only knowledge of Sweeney Todd before watching it was the encouragement of my Brother and Sister in law (both of whom graduated from Chapel Hill with music education degrees and love musicals, UNC sports, our nephews & fine wines, to me a good list) and seeing one song in the movie Jersey Girl by Kevin Smith. I knew it had to do with killing people and then eating them, or something close to that.
Some of the songs made me chuckle, the lighting was interesting and made the movie hard to watch on our small TV and there were many 'gross-out' scenes which drove the little lady from the room (I ended up watching the second half by myself).
Liked it but probably never need to see it again.
Not sure how that sounds but ohh' well.

Ice Fishing Debry

Yesterday I went ice fishing in Park Rapids Minnesota.
(This picture might not be big but it is pictures from the official website).
Park Rapids is about two and a half hours away from Grand Forks and just south of Itasca State Park (headwaters of the Mississippi, which will be a future visit whenever we get the Jeep fixed again, the Jeep seems to dislike the cold, ha ha).


I went with my boss here at the University.
He picked me up at Nine and we were back by seven. We only spent three hours out on the ice and while I got cold at the end, it was fun.
I have never participated in any kind of fishing derby and this was pretty fun. The gave out raffle prizes throughout (we did not win anything) and we watched a bunch of people catch fish around us (my boss caught three little ones and I watched fish play with two of the minnows I put in the water). We fished in a spot of the lake where the bottom was about five to seven feet below us.
I would like to just fish next time (no time limit and less people) in that I found it easy to just zone out and just stare at the fishing pole. I found it peaceful to just let the pole lay there and watch the bobber bounce around occasionally when the minnow got nervous (which I always believed would lead to something getting caught).
Overall, good time.

Tropic Thunder

Thank you Netflix.
In the tradition of sharing, the misses and me get to choose every other netflix movie we get. Tropic Thunder was my choice.
It was okay. I laughed and overall it was pretty funny.
However, it was the commentary piece that I really enjoyed (one the big problems I have with netflix is that when we get the movies, we rarely get the bonus features or extra disc which has all the special features I really like - outtakes, deleted scenes, "making of" specials and anything else, it lessens what I come to like in DVDs).
The commentary was all three leads with Downey doing his characters as the movie went along (including 'him' at the very end, it was also funny to listen to Black eating a sandwich and everyone making comments about him being late). They praised everyone and made fun of each other which made rewatching the movie even better.
Ohh' well. I'll take what I can get.

Watchmen

So I finished the graphic novel (okay, the comic book) the Watchmen in preparation for the movie release later this spring (thank you competing movie companies for agreeing to something).
My take: not sure.
I have accidentally read some of Alan Moore's work (I really liked the League of Extraordinarily Gentlemen) and get the whole world is full of pain and hurt and sometimes we have to find love where it might exist.
I liked the world end of the world thing going on, but what I really loved was the dated references of the book (written in 1986 and to the students I teach here at UND, it would be ancient history). Some of the references were to many terms of Presidency for Nixon, the murders of Woodward and Bernstein, and little changes in time that make people who know a little of history laugh (like near the end when the mention a person who is running for president as 'RR" at first and then it is later revealed to be Robert Reford, ha ha).
I plowed through the book and enjoyed it but I viewed it like I was reading it so that I could understand the movie better (I have done this in the past, like Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars books). It helps me understand the movie but not always enjoy it more (I turn into one of those "you know, that book....." you know one of those dopes who thinks they are smarted then I really am, ha ha).
It will be interesting to see how they update the whole story while keeping the same characters and under lining plots.
Whatever.

Basketball

So tonight I dipped back into my past for just an hour.
I took a side job helping out the local park and rec dept (yes, I answer phones twice a week and call some people) but tonight they were short of basketball refs and yours truly stepped back in time to call a game.
I was told it was gonna be a blow-out but it was super close until the final minute when they one team hit two threes in a row to go up by six.
Then, in classic adult league "still think I'm tough" fashion, one of the losing guys started throwing some elbows with about 20 seconds left.
This dude's team missed their third straight three when he missed the rebound but teed up his elbow and almost took out this guy's face.
My partner (a guy named Chauncey) who has recent experience (it helps to not take 12 years between reffing games) gave the dude a 'T' and tossed him (it helped that both teams seemed upset at this and the fat dude just walked off after the incident).
I was okay. Missed some calls right in front of me (I got two "COME ONs" and one "YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME"), screwed up one call (I might have imagined it) but overall I was fair.
I'll probably be doing more games in the near future. Needless to say, I need to get in better shape if I continue to do this.
Ha Ha.

Weekend

Sick as ever.
Head sort of feels like it is gonna fall off.
I have been in full-press mode to fill out as many job applications over the past week (fell behind during the Christmas break and have been playing catch-up ever since).
I actually had a phone interview with a park in Missouri and took a half-day interview with the state of Minnesota and had positive feelings about both (although have learned to not get too excited, lousy experience).
Otherwise it warmed up here over the weekend (was 44 yesterday, whoa, our first day with over 32 weather since Halloween, ha ha to let that sink in is entertaining).
Go Steelers.