blogging when I can

Here I am at the kid's guitar lessons, stealing wireless from the next door business. Crab Girl is in with Super-Cool-Guitar-Teacher working on scales. Crab Boy is playing on my Blackberry next to me, but just asked if he can play on my computer. It is about the first free moment that I have had in a long, long time.

My class is 1/2 over! I am hopeful that it will ease up a bit in the next month. I gave the students a project to do - they have to make a 7 page powerpoint presentation on a space topic - almost any topic that they want at all, as long as it is related to space or science. Then - for extra credit - they can present it to the class! If 1/2 the class wants to present, then that would be about 45 5-10 minute presentations (or 225-550 minutes of class time). That is a lot of time, and will take 6-10 classes! Holy crap! I only have about 20 classes left! That means that I only need to come up with 10-14 more lectures! Yikes - I still have a LOT of stuff that I have to present!

Last night I bought tickets to go see Coldplay and Metallica. I am going to do more stuff that I want to do and stop feeling guilty about simple things like this. I bought two tickets to each, but don't have anyone to go with. Maybe my wife will go with me to the Coldplay concert. Who knows? I have to find someone to go to the Metallica concert with. Anyone want to come?

I played soccer on Thursday and pulled a muscle in my leg. I rode my mountain bike to work a couple of times this last week, and really worked out my quads (I think that those are the muscles....???) So, going into soccer, they were already sore. Then, at some point during the game, my right leg just started shouting in pain. Not screaming, just moaning sort of loudly. Now, two days later, my muscles still hurt a lot. Fun. I wanted to ride my bike in to work on Friday, but was afraid that it would hurt too much. I am getting old.

Crab Mamma is having a party tonight. One of her co-workers is leaving, so she decided to throw a party for him. It is strange, since she is quite anti-social and does not like being in crowds of people. Maybe, since it is pretty much her friends, it is ok. Hmmm....

I finished a proposal to NASA this last week. I interviewed a few people for a post doc positions. None of them are perfect, so I am not sure what to do. I think that I will actually hire two Post Docs, and hope that I get some more money in the next two years. I am pretty confident, but who knows. My boss is trying to pressure me to hire someone who, most likely, will not fit in. That is because she is the wife of someone he really wants to hire. It makes sense from his point of view. The problem is that she doesn't do any modeling. I am a modeler. I model. She doesn't. I have hired people who don't model into my group before. It has not worked. They don't want to model, which ends up being a small problem. Which grows into a big problem. So, then what do I do? How many times can you tell your boss to bugger-off? N or N+1? I am up to N+1000. I am constantly fighting back. So, more stress. Instead of being a complicated decision, it end up being a quagmire.

I would imagine that you have noticed that pretty much all humor has gone out of my blog. That is how I feel right now. Life pretty much s*cks *ss.

But - I was told that I get to teach this class next semester, which means that all of the prep work that I am doing right now gets to be reused again! My life will be MUCH easier next semester. Then, a year from now, I teach the same class again, which means that it will be great! So, while life is sh*t right now, it will be better shortly.

Oh - on a better note, we are all going to San Fransisco for AGU this year. So, around the middle of December, we are taking an 8-day trip to California. That should be a good time. The lead up to AGU is going to be painful. I have to do a million things. I don't really have time to do them, but I have to. Well, I am sure that it will work out, and we will have a great time. Then, once we are back home after AGU, I am spending two weeks doing nothing. Nothing at all. Glorious nothing.

Ok, that is enough of a pity party. Sorry.