So it was just about a year ago that I first launched my first forays and attempts into organizing my finances and taking care of all of those things, and now I find that it's necessary to tighten the belt once more--when I'm in a settled routine like the schoolyear, spending is constrained by habit--now that it's summer, it feels like I'm hemmorhaging, but I shouldn't worry so much about retirement, which now seems further off than ever--it's okay to enjoy myself a little more, I think.

So it's tiring, but at least the weather has broken, which has been a great and deep relief, which means that today practice should be okay too, and that I might actually get back into the groove, though my right elbow has been hurting me ever since I ill-advisedly decided that maybe just maybe it was time to get back to lifting, but of course now I pay for it in aches at all sorts of odd angles, which do not seem to be going away, and a chest-burniness, though I should just really suck it up, I guess--more sonkyo suburi is what I need--

I'm glad to say that everything at the internship is pretty much wrapping up--I've been privy to all sorts of things that have been said in my presence as I do my best to remain inconspicuous, while the data study has only gotten more and more complicated but rewarding, though it's hard to know how to make any of this intelligible to lay people, how it translates into policy, and how sticky it is, this fact that it is the composition and structure of the school which still seems to matter so much, but of course a lot of that can just be the vestigial structures left behind by the old districts. It's hard to say--it's all just two-letter abbreviations and OSIS codes to me right now--to think that schools have names beyond numbers!

It's this sort of unintelligible crap which makes us think that there is a sizable population of blacks born in Japan, but of course that's just Jamaica, which was miscoded or misentered or mistranslated, but not miscegenated. And actually being born in Brooklyn has an effect size of -0.14: who knew?

So one quirk of working at the office is that I've been given a terminal in an all-purpose room on the first floor, which is mostly empty, and full of reams and reams of copy/printer paper, and the occasional semi-private interview, yesterday morning's sideshow being an administration of an IQ test, with all of the classic questions like, "Why do people brush their teeth?" "What should you do if you find a wallet?" "Why should you eat fruits and vegetables?" as well as run-of-the-mill, pick this out, please, but as fast as you can, sort of things.

All of this is amusing enough, except of course it can't quite capture the worldweary, yawning, authoritative, "I'm going to tell your parents" attitude. All of this was of course very student-centered, as what can be more student-centered than aptitude testing for exactly what ways you are skilled at killing people, or being killed--and the little kid, was the first blond-haired NYC public school kid I've ever seen in real life, who was a little wisp who kept trying to peek over the testing manual to see what the answers were, as well as disappearing at one point underneath the desk, which I don't think was a response to a question.

So the problem is that my Chinese is so bad that I was unable to order anything from the Taiwanese food court, much to Wifey's chagrin, though he had plenty of gangs of young Taiwanese men to chew on in the interim, and we could both afford to cut back, lest it's on stinky tofu, tassely chicken, and other mysterious dishes which sure as hell don't quite seem like I grew up on them at all.

So today's surprise guests at practice were two hachidan sensei, who schooled us all something fierce and all in translated Japanese, no less. But it's amazing to see sensei actually older than Shrimp Sensei but even more composed and just as thoroughly dignified, with more fumikomi than any more mortal needs. It's also amusing to watch the Koreans who magically showed up to practice and their very different wham-bam-wham style, though in this case it was even funnier because they were all thoroughly unaccustomed to the back-forward-strike drills, and so they were perpetually out of synch, much to Sensei's chagrin. Still, maybe it's Japanese thing, but poor little Bugley-chan got shoved when he didn't follow through nearly fast enough.

So my boss neglected to show up for work today, which meant that I just went and took a half-day and was able to finish reading Harry Potter, which seems a little lighterweight than usual, but then again I've forgotten so many of the more minor details and scenes which get so wrapped up in itself. I was able to finally hit the office and make some headway on the various grants I've almost finishied, for the most part--it's hard collaborating with people, and part of this is my misogyny, I'm sure, but some people just don't work very hard or well with others--as for me, when it's a solo project, I'll dawdle as I please, dallying until that last push. Not so with others--I need to be satisfied with the overall pace. And it also meant that I was able to go home early enough to pick up my dusty dusty weights again--it feels good,a different rush from kendo altogether, as well as a little present for Wifey. Time to raid the bookshelf again.

So the thing is that all this Flushing-excused skipping of practice has been catching up with me, I've been hopping like a bunny with a stump for a leg as opposed to a proper kendoka, and the reek from an hour under the men is too much even for myself--you know you stink when you can smell yourself whenever you enter an enclosed space. But what with the summer and Sensei away at kendo camp, at least it wasn't too too crowded. I think I still try to swing too much, rather than strike with my whole body all at once. I just don't have the same passionate, go-four-times-a-week, dig-until-the-sun-goes-down work-ethic that I used, the same sort of thing that's happened at my internship, where I used to work nonstop, not even peeing or eating, and now I'm still productive but not at such a breakneck pace. It's the sort of thing where I think I pull back once I realize that past a certain point the disproportionate competence of the novice ceases to be impressive, that after the learning curve is mounted it's ok to plateau.

At least I've found a newfound desire to push this algebra project of mine. Sometimes it feels like it's not that different from what's been done--other times it feels like I'm fighting a battle alone. Otherwise reasonable people just freeze up when you tell them that everything that they've ever done and how they've done it is completely wrong mathematically, pedagogically, politically.

So I have a new addiction, which is not even the Daeng Na Bangus at Krystal's, although that's pretty great too, but rather I've finally discovered Geometer's Sketchpad, which is great, mind-blowing dynamic fun, the sort of thing which I wish I had had as a kid. It might well really change everything that I do next year.

Or I'll get lazy and never implement it.

So it's kind of fun, riding the 7 train out in the smelly stinky stank rank Flushing with the crush of people, many of whom tend to be improbably ugly, somehow, and pimplier than not, the sort of train where you never need to have anything to do with Manhattan in the least, a Queens-bound life, except Tuesdays and Thursdays, perhaps. It's fun to pick up Wifey at work and pretend to have important business with the battered women and then take Wifey back to smelly Flushing to eat and ride the train home early enough for an evening of tv and squealing. The summer is great as long as you stay indoors.

So it's not that I don't want to blog or have run short of comments or stories or the usual run of blogguery, but I've just fallen out of the habit, somehow, and it's strange to finally be working at a job where I don't actually have any opportunity to check my email or monitor other things on the internet, as I'm now stuck on the ground floor in a big old empty room and an old school IBM back before IBM became all Chinese like.

I feel myself getting fatter these days--I don't know if that's an illusion or maybe the hyperhydration I put myself through just to make it through these torrid muggy days, though Sensei has softened substantially in terms of airconditioning and dehumidifying the dojo to the point where it's not really a pain and torment.

I'm getting excited about all of the sideline projects I'll finally be able to take up once I move on from this internship stuff. Which isn't to say that the internship isn't fun, but I have a great deal of independence and there's been a lot of damage control of late.

So it has been a good week at the workshop, and so far a great summer in terms of purpose, verve, productivity, and general satisfaction. I must say, though, snobby as this is, that it is very difficult to actually work with other teachers, teachers who so easily get wrapped up in either their worship of technology or abiding hatred of it, to which they attribute their reactionary bemoanings of the degeneration of the values of youth, which is all very immigranty, ultimately, I think. It's not just that, though, teachers are complainers, and teachers are not very good learners. It makes me sick to hear teachers complain about what they don't know. I mean, it's good to be honest and not to try and bullshit your way through something, but let's face it folks--if you're a teacher and you don't understand or know something, you'd best run off and learn about it. See a problem, fix it. Simple, no?

But of course. And so there are all sorts of pointless arguments about math which everyone should know by now. But people mostly complain. And I've gotten really annoyed with a science teacher at my school, one I haven't worked with before. I mean, when you miss almost two days of a five-day workshop for personal reasons not of an emergency nature, it's really not your place to complain about how you weren't "given time" to prepare a lesson. And then it's not acceptable to fake your way through your own very public and unarticulated doubts about the whole field and to stumble your way through a low content, abstract, self-important, and intentionally protracted presentation, powerpoint-laden or not. It's just insulting and unhelpful and it's nice to frame questions about power and want to "figure things out" to "wrap your mind around things" but you know what? You're supposed to be a teacher, and you're supposed to be writing lesson plans everyday, so why does it take you more than a week to get anything done? It's a professional embarassment, really.

So I still managed to make it home earlier than on a practice night, but it was later than not, which was just fine, as it meant some quality time with Wifey, at least. But I was realizing on one of the eight (R, 6, 7, 5, N, 7, 7, N) trains I rode today, I have not at all been working out in the visible ways.

I'm well behind Lex in these ways, though, in that I'm only now reading Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which is not just deeply brilliant but helpful in understanding some of the more allegedly mystical elements of training, just as proprioception and whatnot, though I haven't reached the kiai portion quite yet.

So in lab today we made the error of throwing out the supernatant when of course we wanted the pelleted beady matrix of resin and whatnot. So that's funny enough as it is, but there's a great Daoist mol-bio joke, which concerns the persistent lack of results from using empty tubes.

So I'm tired and when I woke up this morning there was a viscous thin dangly band of mucous material connecting my upper eyelid to the lower. But it's all worth it--it was great to finally return to kendo last night, as painful as I thought it would be, with a/c it's all a breeze, though for once I found myself thwarted--I often avoid jigeiko with senseis because of various cowardly reasons, but last night when I was achin' for it, to see how far fallen I've become, I couldn't get a match to save my life. So it goes. And it's nice to see that although I've been lazy there are some things which are so deeply ingrained in me now (nothing flashy, mostly reiho) that I can drop right into auto-pilot once I step foot in the dojo.

So this still needs verification, but I think blogger's blogcounter is finally uptodate. Anyway, as I was saying, there are many things on many plates these days, including further future stuffs which will be even more work. The big news is that the teacher hired as my counterpart on a mirror universe team has bailed very offensively, accusing the mirror-crew of everything they actually due, a Muad'dibbean prescience which probably served us all well--maybe what we need is a wave of cleansing Fremen--I've got too many blackheads really.

What does this mean? I'm in one of my energetic crests where I am contemplating teaching multiple loads. Then again, my aboriginal ancestors may have been headhunters. So it's time for some racial memory.


I miss kendo. I've made endless excuses, including a foot which hurt too much on the instep-arch to the point where I was hobbling around like the old man I already wish I am. It's stupid things like this, which have made me miss almost nearly two weeks, and who knows how much more, as my kihon are mealier than ever, and nidan-waza now seem completely out of reach. My only suburi is with a battered black bokken sans tsuba, but with tsubadome, white.

So there is quite a lot of ground to cover, as I am still blindsided after three days by a Rob Chin post, which is crazy, as usually I lap him and finally they updated the post count, and somehow 681 seems off pace from the last update in November, and I'm nearly two months past due for a comprehensive archive of the year since the last. My frequency is far down, and there is little excuse, beyond perhaps the increased duration and intensity of my screentime.

Part of this has been a wikipedia obsession re: the Sci-Fi of yore, so too long ago.

What is the most appropriate unit for expressing the performance gap between different subgroups? Should it be standard scores or should it be percentiles or percentile gaps, or what? But somehow it's interesting to think further about the role which sample variances actually play akin to finan-volatility or somehow. Sadly Rob Chin is little help on this, and to whom else can I conceivably turn? I think in these terms now, it is my baby, and only Wifey suckles more at my teat.

Less figuratively.

Think of the movies--Ren and Ioz and monkeybirds-eponymous, alliterative unreimaginative tetrads, maxwellian components rendered less lugubrious, the baby of a dynasty and fatties unredeemed though rendered sympathetic and not by high-heat, alzheimery downslides but still with textual tension, and.

Bio-stats and -info(r?)matics is enough to be drunkening. I feel myself more arch. I can be a mathematical cleaner, point-man.

So there are strange pains in my left foot, right under the arch, which makes it hurt whenever I walk on it, though sitting around and even standing are just fine. It's a little worrying, and I skipped kendo, though I just tried some ayumi-ashi and it felt okay enough, but I should just rest it and hope that it gets better. Somehow I feel like I should be doing suburi.

So I must admit--I love office work. It's hard to imagine, perhaps, but once I get going, I keep on working and working without so much as a break--maybe it's because I'm in a foreign context and so I can't slouch as much as I do in my own office, but I just get into a groove and the time melts away. wifey is laughing at me for saying so, though.

So I have been busy tapping away at data, where N>4000, and learning at long last how to program in Excel by using formulas and the like. It got so bad that I was let go early from my internship, but I just ended up going to work anyway and working for basically six hours straight on various data analyses no more sophisticated than what they would do on Math A. But it's great fun, and I feel like some more self-content version of Rob Chin, but that's probably just my arrogance more than anything else. So, it's been a good internship so far, and I've had a good deal of fun, though I could stand to be more productiv eand so on... I just need to stay productive and forget about all of the other lucrative projects I need to finish... Since when did I get so grubbing?