Relocated!!!!!

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So somehow I neglected to commemorate in full splendour my five-year bloggiversary which was sometime last week, as like Friday as not. As you might be able to tell, I've been doing my best summer to resume my daily pace now that the usual excuse of not having consistent access is gone. I won't bother now to revisit in detail where I was at five years ago--such exercises are moot at such an intermediate distance. More sobering, perhaps, is that this is the year of my tenth high school graduation anniversary, or somesuch. I be getting old.

Today was a leisurely morning with Mark as he made coffee for me and the fungus gnats and we browsed various titanium rings and their associated diamonds from past and present and then my new routine of morning calisthenics before digging up call the CST books which I've been leaving by the bed|wayside in order to try and make some headway this week. Making my way to Rob Chin's for some carne guisada y pernil was the right taken, as somehow on that blacktop roof of his I managed to make some progress on how I way join that faux-cult. In particular, I think that the ways in which this will help what I'm trying to write about (social justice curriculum and course for Latino immigrant students and Spanish speakers) is to re-envision discourse in terms of limits and forms rather than the process of production. That is, looking at "what can be said" in the context of such an academic course, as opposed to affinity grouping or somesuch; looking then further at the notion of the "archive" as a methodological question: how will this ed research be conducted, while keeping in mind the injunction to ever pluralize--the see discourses, discontinuities, and resistances. The irony in all of this might be the ways in which social justice curriculum seeks to convert an informal set of practices into a more scientific or rationalized process--just add the water of our discontent? So maybe not that much progress, but at least I'm working on it.

The GC, meanwhile, is surprisingly hopping during the summer, or at least the library is as most of the faculty is on vacation and no one has summer classes. I'm rewired here and will be glad to use this as a bonus office, even though I will need to deal with MS Office 2007.

So today should have been lazier, given that we got back from Hellboy around 2am after dodging some drunken mics on the train who trampled poor Mark's sandal to the point where it snapped and I had to step in and walk half-barefoot all the way home, and then lingered online for a while before hitting bed, but it felt good to hit keiko and then Rob Chin up for some authentic Frisco-beer bought in USq and spicy pickles to boot, though City Bakery ought not to smell like barf-cheese, I'm just saying. I should do more planks as my glutes need a good deal more work than they've been getting, perhaps. And then off all the way to Flushing for the usual 359 goodness plus even red mango, though mochis distressingly bear 62.5 calories per serving, which of course is irregular given the vicissitudes of serving size.

I'm glad that Mark and I are enjoying different wines. In the past week-plus, Mark West Pinot Noir 2006, Charmee Pinot Noir 2006, Rock Rabbit (the house white). All right, I guess it's not that many, but at least there's variety!

So summer is so nice and lazy but at the same time I feel the danger of it. I should promise myself this week to finish this long-overdue paper. Or at least something. I can feel the summer slowly slipping, dripping away, and already vaguely dread yet another school year--#7. I guess that's not completely fair: Friday's interview was deeply encouraging in terms of the possibilities presented by good leadership at the new school. One more year before I jump ship.

I feel these entries have gotten all to straightforward, not with none of the old glib incisiveness. Or maybe just that things were always better way-back-when.

So I'm descended back into idleness after a week of three-hour commutes and a modicum of planning. It's summer, for real, now, and I don't know what to do with myself, as tempting as it was to go and buy a bat and ball the other day, fetching said ball is still rather tedious, all by yourself. I guess I can always exercises, one way or the other, but it's good to just relax--I really can't fully remember what I've done in summers past, though I suppose I should finish some of this overdue work before it's too late, but I know that it's a matter of my personality--no deadline means no completion, not ever.

I really should start on the whole cardio thing again, but it's just too tedious for me: I need some sort of project, somehow, and I've been putting finding one off for way too long. I remember having this sort of thing in college, where I would long for whatever breaks I could find and then promptly squander them once they arrived. Even during spring break I had the floors project... and now look!

So it's still sweltering sweaty sweat: it's interesting, this daygig, as the kids are so like, "What's a hexagon?"--future math teachers of America!

Alric has big news.

I like having the free time to wander around in Target and buy nothing, just wondering at the cheapness, except the books section, which is a slice of what real people read, if they read at all, which is also fine, although it would seem that more women than men read judging by the titles, and I don't know if that's true overall, as my set is not exactly representative.

One more day commuting and then I really should settle into writing this long-overdue paper. Well, it's still under a month late, I guess.

So I don't know what to make of my kids--the honeymoon is over and they're all draggy about learning the math alongside the problem solving I'm supposed to be teaching them, and there's in general very little patience in terms of trying to solve prolems with more than one-step formulas once they are given a new kind of formula. It's tricky, yes, but it's the time span more than anything else that's limited.

Other than that, the weather has been nearly unbearable. I wish it were fall already.

Besides that, it's just this new routine with the prospect of more hourly wage labor, which I don't wnat to say no too straight off because you know, it's all about the networking.

So I don't know what it is about PIXAR movies, but they always make me cry. Mark and I enjoyed WALL-E, though I was a little confused as to why so few Chinese people actually made it into space.

Today's trip out to Brooklyn College was a success--my students are amusing, and very young--they still call me "Mister." But my interactions with the Taco Truck guys was less successful, partly because Mark was ordering tacos with his whole arm again:

Maestro, tengo una pregunta. En tu idioma que dices cuando quieres comer.
Pues, los chinos no se dicen nada antes--solamente comenzamos a comer: los japoneses, pues, los japoneses siempre se dicen "itadaki-masu," pero nosotros no tenemos tiempo para esto.
Y como se dice "novia"
Uhhhh... niupengyou.
Ah, chino es mi idioma, porque dos de mis amigos estan casados con chinitas

I can only look uncomfortably at Mark.

So it's been a very lazy weekend in terms of any of the work I should actually be working on myself, wandering around Astoria and Sunnyside looking at apartments and making such plottings amid some other movies at the expense of kendo, unfortunately. At least the apartment is clean, if somewhat strongarmedly.

So last night we were out late with Mark's future roommates at what had to be the worst places to eat or drink in the W Vill--sangria like blood and Guinness, well, still like Guinness. We got home late but happy, and today I was relieved not to have to go all the way out to Brooklyn College for unappreciative Asian girls with bad Bronx accents and doughy thighs--today was just half a workout with myself, a greasy Chinese lunch with Mark, and a longish wander no place in particular, but always in the direction of Red Mango.

So three pilsners (urquell if lukewarm) with Rob are just about enough to cure what it was that was ailing me. Which is not to say that I wasn't a little moonish earlier, but after a late-night session discussing crossword puzzles for mathematics learning with graduate students, a little levity is quite overdue.

Pendant lamps, meanwhile, are quite overdue to alleviate Mark's persistent complaints re: the want of a overhead lighting in my apartment's living room. That and a recentering of the new TV. Meanwhile, the flypapers have yet to fully exterminate the gnats.

I should really do better to reread Monkey or rather Journey to the West, Waley notwithstanding.

It remains to be seen if I can meet Rob for a paella lunch tomorrow.

So the problem with this vacation is that there's nothing to do msot days, other than watching some good old Kurosawa films on the exercise ball. "I'm smarter when I"m drinking" as Sanjuro says.

I really do need to set more and better goals for myself before the weeks just melt away.

So it's been a good long while, and year six of teaching is over, but I can't say that I'm very relieved. Today at least, I'm trying to kick the third quarter off right, but I'm a little ill at ease when it comes to that mix of career and school. In part this is because I've still not finished this paper on the ways in which critical social theory (no capitals, e.g. Foucault, Bourdieu, Gramsci, et al.) can inform educational research. For that, one would need an actual question or context--the exercise, without the data to frame it is just an exercise. It also doesn't help that every Latino I sent to take the Regents failed. What does that say? Sure, maybe I'm not preparing them enough for the tests, but what am I really accomplishing? Two half asses don't add up to one.

Things to think about as I do my best to build new summer habits.