Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Teaching remotely -- via one-page instructions to a class substitute you've never met, in this case -- is getting a bit odd. Instruction via full network potential is one thing -- I've done the blog/chat/forum/courseware thing myself, as teacher and student, and I hope next time to post instructions for labs and webquests on a blog, then send in the address -- but curriculum without pedagogy isn't really my thing. For all my classroom discourse about King Content, I never really meant to shave style from substance.

On the other hand, quitting smoking on the fly turned out to be a breeze. 8 cigs since Sunday was all I had been able to gag down anyway, and most of that wasted. Hard to tell if the illness, the meds, or just the sheer mental weirdity that immediately follows the quitmoment is to blame (yes, I've done this before) but man, am I flying.

Been hard hanging with the kids much, though. Cassia asks me to hold her all the time, but I don't have the stamina to dance; Willow was a peach in the doctors office -- lots of curious questions, though I was little help explaining the stirrups -- but I miss being able to lie down with her at the end of the day and make up yet another story of Simon and his magic chalk, sing quietly of the things she is not (trees, birds, ceilings, floors, bed, pillow, ad infinitum) until her own breathing becomes heavy and I slowly, carefully, slip my arm out from under her neck and sneak away.

Heck, I miss being able to lie down. Stupid lungfluid.

Once bonus of being upright so long with little work to do and no alarm clock to follow is the time catching up on the virtual world. Mock The Stupid and Overheard in New York are guilty pleasures delivered in big gulp size. Elsewhere, the AV Club interviews a surprisingly sedate, thoughtful Fred Armisen, and sequel week over at McSweeneys brings us a hilarious account of The 4 Year Old On A Blind Date, which sounds much less funny than it turns out, trust me. It's not all funny, either -- I even managed to learn some stuff, though don't ask how I ended up there...or what, exactly, one learns from discovering a multiply-feminist critique of copyright laws.

Once you have children, listening to music with headphones becomes a much more fulfilling experience. Especially good music. And I ain't talkin' no iBuds, either. Gillian Welch into Steve Earle, warm and fuzzy on my ears? Maybe it's the 10th hour of nonsmoking talkin', but it just doesn't get better than that.

Though Byrne's playlist is enough to make me regret skipping that Laura Cantrell show that night in San Francisco with Dad all these months ago. Hey, Dad, there's some great downloadables over on her website; I especially like this toned-down cover of Letters, and this Bragg and Wilco cover. Oh, and where the heck did Doug Sahm come from? This rocks, man.