Daily Search for Meaning

Wow! My ass is really dragging.
Monday is such a long day. I typically go solid from 9:00 - 5:30 with teaching, meetings with students and office hours. From 6-8, I work while waiting for my son to get out of class so we can ride home together.
I actually really like those two hours. It's just me all alone in the building. I spend the time getting as much work done as I can so I don't have to work when I get home.
Last week I gave my creativity class a chance to use today's class to review for a test or listen to a lecture on creativity and madness. They actually chose the lecture. One student even brought a friend with her who wanted to hear the lecture!
This NEVER happens (though it would be nice if it did more often).
I stayed up late last night and woke up early to prep the lecture. I think it was worth it though.

I was at one of the monthly eLearning meetings a couple of weeks ago and one of the attendees was demonstrating Google Wave for the group.

It is an interesting mashup of a chat, wicki, virtual workspace and information repository.  Apparantly, you can start a "wave" and invite others to it. Once people have access, they can collaborate on a group project by typing information into the wave workspace, dragging images, videos and other files directly into the workspace, search, edit other's work or comment on it.  Throughout, you have the ability to chat in real time with other people in your group (those with access to the wave) about the contents being added, future directions, whatever.
If you can't participate when others are working, you can visit the wave at any time you wish and hit the "playback" button which will play the wave as it progressed, including changes, chats, additions and deletions.

eLearning was thinking that it had the potential to replace Moodle as a class management system some time in the future.  However, in its current incarnation, it wouldn't work since it isn't really possible to integrate the platform with the school's class management system and it isn't possible to keep student information private should they or you wish to do so. It does look like it has real potential to be a useful collaboration tool.

At this point, it appears you can only play around with Google Wave if you know someone who has access and they extend an invitation to you to join.  I don't know what criteria Google is using to decide who initially gets access.  Potential developers probably. Anyhow, someone in the eLearning group now has access and offered to invite me. It was an invitation I gladly accepted (I LOVE playing around with new technologies).
He said it would take a couple of days before I received the confirmation email from Google granting me access.
I would be happy to extend the same invitation to my LJ friends if I have the ability to do so and if you are interested.

I have to admit that it has crossed my mind that this whole "by invitation only" aspect of the project might be a really clever marketing/propaganda ploy.

Link to information about Google Wave

There was a line of about four women with shopping carts in front of me as we were leaving Costco (I hate that place) after checking out. They were walking sooooo slowly. It was like march of the zombies or something.
Speaking of which, I asked my students yesterday what they were planning on doing for hAlloween (trying to live vicariously through them) and a couple said they were going on a zombie walk! It was the first I had heard of the existence of such an event. It sounds really cool though.
I wanna go on a zombie walk too.

I've spent the day today grading the essay exams from my creativity class. Overall, they are much better than the previous two times I've taught the class. I'm not entirely sure of the source of the improvement though. This time I didn't post all possible questions and allow a notecard during the test ( to make up for higher expections for detail in the answers). It was my sense that doing that just caused them to read the material being tested. Even with those aides the answers I got suggested no reading or understanding of the readings.
This semester I just gave them a general study guide and asked more general answers. Yes, there are still quite a few who are obviously clueless but there are also quite a few excellent answers.
The improved performance could also be due to class demographics. This is the largest class enrollment so far with the greatest diversity of majors.
*shrugs*
On a similar note, in my research methods class, the scores for their first exam formed a normal distribution for the first time in years ( it is usually a bimodal distribution). So maybe the classes are different this semester.
In either case, I am enjoying them more.
I have a LOT more school-related work to do tonight but I will probably skip it. I am tired of beginning my work weeks with a severe sleep dept.
We will see whether the stress of trying to catch up this week was worth it.

Those of you who read my FB update this morning know I didn't get much sleep last night.  By the time my school day was over I was really dragging.
I had iai tonight so, once I got home, I cooked food, fed dogs, ironed gei, got changed and headed off to iai.
I was so tired I hard a hard time keeping my eyes open on the drive down.

When I got to the dojo, Sensei (who knew I didn't get enough sleep last night) asked me if I knew what the best thing for lack of sleep was.
"Sleep?" I responded?
"Nope!" he said with that evil grin of his. "A hard iai workout!"
And he was right. 

I am tired now that I am back home but it is a good tired - one that comes from a goodf, energizing workout.

For about the 3rd time (if not more) in that many years, I learned how to cut - again.
I had picked up some bad habits and am still overextending/breaking the right wrist as I cut kiri oroshi to get the "whipping" motion of the cut.
So my cut was totally deconstructed tonight and I practiced the basics....slowly.  I even worked on my grip.

Who would have thought that such a simple cut would be so difficult to get right.

I've succumbed to my nascent iPhone envy and bought myself an iPhone as a birthday present.
The LJ App was one of the first applications I downloaded from iTunes. It has been a long time since I posted anything here (I'm still trying to figure out why) so I thought lj would be a fitting use for the new phone.
It's fun And it beats the hell out of my windows mobile phone! it was cheaper than that phone too and it has more downloadable applications than my beloved Palm used to have.
Tell you what though; I have gotten absolutely NO work done today.
It's essentially a new computer. I really should have seen that coming.

We had a good class on Friday - those of us who showed up.  Only half the class was there. Sensei worked with the five of us who were there, starting the first steps for getting us ready for our next test.
He actually wants me to aim for testing for Nidan next year!  And from what he said, technical precision and control in the kata will be the defining feature separating Nidan performance from Shodan performance.
Consequently, I have been instructed to get the equipment I need to enable that precision and control. 

I feel the need to post something and the easy way out would be to just catch people up on what has been going on the past week or so.

Yesterday in iai, it was HOT!  In the low nineties and the gym we practice in has no air conditioning.  Sensei said "Excellent! This will be a great training opportunity!" and then he turned off the fans and turned up the intensity of training, working us harder than he normally does.  I was drenched by the end of it but happy.  I always appreciate it when we work hard and are sore and tired at the end of training.
I'm sore today and because of the change in schedule, the second class is on Fridays instead of Saturday mornings.  I suspect I will be really sore tomorrow.

One thing that has been worrying me about iai is that I have developed "tennis elbow" though it is obviously related to my cuts (that's when it hurts the most).  I'm doing something wrong and approached Sensei about it last night.  He thinks I might be pushing my right hand too far forward during the cut and "breaking the wrist" in the process.  He says he will watch my cuts more clasely to see if he can verify whether this is the problem. I think he is right. I probably developed that habit to consistently get the "swoosh" of a good cut...though it's NOT a good cut, as I am finding out.
Last night, Sensei also had us cut slowly (all of these cuts are kiri-oroshi, BTW), making sure to keep our chest pushed out/expanded and shoulder blades pulled back as we cut.  That was when I found out I had been leaning forward a little during the cut as I extend my hands outward to make a BIG cut.  That's cheating and very bad form.  So, 3 years after starting iai, I'm back to relearning how to cut again.  This seems to happen every year after the shinsa.  I think this time last year, I learned how to hold the sword correctly...again.

I've been pretty busy getting the material for my online class posted and ready for the class.  I could do it the easy way and just use all the material from the last time I taught the online course but NOOOOOOOOO! That would be too easy!  I have to change the writing assignments, and the homework assignments, and (some) of the discussion forum questions.  And I have to read each chapter again before I post the questions and PowerPoint lectures to make sure the material is still relevant and meets my (new) goals for the course.  Damned work ethic.  If only I didn't care whether or not the students enjoy the class and learn something in the process.
I had my first anxiety dream about the course on Monday this week.

ALSO, and this is a BIGGIE, I was contacted by my former advisor and asked if I could make it to Bulgaria a week earlier than planned.  What is this about Bulgaria?  Well, I am going to an Analogy conference the week of July 25 and am scheduled to participate in a symposium on Analogy and Creativity.  I was then going to go to Amsterdam to attend the Cognitive Science conference and return back to the States the first week of August. Since I am teaching an online class, I could actually pull it off if I scheduled wisely.

My advisor was also going to present at that same symposia. He was also scheduled to teach a portion of the summer session class the week prior to the conference.  Because of problems related to surgery (he wouldn't tell me anything else about it) he would be unable to teach the course and asked if I could fill in for him.  The course material is pretty specific (Creativity in Real and Virtual Worlds) and, frankly, there aren't a lot of people who could teach it and fewer who would be able to go to Bulgaria to do so.  I, on the other hand, have actually taught some of the material scheduled to be covered in the course, have read many of the assigned readings and have actually been readings and thinking A LOT about creativity in virtual worlds lately.
I love to help him out but it isn't a simple decision for me.  Three weeks away from the family?  Not only would I miss them, could I trust them to keep themselves and my vegetable garden alive while I was gone?
I could teach my online class for the conferences but the extra week while I am teaching another course during the day is a problem.

Eh, who am I kidding? I can't pass up the opportunity to have my plane fare, meals, and housing for a week in Bulgaria paid for.  It would give me time to actually see and experience Sophia, Bulgaria. It would also allow me to bring my husband along for the week that I teach, keeping him from being sad and jealous that I got to go to Europe and he didn't.

I officially agreed to teach the course today.  Now I have to really kick things into gear so that IThese are the kinds of problems I enjoy having to deal with though.

Well, Saturday was the shinsakai. I tested for Shodan and passed. Yay!

Look at the wear on that iaito! I REALLY need a new one. I was waiting until I got Shodan so maybe now I can finally put in the order.

For those of you reading my Twitter and Facebook feeds, you may have noticed that today was filled with a series of  bizarre updates revolving around the day in the life of a suburban bear.

It was actually a full day Twitter experiment.

I had looked at Twitter in the past but didn't see any added benefit beyond what other Social Networking sites such as Facebook or LiveJournal offered.  In fact, it appeared to offer less in the way of interaction and activities than what other social networking sites provided.  I have a few friends that use Twitter as their primary application but they couldn't really explain what it was exactly that they liked about Twitter.  In fact, this inability to explain the attraction of Twitter seems to be a recurring theme with the service.

However, after a stimulating lunch with the Oakland University faculty (most of whom were from Writing and Rhetoric) at the E-Learning brown bag, I decided to give Twitter a try.  I could see almost immediately how it was an effective application for businesses and entrepreneurs who needed to frequently update their followers about current offerings, meetings and whatnot.

I also appreciated the links posted by some of the Rhetoric faculty who attended that eLearning brown bag. And there was also the pleasure of getting to know new people through their updates. However, using Twitter to update others of your day to day activities and interesting articles you have encountered is something that I do already in Facebook. And, frankly, I enjoy reading people's comments to each other's updates and links in Facebook.  In Twitter, I frequently feel as if I am only hearing one side of the story.  I still couldn't figure out why some many people consider Twitter to be a big deal or how I could use it to communicate better with others.  However, I put in an effort to use it to post my own tweets and to follow the tweets of some of my friends and some businesses (if you consider "The Onion" or "Somecards" to be tweeting about business).

So what does this all have to do with suburban bears?

Well, for some reason this morning as I was getting ready for work, I was thinking about Twitter and wondering how else I could use the application.  It was then that I came up with the idea to post Twitter updates during the day in the form of a story (I think this was partially inspired by blogs posted by a friend of mine for "Blog Like its the End of the World" Day). For some reason, I decided to post them in the form of a nature documentary focusing on "Ursus Unfamiliaris" - the suburban bear. This "twitter-mentary" focused on the day in the life of a specific bear whom I called "Cee."

I then posted about the events during my day as if they were happening to Cee the Suburban Bear and being commented upon by the narrator of the documentary.

It was actually a fun experiment. It was very challenging to explain what was happening with a 140 character twitter update, to restrict the updates to just the major events in the day, to maintain the story line throughout the day while trying to also be entertaining.

Judging from the comments to my posts on Facebook, I think some people were entertained, others were probably confused and a couple joined in the fun with one friend in particular expanding on the Twitter update with storyline.

This experiment allowed me to think more flexibly about Twitter and how it can be used.

I know it was fun enough that I want to spend another day making narritive Twitters throughout the day.

For those of you who missed the Day in the Life of the Suburban Bear Twitter-mentary, here are the posts:

11:15 PM: We conclude this day with Cee and her family secure in their den, contemplating the universe through the windows of their laptop screens.

8:06 PM: The mothering instinct is strong in suburban bears. "Cee" feeds and nurtures both mature family members and canine companions. AMAZING!

6:35 PM: Suburban bears form lasting pair bonds and greet each other enthusiastically after even relatively brief separations.

2:44 PM: Unlike most animals (who search their environment for fruit and berries), "Cee" the suburban bear, is searching her campus for monitors

12:50 PM: Cee wages battle with the computers in the computer lab! The howls and roars are terrifying!

9:25 AM: Cee searches the parking lot for signs of friends or foes before entering Pryale Hall.

9:06 AM: Familiar with her surroundings, Cee successfully forages for eggs, grains, roots and coffee on the way to work.

 

8:46 AM: "Cee" grooms herself carefully knowing that her status will be judged by the appearance of her glossy fur.

8:38 AM: Today we have the rare opportunity to observe a mature female of the species Ursus Unfamiliaris (more commonly known as the "Suburban Bear")

X-posted to Analogy and Creativity Blog

I went to the Nine Inch Nails / Janes Addiction concert last night. I had fun. I thought about a lot of things. I enjoyed the good music. I was glad that it wasn't raining like it was yesterday and the grass was pretty much dry and the weather was cool enough to wear my new leather jacket.

Do you want to know what a psychologist thinks about when they go to an event like this and have lots of time to think?

Well, this particular psychologist thinks things like

• "OMG, there are a lot of people at this concert"

See? Lots of people.

I also was thinking

• "I have NOTHING in common with Rich and Kevin's girlfriends. Small talk is going to be more difficult than usual"
• "Wow! She has a whole buffet in her purse"
• "Hmm, drunk dialing is bad enough. I wonder how many people have experienced drunk-posting-to-Facebook? The repercussions of that have got to be worse."
• "Note to self: No posting to Facebook, Twitter, or LJ while drinking or after drinking."
• "If a meteorite came flying through here and struck the amphitheater, it would look like an ant hill that just got stepped on."

But then, I seem to always have this sort of a dialog running through my head.

As a psychologist I was also thinking about odds and corporate manipulation.
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Today Sensei videotaped each of us as we went through our shinsa sets.
He said he will burn the videos to DVD and get them to us by Wednesday so that we can use them to refine our performances for the shinsa on the 13th.

He said he thought I would be happy with my video.
I thought I performed solidly today.  No major snaffus such as getting the sageo stuck under the iaito during To Rei or missing the koiguchi on Noto.
The only thing I was unhappy with was that my attention actually wandered a bit during the performance.  Specifically, as I finished one kata and was sitting in seiza before beginning the next, I caught myself thinking about what I had done right or wrong on the previous kata.  Not a good idea.  It's things like that which will get me to forget what kata I just finished when under the stress of testing.

Hopefully, I won't be appalled when I watch the video.

Sensei said that he would probably save himself some time and just burn all the videos to the same DVD rather than giving each of us a DVD with just our performance on it. I hope this is the case since that means I would have a video of one of our Nidan students performing the whole Lower Volume, two Sandan students performing Lower Volume and 5 kata from the upper volume and Sensei himself performing all the kata in the Upper and Lower Volumes.

This is what makes me think that we won't get videos of EVERYBODY's performance.  The policy at TRI is to tightly control videos of our kata.  That is why you don't find any authorized TRI videos on YouTube or online from official branches of TRI. Members aren't even allowed to own the DVD of Soke Sensei performing the kata until they reach the rank of Shodan.  Which is actually too bad because I can't tell you the number of times I wanted to refer to such a video when I was unsure of how to perform a kata or when I had forgotten one of the moves in a kata I had just been taught.

If Sensei DOES give us a DVD with everyone's performance on it, that would be SWEET!  I could brush up on the kata I do know and get an idea of the sequence of moves for the upper volume kata though I won't be taught those kata until I reach the rank of Sandan (which, at the rate I am progressing, will be YEARS from now).

Have any of you ever sat with a friend in a methadone clinic? It is not pleasant, let me tell you. I know. I know. That's a shocking revelation.
The clinic itself has a cheap, underfunded, understaffed feel to it.
It smells of poverty and dejection.
There isn't a healthy looking person in the bunch.
For most, there is no hope and no prospects but they are still trying.
It' sad and a little depressing but made a little less so with the knowledge that I could have been one of these people rather than the person sitting in the waiting room blogging about it on her cell phone.
Not that I would have an opiate addiction. Opiates make me ill. But my addiction almost brought me down this low when I was in my twenties. I was lucky to escape.
I guess these visits with my friend are good for reminding me of that.

As promised, here are my thoughts on the book "Tesla: Man out of Time" by Margaret Cheney.


The author did a good job describing Tesla's life, inventions, trials, tribulations, eccentricties, and accomplishments. The writing was obviously based on collections of Tesla's correspondences, newspaper clippings, lectures, patents, publications and his autobiography. As such, I was confident of the accuracy of the information reported. However, the writing style left something to be desired. It really came off as a summary of the sources of information in the form of a timeline rather than as tale about Tesla's life.  True, fact wasn't compromised by imputing events, thoughts and feelings to Tesla that weren't substantiated by the sources used in the book. However, the lack thereof left me without a true sense of the man other than that which could be ascertained through his accomplishments.
That said, the detail in which the author treated her subject and the many accomplishments of Tesla detailed in the book made for interesting reading and I now have even more respect for Tesla than I had prior to reading the book.
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I'm not sure what has been up with me lately but I don't seem to want to do ANYTHING I normally want to do. By this time of year I am usually hard at work puttering around in the yard.  I have beendoing some yardwork but it has been sporadic. I also don't feel like working on research or writing or even prepping my summer class.  I haven't even been checking Facebook or LJ like usual (much less writing in LJ).
I have been obsessing a bit with Second Life and I can tell that a good part of it is escapism rather than class prep.

Oh well, I am hoping I can kickstart things by creating this post about last week's iai classes.
I just finished a book on Tesla and maybe that can be tomorrow's post.

Last Wednesday we all went through practice testing (the shinsaki is about 1 month away).  Usually, everybody testing for the same rank tests together.  Well, not ALL at the same time. We test in groups of three or two (if the number testing for the rank doesn't divide equally by three).
We test in front of 4 instructors with each instructor watching one or two students' performances.

The more people I am with when testing, the less anxious I am because I know that all eyes are not on me.
I was reminded on Wednesday that I was the only person testing for shodan. That means EVERYBODY's eyes will be on me.
*gulp*

I know that I will have to practice enough that sheer muscle memory will get me through the test of my brain shorts out.
Practice testing in class helps.  However, it appears that every time I practice test I make some mistake that I have never made before. This time it was getting my sageo stuck under the sword during opening to-rei.
There is also the problem of the changes made to the kata in the past year. When I get nervous I find myself doing iit the old way.

I did get a couple of compliments though.  I was told that my noto was impressive as were transitions into jodan before cutting.

Saturday we spent an hour discussing the latest crisis to hit our dojo. The place we moved to had suddenly decided that it was too expensive to keep us on and that they would have to either raise the rates or we would have to give up our Saturday class (which wouldn't drop the rate much). *Sigh* The place was just beginning to feel like home.
This keeps being a problem because our membership (though growing) still remains small with about 10 core members. We REALLY need a permanent home; some place that values our presence.
Sensei described our options and had each of us weigh in on our preferences.  The overall consensus was that we pay a little extra or drop down to 1 day a week to get us through the next session until September. In the meantime we scour the area (again) to find a new home.

I am tasked with seeing if that home can be my university.  It is a logical choice. Over half of our students are affiliated with the university in some fashion and it is centrally located. This week I will be contacting the professors that I know that are teaching Japanese in the Language department to see if we can interface with the Japanese club or if the department would support the creation of a specialty class at the university gym.
I am happy to do it but making the cold calls/emails is pretty tough for me.
This isn't something I can procrastinate so I will make the contact tomorrow.

I'm stuck in the airport waiting for our pilot to come in on a later flight so he can fly OUR plane (which is sitting at the gate) to Detroit.
Grrr.  I am SO ready to go home.
It was great catching up with old friends and visiting with my parents but I am ready to be back in Michigan.

When I was standing in line to check in the baggage, a talkie guy behind us started up a conversation.
He asked where we were going.  I said "Detroit."
He asked "Why would you want to go to Detroit?" I said "Because I live there."
Oooooh.

I guess the city doesn't have that great of a reputation.

I missed seeing my cherry tree blossom but I expect the tulips to be in full bloom.
Tomorrow is supposed to be nice and 70 degrees so I am hoping that after kickboxing I can play in the garden a bit.

Another beautiful day today.

E-sensei is off getting some buddha training so A-sensei came over from Lansing.  It was an interesting session.  It's nice when we get a substitute teacher. I always learn something new. One of the things I learned today is that A-sensei is a good teacher. No matter how new the student or how horrible the performance, he finds something positive about their performance and then providesa couple of points for them to work on that are within their abilitiies.

I did quite a bit of gardening today. I was clearning out of the leaves mainly.  I saw tons of little plants popping up. :)
The daffodils and hyacinth have bloomed and I'm betting my weeping miniature cherry tree will be in full bloom in a few days. 

I am worried about the trouble I am having in both the front and backyards with bare patches in the grass. In the backyard it is because I can't get all the fall leaves up before the first snow. The dead spot is under that tree so it gets very little sun in the summer making sowing grass seed difficult there.  To add to the difficulties, the dogs consider it their personal wrestling ring.

Speaking of which - they were SOOO dusty after playing all day in the yard (invariably rolling around in the bald patches).
So they got a shower and shampoo before they were allowed into the house.  They made sure I got shampooed and drenched as well.

Add to that helping a little bit with sanding the table, grocery shopping, washing a load of laundry, and cooking dinner and you have one (pleasantly) tired iai_adept.

One of the students in our dojo forwarded this NY Times article about the more esoteric martial arts to our sensei.
I thought it was interesting and was happy to see iaido included.

I'm sorry I have been remiss in posting and absent in commenting on my friends posts these past couple of weeks.
It has been because I have been exploring Second Life.....again.

It has been an on and off relationship since 2005.
When I first opened my account, I played around, and visited some places but was unimpressed. Around that time I had also started playing the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies and Second Life couldn't compete. It wasn't a game, so I didn't see the point. I wasn't wanting to explore virtual sex nor go virtual shopping or virtual clubbing. At that time, there wasn't too much else going on there.

In the summer of 2007, I put in another concerted effort to learn more about Second Life; this time in order to see how I could use it for education. I even tried out making clothes (I SUCK at Photoshop) and 3D modeling in-world with prims (I suck at that too).
I went further with my explorations that time and found some neat places but really didn't see how it could add to my students' learning even in online classes beyond other online technologies such as chat rooms and discussion forums.

A couple of weeks ago, I started exploring again, this time making use of the many online tutorials of avid Second Life citizens and bloggers such as Natalie Zelmanov and Nicola Escher. I made progress on crafting a shirt, 3D prims, and scripting (I actually DON'T suck at scripting).
Oakland University now has an island with teaching resources and a sandbox which has been helpful, as has my joining Second Life Educators groups.
It must have been exactly what was needed or SL has matured and diversified, because in the last 2 weeks I have found many interesting places and developed lots of great ideas about how to work it into my classes.

I am going to try SL out on my online Cognitive class this summer and (if it works out and shows promise) make it a big part of my Creativity class this Fall. I am also thinking about trying to obtain a grant to examining the best ways of using online technologies to teach students in higher education to be more creative.  Follow the cut if you want to see pictures of my explorations and progress.
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Sensei told me that this was going to be part of my Shodan test:
http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/179186/Samurai-Cuts-BB-Bullet-in-Half.html

He just wanted to give me a heads-up so I had time to practice it before the shinsa.