It's a good thing that I'm running out of summer session. My brain is getting foggier and foggier, and I think it's going to need a break. The good news is that I have one scheduled for the July 4 weekend, which is a mere week and a half away. I've been pushing fairly hard on a number of different fronts, and making some good progress, so I think I'll be in position to be able to coast for a little while before having to ramp it up again.
My summer class is almost over. All I have left to do is to talk about basic graphing, and grade a about a dozen exams. It's a small class, and I'm expecting the grading to go relatively quickly. I should be able to take care of it all by the middle of the weekend.
I've make significant progress on the math module stuff. The first module is essentially complete, and most of the organizational details have been completed. I still need to write exams and grading rubrics, but I think that once I get my brain back in order, those should fall out relatively quickly. I'm getting more excited about the idea as I move forward because I think it might actually work. And if it works, it will be a pretty big deal for us.
I think I've come to a pretty good place on the math article. I think that the work I've got with Jason should be enough to make a decent article, and then it goes into the writing and submission process. I really hope we can get it out before the end of July. I really don't want to be fussing around with it when we start up the new semester.
My third year review application is in a good place. I say that, but at the moment I can't even remember what I've done and what I have left to do. I have no idea what that means for the actual status of the application, but wherever it is I'm just calling it "good" and moving on.
And at some point, I need to start reading the analysis book for Fall class I'm teaching. I feel that analysis is one of my weaker subjects because I'm not quite as meticulous as analysts need to be. I sort of like to gloss over the boring details and keep the focus on broader concepts, but that's exactly the opposite thing you need to do in analysis. I'm also going to need to do a bunch of problems.
I'm happy to report that church stuff is... happy. For the first time in a long time, there is optimism and energy on Sunday mornings. A lot of pieces are starting to look like they might fall into place. There are still issues, but the church will never actually be completely free of issues. We've still got a lot of infrastructure problems and little pockets of nonsense that are just there.
There was a comment regarding the new elders that made me smile in the "shake your head and smile" sort of way. The comment was something like "What can a 40 year old tell a 70 or 80 year old?" This isn't an indictment of the older generation. Just an indictment of this one person, and I don't even know who it is, nor do I care. But that is the type of pocket of nonsense that hopefully won't expand into a real issue.
There's also a bit of theological concern regarding women elders. It's the forever argument of egalitarianism vs. complementarianism. I believe that there's plenty of room to disagree on the issue, but the church has declared that we are taking the egalitarian position, so that's the way we're moving. Although I know that the resistance to this is a little larger, I still don't see it as a real obstacle to anything at the moment, nor do I see it being a major problem in the future. We've already got the ball moving in this direction, and it's going to take a massive effort to stop it. And I just don't think that there are enough people who feel strongly enough to organize some sort of counter-movement.
I'm looking forward to the new adult Sunday school class that I'm leading with Daniel and Mike. We'll be spending the next 10 weeks looking at the first 12 chapters of Genesis. This is basically all the stories that lead up the God's promise to Abram. I don't know how many people we'll have, but there does seem to be a warm reception to the idea. Now all we need is to have people actually show up.
I got a message from a guy on one of the poker forums, asking me for a copy of the article I wrote two years ago. I found it to be amusing. (Of course I gave him a copy of the article!) On the same day, some other guy wanted to ask me something about poker and Christianity, but he never followed up, so I don't know what specifically he wanted to know about it. I found this to be amusing as well.
