It's certainly an unusual July 4. I'm sitting in my back yard, watching the embers slowly burn out in my fire pit, and contemplating about the fact that under normal circumstances, this would be an incredibly unpleasant and somewhat stupid thing to be doing. It has been a long, long time since I last cooked hotdogs and made s'mores over an open fire, and I'm glad that things worked out today so that I could hang out with a few friends and do these things.
Flying to California went pretty well except for the delay, and it was a great weekend. This was the first time I really got to spend time with Elijah (even though I saw him over Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can't really say that I hung out with him). That was fun. The next time I see him will probably be Thanksgiving, which is when I also expect to meet the other nephew.
I also got to watch Corwin compete in his jiu jitsu competition. He didn't do that well, but it was his first competition in a while, so it was really about getting back into things. In the match that he won, he almost submitted his opponent (Corwin later commented that he "heard him gasping, but he did what he was supposed to do" and got out of it).
Other than that, it was just a good chance to hang out with family. There's a picture of me, Justin, Corwin, and Elijah at a little French bakery near Justin's place. I think this is the first time in several years that we all ended up together for a non-Christmas/non-Thanksgiving gathering. (Yes, it's another round of pregnant people all over the place.)
The flight home was uneventful except for the sudden drop in altitude coming into Las Vegas. I was about to take a sip from my beverage when the plane dropped, which made my arm shoot up, and I was thankful to not have been tipping the cup a second earlier. I spent the next five minutes contemplating the fact that my arm went way up instead of staying right in front of me. The way I see it, if I had been resting my arm on the tray table, it would have stayed there. But since I was holding my cup in the air, I was exerting an upward force on the cup so that when gravity was removed (by the plane dropping), that upward force is what extended my arm.
I finished my second module of online math videos, which may be as far as I get this summer. I transitioned into the process of setting up my calendar for my Fall classes and updating my notes, quizzes, worksheets, and other things. I want to get through this quickly so that I can start putting together Calculus 2 notes. Although I've been teaching for 5 years, Calculus 1 and Calculus 2 are two classes that I haven't taught yet. The good news is that this is material that I know inside and out, which will make it easy for me to organize. But it's still a full set of notes that need to be put together, and that just takes time. And I have approximately a month to get ready (since I'm going to be taking a week off a month from now to go to Catalina, and I really want to be done before then).
I've also finished the bulk of the revisions to the Prealgebra textbook. All that remains is to wait for the student to finish proof-reading the problems and making those corrections. I've started into the Elementary Algebra textbook, but since that's a Fall 2013 thing, it's a lower priority than the Fall 2012 things (lecture notes). I'm thinking of asking another student worker to possibly write up solutions to the problems for me, as that takes a lot of time. I'll have to invest a little time up front because that student will have to learn LaTeX, so we'll see if that actually happens.
My tenure application is nearly complete. I'm still waiting on my annual reviews, and then I'll hopefully finish it off in the next week. I just want to get that monkey off my back so I can focus on the other primates.
The fire went out, the sky got dark, and there are a lot more people around here are launching fireworks than what I can recall from previous years. Maybe it's a sign that the economy is getting stronger. Time to watch some explosions, and then take a shower to get all of the smoke out of me.
