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Bah.  I worked today.  Then, I had to wait in a really long line to get my FBI background check.  I’m thinking about substitute teaching a bit this coming year, so I had to get it done.  They have very weird limited hours at the ESC and apparently every new teacher in the the greater Columbus area was sent to get their background checks done today.  Good thing I brought a book.  Tonight, I just hung out at home, read on the porch a bit, ate some leftovers, watched some telly.  I’m feeling kind of cruddy and ronery (Kim Jong-Il style) though.  I miss my partner.

Today was Day 2 (and the last day) of the Innovative Learning Environments conference.  I started the day with a session on creativity and, oh my goodness, I’ve never had so much fun at a conference session in my life.  We ate a raisin, we drew abstract words and we even had a drum circle.  A DRUM CIRCLE!  I felt like a kid again and I’m feeling very creative.  I need to go home and use up that second canvas I bought.

Something else the session made me want to do was this thought experiment that I’ve been thinking about (and trying out on people) for a while.  In the session it was explained that part of creativity is the ability to have some naïveté, to remember what it’s like to see something for the first time or with new eyes.  So what I’ve been thinking about is My Perfect Day.  And what I mean is not a perfect day where you get to fly to France and have coffee near the Eiffel Tower with Oprah or something, but a perfect regular day.  If you could make your own schedule in your daily life, what would it be like?  What would you do?  What I think this makes me do is to see my plain old regular day with new eyes.  Rather than slogging through a day of to do lists of things you just wish were finished already, imagine you had the power to structure your own day.  This should be a day that you could do over and over again, full of things that you really enjoy.  So, here’s how I see my perfect regular day (at least right now)…

I would wake up early, just as the sun was coming up.  I’d lay in bed for five minutes, feeling the snuggly softness of the perfect nest of sheets and blankets I created all night, appreciating the dim light coming in through the window.  Then, I’d get up, head downstairs and brew some fresh coffee.  I’d make my oatmeal breakfast, find a book and take my coffee out to my scenic patio to read for about an hour (Did I mention I don’t live in my current apartment in this scenario?).  Then, I’d come inside, get dressed to go running, and take a run through a nearby wooded park (or maybe on the beach).  It would be a short run, 3 or 4 miles at a leisurely pace.  I wouldn’t listen to my iPod; I’d just run through nature and be quiet.  When I got home I’d stretch leisurely and then take a nice, hot shower.  By this time it would be about 9’o’clock.  I would take my laptop back out on the patio and write until lunch time.  I would write whatever I felt like writing, a mix of academic and creative work.  Then, I’d make a big salad for lunch, made from produce I had picked up from the farmer’s market that weekend.  Dan would join me for lunch on the porch and we’d chat about our morning and Dan would fill me in on the news of the day.  In the afternoon, I’d spend a couple of hours doing something creative like painting or baking or photography or creating a digital story or doing some sort of craft, or I might even do some more reading (When I have kids I imagine this will be even more fun).  Then, I’d spend a couple of hours doing chores or running errands, cleaning just one room per day, picking up just enough groceries for the night, shipping a package for Dan, or working in my little garden.  I’d get home just as Dan was finishing up work for the day and we’d decide to either make dinner together or walk to a nearby local restaurant.  We’d eat at a leisurely pace and talk about our next vacation, which would always be just around the corner.  Then, we’d take a walk around the neighborhood, holding hands, and waving hello to our friends and neighbors.  When we finished dinner or got home, there would be various things going on.  Either we’d have a recent movie waiting for us from Netflix and we’d lounge in some big comfy chairs and watch, or I’d head to my writing group at a coffee shop where we read our writing together and offer critique, or I’d head to the community center to teach a technology class to kids (blogging, anyone?).  When the evening activities were finished, it would be about 8’o’clock, Dan would head downstairs to play some games and I’d put on my pjs, make some tea, call my mom or Beth or Marcy or my sister and chat for a while before settling in to bed with my laptop to write my blog, check facebook and maybe read a bit more before setting everything aside and drifting off to sleep.  And then the next day, I’d do it all again, and I could because, you know all that writing I did in the morning?  It’s selling like hotcakes. 

I think this version is probably seasonal too… this one would be late spring/early summer.  So, tell me, what’s your perfect regular day?  Please share.  Once you start writing this out, it will be hard to stop, I promise.

Haha.  I have been a blogging slacker.  Yesterday I spent most of the day finishing The Namesake and it made me think of all sorts of things I should write, but they were all depressing and it just made me cry thinking about writing them.  I didn’t have the energy to conjure all that up and write, so I didn’t.  Instead, I spent the evening watching True Beauty on Hulu.  What a fantastic waste of time.  Today has been similar.  I read, I tried to lay out in the sun (except that the clouds like to come just as I get situated) and then Dan made me watch Jersey Shore.  So awful.  I don’t recommend it.  I won’t even link to it.

Hmm.  Now, I’m trying to decide if using a gift card to Pizza Hut counts as “buying anything.” Since I said I was going to act like payday was Monday, I sort of think that if I really had no money, and found a Pizza Hut gift card, that I would use it.  Right?  Tough call.  And then there’s the conundrum that always occurs when Dan gets home from a week in Arizona.  I’m dying to get out of the house, and he’s dying to stay in it.

I’ve been reading more novels lately.  I think it’s because during exams, I had the habit of eating breakfast on the porch while reading a non-school-related book.  It was nice and I liked it.  And so, I’ve gotten into the habit of reading in the morning and often in the evening.  I read outside today on my lunch break and I couldn’t wait to get back to the book when I got home.  After dinner, I shut off the television for a while and sat on the porch in the warm sticky air and read some more.  Some nights I get caught up and the mosquitoes have to remind me that it’s time to come in.

There have been two books* that I have liked a lot recently and I’ve noticed that when I really like a book, and I’m about half-way through, I start to run my hand over the cover and then smell the pages at the top of the book.  A good deep inhale, and then I take a look at it again wishing that I could read a little longer or wishing that I could write like that or wishing that I could have the life of one of the characters.  I love the smell of a book, new and inky or old and musty.  It’s part of becoming friends with the book, really taking it in.  I used to get this feeling about books, but it’s been a long time.  I think that since entering graduate school, I’ve become a better reader in general, and I think that I’ve spent so much time wading through dense texts that opening up a novel that allows my eyes to glide across the page is so… pleasant.  I almost forgot people could write stories that make you feel something, that make you savor every word.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Tomorrow, I feel like finishing this book and writing some of my own stuff.  Ah, summer.

*Loving Frank and The Namesake

Well, this no talking thing is turning out to be VERY difficult.  I’m doing okay, and I’ll save the details for the end of the week, but the Bachelorette apparently causes me to have unexpected outbursts.  “How can you be mad about Frank still being in love with his ex, when you are CURRENTLY dating TWO other guys?!?  Duh!”

Anyway, there are a couple of stories that I’ve been dying to tell Dan today and since I can’t, I’m going to tell the internet (that Dan also reads)!  For the first story you need a little background that Dan already has, but too bad Dan, everyone else needs this part.  So, I am submitting another journal article for publication and for some reason this journal requires that I mail two paper copies and a CD with the file on it (because apparently they’ve never heard of online submission systems).  I wanted to get this done yesterday, so Dan and I went to a FedEx center and I picked up a cardboard envelope thing, filled out the forms and then went up to the counter to mail it.  The guy asked for the zip code and I fumbled around for a minute because it was going to Canada and their zip codes have letters in them… crazy Canada.  But so, I read it to him and he goes, “Okay, to get there on Tuesday or Wednesday, it’s going to be 59 or 60.”  And, I go, “Dollars?” And he goes, “Yep.”  And I said, “Do you have anything cheaper?”  And he looks all annoyed and says, “Um, no, I don’t see anything.”  And I’m thinking, this is a flat envelope that weighs 8 ounces and is going to Ontario, which technically borders Ohio!  But, I didn’t yell, I just said, “Well, can I just pay for the envelope?  I’ll go somewhere else to ship it.”  And I pay my $1.59 and as I’m walking out the door, I say to Dan, “I shipped a box to Burkina Faso in Africa for cheaper!  That’s insane!”  Blah.  So, today at lunch I walk to our local US Postal Service, filled out a form and guess how much it’s going to cost to mail a large envelope to Ontario, Canada?  $4.  Yeah.  That’s what I thought.  FedEx, you stink.

Okay okay, this is a good one too.  I’m on the porch this morning eating breakfast and doing work and I see my neighbor two doors down.  I don’t know him too well, but I’ve gotten to know his habits since I’ve been home full time working on my exams.  He has two shih tzus that he seems to be walking every time I head out for a run.  He also smokes on the front porch just about every hour or so and since I’ve been spending a lot of time working on the front porch, I’ve been seeing a lot of him.  We don’t usually talk, but today (of all days), he decides he wants to say hi.  And he says, “You sure do stay out here a long time.”  And I say, “Well, I kind of have to.”  But, I didn’t elaborate because, well, I’m not supposed to be talking this week.  Gah.  And then that’s it and he goes inside.  But, this afternoon, I’m back outside again and it’s smoke break time (I guess) and this time he goes, “Do you have problems with your internet or something?”  And I go, “No, I just like working outside.”  And he says, “Oh, well, before you said you had to be out here and I figured since our walls are made of metal (they are) that you were having problems with your internet.”  I say, “Oh, no, I’m just working on some exams and I just have to be reading and writing for long stretches, that’s all.”  “Oh,” he says, “I work from home, I’m a writer, and I have problems with my internet all the time.”  “Oh, yeah?  I thought you might work from home.”  But really I’m thinking two things, Stop talking! and I live next to a writer!  Maybe he can tell me how to get something published! But, then I don’t say anything else and he goes, “Well, good luck with your exams.”  “Thanks.”  See, I know this sounds like a lot of talking, but I kept it to a minimum, I swear, and what I really wanted to do was jump up and walk over to his porch and introduce myself and ask what he was writing, but I refrained, for now.  It made me feel kind of socially awkward, but I’m all about following the rules of my challenges.  But really, how cool is it that we live next to a writer?  Neat, huh, Dan? 

I need to taaaallkkkk.  Wah.

I spent most of the morning reading Coming of Age in Second Life, an ethnography of the virtual world, Second Life (and the title is a play on the classic Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead).  In it, the author, Tom Boellstorff, gives some different histories that he thinks are relevant to studying virtual worlds, a history of the idea of the “virtual” all the way back to Plato, a history of all sorts of virtual technology, including virtual reality and video games, and then he even give his own personal virtual history.  By this, he means the virtual worlds that he was exposed to throughout his life, starting with his babysitter bringing over Pong in the mid-1970s (he was born in 1969).  All that is to say that I started thinking about my own virtual history.  My dad was a computer guy, so I don’t know if mine is representative of others my age, but here goes nothing.

My first interaction with a “virtual world” or, according to the author, “any computer-generated physical space… that can be experienced by many people at once (Castronova 2005:22) (p. 17)” was with the Atari.  I would watch my dad play Pong, Kaboom or Pac-man and sometimes he would let me play (although I must have been 3 or 4 at the time).  And, I don’t know if our Commodore 64 was in anyway connected to an early version of the Internet (I doubt it), but I distinctly remember its blue screen with white letters and asking my dad to turn it on and set it up so I could type.  I just wanted to see the letters I pressed magically appear on the screen.  I didn’t even care if I could print it (although we had one of those old printers with the reels of paper with the holes on both sides, but I don’t remember it working much).  There was something about being able to press a button and have an image appear that seemed fascinating to me.

The other sorts of virtual worlds I remember, and I don’t have a very good time line, but somewhere between the ages of 5-10 were the original Nintendo, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Oregon Trail, and Number Munchers.  Nick got the Nintendo for Christmas in about 1990 and I wasn’t all that interested in it.  I played a little Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, but I never got into the Legend of Zelda like I remember my cousin, David did.  I don’t know why, though, that was a neat game (and more like a virtual world that we might imagine today).  Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? were, I thought, super fun and interesting (and I swear I learned a lot of my mad Geography skills from those games).  Beth had both of them at her house and we would play in the living room all the time, which was helpful when we needed to ask my Aunt Ann (a 3rd grade teacher) for some help.  We had Oregon Trail at school too (on the green screen!) and Number Munchers, both of which we played during computer time once a week. And, I’m sure this doesn’t count as a virtual world (a virtually mediated tool?), but Beth and I loved Print Shop Deluxe and we would make all kinds of things with that program, including the Richards’ Family Magazine.  That’s right.  They are collector’s items now.

From the ages of about 10-15, I remember playing Family Feud with Beth on the computer.  We played it so much that we knew the answers to every question.  We earned 1,000,000 points and the counter wouldn’t go up any higher.  I think that’s when we stopped.  I also remember playing some Mortal Kombat with Ben on the Sega, only because there was a female character (Mileena!).  He also taught me how to do her fatality, so that was awesome.  But, I got tired of it kind of quickly.  When Ben upgraded to some other game console, I had the Sega in my room for a little bit and was kind of into Sonic the Hedgehog, but I also got tired of that.  When AOL came out (yay, dial up!), we had that and I would go on things like “teen chat” and try to talk to people.  But usually, instead of carrying on a normal conversation, I thought I was funny and would go in and claim to love the New Kids (who were by that time way out of style) and other stupid things, just to cause a scene.  I was a bad virtual teen.

In my later teens, the computer was moved to the basement, I had completely given up on video games and I only remember using the computer to type papers for English class.  But, when I got to college, I discovered AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and would talk to my friends (some that were in the same room) until 2am every night.  I also discovered Winamp (that my friend, Murad installed for me) and listened to all sorts of “free” music (when it was actually free and no one knew any rules… obviously I am a law-abiding iTunes user now).  And then my senior year of college, I met Dan and it was all downhill from there… including my Masters in Ed Tech.  At this point, between my blog and facebook, I don’t even think I can distinguish my “virtual” life from my “actual” life and there are far too many technologies that I use to list them here.

And there it is… my virtual history.  That was fun.  I think you should leave comments with your favorite old school virtual worlds.  Please? 

This morning I edited and revised like a mad woman.  Lunch was another round of eating lunch on my private-pretend beach (also known as the dog poop area of my apartment complex).  This afternoon, I met with a professor to work on a project.  And this evening, I spent time listening to music, looking up lyrics… and also, writing a stand-up routine.  Dan really shouldn’t leave me alone.

Let me begin with last night.  I read and cleaned a good part of the day.  Dan and I head to Ben’s house at around 8 to watch UFC.  We stop for ice cream on the way.  I hang out with Rachael, Megan, Tess, Erin, and Jackie for a bit (a lot of girls in that house this weekend, now that I think about it).  The boys play games downstairs until UFC starts.  At 10, we all head downstairs.  Ben and I make a run to UDF so Ben can get a GIANT cookies’n'cream milkshake.  I get to chat with my cousin Danny who is visiting from Texas*.  The fights were pretty good, except the last one was obviously rigged (you had to see it).  Then, Dan and I get home at around 12:30am and, surprisingly, find a good parking spot.  We approach our apartment and guess what is missing?  Zoe the zucchini plant!  Gone.  My two other pots with Boston lettuce are still there, but Zoe is gone.  I stand in shock for a moment, point it out to Dan.  He stands in shock for a moment.

A few things to keep in mind:  This plant was HUGE (at least 35 lbs.).  I had the plant in the back of my apartment, which is in a courtyard, instead of on my front porch which is on a busy street (and from where my porch chairs were stolen).  My neighbor in the courtyard has her back porch AND front porch decked out with at least ten plants, a table and chairs, and lantern lights.  These are all important facts because they make this situation very puzzling.  A) Who would decide to steal a gigantic plant and then carry it around downtown Columbus?  B) Who came into my courtyard just to steal the biggest plant available?  C) Why didn’t they take the fifty things on my neighbor’s porch that are much prettier and more interesting looking?  Sigh.  It was the zucchinis.

Dan started walking around to see if maybe someone just took it and threw it somewhere nearby.  He also kept saying (and continues today), “That’s so crappy.”  He feels my pain.  I have been watering that plant 2-3 times a day for 2 months, trimming the dead leaves, adding soil, taking it on my anniversary trip!  Okay, I admit it, I teared up a little.  It was sad! It’s like someone stole all of my hard work just as one of those zucchinis was about ready to be eaten!  Anyway, Dan didn’t find anything last night, but this morning I woke up for my run, and started by jogging around my complex for clues.  I didn’t see any on my way out, but as I was stretching on my back stoop, I noticed a Zoe blossom a few feet away.  I picked it up and kept walking in that direction.  I turned a corner that led out to the main road and on the main road, another blossom!  I was hot on Zoe’s trail and I continued on that street for about 5 minutes, looking in trashcans along the way (I felt like I was looking for my lost cat), but no luck.  I suspect that the getaway car was parked on the main street waiting to shuttle my beloved Zoe to a garden in some thief’s yard!  Gah!  I still can’t get my mind around someone stealing this particular plant?  Why?!  I’m sure it was just some drunken jerk who thought it would be funny to carry it around for a while and then dump it somewhere, but I secretly hope it was a hungry person that ate those delicate baby zucchinis.

I was so into my search that we were almost late for church this morning.  Then, we had terrible experience at Mozart’s (except for the pastries, and the little old man playing piano, they were good).  Now, I’m doing more reading while dwelling on my missing plant.  Do you think I should hang pictures around the neighborhood?

*Aw, Danny!  For those of you that don’t know, Danny is my cousin, Beth’s, brother who is the same age as my brother, Ben, so we spent much of childhood together.  Beth and I liked Danny because he would let us force him to play house and he was the baby.  I like seeing Danny.  It takes me back to good times.  But, I’m still mad about the zucchini plant.

1) Ran 7 miles

2) Ate cereal

3) Read on the porch for a few hours

4) Ate lunch (leftovers)

5) Did work for my professor

6) Watched team USA lose

7) Picked up carryout from the Happy Greek, while dodging hundreds of happy Comfest goers

8 ) Watched Lost

9) More Lost

10) Bed

Yesterday, I worked pretty much all day.  The highlight of my work day was sitting outside in the stifling heat eating lunch by the fountain.  The heat felt great after freezing in an unnecessarily cold office building all morning.  What I didn’t expect was a sudden, long gust of wind that blew water from the fountain all over me.  Seriously, it was so long that I couldn’t just scrunch my face up and wait for it to be over (which I did for a few minutes).  I had to move.

When I got home I made Sunny Blueberry Corn muffins from my new cookbook and they were delicious (and so was the batter, so I scraped the bowl clean)!  Then I kinda sat around all night thinking up new schemes.  It’s all a blur now, but there some good ideas in there somewhere.  I promise.