So, apparently I’m a popular professor. My classes are full, or nearly so. At the end of drop/add, I have 94 students total in four classes, where the maximum enrollment is 97. A couple of days ago, they were all full and I had to turn several people away who wanted special permission to get into the full classes. (Two students dropped the eight o’clock class; maybe they decided they just couldn’t get up that early.) So, while I have 23 out of 25 students at 8 am, the other teacher who teaches the other section at that time has 2 students. I revel in the fact that I am VASTLY MORE POPULAR.

Except I know why I’m more popular. I require fewer papers. The syllabi are online, so the students look at the course requirements and take the class that requires less work.

Moreover, having more students means that I have more papers to grade at the end of the semester. So far, with 94 students, each turning in a ten-page assignment, I have 940 pages of (usually mediocre) freshman writing to grade during final exam week before I can begin my summer vacation.

Ah, the price of popularity.

Yesterday I quit my martial arts classes.

This was hard for me to do. I’ve been doing martial arts for half my life, and it’s tough to give them up. But the fact is, I was no longer enjoying them. Back when I was in high school, I thought about martial arts all the time. I’d read about them, think about them, and practice them every chance I got. For the last six months or so, I haven’t thought about them at all, except to dread going down Monday nights for my class. I have lots of sports and instructional DVDs relating to martial arts, and I haven’t wanted to watch any of them. I thought maybe I was just in a slump, and that I just had to stick with it before I’d start enjoying it again. But six months is too long a slump to keep doing something that costs money and isn’t any fun. I can see doing it to acquire something worthwhile – a school degree, for instance – but I just don’t value the ability to fight anymore. When I was 15, I felt threatened, and so valued it. When I was 25, my buddies and I liked a friendly fight for fun. Now, though, I’m a college professor, and I just don’t value those skills.

Every Monday I drove an hour south, worked out for an hour and a half, and drove back for an hour. This pretty much killed the evening for me. I was always incredibly sore, and frequently had bruises or other injuries. I often felt great for the first hour or so after I finished the workout, so on the way home, I’d say to myself, “I’m really glad I went tonight!” But then I’d dread going the next week. I finally realized I didn’t have fun doing the actual sport, I just enjoyed the endorphin high when I finished. Heck, I can get an endorphin high by running, save a lot of money, and get in better cardiovascular shape, to boot.

Even with the complete lack of enjoyment of the activity, I still found it hard to quit. After having done them for half my life, my self-image is wrapped up in them. Despite not having fun in class, I liked to be able to say “See that stuff on TV? I do that! See that guy on TV? He’s in my class!” I did the real stuff. I wasn’t a big talker, a poser, or anything else. I really did it. I may not have been very good, but I knew how good I was – it wasn’t an unknown quantity for me. But after quitting, it would change – now, I’m no longer someone who “does that;” now I’m someone who “did that.” I know how good I am, now. A year from now, I’ll know how good I was when I quit – how good I remain will have become a mysterious, unknown quantity. The point is, I no longer care, really, what the value of that quantity is. It’s just that I’ve cared about it for so long, a lot of my habits are built around it.

Instead of paying monthly, my school uses six-month contracts. My contract was up for renewal in February, and I just couldn’t stomach the thought of six more miserable months. So I quit. I’ve been at this school for a year, and I’m glad I did it. I’ve learned a lot, and am now MUCH more skilled at fighting than I ever have been – even when I was a black belt weightlifting senior in high school. Now, though, I’m moving on. I don’t really have any desire to fight (for real or as a sport), nor do I have any desire to teach it. I quit, and I’m glad I did that, as well.

Today is my big sister’s birthday!

In honor of her, I’m doing a photoblog today.


This is my sister. Her name is Marisa. (The “i” is pronounced as a long “e.”) She’s really cool.


Sometimes she’s pensive.


Sometimes she wrangles llamas!


Sometimes she’s lazy


But she *always* looks great.

Happy birthday, Big Sis!

So, in the past week, two [EDIT: three] sets of friends have announced their engagements. Cue the "ring by spring" jokes. Cue the "getting your MRS degree" jokes. Cue all the little condescending jokes made by people who are already married. Students here feel a lot of pressure to get married -- and Valentine's day is coming up in less than a month.

What's with Valentine's Day, anyway? As A. J. Jacobs put it, "It's a cruel concept, Valentine's Day. It's as if they had a holiday to celebrate rich people or attractive people. Miserable and alone? Sorry, this isn't your day."

Rich Person's Day? Now that's a concept. "Buy something you can't afford and give it to the person you know who needs it the least!" I'm sure Hallmark could even come up with some great cards to let that Special Rich Person know you're thinking about him or her.

Expensive cards.

This is Slaine, the Christmas Dragon.



Slaine was given to me shortly before Christmas as a present from some students/friends of mine. I keep him on the computer in my office to keep me company.

When Christmas rolled around, Slaine wanted to join the festivities so much, I couldn't dissuade him. So, I made him a little Santa cap. Now, he calls himself "Santa Claws," and claims the hat was "dyed red in the blood of his enemies!" (When asked about the fluffy white trim, he replied, "AND TRIMMED WITH THEIR SHREDDED PILLOW INNARDS!")



The skulls at his feet are of the naughty children. When he finished his work, he seemed disconcerted that he hadn't heard any "Slay Bells" in the process.

I fear telling him about Valentine's Day . . .

I had a scary dream last night.

I dreamed I liked dogs.

There was this large dog lying there. This girl says, “Ugh! I hate dogs.” I say, “No, they’re very friendly! You just have to get past the smell!”

Then I dreamed I raced the Iditarod, sleeping with a pack of sled dogs to keep warm in the Alaskan snow.

I dreamed my sister laughed at me for hating dogs all my life and then changing my mind.

I hate dreams.

Everything seems to be breaking lately.

1. My glasses (see previous post).

2. My shoelace. I guess it’s time to get a new pair of shoes.

3. My mom’s new DVD-R. (I hope to get it working soon.)

4. My car. The carburetor’s shot. (“Shot” is a technical term meaning, “it stalls when I press the accelerator too hard from an idle.” “Carburetor” is a technical term meaning, “I have no clue when it comes to cars, so I’ll pick a random car part to talk about so I can look masculine and educated in front of other posers.”)

When it rains, it pours.

My glasses broke over Christmas break.


Yeah, you see it. I had to fix it with superglue. That’s just about the most nerdy thing that could happen to me. At least I didn’t fix them with tape. The repair isn’t pretty, but that’s not really my fault. The superglue had sealed the nozzle of the tube shut, and I had to use a pin to poke a hole near the bottom to squeeze the glue out. To top it off, my hands were shaking from exertion, because I had just been chopping down a tree.

Yeah, you heard me. Chopping down a tree. No nerdy “I broke my glasses because I was studying too hard” here. I was swinging a big ol’ ax at a dead tree that was threatening to fall on my sister’s dog pen. The top of the tree fell off and whacked me on the head, knocking off my glasses and breaking them.

My sister’s dog pen is the latest addition to her cabin.


That’s one of her dogs, Jasper. He’s half German Shepherd and half Chow. Her other dog, Kajsa, is Jasper’s mother (the German Shepherd half). They keep Marisa safe. This summer, they bayed a couple of snakes outside Marisa’s cabin. She had to call our cousin David to come shoot them, because her BB gun wouldn’t do the job.


This is our cousin David with the .22 rifle I gave my sister for Christmas. (It’s a Mossberg 702 “Plinkster,” semiautomatic with a ten-round magazine.) She was really excited about it. I was really excited to give it to her. Now, she can shoot the snakes herself instead of calling David to come do it. Sure, David’s a great hunter and everything, but Marisa needs to be able to solve her own problems. At Nimblecat, she’s a good distance away from any of her neighbors, and I want her to be safe.


This is Marisa’s cabin. She designed and built it herself. She calls it “Nimblecat” because her cat likes to walk across the rafters under the vaulted ceiling while she cooks in the kitchen below.


This is Sihn. Sihn is the Nimble Cat. She's Egyptian; my sister picked her up on the streets of Jerusalem and brought her home with her from Israel. Sihn is a polite, but distant cat. She curled up on my lap ONCE during the week I stayed there.








Yes, I did get a digital camera for Christmas. How did you guess?

Last night Dann and I had our annual New Year’s Party, which has been a tradition since we were in high school. As always, we rented some cheesy films, ate junk food, stayed up late, played some games, and in general had a blast. Pan (Dann’s wife) is an excellent cook, and made sure we had a great meal of steak and shrimp before we started downing our junk food.

Visions & Revisions: The Obligatory Retrospective on 2005, with a Quick Glance Forward to 2006:

I had fewer changes in my life in 2005 than in 2004. I stayed settled with the same job and the same apartment, in the same town I spent my childhood. This is just fine by me; it’s much less stressful and much more relaxing than the previous few years have been. On the other hand, everybody else in my family moved this year. My sister finally (finally!) moved out of her basement apartment into the most beautiful storybook cottage she had been building. (She calls it “Nimblecat,” because her cat Sihn walks on the rafters above our heads.) My father retired from his position as the Vice President of a small Christian college in Iowa and moved back down to Georgia. He taught a couple of courses as an adjunct professor this last semester with me, and it was a lot of fun to have him around the campus.

Car Mileage: 168,003 miles. I’ve put 30,000 miles on it in the last two years (although I suspect most of it was in 2004, when I had that awful commute every day).

I fulfilled all my New Year’s Resolutions for 2005 – I started back training at the HardCore Gym in Athens, I made a diet plan and stuck close to it, I think I became a better teacher, and I read a bunch of books. Training at the HardCore Gym was particularly cool, since shortly after I joined, Forrest Griffin (a fellow student there) won the six-figure contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship on live national television on SpikeTV.

Blogwise, I blogged at least twice a month. (June and July only had two entries each, but then, things are slow for a college professor during the summer.) The previous year, 2004, I blogged every day for a few months, then slowly tapered off until I skipped April-July entirely. This year, I want to blog more often.

New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Put on some muscle mass by seriously lifting weights. (I hate weighing 130.) If not, I want to quit training martial arts. It’s just not fun when you go three months without ever winning a match because everybody who’s your weight is a professional fighter, and everybody who’s your skill outweighs you by 50 lbs. Despite producing most popular professional fighter this year, our gym usually only has a couple of dozen people show up on any given night, so choice of training partners is pretty limited.

2. Blog at least once or twice a week, even if it’s only a hastily-dashed-off note. You keep thinking you’ll go back and write in-depth about some event, then you come back to it two weeks later and it’s not nearly as important to you.

All in all, it's been a good year -- one of the best, in fact. I haven't been this happy since college. Here's to a great 2006!