~Thursday~ I picked up the #9 Greek Village Wolfline bus this morning, and was pleased to see Jackie on the bus and took a seat next to her. Jackie was the student leader on our 2010 Gulf Coast Alternative Spring Break Trip last year to Thibodaux, LA, where we did post-Katrina Habitat for Humanity Work. We had a nice chat all the way in.
A student to my left was reading the Book of Mark in his bible. Just before getting off the bus a lady asked the driver where the closest place was to pick up the #4 city bus, and she didn’t know the answer. The university bus drivers, in general, are not familiar with the city bus routes at all. Why would they be?
I said to the lady, “If you get off right here and cross the street, right there on the corner opposite the credit union, you can pick up the #4.”
I had an unpleasant, yet thankfully short, exchange with one of my colleagues this morning. That’s all I’m going to say about that, because it’s work-related stuff and I don’t like to get into personnel issues in this public forum.
I spent some time this afternoon preparing my presentation for the current students in the Master’s program from which I got my degree. In the place of a thesis in that program, you have to take a final course called “The Capstone Course,” in which you do a project to showcase as much as you can of what you learned during the degree program.
At the end of that course you have to stand up and present to the faculty and other degree candidates on what problem you solved, how you did it, and “defend” any rhetorical choices you made during the project. Tonight I talked to a bunch of students who are taking that course in the next, spring, semester.
The meeting time was from 5:00-6:00 and for the first 30 minutes, the professor who is teaching (advising) the class in the spring talked about the expectations, schedule, and so on, and I followed with my information.
My 675 Experience (The presentation I gave tonight):
http://www.nematome.info/ENG675/My%20675%20experience.pptx
My Defense Presentation (Given to the faculty on 04/19/07):
[Note: the first three slides were the intro slides for who was presenting what each night; they were not part of my project’s defense presentation.]
http://www.nematome.info/ENG675/041907_Program%20Management%20Portal.ppt
My 675 Project Deliverable (A 70-page design document):
http://www.nematome.info/ENG675/Martin_675_Final.doc
After that meeting, which was sponsored by SIGDOC, I had dinner with some of the folks that attended, including my friend Jen, in addition to Sarah (the student organizer of the event), Gary, Neal, and Joel.
We went to Player’s Retreat, which we went to instead of Mitch’s Tavern, because Joel is in a wheelchair and Mitch’s is upstairs and not accessible by wheelchair. Evidently, the place is so old that it’s “grandfathered in,” so doesn’t have to adhere to ADA requirements.
On the walk over Jen brought up our presentation at UNC CAUSE 2010, because she said, “I sensed we had a little bit of tension at one point between us, and that’s never happened before.” I was appreciative of her acknowledging that, and we had a great talk about it, mostly around our two very, very different worldviews and presentation styles. Love her!
She gave me a ride home, and we kept hearing this creepy noise on my side of the car that at first seemed to happened when I moved my arms, but we finally determined that that wasn’t it. It turned out to be postcards on her floor that my feet were on that when my feet moved them they made a noise against the carpet. It was kind of funny, albeit I’m imagining you had to be there to appreciate it.
I stayed in for the rest of the night, and since this entry is (relatively!) short, I’m going to clip in here a dream I had about a week ago and forgot to include at that time. I’m not sure it’s at all significant, but it was so vivid that I actually captured it the morning after before it withered away. (Although as I’m re-reading it while clipping it, it’s interesting that it has a wheelchair involved in it, after what I just wrote.)
| I was on a paved path in somewhat of a woody area with my mother and a wheelchair. I was in the wheelchair and she was walking behind me, but not pushing me. We were going downhill and I was gaining momentum to the point that I looked back and asked her, “Is it making you walk too fast?”
“Yes,” she said and I put my feet on the ground in front of me to slow myself down. We came to quite a sharp corner, beside which was a cliff that had what would have been about an eight-story drop if it were from a building, and no rails of any kind. There was a lake below. The person in front of us stopped suddenly, and I had to veer out a little around the corner so as not to run over the back of them, and I veered off the cliff. During the fall, which was more freeing than frightening, I became separated from the chair in a way that we hit the water at the same time, about twenty feet apart. I went under and when I resurfaced, I saw the chair floating. But after clearing my eyes, it had sunk. “Where is it?” I yelled as I moved in the direction I had seen it. And very shortly, I saw its shadow under the water. I pulled it up and swam to the shore with it. Right before getting out of the water, a brown thing in the shape of a crab, although it definitely was not a crab in spite of having pincers shut together in front of itself, bumped up against my white shirt, but didn’t attach itself to me. I made a little wave in the water and it floated away from me on the ripples, never making any movement of its own. When I got up on the path, I asked my mother if we could go back the way we came, which would have been a shorter walk than continuing the loop we were originally doing. “I’m afraid if we walk too long my thighs will start chafing with these wet shorts now.” |
I have no idea what any of that means, although the chafing probably has something to do with how fat I’ve gotten, although my thighs do not get chafed from rubbing together or anything. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this dream is that I was compelled to “capture” it.
