I didn’t make my 2008 goal of exercising three times a week (I fell short six weeks), so I’m going to try again in 2009. That maps to just under 900 miles:

26 runs @ 4 miles = 104
26 runs @ 8 miles = 208
52 swims @ 1 mile = 52
52 bikes @ 10 miles = 520
Total = 156 workouts, 884 miles.

That’s the minimum. Now, what I’d really like to do is run twice a week, with a long run every other week:

52 runs @ 3mi = 156
26 runs @ 5mi = 130
26 runs @ 13mi = 338
52 bikes @ 10mi = 520
52 swims @ 1mi = 52
Total = 208 workouts, 1196 miles.

But first things first: one of each, every week.

Part of getting this done: I’m going to buy a bike trainer and a road bike. In that order. Given that cycling is low impact, it would be great if I could do it more often. With a trainer, it will be easier to squeeze in workouts between Daddy duties, classes, etc. And once the summer months approach, it’ll be time to go bike shopping.

110 runs, 3d 17h 41m, 578.2 mi (9:18/mi)
31 swims, 23h 21m, 29.6 mi (47:17/mi)
26 bikes, 21h 03m, 317 mi (3:59/mi)
total 167 workouts, 5d 14h 05m, 924.9 mi

Only 77 workouts for 412 miles and 2d 7h in the second half of the year (cf. 90/513/3d 7h).

Here’s a sparkline for running, and an expanded version of the same. It’s easy to see when my Achilles injury occurred. Since then running has been more spaced out and long runs have been scarce.

Let’s review:

• Jan 5: Madelyn starts the Big Girl sleep plan. I’m happy to say this continues; the Bee is pretty easy to put to bed now.
• Feb 21: I get an awful flu bug, missing classes and losing eight pounds in less than a week.
• Mar 10: A misstep down the stairs, and I sprain my Achilles, putting a serious kink in my running. In the long term, this is a good thing; since then I’ve been swimming and biking pretty regularly and my fitness is much better balanced.
• Apr 28: Our new graduate curriculum is approved. Bye-bye to periodic literature courses; hello to writing studies, theses or exams for everyone, and individual programs of study.
• May 15-25: Erin, Madelyn and enjoy a great vacation in Wisconsin and Michigan.
• Jun 5: Strawberries! Our yard is full of ‘em. We enjoy ice cream, jam, and strawberry pie.
• Jul 22: The awful ugly counters come out of our kitchen.
• Aug 20: My release time technology work ends. I don’t miss this one bit.
• Oct 3: Jeff and I get the contracts for From A to <A>. (Essays are due tomorrow, 1/1/09. One step closer.)
• Oct 27: Amelia is born.
• Dec 19: Our power is knocked out by an ice storm. We spend a night at a friends’ house; the following day I spend 18 hours making up for lost grading time.

All in all, a fine year. Thanks, 2008; more like you, please.

This Gainesville Sun article shows Florida’s budget for the national championship game. $2.4M, with $900K to salaries, about $500K for travel, and another large chunk for player bonuses. Spendy.

After two rainy, dreary days, the sun came out yesterday, and the wind died down. I hit the road for a long run, my first in a while. Ten miles, 1:27:00 (8:42/mi). Much faster than I expected to be! Some soreness afterward, but nothing unusual. Good deal. More sun today; maybe I’ll get in some time on the bike.

Using Google Docs for managing student work is great. Except when the power goes out. We had a pretty bad ice storm last Thu PM/Friday AM. Besides ice raining down on the house all night, the snapping tree limbs and exploding transformers woke me and/or Madelyn multiple times. Our power went out for good in the early morning, and with it our heat (gas furnace). We awoke to tree limbs down everywhere, a half inch or more of ice over everything. The sound of chainsaws, beeping trucks, and crackling ice increased as the day went on. We were okay for a while; Erin made a gigantic pot of soup, which warmed the house pretty well, and we took care of the girls. I made a quick trip to WIU to do some reading, charge my laptop, and print some essays. But once it got dark, trying to deal with Amelia and Madelyn was no fun. So we escaped to Shazia and Rizwan’s house for the night.

Fortunately our power came back on Saturday afternoon. But as we put Madelyn to bed after the daal party (again at Shazia and Rizwan’s), I realized the gas had stopped working. Oops. I lit the kerosene heater and stayed up until waiting for Ameren. About 1:45am a serviceman arrived. The gas regulator had frozen. It didn’t take the Ameren dude long to fix it, relight the pilot on our water heater, and ensure our stove and heater were working. And he was nice and very tolerant of my sleepiness. I think I fell asleep at 2:30.

Add this all up, and much of my grading for the end of the semester–two graduate classes, a total of 17 students–was compressed into one day. Guess it’s yesterday now. I didn’t have time to comment on essays, and I had forgotten to ask the students (as I usually do in graduate classes) to preface their essay with a few paragraphs which situate it in terms of their larger work. Last night I drove the grade sheets to campus around midnight then went to bed.

My parents got here today. Amelia is obliging with smiles galore, and Madelyn is happy too. There’s another storm coming tonight. We’ll see if we need that kerosene heater again. For now, I’m very thankful for generous friends, quick response from our utilities, safe travels for my mom and dad, and the coming of a very, very needed night’s sleep.

It’s been a while. With two girls and the usual end of semester business, free time has been short, and I’ve been pouring my writing time into other things.

Last night as I was helping Madelyn get ready for bed, she picked a very bad time to jump, and caught me in the eye socket just as I was bending down to fix a zipper or something. Holey. Moley. Did. That. Hurt. And of course it happened when Erin had ducked out to go to the store. Once I got the bleeding to stop and determined that nothing was broken, I calmed down Madelyn, parked her in front of Dora, and laid down with an ice pack. Amelia slept through it all. I was able to finish getting Madelyn in bed, but had a hard time falling asleep and a killer headache this morning. Coulda been worse, I guess.

Madelyn’s leap kept me from exercising today, but I’m planning a long run Saturday morning. Bumped into Doug at the track the other day–who I haven’t run with very much since my Achilles injury–and he offered to go with. We may be looking at some pretty bad weather, so I’m not sure if we’ll end up outside. A half-marathon at the Y? On their short track, that would be 171 laps. Hrm…

As 2008 winds down I have to start thinking about exercise goals for 2009. First and foremost is not getting hurt. To that end, I’ll definitely continue my more diverse approach to training, swimming and biking in addition to running. Ideally, I’ll find the time to exercise four times a week: swim, bike, speed work, and a long run. But since I didn’t make my goal of exercising three times a week this year, I’m not sure raising the bar is a good idea.

This Saturday is the “daal party” at Shazia and Rizwan’s, a lovely event with much delicious food and drink. Everyone I’ve talked to about it is very excited. I’m bring the Boulevard Saison-Brett which Jeff brought, and some Goose Island Bourbon County as well: big beers for post-daal conversation. I expect a nice end to a busy and enjoyable semester.

More things to write, but they’ll have to wait for now, since I’ve got a nice pile of essays awaiting me in Google Docs.

A very nice lede from Joshua-Michéle Ross. “Shibboleth” is too strong; change that word and this is nearly perfect.

Hat in hand the U.S. Auto Industry lined up for their slice of government aid and it appears as of this posting that they will get the money they are asking for. These titans spent years hiding behind the “free market” shibboleth when convenient (the market wants gas guzzling SUV’s) and when punished by that same market we hear that they are victims of factors outside their control and that they are “too big to fail.” It has become a hackneyed expression precisely because it summarizes the situation so well; this is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss.

from Catch 22: Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Succeed.

I find some oddly similar cognitive dissonance in the MLA’s hat-in-hand foray into my inbox. Dear MLA executive committee: we wouldn’t need to subsidize graduate student travel to the MLA convention if it was held in more affordable locations.

Sylvester Croom is out at Mississippi State. Five years ago, passed over for a job at Alabama, he took over a sputtering program, soon to be on probation, with a huge discipline problem, terrible recruiting, and awful facilities. Arguably the weakest school in the SEC from a variety of perspectives. Five years later, he hasn’t produced the wins. His offense was awful. But still I feel very bad for him. Last year, his team beat their in-state rival Ole Miss, won a bowl game, played a complete season. This year? Some inexplicable losses, and I never want to hear a coach say, as Croom did after MSU was blown out by Ole Miss, “I don’t know why what happened today occurred.”

Still, I wonder why the hell college football won’t do better than three coaches of color. Only Gill, Shannon, and Sumlin for one hundred and nineteen teams. And with few assistants at high-profile programs, this problem isn’t going to get better soon.

This year we’re smoking a turkey. A little miscommunication with our supplier, so we had to make due with an organic bird from the grocery. Ah well. Last night I marinated the bird in a chipotle-orange wet rub. Here’s the recipe, which I stepped up seven times to match the amount of chipotles in the can (poor pepper crop for us this year, so my original plan, roasted red peppers, wasn’t an option):

3T olive oil
2T chipotles in adobo sauce
1/4 c fresh squeezed orange juice
1/2 t salt
2 cloves garlic

I added the zest from two of the four oranges I used. We have a 19lb bird, and it took about half the rub. Besides covering the skin outside, I loosened the skin to rub the flesh directly, and cut a small hole in the skin of each leg to get marinade on the dark meat as well.

This morning at 9:00 I started the bird in my Weber, using charcoal and mesquite chips, with the water pan from my smoker under the bird. Erin’s parents brought oranges from Florida, which we juiced for mimosas; I filled the cavity with the skins. With the coal on one side and the bird on the other, the heat is indirect, perfect for slow cooking. (See above.) I loosely covered the bird with foil, which cuts moisture loss a little, but this is more to ensure I don’t grub it up with the lid of the Weber. After going through two loads of charcoal, (about two hours), I’ll re-rub the bird (outside skin and cavity only) and move it to my electric smoker. Thirty minutes later, it will be time for a glaze:

1/4 c orange juice
1/3 c butter
1/3 c honey
3 T of marinade

I’ll cook the bird until I see 150° in the breast: that’s done enough for smoking. (Actually, I always run “low” on poultry temperature; the meat thermometer’s 170° makes for a dry, tough bird.) I’ll wrap the bird tightly in foil, and put it back in the smoker (with the heat off) to let it rest until carving time. If the girls allow, I’ll post again with pictures of the finished product and the rest of our menu.

I’m almost done with the first real draft of the web 2.0 style article. Draft zero is done; I’m reworking that now, smoothing and the like. One concern: I keep going back to the same examples, and I think I should tweak my approach to draw upon technologies (read/write, folksonomy, APIs) rather than specific sites (Wikipedia, Delicious, Google). Since I wrote the abstract, I’ve moved more directly parallel to Thomas and Turner, using not only their definition of style (albeit with one tweak) but their form as well, with my article now including a list of elements of web 2.0 style. I haven’t decided if I’m going to go whole hog and adopt their use of a “museum” as well; we’ll see what the editors think.

Anyway, here are the elements. The last three are “trade secrets,” stylistic fundamentals which appear to contradict the conceptual stand and/or are less widely apparent elements.

1. Function comes first
2. Functionality is complex and layered
3. Function, not presentation, defines identity
4. There are many kinds of readers and writers
5. To simplify, support complexity
6. Code provides transparency
7. Networking changes everything
8. Users are more important than any user
9. Weak ties are enough
10. 2.0 means evolution, not revolution

The more I work with it, the more I like T&T’s definition of style. Might be another piece in that.

Went to the track yesterday for some intervals. It was pretty warm, in the low 40s, but windy. I was underdressed, cold on the way there, cold between sets, and cold when running into the wind. Still, I was pretty pleased to run 10 x 400m at 1:36 or better (6:24/mi). Average time 1:32, fastest 1:23. And I always like to see how intervals look when graphed. This larger graph shows that I need to walk more slowly during the rest periods. And I still need to work on pacing. My first five intervals started out too fast, and I wore down. My last five were more evenly paced, and I made a conscious effort to run out the last 100m at a brisk clip. Much more satisfying than running at the Y.

This is from last week, but via NCTE comes the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, a document complemented by similar efforts like their best practices for online video. Great sound bites, like “Media literacy education can flourish only with a robust understanding of fair use” and “Fair use is flexible. It is not uncertain and it is not unreliable.” Strong supporting resources, too; see Empowering Our Users With Fair Use from ACRLog for details.

I’m pleased with this effort, which is sorely needed and which I will quickly put to good use in my courses (with other materials from CSM I’ve used in the past). For me, most of the content isn’t specific to media literacy education, but is widely applicable. I teach fair use in every course–no matter the content–because I believe strongly in it and find the current status of fair use education miserable. I welcome not only the specific content on fair use, but this kind of best practices document, which provides a broad introduction and simultaneously debunks some misguided lore. In particular, the clarifications on “400 words or less” and similar nonsense are very welcome. I have three criticisms, only one major:

1. I wish the authors had put more effort into making the blogged version of the document an actual blog post, as opposed to something just cut and pasted: lighting up the links, adding section links, using proper markup, etc. I suspect most folks will link to this blog post, and it’s too bad the authors of this document didn’t give their good work the best presentation.
2. The shout-out to Creative Commons is welcomed, but how about going a bit further and licensing the document with CC-BY or a similar license? I’d also like to see stronger encouragement of student use of Creative Commons, since that not only allows the kind of attention to IP matters rightly encouraged by this document, but is practical and expedient.
3. Under point four: “students may use copyrighted music for a variety of purposes, but cannot rely on fair use when their goal is simply to establish a mood or convey an emotional tone, or when they employ popular songs simply to exploit their appeal and popularity.” These two uses of “simply” bother me. Mood and emotion aren’t simple goals, but essential to any professionally produced media. Same with the use of popular music; soundtracks for films use it for specific rhetorical goals. I can hear Ulmer saying now, “Mood and celebrity? That’s the stuff of electracy!” Indeed, I think this last caution needs to be rewritten to make clear which uses are likely to be unacceptable. It seems to me the line between incidental or non-essential use should be more clearly drawn.

Just some constructive criticism. I don’t mean to kick the chair out from an otherwise strong and welcome document.

I’ve been on parental leave since Amelia was born. We’ve enjoyed good support from friends, with a nice stream of meals and some thoughtful gifts as well. (At left, the card from Jeff and Jenny.) I’m happy to say all of my girls are doing well. Erin has recovered very nicely from giving birth to another huge baby. She’s still tired, but she’s feeling good enough to work in the yard a bit, enjoy some visits from friends, and get out of the house a little. Yesterday she went to a local art show while Amelia was napping.

Girl #2 does that quite well, much to our surprise: tomorrow Amelia will be three weeks old, and so far she’s been a great sleeper. On a typical night, she’ll go to bed at 9, wake up once, and get up for good around 7. That’s great for Erin, obviously. She’s also napping frequently during the day, sometimes the “nurse-n-nap” as Erin calls it, or snoozing as I hold her and read or mosey around the house. So far, we think that Amelia not only sleeps better than Madelyn, but is easier to calm down, too. Usually all it takes is a few snuggles. No doubt part of that is better parenting.

Madelyn and I have spent a lot of time together the past few months. Quite a few multi-hour outings where we’ll make three or more stops: checking out the bridge construction in the park, looking at holiday decorations, playing hide and seek, visiting various playgrounds, going to the YMCA for swimming or “basketball” (which is mostly Madelyn running around and playing with the racks where the balls are stored), eating breakfast or ice cream at the Old Dairy. The Bee has been great: some hiccups with eating, and a few more potty accidents than we like, but we can’t complain. Madelyn loves to hold her sister and is eager to help take care of her. She’s sleeping well, too, going to bed and getting up early since daylight saving time ended.

Though I haven’t blogged much, I have been doing a fair bit of writing while Madelyn is in day care, working on my web 2.0 style piece, and another project too. But right now being Daddy is job number one. I’m up early and to bed late, and enjoying every moment of it. These are good days.

Flickr rolled out a new home design which integrates statistics more heavily, including sparklines of recent activity. Thanks to Amelia, Erin has a spiky sparkline:

Pretty cool. Unfortunately, besides a larger version on the main stats page, that seems to be the only graphic Flickr’s statistics generate. Erin’s account doesn’t get a bazillion hits, but I imagine for more higher-profile users more graphics could be very interesting.

Today we were reintroduced to baby parenting. Seemed like a hundred times I thought, oh yeah, burping, done this before or something similar as I helped Erin with Amelia. But one critical difference: when Madelyn was born, I didn’t have another child to think about. And today as I was running errands, canceling appointments, singing to Amelia, and such, I kept thinking about Madelyn (who is staying with our neighbors). Our first girl.

This afternoon I stopped by the house to grab a few things for Erin, and found a package on the porch for Madelyn from her uncle Curtis. My brother. My friend. And I sat down on the porch and remembered a phone call from March 1974. One of my first memories, probably degraded to a memory of a memory at this point, of my dad calling from the hospital, and excitedly saying, You’ve got a little brother. And then sharing holidays, arguments, common enemies, and bike races. Two car accidents. Fighting over toys, leftovers, and darn near everything. Plotting against Mom and Dad. Pickup football. A few trips to the hospital for stitches. High school. College. More pickup football, beer runs, weekends. Meeting for holidays. Two weddings. Working on each others’ houses. Grieving together. Moving farther apart. And now nieces and daughters.

Dearest Madelyn, you will always be my first baby, my busy bee, my smiler. Now you have a sister, with whom you share a birthday, and someday will share much, much more.

Born today at 2:01am. 9 lbs 6 oz, 20 1/4 inches. Erin’s labor wasn’t a picnic, but she’s doing fine now, and so is our new baby girl.

Happy Birthday, Amelia. And you too, Madelyn.

Update 10/27 9:45pm: Everything is going great. We’re hoping the girls will come home Wednesday morning. More pictures on Flickr. Best wishes and our thanks to all who’ve commented.

Penn St 10
Ohio St 6

Penn State is undefeated. Joe Paterno is 81 years old. He’s got me beat by 40+. If I should be so lucky to hit 81, can I please be 1% as amazing as Joe? One condition: no simpering sentimental ESPN-tributes allowed.

Last Saturday we celebrated Madelyn’s third birthday a little early, to ensure no conflicts with the impending birth day of grrl#2. Here’s a video of us singing Happy Birthday, followed by the distribution of the cupcakes. (Thanks to Scott for great shooting.)

Like last year, our format was pajama party: potluck breakfast at night, with a haunted closet for the kids. And again like last year, a bazillion people showed up. Even my parents, which was pleasantly surprising, though not a surprise (we invited them, just didn’t expect them to come). The party spilled over onto the front porch, back porch, backyard, and basement. The kids blasted through the haunted closet, into Madelyn’s room, and looped back around to do it again. It was only two and a half hours between the arrival and departure of the first and last guests, but it seemed like eight. It was great to see so many smiling kids and laughing parents. And the food was terrific, as usual.

Madelyn was too busy to eat anything except cupcakes, and she drank a bunch of full strength orange juice (she usually gets it watered down). Sugar buzz! At one point, she was completely incoherent, babbling away and wandering around her bedroom aimlessly. She snuck under the dining table to open presents, and tried to follow my parents’ dog under the bed. Only once we couldn’t find her: she was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, almost asleep. What a girl. So many times I heard, “And you want another one of these?” as Madelyn careened by, leading or following of a troop of screaming pajama-wearing three to six year olds. And every time I smiled and said, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised about this, but there’s a frost warning for tonight. And again Friday. In 2007 we had tomatoes in November. Not this year.