Good to be home
Nov. 11th, 2001 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterWell, it's good to be back home (in my apartment, as opposed to the family home) again. I just got in, after stopping for a couple of things on the way up. Now I just need to stop procrastinating and immerse myself in that textbook some more.
I need to read at least one chapter of that book tonight so I can get with the rest of the strategic management group on the project and come up with some decent questions for our interviewees. Though I have to confess, I feel a little put out toward other members of that group. Apparently, out of all four of us, none of us had read the book. It was quite...amusing, let's say, on Thursday when the professor gave us a "group quiz"--a quiz in which any member of the group could write answers--and none of us knew any! (Well, I knew one or two.) Luckily, the professor announced that if we got even one question right, it would count for full credit.
Sigh, I hate my tendency to procrastinate. It wouldn't be so bad if it were any of my other textbooks; my other textbooks are at least written to a reading level that makes it easy enough to skim through and pick up the salient information. But not this textbook. This textbook is written in a manner that it would almost be funny how obfuscated the text is, if it weren't also so tragic. I suspect the only reason we even use it in the first place is that it was written by another professor at SMSU. I wish I'd done more reading in it back when we did class review surveys, so I could have put down some choice words about it. I sure do have them now, let me tell you!
Turning my attention to the trip down to the parents' that I took today, it was quite fun, as they usually are. It was a little frustrating that I forgot to take down some of the things I meant to--a CD-RW full of movie trailers I wanted to show, some more DVDs to lend. But it worked out all right in the end, we still had a good time. We had turkey, dressing, all the traditional Thanksgiving fixings, since this was probably the only time in the month we could get the whole family together easily--Mom's birthday and all. And generally around closer to Thanksgiving itself, other families with whom the folks are friends are wanting to do their own things and invite us to them. I got to see both of my brothers and my niece, Aeris (yes, she is named for that Aeris), the family pets, and so forth.
I also attended the service at the family church this morning, a small Independent Christian church of which my father is a deacon. Today, he gave the Communion meditation--which is sort of a mini-sermon to give folks something to think about as the unleavened bread and grape juice are passed around. It was a talk against prejudice, and a darned good one (if, to my mind, a little ironic, lecturing against prejudice to a Fundamentalist congregation--given the reputation Fundamentalists have earned among the general public).
As an example, my father mentioned his experiences with a businessman in town, who seemed to have some sort of prejudice against tradesmen. (My father repairs clocks for a living, because it's what he likes to do--sort of a working semi-retirement for him, I guess.) The fellow always seemed to look down on him, never would treat him as an equal, until one day, as he was leaving the fellow's house, my father noticed and remarked on a plaque bearing a lengthy German inscription. "Bet you can't read that," the man said. My father, who took German in college and has been interested in it ever since, could, and did (he recited it again as part of the meditation, though I can't remember exactly what it was). The businessman was quite dumbfounded--and even more so when he learned that my father had a Master's Degree. Since that time, my father said, the man now practically fawned over him...which he found even more insulting than his sneering treatment before.
I wish you could have been there and heard him give the speech. Even if you don't agree with the theology, my father really knows how to tell a story. Which is why I've been trying to get him to put some stuff up on LiveJournal, but I suspect that in the end he never will. He's too afraid that someone might "steal" his work. I don't think he places the same premium in preferring to be read over being paid that I do. Well, wait a moment, I'd probably rather be paid and read than just read, myself, but for a little thing like this journal, or for the stories I have to tell, just telling them is all right with me.
Well...time to go back to the grind, and hope I can get through an entire chapter before I fall asleep.
I need to read at least one chapter of that book tonight so I can get with the rest of the strategic management group on the project and come up with some decent questions for our interviewees. Though I have to confess, I feel a little put out toward other members of that group. Apparently, out of all four of us, none of us had read the book. It was quite...amusing, let's say, on Thursday when the professor gave us a "group quiz"--a quiz in which any member of the group could write answers--and none of us knew any! (Well, I knew one or two.) Luckily, the professor announced that if we got even one question right, it would count for full credit.
Sigh, I hate my tendency to procrastinate. It wouldn't be so bad if it were any of my other textbooks; my other textbooks are at least written to a reading level that makes it easy enough to skim through and pick up the salient information. But not this textbook. This textbook is written in a manner that it would almost be funny how obfuscated the text is, if it weren't also so tragic. I suspect the only reason we even use it in the first place is that it was written by another professor at SMSU. I wish I'd done more reading in it back when we did class review surveys, so I could have put down some choice words about it. I sure do have them now, let me tell you!
Turning my attention to the trip down to the parents' that I took today, it was quite fun, as they usually are. It was a little frustrating that I forgot to take down some of the things I meant to--a CD-RW full of movie trailers I wanted to show, some more DVDs to lend. But it worked out all right in the end, we still had a good time. We had turkey, dressing, all the traditional Thanksgiving fixings, since this was probably the only time in the month we could get the whole family together easily--Mom's birthday and all. And generally around closer to Thanksgiving itself, other families with whom the folks are friends are wanting to do their own things and invite us to them. I got to see both of my brothers and my niece, Aeris (yes, she is named for that Aeris), the family pets, and so forth.
I also attended the service at the family church this morning, a small Independent Christian church of which my father is a deacon. Today, he gave the Communion meditation--which is sort of a mini-sermon to give folks something to think about as the unleavened bread and grape juice are passed around. It was a talk against prejudice, and a darned good one (if, to my mind, a little ironic, lecturing against prejudice to a Fundamentalist congregation--given the reputation Fundamentalists have earned among the general public).
As an example, my father mentioned his experiences with a businessman in town, who seemed to have some sort of prejudice against tradesmen. (My father repairs clocks for a living, because it's what he likes to do--sort of a working semi-retirement for him, I guess.) The fellow always seemed to look down on him, never would treat him as an equal, until one day, as he was leaving the fellow's house, my father noticed and remarked on a plaque bearing a lengthy German inscription. "Bet you can't read that," the man said. My father, who took German in college and has been interested in it ever since, could, and did (he recited it again as part of the meditation, though I can't remember exactly what it was). The businessman was quite dumbfounded--and even more so when he learned that my father had a Master's Degree. Since that time, my father said, the man now practically fawned over him...which he found even more insulting than his sneering treatment before.
I wish you could have been there and heard him give the speech. Even if you don't agree with the theology, my father really knows how to tell a story. Which is why I've been trying to get him to put some stuff up on LiveJournal, but I suspect that in the end he never will. He's too afraid that someone might "steal" his work. I don't think he places the same premium in preferring to be read over being paid that I do. Well, wait a moment, I'd probably rather be paid and read than just read, myself, but for a little thing like this journal, or for the stories I have to tell, just telling them is all right with me.
Well...time to go back to the grind, and hope I can get through an entire chapter before I fall asleep.
