Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

And the countdown has started! T minus 4 days until we leave for Iceland! Angel Baby and I packed our gear this afternoon to see just how much weight each of us will be carrying. We divided the heavier items so neither one of us is stuck carrying all of those things. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by how much room I still have in my pack and how light it is at this point. Granted, I still have to add the bladder full of water (which will likely be the heaviest item in my pack) and the food, but after walking the hill the last two weeks with odds and ends items inside my pack just to give me some weight, I know I'll be absolutely fine. I got this! What makes me most happy right now is how excited Angel Baby is about this adventure. He has mentioned several times over the last two days how stoked he is. I suggested over dinner this evening that things might go badly, and his response was, "Yeah, but that's okay, too. We'll get out of it what we put into it. N...

Last weekend, Lovely Beautiful Daughter and I went to Louisville for the Forecastle music festival. What a time! Back in 2012, when I did my first cross-country bike ride, LBD and the boys put together a care package and sent it so it would arrive on the same day that I rode into Haswell, CO. Inside the care package was LBD's mp3 player with a playlist of her favorite music. The Killers were a part of that playlist, and from that day on, I've always thought it'd be wonderful to see The Killers live. Friday night last week, LBD and I stood smushed together, surrounded by other fans, and watched The Killers put on a wonderful show. I'm pretty sure I had a smile on my face during the entire hour and a half show. At one point, LBD took my arm and with tears in her eyes told me thank you for making her dream of seeing The Killers live come true. While I love so many of The Killers' songs, my favorite is a Brandon Flowers song he wrote and sang for the album Flaming...

This summer, I did something as a teacher that I've never done in my entire career. I gave a student an A because I got tired of the constant emails bashing me and how I grade incorrectly. Yeah, I'm not proud of how I caved and gave the student exactly what the student wanted, but I decided to do what I did because this student isn't worth my time. The first email I received from this student expressed disappointment in the grade given for the first draft of the first paper. I replied, explaining what I was seeing and why I gave the grade I did (which was exactly what I said directly on the paper as well as in a long end comment the student can access when the paper is returned). Then the replies started coming in: I didn't grade correctly; everything I asked for was in the paper; all of the ideas were there, just "invisible like" (whatever the hell that means). It's one thing to get an email from a student; it's quite another to get an email, follow...