Back At It

Back to school, back to training. After about a month of unstructured training (read: skiing my brains out), I've returned to my daily regimented training. As nice as time away from running, swimming, and cycling is, I've gotta say it's good to be back, moving towards my goals for 2008. On the other hand, I ran for an hour last night and then jumped right in the pool for masters practice. To make things worse, there was a lot of kicking and butterfly in the workout. Cramped right up. Good thing the pool in Brattleboro is three feet deep for half its length. Rode the trainer for an hour and a half tonight, and I'm feeling that good trained feeling moving back into my muscles.

School's back in session, too, and my students are amazing. I'm letting them design a unit themselves this semester, and it looks like one of my classes is going to be studying science-fiction/fantasy/graphic novels/post-apocalyptic books, and how those works of literature translate to the screen. As a closeted nerd, I couldn't be happier. Sounds like we'll be reading Phillip K. Dick, watching Bladerunner, reading Calvin & Hobbes, Ghost World, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I'll keep you updated.

And while we're on the subject of total English dorkiness, here's a fun one for you. My colleague Carol tried to log onto Harper's Magazine's online archive, and found out she had to verify her subscription to do so. To verify, you have to input a number from the mailing label on your magazine. Harper's, since they're helpful folk, give you a visual:

Apparently, some intern at Harper's believes that Mark Twain is the devil but, regardless, also that he still receives Harper's in his hellish pit, which appears to be somewhere in Midtown Manhattan.