Wrapping Upchuck: 4-21-10

I am always amazed at how quickly time slips by. It seems my last blog posting was this past Saturday, and now it is Wednesday morning. And I don't even know where the time went between then and now. This won't be a long Wrapping Upchuck, just a simple, short one hitting on the highlights. First was the Celebracion Latina that happened on Sunday. It was a day-long, outdoor, festival-style event celebrating Latino life and culture in New Orleans in conjunction with the Children's Resource Center of the New Orleans Public Library. The weather was perfect, lots of kids were out, and the music was great. The puppet show wasn't bad, either. All in all, a successful, fun event. Monday and yesterday were just regular university work/school days. Nothing so spectacular happened on either day. I did, though, play racquetball for the first time in a long time on Monday morning with a good friend and current graduate student. The only other real out of the ordinary event was my book club meeting which took place last night, where we discussed Christopher Moore's novel, Fool, which is a spin on Shakespeare's King Lear tragedy as told by the Fool/jester character. Anyway, that's about it (or about all I feel like mentioning).

Wrapping Upchuck: 4-16-10 & 4-17-10

Wasn't able to wrap things up yesterday evening for a variety of reasons, but will catch up now. Let's see, Friday morning started out as usual, only instead of catching a ride with my Squirrelly Girlies up to the office, I donned the helmet and pedalled the bike into work. Did some administrative housekeeping in the morning, and then went over to the Center for Public Service to speak with Tulane's AmeriCorp Vistas contingent for about an hour or so. It was a great conversation, and I was happy to share my thoughts and hear from the Vistas about their experiences to date. From there, I hoofed across campus to the student cafeteria where I joined some prospective students and their parents for lunch. I was running a bit late to lunch, but made it to my assigned table to find that there were actually quite a good number of expectant students and parents eating and patiently waiting to speak to someone about the Latin American Studies program. I was pleasantly surprised, as most prospectives, if they do have an interest in any major at this point, tend towards the traditional professional fields -- business, public health, pre-law, pre-medicine, etc. And those interested in the Liberal Arts, tend to thing more along the lines of English Literature, Philosophy, Spanish, Communication, Art History, etc. Very few are thinking of Latin American Studies right out of high school. So, I was happy to have an interested audience. And, in fact, I had a wonderful convesation at lunch with all the students and parents there. I hope they choose to attend Tulane and take my classes!

After lunch, I had a relatively quiet afternoon (as Friday afternoons tend to be), with a couple of student appointments and some end-of-the-week tying-loose-ends up work. The day ended with me trucking on my bike up to St. Joe's to attend our Graduate Students' annual Faculty/Staff Appreciation Party. It was a great party and I felt very well-appreciated -- plied with good Abita beer and some wonderful Slice slices! From there, I biked on home where I found Squirrelly Girlie the elder sprawled out with a friend on our pullout sofabed in full sleepover mode watching a movie and eating popcorn. (It's primarily because of the sleepover that I wasn't able to put up my Wrapping Upchuck posting last evening.) And my Squirrelly Girlie the younger was at a friend's house experiencing her first sleepover (which she had been giddy about for days leading up to it.) So, needless to say, with a 'tween sleepover in progress at the homestead, I just cashed in early, being both useless to the event and wanting to avoid any chance of being an "embarrassment" to Squirrelly Girlie the elder.

Which brings me to this morning ...

Regular Saturday morning routing: sleeping in a bit (until 8:00am) and having a leisurely breakfast with the morning paper. Sleepover guest got picked up by 9:30am, my B-2/3 picked up Squirrelly Girlie the younger from her sleepover by about 10:15am or so; and then I carted both girls off to the regular morning dance class routines. The elder spends basically from 10:30am-3:30pm at the Dance Studio, and the younger joins me usually at the local coffee shop for a mid-morning snack until it's her turn to dance. Today happened to be an open studio day for the tap class, which both my Squirrelly Girlies dance in together, so this meant that my B-2/3 and I got to sit in and watch the hour-long tap class. It was, as usual, an enjoyable experience -- especially since my girls are just wonderful, cheery, and talented dancers.

From there, we headed out to the Fly (which is a riverfront park right behind the Audubon Zoo) for a crawfish boil put on by the St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church (my wife's church). Lots of fun ... and a great boil. I left the boil (and my family who was still enjoying the festivities) at about 1:40pm, smelling of spicy crawfish, to run up to the Children's Resource Center to participate in my Introduction to Latin American Studies class's Storytime program. We did have one visitor for the event, which meant that she got all the attention from the students who planned this event and who read the story. It, too, ended up being a nice event. After that, which brought me to about 3:00pm, I hopped in my pick-up truck and went over the my parents' house, where my siblings, nieces, and nephews were gathering for a belated group birthday party (three of us have birthdays in April within a week or so of each other). Fun was had by all, and my god-child gave me a gift of a big bag of Twizzlers for my birthday -- and this added to the two I had already gotten from each of my Squirrelly Girlies as their presents to me! One guess as to what my favorite candy treat is! Anyway, hung out with my extended family for a while, and got home just a couple of hours ago.

Now, Squirrelly Girlie the younger is tucked in, and both Squirrelly Girlie the elder and my B-2/3 are doing their little pre-bedtime sharing ritual while I'm in another part of the house tip-tapping away at the keyboard writing up this entry.

Tomorrow is Sunday, but it's a special Sunday. It's Celebracion Latina Sunday, and I'll be at the fiesta for pretty much all afternoon. I'll fill you in on the details after all is said and done. And so goes this Wrapping Upchuck!

Wrapping Upchuck: 4-15-10

Tax day, the day the Titanic sunk, the day Abraham Lincoln died ...

My birthday.

42 years old.

And it was a good day.

It started with a hot cup of coffee and the Newspaper and lots of good morning hugs, kisses, and birthday wishes from my squirrelly girlies. There is something good about being the only dude in a four person family!

Also had my last day of physical therapy today. Graduated by completing a 10 minute jog on the treadmill. I'm pretty much back in the running saddle if I want to be; and I have to say it is a thrilling prospect to know that, if all proceeds accordingly from here on out, I will be running the Crescent City Classic next year. (By the way, I hope Fox News and the conservative tin foil hatters don't catch wind that New Orleans is affectionately known as the "crescent" city. They might think we've become irretrievably and horrifyingly Islamified -- you know, given that the shape of the bend in the Mississippi River that surrounds NOLA reminds one of all those crescent moons in the flags of those scary Muslim countries.)

Anywho ... back to the point ... felt great after the Physical Therapy session as I made my way across campus to the office, where I had a series of very productive meetings with some representatives from the Hispanic Apostolate's ESL program to talk about future service-learning collaborations with their programs and our curriculum. That brought me to lunch, where I was a bit late in getting over to the student cafeteria on campus for another "lunch with the Prospectives" session. Met some very nice people and had some good conversation.

Then it was back to the office to tackle some administrative stuff, that was interrupted by a mid-afternoon coffee break meeting coordinated by one of my office colleagues and involving some other colleagues from Esperanza Charter school to discuss lots of things relative to collaborating with that public charter school (whose students are more than 50% Latino) and in helping them to promote a scholarship fundraiser to help their 7th and 8th graders pay for the costs of High School. That, too, was a very productive and good meeting. I'm sure I'll be bringing more attention to their efforts in future posts.

Returned after that to the office, met with a grad student or two, and ended the workday meeting with a group of students from my own college course in order to talk about their service-learning work for the upcoming Celebracion Latina at Laurence Park (corner of Magazine and Napoleon) this coming Sunday, from 12-6pm. We're planning to reprise our semester-long Sring storytime program. Every hour on the hour starting at 12pm, we'll have an open reading of our Storytime book choices (taking the first six books on the schedule in the listed order) followed by a relevant craft. The whole day should be fun, so please do come out and bring the kids.

Then, after that meeting, I did a last minute check of my email (today was also the deadline for students we admitted to our graduate program to inform us of their final decisions), tidied up some loose ends, and then caught a ride home with my Squirrelly Girlies, where I had a wonderful birthday dinner and opened my thoughtful presents. And now I'm just lounging about catching up on my favorite blogs and winding down to another early-ish bedtime.

One thing that doing these Wrapping Upchuck posts has revealed to me is how busy and full my days are, and also how much I actually do manage to get done, even though it does sometimes feel as if I manage to get nothing done.

Oh, and thanks to my many Facebook friends for their seemingly endless litany of happy birthday wishes. It's actually quite humbling and touching.

I love my life. Peace.

Wrapping Upchuck: 4-14-10

Sluggish morning routine, partly because I stayed up later than I wanted to last night. Anyway, read the paper and got ready for work, only before heading to work, I had to head down to the 2001 Behrman Hwy. DMV to get my driver's license renewed. What I thought was going to be a piece of cake ended up as a fiasco.

Pulled the number nad within five minutes I was at the counter with my current Driver's License and my proof of insurance. I was about to take the eye exam when the DMV worker stopped me and told me that there was a flag on my license. Some "Insurance Cancellation" issue that went back to 2004. Uh-oh! I had to leave the line and spend the next few hours on the phone with various entities. First I called the state LA DMV and explained that I was being blocked. They checked my record and found out that a car that I donated to Bridge House in April of 2004 was still showing up on my record. Of course, the insurance was cancelled the day Bridge House came and collected the car. I guess the DMV never did get the information on the Title transfer. Anyway, Bridge House did send me all the paperwork for the formal act of donation; but all those receipts and paperwork were Katrina casualties. I no longer have that proof. Of course, the State is pretty useless and can give me no information on the status of the car. Their only suggestion would be to call Bridge House and see if they can recreate or find a record of the donation in their materials. I did that, and they're checking into it; but it's a long shot. In any case, there is a final way out. I can fill out a form and pay a $225 fee to the state certifying that I no longer own the car and theyn they will push a button on a computer and I'll be good to go. Funny part of the story: When I was told of this option by the nice young lady from the LA DMV over the phone, I asked her what that $225 was paying for. She replied: Why, to clear your block! I said: So, what you're saying is that if I fork over $225 and sign a paper that tells you what I've just told you, it pays for a computer button being pressed? She replied so innocently as if she was simply astonished at my stupidity: Why, yes, essentially, yes, that's what you're paying for. $225 to have someone press a button on a computer that takes about 1 second and -- viola! -- they will allow me to have a new Driver's License. Damn! It's enough to turn me into an anti-government libertarian/conservative. Where's the next Tea Party!?!?!

Anyway ... after that I mosied over to my office where I began the tedious process of composing Summer Field Research Grant award letters to a bunch of lucky grad students (and I also had to compose an almost equal number of rejection letters to a bunch of the unlucky ones). Pried myself away from this task to take a lunch break with a colleague where we talked about some heady, important stuff. After lunch, I participated in the final interview for the Runsdorf Award and completed by committee obligations for that task. With the remainder of my work day, I hustled back to the office to plug away at some of my routing administrative tasks.

At 5:30pm, I drove the truck home and picked up Squirrelly Girlie the Elder to bring her to Wednesday night dinner and fellowship at the St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, after which we skedaddled on home. From then until now I've been chillin' with the laptop websurfing, making my blog rounds, and checking email -- though I did break away to read aloud to Squirrelly Girlie the Younger the next chapter in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We do that sometimes.

I'd say that I'm likely to stay up and read a bit, but my eyes are drooping closed as I write these words, so when I finish Wrapping Upchuck, I'm heading straight to bed. Hasta luego.

PS: Tomorrow I turn 42. Tax day, the day the Titanic sunk, the day Abraham Lincoln died. An otherwise good day in the annals of history! God bless!

Wrapping Upchuck: Tuesday, 4-13-10

Light Wrapping Upchuck for tonight, as I am dog-tired. But it was a good day. Started off with the usual wakeup routine, only this time I drove myself up to work where I parked and walked first to my scheduled physical therapy session for my left knee. Only one more physical therapy session to go. I'm already up to jogging some on the treadmill, which I guess is pretty much the last step on the road to knee surgery recovery.

Anyway, after my PT session, I had to rush up to a series of interviews of Runsdorf award nominees, all of whom are being considered for this award because of their outstanding community service over the course of their undergraduate careers at Tulane. We interviewed three students (and have one more to go tomorrow). I have to say that I am absolutely, thoroughly impressed with the quality of the accomplishments of our finalists. They are not only exceedingly smart and engaged students, but they are very self-confident, extremely well-spoken, and committed to their communities in so many ways. I think that being so much on the front lines of community engagement and in such direct contact with people of all kinds of ideas and backgrounds are principle causes for their confidence and capabilities to relate to others. The Service-Learning graduation requirement is worth it if for no other reason than having this impact on student performance.

Anyway, after this round of interviews, it was back to the office to work on class prep and some adminsitrative work. At 12:30pm, I attended our final faculty lunch gathering and found myself filling in for my boss and guiding the program of our meeting in his stead, given that he was away at another important meeting. It was a yummy lunch and a fun meeting. I think I did passably well in my substitute role.

After lunch, it was back to the usual duties of class prep, meeting with some students, and working piecemeal on some other ongoing projects.

By 3:30pm, I was in my regular Tuesday Honors Seminar, which took us until 6:00pm. After which, taking advantage of the Provost's course activity funds, I hosted the students from this class (most of them, at least) to a nice dinner at a place called Taqueria Corona, one of my favorite local Latin food restaurants. Good food, and even better conversation. I have some great students in my class.

So, today was a very encouraging and inspiring day in terms of being reminded of how talented and accomplished (and just downright nice and friendly) Tulane students are. I love my job!

Afterwards, it was straight to the homestead, where I put out the garbage (tomorrow's "trash day"), chatted a bit with my B-2/3 and talked about some upcoming weekend scheduling issues (looks like I'm going to be serving as "Assistant Coach" to my youngest's Spring/Summer Softball league, with our first organizational team meeting this coming Saturday morning), and eventually sat down to unwind in front of a Netflix instant movie which I had never seen before (but had heard good things about): "Donnie Darko." Wierd movie. Enjoyable and provocative, with a kind of David Lynch "Mulholland Dr."/"Twin Peaks feel to it. And now here I am, ready to call it another good day.

Wrapping Upchuck: Monday, 4-12-10

Today was a busy day. Started out with the usual morning routine of breakfast and paper-reading. Caught a ride with the B-2/3 and the squirrelly girlies up to work, which started off bright and early with a Graduate Student Summer Field Research Grants committee meeting. Glad that's over with. Now I need to get the news out on the decisions the committee made. That's always a tough job, given that I'm the one that has to be the bearer of bad new for some; but it'll be over by tomorrow.

Immediately after this meeting, I had my Monday morning seminar for the Public Service Fellows. The Seminar theme is "Social Justice and Civic Engagement in the Americas." For this seminar session, we discussed the topic of structural violence and human rights as presented by Paul Farmer in his book Pathologies of Power. Farmer is an interesting and impressive scholar and physician who is an unabashed advocate for the idea that healthcare is a fundamental human right. Farmer's belief comes out of years of working with victims of structural violence in the developing world. The stories he tells are gripping and they provoke a lot of thought. We had a great classroom discussion of his argument's strengths and weaknesses.

After class, I did a little office work for the remainder of the afternoon, which involved coordinating some more meetings, answering some emails, meeting with a couple current students about the outcome of their summer field research grant applications, chatting with one of my thesis advisees, and discussing our graduate doctoral program with a prospective applicant.

Then I caught a ride home with the B-2/3 and from there I went and picked up the squirrelly girlies from the ballet studio. From there it was back home, where I assumed responsibilty for dinner and the bedtime routines for the kiddies, given that my B-2/3 had a business meeting up at church, which was followed by her attendance at a Carlos Fuentes lecture up at the University. I was interested in attending that lecture myself, but someone had to be with the kids, and my B-2/3 really wanted to go. So I stayed home. Interesting story concerning my B-2/3 and Carlos Fuentes from many years ago, even before I knew Michele. When Michele was at George Mason University, she took an English class that focused on the work of Carlos Fuentes, who also was a visiting author in residence at her university at the time. Of course, Michele got to meet Fuentes at that time and had the chance to get Fuentes to sign her copies of his novels. When she went up to Fuentes with her books, Fuentes took a long look at her and then took Michele's copy of Aura and wrote: "To Michele, who looks like Aura. Carlos Fuentes." Quite a compliment! So, how could I not want Michele to have the opportunity to hear Fuentes speak, and perhaps even meet him in person again at the book signing following his lecture. Of course, Michele is bringing a few more of Fuentes's newer works for him to sign, but she's also toting along her signed copy of Aura just to remind Fuentes of their previous encounter. Michele is still up at the event as I write this and should be home shortly. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. Anyway, that's the "Wrapping Upchuck" for today.

Wrapping Upchuck: Sunday 4/11/10

So, in this inaugural "Wrapping Upchuck" posting, what do I say? Where do I start?

Well, I guess a basic description of my day will do.

Today began like any Sunday does in the Huck household. We all slept in a bit (and by sleeping in, I mean until about 8:00am). Or rather, I should say that I slept in a bit. I woke up to the sound of my youngest daughter involved in some loud conversation with my B-2/3.

Of course, as is usual for Sunday, the first thing I do is head for the Times-Picayune. Really enjoyed the spread in the Living section on the new TV series Treme. My youngest, as part of a little game she has had going on since yesterday, brought me a cup of coffee as part of her "doing something nice" for me. She organized a name-picking process yesterday, sort of like a Secret Santa kind of thing, and we all as a family picked a couple of names from a hat with the promise to do a couple of nice things for the people whose names we picked. So, I got a nice big cup of hot coffee from my youngest, who obviously picked my name. Her big sister, milking the game for all it was worth, managed to squeeze breakfast in bed from her younger sister, who did it gladly. My youngest really is a very sweet, overly sensitive little human being. She wants to be an opera singer when she "grows up."

So, I sipped coffee, read the paper, and then putzed around doing much of nothing until it was time to bring my oldest up to Church for 11:00am. After dropping her off at Church, I stopped off at my office to print out a couple of essays I needed to read and grade, and then headed back home. I had just enough time, before all my squirrelly girlies returned from church, to freshen up and put on some semi-nice duds in order to participate in an admissions luncheon up at the university where I work. It was one of those major admissions events where hundreds of prospective, already-admitted students and their parents descend upon the University for a visit as part of their last efforts to wrap up their college decision-making process. We faculty get to join this group for lunch where we host a table and represent our departments/majors. I had a couple of families at my table and we had a very nice conversation and visit. Each of the young prospectives I spoke with was very impressive and would be a great fit for my university; but it sounds like they both have some pretty competitive alternatives, too. We'll see what they decide. I did my part and got a nice lunch out of it.

Afterwards, I went back home to join my family and I putzed around some more, listened to some music (Mozart's "The Magic Flute" opera, which I think may be my favorite opera of all), did some reading (I'm currently into a couple of books -- one is Christopher Moore's Fool, which is a bawdy retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear from the point of view of the court jester, and Jean-Robert Cadet's autobiography called Restavek: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American), played a couple of games on the computer, and did a bit of house cleaing in what we call our "craft room."

When the early evening rolled around, I attended a Maryknoll Affiliates meeting. The Maryknoll Affiliates are a group of Catholics who share the Maryknoll religious order's concept of "mission," which is heavily grounded in the Social Justice teachings of the Catholic Church. We meet on Sunday evenings once a month, and tonight was our monthly meeting night. We spend most of our time discussing a summary of the Latin American Bishops' 5th General Latin American Episcopal Conference that took place in Aparecida, Brazil, where they reaffirmed the "see-judge-act" method of social analysis that originally out of the famous 1968 Medellin Conference, and which produced what is now known as liberation theology. We had a great discussion about this, and we even had some time to address the big elephant in the room, which is the ongoing (and worsening) sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. I tell you, if it weren't for the people I know through the Maryknoll Affiliates, I don't believe I could continue to be part of the Catholic community; but knowing that there are good Catholic folks who find themselves keeping faith in the midst of their own doubts and struggles that parallel mine is a faith and church lifeline for me. Anyway, I came back refreshed from my meeting and with another book in tow on loan from my good friend, Mateo: Philip S. Kaufman's Why You Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful Catholic. And now I'm back home writing up this my first "Wrapping Upchuck." After which, I will be easing into my nighttime routine, reading and grading some more papers, and perhaps getting into a movie before drifting off to sleep in preparation for a new (and quite busy) week.

Buenas noches y que Dios te bendiga!

"Wrapping Upchuck": A Blog Experiment

Most of the postings on my blog are usually commentary on current events of the day. But I'm thinking that what is lacking from my blog is a real glimpse into the routines and activities of my life. So, what I'm going to try to do is give a daily descriptive summary of my day. Sometimes, I imagine this posting will be nothing more than a calendar listing of activities and events. However, I hope that more often than not I can be reflective on these activities and events and what they have meant to me. Like many things I've tried, this may be an experiment that is short-lived; but, what the hell, it's worth a go. And it will definitely keep me on top of my blogging self-nudge, which I have managed well so far, but sometimes only just. In any case, if you are the kind of person that likes to peer into the daily lives of people, you might enjoy this little blogging experiment, which I am calling, for lack of a more pithy title, "Wrapping Upchuck."