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Back to da grind

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Playtime’s over, children, and it’s back to work.

Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to had an absolutely wretched night’s sleep — I, myself, tossed and turned until well after 3, when I finally fell asleep and engaged in stress dreams about work stuff. Hence, when the alarm went off at 6, and I took a good look in the bathroom mirror, I was kind of thankful for my allergy eyedrops so that I didn’t look quite so much like I’d wandered off the set of The Hangover 2.

Things about which I am thankful: This year, I did not have a series of increasingly desperate-slash-hostile voice mail messages beginning on December 23 and continuing through the winter break from someone who needed something right now who was, apparently, not listening to the part of my outgoing message when I said the office was closed. (The fact that she had had eight months to deal with the issue before it reached the urgent stage and had failed to do so was, naturally, my problem.) This year, I had a single, solitary hang up.

My relief at the lack of mail in my inbox (couple pieces of junk) was tempered a bit by the fact that stuff I needed to be in there wasn’t. Also, the fax machine had broken about five minutes after we all left, and God may know where the faxes sent in the meantime have gone, but our Canon Ikon technician does not.

The plants lived through the two weeks without fluorescent light or water. The men’s restroom, however, was clearly not cleaned the entire time we were on skeleton crew — and yes, it was used. There is ample evidence of that, and it’s quite disgusting.

Also, a coworker threatened to wear a Snuggie to the office because it’s cold (they turned down the heat in all the buildings over the break). It’s almost enough to make me want to draft a dress code policy for the sole purpose of banning Snuggies.

Surprisingly, I was kind of productive right up until about 2:30 when my energy started to wane.

And so … it’s back to the grind. Almost like we never left … sigh.

Happy new year?

Tags: art, children, energy, flu, god, heat, ice, me, men, plants, SHE, stress, stuff, winter, work
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Confessions of an Arabic Learner

Friday, December 11th, 2009

The other day whilst trying to set up an appointment to discuss a project with our associate chair, she mentioned casually that she couldn’t meet one afternoon because she was supposed to be on Wisconsin Public Radio.

“Really? Why?”
“I’m … not actually sure,” she said. “They want to talk about learning Arabic?”

Well, the interview is now online, and it’s quite the doozy. For those not inclined to listen to the whole 54 minutes, the first five will do it — it’s long enough to establish the following:

The woman doing the interview is a complete idiot.
The woman doing the interview did absolutely no research on how to pronounce the name of the book that she’s supposedly basing the entire interview around (“Al-Kitaab fi ta’alum al-’arabiyya” — she shortens it to “Al-Kitaab,” which means “the book” and would be pronounced as a mashup of the two common English words “kit” and “tab” as they are pronounced by Americans. Not only can she not do this, she actually changes the way she pronounces it over the course of the hour several times).
The woman doing the interview clearly did not ask one of her interviewees, Mahmoud al-Batal, how to pronounce his name, as she consistently pronounces it wrong (and, again, her pronunciation changes over the course of the hour) — which, I’m sorry, is a horribly egregious error. I’ve had people make sure they’re pronouncing MY name correctly before, and my name is pretty damned easy.
The goal of the interview is to make learning Arabic sound as difficult as humanly possible. Whether this was the stated goal or not, I don’t know, but I was alternately amused and astonished by her inability to move beyond the fact that Arabic is read and written from right-to-left (and also to find out exactly why this is — including, if possible, assigning personal blame for it).

My favorite part of the hour is that you can practically hear the two interviewees looking at each other and trying to nonverbally work out how to respond without calling the interviewer a complete moron.

Anyway, for those who are so inclined, here are some reflections about learning Arabic that I’d like to share. This is based not only on my knee jerk reaction to this interview, but from the 16 years of experience I’ve had being a white guy learning and speaking Arabic and responding to questions from those who do not.

Things that are not actually difficult about learning Arabic as a foreign language.

1. The alphabet (more correctly in this case, it’s an abjad). Arabic has an actual alphabet. Each letter stands for a specific consonant sound. It’s not written in characters. Once you learn the alphabet–which took about three weeks when I started, but that’s because Arabic 101 only met twice a week–it’s a non-issue, and you don’t have to revisit it ever again unless you decide to take up a language that uses the same alphabet but has more letters (Persian, Urdu, and Malaysian, for example), in which case you’ll have to learn the new letters. It’s really not that hard.

2. Arabic is always written in cursive — even when it’s printed or typed. It was bewildering the first time that my Arabic instructor, having taught us the letters a, l, k, t, and b (ا ل ك ت ب) put them all together to form “alktab” (al-kitaab, الكتاب), “the book”. You stare at it for about 10 seconds, and then it clicks. By the end of the first class of 101, this is not an issue anymore. I’ve done this with 6th graders. They can get it. It’s really not that hard.

Explaining this to Hollywood, on the other hand, is another story. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve seen Arabic text in the background that doesn’t connect — which, frankly, renders the text unreadable. Most recently, some characters on the show “FlashForward” traveled to Hong Kong looking for Shohreh Aghdashloo (who must be desperate for work), and stopped by an Iranian restaurant she was known to frequent. The restaurant’s sign was in English and Persian (written with the Arabic alphabet) … and the Persian letters didn’t connect.

I also once saw improperly formed Arabic tatooed on a guy in a Sean Cody video. Poor guy.

3. Sounds that aren’t in English. Once you learn how to say them properly, you get over it. However, contrary to popular belief, there are actually four H sounds in Arabic, and only one of them sounds like forming a spit ball. The alphabet is fully phonetic — every letter has one sound. And it’s always the same sound. Unlike English. Contemplate, if you will, the utter uselessness of the letters c and x sometime — both simply replicate sounds produced by other letters — x has no unique functions (it can be represented as “eks”), and c’s only unique function is in the syllable “ch” as in “choose”. K and q aren’t as differentiated as they ought to be — as in, for example, the Arabic ك and ق

4. Reading and writing from right to left. Although our interviewer gets hung up on this, it’s probably the biggest non-issue of them all. It just is.

5. The lack of a “be” verb. There is no verb “to be” in Arabic (it’s a Semitic language quirk — there isn’t one in Hebrew, either). “be” is implied. To say you’re a student, you say, انا طالب, which is literally “I student.” The “am” is implied.

Things that are more difficult about learning Arabic as a foreign language.

1. The non-writing of vowels. Like every other Semitic language out there (except, apparently, Amharic, which at some point gave in), along with a number of other languages that use abjads, vowels — specifically short vowels — are not written. Normally this isn’t such a problem, however, to continue with our example, let’s look at ktb — كتب. It could be “kutub” (books), it could be “kataba” (he wrote), or it could be “kutiba” (it was written). You have to figure it out from context, which is a bit of an advanced skill.

2. The lack of cognates with English. The running joke when learning Spanish is that you can add “o” to the end of an English word and make it a Spanish word. It’s usually not true, but it’s based on the number of cognates between the two languages — words that are similar enough in form and meaning that speakers of one can understand the other. In Arabic, however, you can’t add “al-” to the front of an English word and make it correct — it’s kind of a crutch that the non-fluent but advanced speakers can use when speaking to a bilingual crowd so as not to break stride — I’ve thrown English words in when I don’t know the Arabic ones — but it doesn’t work in casual conversation. The only cognates you’re likely to find are ones that were English to begin with: al-internet. al-kumbyootir. ad-dimuqraasiya. at-tiknuluujiya.

3. The lack of a “be” verb. Where the lack of the be verb gets tricky is in the way the language has compensated for it — while there is not a verb for “to be,” there IS what my first Arabic instructor went to very great pains to make sure that we all understood was definitely NOT a verb for “to not be.” Similarly, there is a not-verb for “to have been.” Never mind that both look, smell, sound, and function like verbs in every other way, except, of course, for the fact that they’re not verbs. Dammit.

4. There are no irregular verbs in Arabic. There are 500 regular verbal patterns, 495 of which only apply to one verb each.

5. Broken plurals. Similarly, there are lots of patterns for pluralizing words … and many of them are really irregular. Grad students like to sit around and make up broken plurals for English to amuse themselves, which is how we decided a few years ago that the plural of “Bi-otch” is “Bowatchaa’”

6. Diglossia. This is probably the biggest challenge for the learner of Arabic as a foreign language. “Arabic” — the language that is taught in a classroom, is often Modern Standard Arabic, a constructed high language based on the language of the Qur’an (but not necessarily mutually intelligible with it). It is grammatically rigid, nuanced, and eloquent. It is not, however, what people speak in their daily lives. Countries, regions, cities all have their own dialects that are based on MSA, but have been influenced over the centuries by other factors.

The Egyptian dialect–the one I’m the most familiar with–contains both words of Turkish origin (from the four centuries of Ottoman rule) as well as words of Coptic origin (Coptic is the language of the Egyptian Christian church, and is descended from the ancient Egyptian language). In fact, I have a book on my shelf that outlines the number of words in Egyptian Arabic that can be traced back to the days of the pharaohs. The Moroccan dialect, by contrast, contains a lot of words that haven’t been used since the medieval period in other parts of the Arab world, as well as a lot of Berber and French.

When I first arrived in Egypt as an undergrad, I had two years of Modern Standard under my belt and found myself unable to communicate with another living soul. Those who could speak Modern Standard usually tired of hearing me struggle and would switch to English, which they usually spoke better than I could speak Arabic.

New textbooks now introduce dialect early on — as well they should. I couldn’t even agree with people — I’d been taught to use the formal na’am, while most people in the eastern Mediterranean actually say aywa.

A few thoughts to throw out there — Arabic is definitely a challenging language, but the things that most people get hung up on aren’t even an issue. Get over the squiggly letters and the right-to-left, oh interviewers of the world!

And, for God’s sake, quite trying to figure out whose fault it is … yeesh.

Tags: arab, Arabic - عربي, art, bla, Books, cat, class, coptic, easter, egypt, english, fes, flu, french, fun, god, hollywood, ice, Internet, iran, languages, lost, me, men, questions, radio, SHE, Travel, video, Wikipedia, Will, words, work, writing
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LiveBlogging the Great Blizzard of 2009

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Given the extensive coverage the topic has received in major international outlets such as the Austin American-Statesman and KUT-FM radio, I’m sure that you are all aware of the impending blizzard that is set to descend upon the ATX later this morning (assuming the weathermen didn’t get it wrong, again). In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, here’s the skinny: there is a 60% chance that we may receive up to an inch of snow today.

Naturally, this news has caused panic among some weaker willed individuals. The University of Texas, for example, felt compelled to issue a pre-emptive notice yesterday afternoon reminding everyone that classes had not yet been canceled, but urged us to check the University’s emergency line before proceeding to work tomorrow for the latest updates.

As you know, here at ROHK we strive for journalistic and culinary excellence of a higher standard, and so, I am sacrificing my own well-being to bring you the latest news about the event that I am sure will be recorded in the annals of history as The Great Blizzard of 2009.

Do check back regularly for updates.

Friday, December 4, 2009

6:10 am: Wake up, get dressed. In honor of the impending cold snap, I search for a clean sweater, and eventually discover one that my parents bought me for Christmas some years ago. It was clearly purchased before they moved to Texas because, even before I lost the 10 pounds, it was still at least one size too large and makes me look like a mustard colored burlap sack. However, today we are going with function above form, following the trend set by world-famous survivalist Jake Gyllenehaal in the documentary film The Day After Tomorrow:

See? If Jake can sport an outfit that reveals no muscle definition whatsoever, so can I.

6:54 am: Sitting outside of Beverly’s house. It takes her longer than usual to come out to get in the car this morning, because she is clearly working up the nerve to set forth in the malstrøm and dodge the sunbeams that are beginning to fall outside.

7:10 am: Realizing that I am driving too fast for conditions, I reduce my speed to 72 miles per hour (114 km/h). This adds at least 2 minutes to my commuting time this morning, but it’s important to drive safe! Arrive alive!

7:26 am: Walking from the garage to campus. It is chilly this morning. The guy who’s not homeless but wants everyone to think he is who usually sets up behind Einstein’s Bagels is nowhere to be seen. I hope that he has managed to find a shelter for the not-homeless-but-wanting-others-to-think-they-are.

7:35 am: In the office. It was a tough last sprint across the West Mall to my building, what with the grounds services golf carts whizzing by, but I did make it here. Lisa has already begun prepping for the cold weather by cleaning out the oven, which has been left a mess by a previous user/staff member. This is very wise of her — clearly we may need the electric stove as a heating device if the power goes out once the deluge has begun.

7:55 am: Typing these words. Outside the window, I can see that it is cloudy. This is clearly a very bad sign — much worse than it has been on every other cloudy day this week.

8:15 am: The men with the leafblowers are out in the pass-through between my building and the next (which once served as the setting for Café d’Amour in the first Spy Kids movie). Clearly they have been apprised of the danger that can result from snow falling on top of leaves. I’m not sure what it is, myself, but as landscaping professionals, it’s their job to know these things.

8:28 am: Discover that emergency provisions are already stocked in the front office: two bags of Chips Ahoy™ and one of Pecan Sandies™. Skeptics may suggest that they are, in fact, left over from Professor E’s final-class-of-the-year celebration yesterday, but that’s just crazy talk. Lisa continues preparation of baked goods for this afternoon’s Survivalist Training/Birthday Celebration.

9:14 am: Correction: Provisions are one bag of Chips Ahoy™ and two bags of Pecan Sandies™. Please make a note of this. This is, of course, in addition to the banana bread that Lisa has made, along with the molasses cookies that are apparently on schedule to be made at noon.

Looking out the office window, I can see that we now have a lower cloud cover than we did earlier. Possibly this is due to the impending snow. Possibly this is due to the arrival of the alien/Snuggie™ vanguard that I described in yesterday’s post. Will investigate further.

The Statesman is reporting that “some” snow flurries have been seen in some parts of Central Texas, and that San Antonio may see a light dusting. I shall keep the brave people of San Antonio in my prayers.

9:28 am: Discover that #Austinsnow is now being hashed on Twitter. I have to join Twitter to do this, but the feed is too damned amusing not to share:

10:07 am: Take a break from perusing postings about the first harbingers of wintery doom–is Skol preparing to eat the sun and invoke the long winter known as Fimbulvetr?–to notice that the clouds are looking far more sinister now than they did an hour ago. At least a five on the Scale of Sinistry, up from a four and a half.

Kim suggests that the gravity of the situation requires that the word “aught” be worked into the title, and that we should refer to this as the “Great Blizzard of Aught-Nine.” What say you?

10:15 am: Realize that I left my iPod in my car. In the movies, the guy who goes back for something never, ever lives until the end. (Well, except in the Final Destination movies, but then Death spends the whole movie trying to catch up.) Not falling for it. Take that, Law of Murphy!

11:13 am: Fear not, dear readers! I remain as fervently committed to bringing you updates as they develop.

It has transpired that one of the bags of Pecan Sandies™ has been devoured by inconsiderate coworkers who do not realize the strategic value that they will play in our survival should the worst be realized and we become stranded in the building. An investigation with possible court martial is under way.

According to #Austinsnow, the earlier rogue flakes have abated. We remain poised for a resurgence.

It is very cold in my office. Am contemplating putting on gloves.

11:32 am: Confirm with Ray that he made it to work safely. Breathe sigh of relief.

11:47 am: Cabin fever has clearly set in amongst the staff. Food is being anthropomorphised:

Also, the Chips Ahoy™ are stale. We will put them on the back burner for now.

12:12 pm: Hearing Christmas carols being sung on the West Mall. Assume there’s irony involved in any song mentioning snow. The Statesman is now claiming that the snow is “on the way,” downgraded from the “it’s already falling” that we got earlier.

Am off to dodge air molecules on the way to find lunch. Pray for me.

12:26 pm: Back from acquiring food. Bitter cold, grey skies, no snow.

There was, however, a young man in front of Goldsmith Hall wearing what is either a very large paper boat or a paper papal hat on his head. Not sure what the purpose is, other than to make people stop and stare. Which we did.

12:37 pm: Have met the first person today who claims to have seen at least several snowflakes. There is much praising of his survival instincts. He has clearly suffered emotional trauma (but not enough to get me to cancel the panel presentation in 23 minutes in which he is supposed to deliver a talk in Persian).

12:53 pm: Ray calls to tell me that it is “snowing heavily” in Round Rock. The office moves to Defcom 2 in preparation for the snow to begin falling.

12:57 pm: SNOW!!!!!! There’s at least 15 flakes out there.

1:05 pm: Photographic evidence that the onslaught has begun:

It’s kind of hard to see, but you can definitely tell if you look under the trees. There’s a small possibility that some of it’s dust on the window that I shot through, but some of it is definitely snow flakes.

1:47 pm: And now the sun’s out.

1:51 pm: The Statesman is now reporting that winter weather advisory that had been issued for today … has been canceled.

I didn’t even get to go out in it: I’m trapped in my office because there’s a lecture going on outside. Poop. On the other hand, it’s a nice sunny day now! And I left my sunglasses at home.

2:43 pm: My journalistic efforts have been foiled by the final presentations of one of the Persian classes going on in the room outside my office, however, I assure you, I will continue to cover the story until my last breath. Or until it’s time to go home for the day, one or the other.

2:56 pm: BREAKING NEWS: the baked goods that have been added to the stockpile of supplies in the office include banana bread, chocolate ginger cookies, and both Irish and English breakfast tea.

I have learned from this blizzard that the primary difference between Irish and English breakfast tea is that the former is caffeinated, the latter is not. (At least, that’s according to the HEB in-store brand — I can’t help thinking that’s not actually correct, but I’m not a tea-o-phile, so can not confirm.)

I have also learned that the air filter on the LCD projector needs to be changed. I didn’t know it had an air filter and that it could be changed. Things our sales reps forgot to tell us. I wonder if this will affect the quality of the breathable oxygen in the event that we become trapped up here. There are at least two clouds that I don’t like the look of visible from where I’m sitting right now, and that’s before I turn my head too much. I have a feeling this isn’t over yet, dagnabbit.

3:36 pm: I am startled to see that there is ice buildup on the roof of Goldsmith Hall, which I can see from my office window. It’s blue and shimmery and … oh, wait. It’s someone’s jacket. In fact, now that I look at the photo I took at 1:05, I can see that it was there then, too.

Never mind.

4:07 pm: Whoa! I’ve gone viral — 600 hits in the past two hours. Who knew? The pressure’s on! (OK, I know I’m supposed to be all Ocean’s 11-style cool and act like this is so <yawn> boring, but I’m just a touch too neurotic for that).

In weather related news, we’re holding at 39 degrees F / 3 degrees C with bright, practically cloudless skies. I do so hope that the roads have been plowed and salted before I head home–I’d hate to drive in unsafe conditions. My palms get a little sweaty just thinking about it.

4:23 pm: Time to start powering things down and head out into the wilds. I shall check in again once I have arrived in the wilds of Round Rock, across the moors of Pflugerville and the towering craggy peaks of Tarrytown.

Stay strong, fellow commuters! Man shall always persevere over Mother Nature. (I mean, just look at the Domain.)

4:35 pm: On leaving the building, I see the measures that my fellow Austinites have gone to in order to protect themselves from the blustery weather. One young fellow is wearing a dark suit, but has elected for the protection of white athletic socks. Clearly, desperate times call for desperate measures. Later, I will see another young man so affected by the cold weather that he has had to pull his boardshorts down in order to cover his mid-calf, exposing a considerable amount of plaid boxer short above the waistline. I feel for him.

4:50 pm: Apparently, the snow has caused a short circuit in the gate at the parking garage. One poor woman sits there with a line of cars behind her, and is finally forced to back up and go to the pay station in order to make her ticket work. It’s very sad that such desperate measures need to be taken in order to complete such mundane tasks.

5:02 pm: MoPac expressway. Cars moving much slower than the posted speed limit. Possibly due to the weather. I can think of no other reason why traffic heading north out of Austin would be moving so slowly at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon, especially the weekend before the Red River Shootout in Dallas. It just boggles the mind.

5:35 pm: I arrive home and begin searching for things to cover the plants in order to protect them from tonight’s deep freeze. I now have a basket full of habanero peppers (seriously, what am I going to do with so many habaneros? I might have to make salsa for the office Chrismukkah gifts. But, oh no, I’ve said too much.

5:45 pm: I send Ray out to Home Depot so that I can wrap the Christmas gifts that came in the mail today. I hope they didn’t get wet.

6:03 pm: Gifts wrapped, Ray happily off at Home Depot, I sit in front of the television, open my laptop, and blog this, the last of my updates. At 6 pm, the winter weather advisory has expired, and I, for one, am considering myself very lucky–very lucky indeed–to have managed to survive the Great Blizzard of 2009.

LiveBlogging has now ended. Please remain seated until the vehicle has come to a complete stop. Don’t forget to search under the seat in front and in the overhead bins of you for any belongings you may have brought on board, and have a nice day in town, or wherever your final destination may be. Drive safe!

Tags: apple, art, Austin, bla, blog, blogging, cars, cat, chocolate, christmas, class, cookies, death, driving, eating, english, fes, flu, food, Friday, fun, gifts, heat, history, Home, ice, ipod, irony, khowaga, landscaping, law, lisa, lost, love, me, men, Movies, moving, news, parents, plants, poop, power, press, radio, rain, Ray, salsa, san antonio, SHE, tea, Television, texas, traffic, trauma, trees, twitter, university, university of texas, weather, weekend, Will, winter, words, work
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Summer’s End

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Summer officially ends today here on this esteemed campus of higher learning. Never mind that today will likely be the 66th consecutive day of 100+ degree temperatures, and that we’re still in a massive drought. Summer’s over when classes start.

Most years, it seems that I always have something to say about the massive influx of students. There is something disarming about the arrival of 40,000 students on campus all at once (and believe you me, they all showed up over the weekend). Our summer school numbers are pretty low here, something I’ve never quite understood since it’s an easy way to relieve that crowding over the rest of the year, but what do I know?

The Bible pushers weren’t out yet this morning when I came in. You may recall them from a post several years ago in which I lamented my inability to throw out holy scripture that I didn’t want. I’m sure I’ll see them this afternoon, unless their precious saved souls can’t quite deal with the heat. That’d be funny.

When I got to my department this morning, I was surprised to find new fliers up everywhere.

We have this professor–I won’t name him because he actually googles himself on a daily basis (and given his narcissism, there’s at least three or four entendres at work in that statement)–who has declared himself the only expert in the bizarre dialect of a language that he teaches. He’s declared his office the World Headquarters of studies in this particular language.

So, this morning, there are fliers up all over the place. He’s running some bizarre contest, and god alone knows what the prize will be. A copy of his most recent biography, I suppose. (Seriously: he publishes these random books consisting of his journals through one of those “publish it yourself” vanity presses, like we all need to know what his opinion of the canapes at a restaurant that no longer exists is … )

I saw another professor on my way out yesterday. We joke around the office that he taught Hebrew to Moses — seriously, the guy is almost 90 and still teaching. I’ve thought to myself that I suppose that I’d like to be that active at his age. (The other running joke is that he’s still teaching because he’s afraid that if he retires he’ll discover that, after all these years, he really doesn’t like his wife.) We have come in on Monday mornings and noticed on the switchboard phone that the receiver in his office is off the hook and wondered to ourselves if he failed to hang up properly again, or if this is going to be the time that we key into his office and find him still in there …

He’s also massively grumpy at times, when it comes to things like only four students registered for his class and it’s going to be cancelled due to low enrollment. This was yesterday’s drama, and he was complaining about it to everyone. The problem there is that the person he needed to complain to wasn’t in the office, so the rest of it had to hear about it at some length. He doesn’t talk very loudly or quickly, you see.

The kicker to all of the pre-semester faculty drama is that I had a meeting yesterday that included the faculty member who sent a particularly nasty message at the end of my trip to Cairo. She was very nice and sweet and pretended like nothing ever happened. I suppose that’s one way to deal with it, but … for god’s sake, if you’re going to be that bitchy, own it! Don’t brush it under the rug. Seriously, does no one understand the finer points of bitchcraft?

At any rate. I need to go see how we’re doing on the office pool: the first day of classes we always have a pool to guess what time the first panicked student will arrive freaking out because he/she couldn’t get into the class he/she wanted. Never mind that registration is over and that we’ve been here all summer long — there’s always a handful of them. I picked 8:45.

I hope your summer is ending smoothly

Tags: art, Bible, biography, Books, cairo, class, faculty, fes, flu, fun, funny, god, google, HBO, heat, ice, me, men, press, SHE, studies, summer, tea, weekend, Will, work
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Rest and Relaxation

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

My wanderings around the state have come to an end, and not a moment too soon. I do enjoy the traveling, but there comes a point when you’re in yet another hotel chain that looks like any other hotel chain (LaQuinta? Fairfield Inn? Hampton Inn? Is there a difference?) when you realize that you simply can’t face one more morning with Faux News blaring in the background over another styrofoam plate and plastic fork breakfast featuring KAW-FEE brand coffee bean product and individually wrapped English Muffins (which are neither English nor muffins. Discuss).

There is the occasional quirkiness to be had. Despite the fact that San Angelo–which only two years ago was proudly putting in all of its tourist literature that it had the highest murder rate west of the Mississippi between 1850 and 1870–is now trying to bill itself as the culture capitol of the Panhandle Plains (a title that is disputed by … well, no one), the town is relatively uninteresting. A tour around town on a Sunday evening revealed a frightening number of businesses with Christian names (such as: Bible Automotive. I’m not kidding.) and a dearth of business actually open to the public. After eating Mexican food from a restaurant that clearly used to be a service station (the food wasn’t bad — Bobby Flay had apparently been there at one point), Natalie and I wound up at Baskin Robbins … along with half the town because, as I may have mentioned, there was nothing else open at 7 pm on a Sunday.

Then there was the unexplained psychedelic van (above) that I stopped to photograph on the way out of town. And this place:

This place practices false advertising: there are no man’s for sale in the man’s shop.

My most recent trip ended a scant three hours ago with a flourish and flutter (literally: the woman sitting next to me apparently cramming for a medical school exam who had refused four requests to put away her book and notes for landing seemed surprised when it all flew up the aisle upon touchdown. That’ll learn her).

We were over in El Paso, the one place in the state that, it is regularly agreed upon, we must fly to. I’ve heard rumors that you can drive it in under eight hours now, with the speed limit on I-10 through west Texas now legally at 80 miles per hour, but I’m more happy to reduce it to an hour and twenty minutes on Southwest Airlines.

I have always liked going to El Paso — in fact, I’ve enjoyed all of our trips to the border area, both in West Texas and down in the Rio Grande Valley (for the uninitiated among you, even though technically El Paso is on the Rio Grande, the term “Rio Grande Valley” seems to only apply to the part between Laredo and Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico). We usually get groups that are really energetic and happy to learn, and this was the case with our session yesterday. One of the guys was so enthusiastic that he engaged me in conversation in the men’s room. I am not a particular fan of the conversation-while-I-pee. If you see me in the men’s room, please don’t strike up a conversation until I’m at the sink, OK?

It’s also saying something about the sort of people that Natalie and I are that we kept coming back to the five or so really negative evaluations we collected at the end of the day. There were 68 people in the room–our largest audience ever. The vibe was overwhelmingly positive, but we still kept coming back to those negative ones. I think somehow we just need to validate that the criticism isn’t valid–we’ve gotten unenthusiastic comments before, but this time the people who didn’t like us really didn’t like us, and they weren’t shy about expressing it.

At the end of the day, though, this last trip was a good note to end the late summer training sessions on. We had a new audience, and they seemed to be happy with what we were doing. The people who invited us were effervescent. And then it was off to have a nice drink in the historic Dome Bar in the lobby of our hotel, the historic Hotel Paso del Norte.

And now … I’m home. Next up is a trip to a conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico toward the end of September. Technically it’s work. I just wonder if I can put sunscreen on my expense account

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