Spring break

I had thought I'd take a blogger break over my spring break, but as I'm watching the first real potential upset of this 2007 NCAA tournament (VCU an 11 seed up 2 over Duke a 6 seed, not to mention they are Duke, with 1:08 left), I got reading Mega's blog where she already has two lists of spring break accomplishments. So, now, I feel compelled to list, a deep seated need to measure out what I've been up to with my time off. But first I much pay attention to the last minute of the Duke game.

...50 seconds left and Duke and VCU tied
...16 seconds Duke down by 2
...10 seconds Duke ties it with a lay-up
...1.8 seconds Duke down two with a VCU 15 footer

whoa, that was some minute of basketball. A timeout. Not sure they will get anything off--no Christian Laetner on this Duke team.

...it's over with a respectable attempt--the first upset

Spring Break 2007 List (or my way of staving off vacation blues)

• Completed one physical therapy appointment: ASTYM i.e. the scraping of another's leg meat with cocoa butter and hard plastic tools which is not helping my bursitis
  
• Filled out NCAA Tournament bracket with family, a more difficult concept to explain to young children than one might expect
  
• Finished Atonement by Ian McEwan--a good novel but a bit too self-referential and crafty for my tastes (Book club discussion tomorrow!)
  
• Read much of Wysocki's Writing New Media: I'm going to remember her contention that writing teachers need strategies for “generous reading[s]" of student texts in order to “approach different-looking texts with the assumption not that mistakes were made but that choices were made and are being tried out and on.”
  
• Completed 2007 taxes, a spring break tradition--$1000 bucks coming our way and real soon thanks to TurboTax
  
• Watched parts of most NCAA open round Tournament games
• Three bike rides and 40 pages of Indian and the Cupboard with 5-year old son
  
• Two 25 mile bike rides--much stretching and some pain but at least I'm out and about
• Several on-going productive relationship talks with wife
• Bid through www.priceline.com on a hotel room for a SF family vacation in May; my $50 a night bid didn't get accepted, but I now have a strategy
  
• Ate lunch at Sill's (the only real restaurant in Layton) with a good friend and past student from Mt High school
• Read NO student work
  
• Best of all: filed and cleaned up in my office for several hrs
• Will see Breach tonight at the theatre, a rare non-Netflix film for me