Got on a bike today for the first time in months. COVID has shown the flipside of tying my exercise so closely to my commute.

My calendar account has started doung this neat thing where it doesn’t show all of my events on all my devices, so now whether I miss a meeting or not depends on what screen I check that morning.

There is a 1976 song by a French artist, the lyrics of which are sung from the perspective of a dolphin that is upset because children are afraid to go swimming because of the recent success of the movie Jaws. It is so weird, but I love it.

Sometimes I don’t realize how ridiculous a phrase in English is until I’ve heard its literal translation into French. The first time I heard Bugs Bunny’s catchphrase as « quoi de neuf, docteur ? », it felt like my world was being turned upside down.

Thinking about how D&D has druids, bards, and magic potions and wondering if anyone has ever done an Astérix-themed campaign (or, preferably, actual play podcast).

First time I’ve read this much into Inauguration Day happening around the same time as my birthday.

I hear Italian PM Giuseppe Conte’s name fairly often on Francophone radio, but I nearly always hear it first as José Piquanté and then fix it in post.

Thinking today about all the faculty performance I could do with the time it takes to do data entry for my faculty performance review.

I do not have any data to back this up, but it sure seems like Francophone news outlets have transitioned over the past two years from translating “impeachment” to just using it as a loanword.

Remembering Governor Andy Beshear’s comments from last May: “You cannot fan the flames and then condemn the fire.” I can think of lots of people who need to hear that this morning.

I had a friend in Michigan with whom I disagreed on a great deal but who was still an important and supportive mentor for me. On November 9, 2016, we had a very tense conversation where he told me that I would see: The candidate’s bluster might be worrying, but he wouldn’t actually act on any of it. I haven’t talked to him in a few years, but I’m wondering what’s going through his head today.

One of the biggest perks of teaching in an ICT program is the ease with which scenes from the fantastic 1992 hacker/heist movie Sneakers can be worked into one’s lectures.

A Star Wars recap/remix from my house this morning: “The piggy galactic emperor wants to rule space so he can stop astronauts from going into space! But we NEED astronauts so that we can study space!”

First line of this morning’s France Inter news broadcast: “A phone call worthy of an American crime novel.”

The Georgia transcript reads like a student calling after I’ve submitted grades but before the registrar’s deadline has passed, arguing that he’s earned a perfect score but is willing to settle for my bumping him up a couple points to get an A.

TIL that Star Trek’s “warp speed” is translated as the vastly inferior “distortion” in French and that at least one French news outlet has therefore adopted the translation “Operation Lightning Speed” for the U.S. vaccine effort.

Just minutes after complaining that Harry Turtledove works so many recaps into each book of the series I’m reading, I discovered that I’d actually skipped a much earlier book. I hadn’t noticed because the recaps were so helpful in catching me up.

I recently ordered a book directly from a French publisher, and thanks to COVID, watching the FedEx tracking updates is the closest thing I’ve had (or will have) to vacation travel for a long time.

Reading about the Dreyfus Affair is spookier in December 2020 than it was back as an undergrad in French Civ II.

The stress I feel when assigning final grades is compelling evidence that I would never make it as a judge.

Weird Thanksgiving. 1st since 2008 w/o family (b/c COVID) and 1st since 2013 w/o a morning run (b/c return of chronic back issues). Still so much to be grateful for—but also conscious this year how much “being thankful” isn’t quite enough. It helps me better appreciate what I have but doesn’t change what others lack. I could stand to do better with the former, but I have much more work to do for the latter.

TIL that if you find out your content management students aren’t accessing the LMS course in the way that you told them to (some only check “to do” page, not main course page), you can at least turn it into a review of course material!

Will they take my PhD away if I admit that I never talked about my dissertation in terms of “chapters” and that I don’t understand fully what that means?

I am not sure what I was expecting when I started looking for Mormon* content on Gab, but “we should get the missionaries on this platform” wasn’t it.

One underrated affordance of writing a journal manuscript in Google Docs is being able to have two identical copies of the manuscript open simultaneously. Really helps for checking consistency across paper or comparing two sections.