Thinking About Thinking

We had Lit Society the other night at a fabulous little Tex-Mex place. The whole idea was working until I had to get up at 4:00 the next morning to catch one of the first flights out of Denver. Oh, tequila. Oh, cheesy, greasy deliciousness. The first thing I did when I got up was drink a liter of water.

Me: "Cute pic! Can I use it on the blog?" Nat King Cole: "<sigh> I guess. I mean, that's what we look like."

On to the book!

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

You have probably heard of this one because it has been on the best seller list forever. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics and has been a scholar in the fields of psychology, decision making, and meta cognition for decades. He includes research from his own work and many additional studies to illustrate how we make decisions and come to conclusions. The process is both extremely complicated/sophisticated and bafflingly flawed. The book is full of examples to prove his points, as well as anecdotes to explain how various cognitive processes play out in the decisions we make every day. Some decisions are minor; some are life-changing.

The book is well-written, easy to follow, and relatively simple considering the complicated nature of the material. If you have never read any book of this type, I recommend this one because not only does he provide so much of his own research, but he mentions other good books and resources (two that I've read are The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert). A quick and almost-too-concise summary of this book would be: (1) Our thinking is influenced by a whole slew of forces in our environment that are subtle and out of our control, and (2) Although we like to think of ourselves as competent thinkers immune to the influences that these psychological studies reveal, we are wrong.

If you want to step away from fiction to read something academic and intellectually substantial, this is a great choice. It ties directly to daily life, and has many spiritual implications as well. In fact, it has so many spiritual implications (this is not the intent of the book; this is our interpretation of many points) that the book we chose for the next Lit Society is by good ole Timothy Keller.

TGIF, people!

Where Y'All is a (Good) 4-Letter Word

Hello from the south where it rained all day and my hair has frizzed to the point of no return.

But! The south is where Gama is.

Things can get a little cray cray when we try to take pictures. G calls us, and I quote, "wild and crazy girlz." Indeed.

After our shenanigans today I caught up on some work. HOW can the break almost be over? It's not POSSIBLE. The good news is that I now have my entire work and teaching schedule for next semester. The bad news is that I now have my entire work and teaching schedule for next semester.

Hold on while I breathe into this paper bag.

All joking aside, I learned my lesson last semester and am making some much-needed changes now. For example, I'm not taking two literature classes (just a humdinger of a theory class) and I'm forcing myself to take one day off during the week. Now, this won't really be a day off, but it will serve as a catch-the-eff-up day. I need one of those. If I'm going to continue the grading "side job" then this is truly the only way to keep my head above water. And bunny mama wants to travel so bunny mama will be keeping that side job.

Go back to work.

I'll give you all my King Sooper's coupons if you'll finish tweaking my syllabus.

We've Come a Long Way, Bunny

Well, well, well. Guess who has physical proof of the bunny love fests that have been going on at dawrighthouse?

Check it out!

She lets us give her kisses!

Here, let me zoom in on that to give you a better view of all the lovingkindness:

Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I think Lucy is a love bug in disguise. In a very surly, disdainful, anti-social, extremely introverted rabbit disguise.

But this put me over the moon.

Small Changes

Hello from the sick ward. We're getting better but slowly. Oh, so slowly. Most of the time it sounds like a twisted round of Marco Polo in the house, consisting of coughing instead of yelling. A round of coughing will start in one room and will soon be echoed in another. So not fun.

On the other hand, G's voice is now so low that I'm going to have to beat the women off him. We ventured into the land of the living today for a Target run, and women were falling all over themselves trying to help him because he sounds like a sexy Darth Vader. Oh, puh-lease.

Remember when I said I want to make some small changes around the house this year? Well, I am a woman of my word. Here's the first change: a rug in the dining room!

Before

After

I like how it pulls the whole room together and makes it look more cohesive! It makes me happy and helps balance the enormous and depressing chore of putting away all the Christmas decorations.

Speaking of small changes, I've started making them to my syllabus as well. It occurs to me that from your point of view, it may not make sense, these changes. I'm not doing a major overhaul, just a few tweaks that I think - like the dining room rug! - make the class and the lessons more cohesive. Instead of three major papers, I'm increasing the load to four (although each one will be a bit shorter and worth a bit less of the total grade). I'm lightening the homework load, just a bit, from their book and adding a required amount of reading responses (like, mini analytical papers) for book excerpts and articles that I'm selecting for additional close readings. It's more work for them - and me - but these changes also keep the lessons fresh, and overall they're very interesting. Or, at least, I like to think they're interesting! One of the best pieces of advice I got as a new instructor is to give writing/paper assignments that I wouldn't mind doing. I've always remembered that and I spend a lot of time thinking of how to make things as interesting (relevant, thought-provoking, important, significant) as possible, while giving students a choice regarding their work.

Teacher of the year, right here.

But it feels like a lot of work (after all, I've been laying around for days). Good thing I have a large DDP from Sonic for fuel.

I'm leaving the Christmas tree up so that I can gaze adoringly at it for one more day.

This week is full of appointments and a crazy schedule. The countdown begins for the Spring semester.

TGIF, people!

Here's a little something to use when jotting down those New Year's goals.

Bring On The New Year!

Sing this to the tune of Elton John's "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road" -- Goodbye, Twenty-Fifteeeeeeeen!

You're welcome for getting that stuck in your head. It's a good song.

We are ringing in the new year with NyQuil instead of champagne. Because, you know, if we weren't sick we would really be partying and living it up.

All day yesterday. Also, all day today.

One of the good things about being away from home the week of Christmas is that we get to come home to loads of cards and gifts when we pick up the mail. Remember how I blogged about some new, small decorations for the house? Well, look what I just happened to open up last night!

This is a custom-made Colorado state decoration! A-peep figured I would appreciate it since I love Colorado (and Denver) so much. She was right! I love it and have given it a new home on our window sill.

This little guy has found a home above Loo Loo Bell's cage. She's thrilled.

Are you ready for the new year? It occurred to me this morning that I really only have two more weeks until the semester starts up, so I've been on the phone scheduling some dentist appts/dr checkups/etc. Am also going to start up syllabus revisions today in addition to the usual reading and napping.

I'm also going to refine a few goals for 2016. Are you doing resolutions?

2015 was good to us. A few highlights were:

*I got to see Gama three times.

*My little brother got married. I love my SIL - she's a keeper.

*G had some pretty incredible work opportunities that involved travel, meeting new people, doing new (important) things, and giving a key-note speech at a local conference.

*He kept up his nerdy nerd involvement and even expanded it to include even MORE games. Lord help us all.

*There was a spur-of-the-moment GIRLZ WEEKEND.

 
*G went to lots of nerd conferences where he met famous nerds and talked about nerd things. Here he is with the actor who played Colonel Tigh on the new Battlestar Galactica:

*I lost (and managed to keep off) 16 pounds.

*We started biking all over the place.

*And hiking all over the place.

*We sold the VA house. And lived to tell the tale. Barely.

*G got to visit the peeps during that whole sh*t show process.

*Did I mention the hikes? Because there were some good ones. I'm proud of us for getting out and exploring in the middle of a stressful season.

*All the food.

*With all the peeps.

*We had some good times.

*There was a lot of reading and a lot of writing.

*There was a lot of complaining about the aforementioned.

*We transformed the front yard!

*I came into my own as a teacher. I overcame enough hurdles to feel, if not settled, exactly, then at least consistently confident.
*I got some good kudos and work opportunities and raises and new jobs.
*I got an entire year closer to the "career" that I want in the long-term.
*We went to VEGAS!

*I presented at a conference.

*We went to SALT LAKE CITY.

*2015 was a year of health for the bun bun, and she even made strides in being a little love bug. We're to the point that one or both of us loves her up every day. Don't tell anyone, but I think she likes it. She just has a surly reputation to uphold.

*And she's quite the traveler!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!