For about two months now, a medium-sized house spider has taken up residence in my bathroom. He’s a rather unassuming type, usually doesn’t overstep his boundaries, and has made a small home for himself in the ceiling corner to the left of the toilet.

His name is Jerry.

Our first meeting was a shock. As always with spiders, they appear out of nowhere, seemingly a part of the landscape until you notice that the landscape has lots of legs and casts a shadow. And it was such with Jerry, as he sat on my wall and watched me do my business with his four to eight beady eyes.

So when I go in there, whether my visit demands sitting or can be accomplished while standing, I make sure that Jerry is in his corner. If he is, I go about my business. If he is not, I find him and then go about my business. If he is nowhere to be found, I go about my business, but not with the usual gusto, since it’s rather hard to complete the task holding your feet off the floor and constantly checking beneath the pendulous parts of your anatomy for a spider.

Despite my occasional anxiety, aracnicide is out of the question. I don’t know why, to be honest. In the past I have always been quick with a shoe or a magazine should a spider make its way within swatting distance. But I suppose in my old age I have softened. Or, more likely, I have realized that I possess a limited supply of anger and I want to reserve it for those people and things which truly deserve it. Plus, spiders kill other stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

I am preparing for one of my favorite classes at the university: Academic Writing. It’s my favorite for a number of reasons.

It’s a challenge for all involved. It’s a focused development of an academic skill that the students will (Vishnu willing) see both progress in and real life application of. And it’s writing.

While I do like the course, planning for it is very time-consuming. Today’s preparation is perhaps extra challenging, because tomorrow, we are rebelling.

This is a required course for all first year students in our English department, as well as exchange students. Therefore, it’s one big mixed bag of multicultural nuts. There are Mexicans, Irish, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Koreans, a German, and a Lithuanian. And me.

It’s like a meeting at the United Nations, but with fewer translators and more candy.

The final assessment for this course is in the form of one argumentative essay, which is assigned in the 6th week and worked on throughout the remaining 6 weeks of the course. Since there are so many different cultures represented in the class, I decided to design an essay task on culture:

What aspects of culture best represent yours?

What a masterpiece.

I patted myself on the back all the up to my epiphany. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. There are three of us, all men. We are all looking as casual as we can, even though we’re sitting thirty feet away from the guy who probes our tushies as part of his occupational duties.

I am here to get a booster shot for Hepatitis A, which I needed for my trip to Ethiopia and are the African travel gift that keeps on giving. While only here for a simple shot, I am a bit worried. But then again, I am always at least a little worried in doctor’s offices. I’m in the place where medical issues are discovered so I always feel there’s the potential of him coming into the waiting room and saying, “that eyelash looks cancerous.”

It’s the same paranoid logic that makes me feel nervous as I go through airport security (haven’t bought a bag of weed since I was in my twenties, but you never know…) or about to get checked by the ticket inspector.

In any event, I just want to get the shot and leave.

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I am putting out a request to everyone and it goes like this:

Go travel.

Go anywhere. To a beach, on a cruise, to a foreign city. Just get moving. I know that sometimes travelling isn’t the most pragmatic idea. It’s expensive, time-consuming, takes you away from your house and your job. But go anyway; those things will be there when you get back.

I know travelling might even be a little scary at first. What if something bad happens for crying out loud? What if you hate it? It’s OK, most people get through just fine. Plus you’ll never know unless you try it.

So just go.

Still not convinced?

OK.

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It is the Day of el Turkey and so, if you’re usually an ungrateful bastard (like me), this is the day you are strong-armed into being thankful for the things (not) in your life.

I typically go kicking and screaming into this fascistic style of thanks. Frankly I’d rather drink a few beers and gripe about things which irritate me (read: everything). But no, I have to be thankful about all the blessings and the good things and the blah to the blah blah.

So I will give thanks.

Fortunately, I have found a loophole.

Here’s my list of things which I am thankful for…each in a couple of ways.

First and foremost, I am thankful for my family. We have our squabbles and issues, but there is not another group of people I’d rather share DNA with. Also, like me, they’re pervious to guilt, so if I ever need a kidney, they’ll be easy picking.

As thankful as I am for them, I am at times equally as thankful for the 4,298 miles that separate us and caller ID on my mobile phone. Absence makes the heart, well, you know…

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It’s Saturday afternoon. I have just finished teaching and have treated myself to a dangerous amount of sausage and an omelet the size of a Frisbee. I put on some music and lie on the couch with a book. And then I pause in a moment of clarity.

Is it possible?

Yes, it is.

I am happy and content.

I review everything in my mind: great friends, good social life, sex life which involves no monetary transfer, a good book, developing professionally, pants loose, Dr. Who downloading for Sunday marathon.

All is, actually, well.

It’s times like this that one can sit back, take in a deep breath and just be. Yes, simply be in this beautiful – all too rare – moment of happiness and content that life offers.

So, naturally distrustful of this happiness, I go out of my way to blow it out of the water like the Lusitania.

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The Girl and I are at Olšanské hřbitovy (pron: Ol-shan-ske herzzzzhh-bit-o-vee). It’s Halloween evening, approaching dusk, and we are walking down main street. Like most of the dozens of other people there, we are carrying candles looking for a loved one’s tomb.

Dušičky, the Czech Day of the Dead, is November 2nd, but some put candles on graves on the last day of October as well. And so are we.

And while it might sound ghoulish, it’s pretty romantic. An October dusk, leave-covered paths, dark trees, candles. Plus, cemeteries are filled to the brim with people who would stand up and tell you to live life to the fullest if they could.

And as the romance froths and cooks and comes to a boil, a lingering spur of Ethiopian dysentery hits me with a desperate urgency. As you can imagine, romance is put on hold as other concerns, which you can imply, come stampeding to the forefront.

I assess the situation, which is not good. We are in the middle of a cemetery, and as dead people are not known for their toilet use, there is no bathroom nearby. We have to go back to Flora, which is about a fifteen minute walk, thirty minutes employing the crabwalk.

The Girl asks me if I’m Ok.

I breathe. If this goes as epically badly as it can, this will be solid grounds for a dumping (ha!). Unfortunately, that’s not where the worry ends.

I have been dumped by women for a variety of reasons, some good, some bad, some dumb. But the most amazing reason was that I was a blogger. I thought she was joking. Blogger? I’m outta here…

But she was not joking.

I developed a three-pillared argument.

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I’m reading the science news today. I don’t read the science news because I want to gain knowledge or so that you think I am sophisticated and deeply intellectual. I read the science news to make me feel better about my dwindling anxiety-ridden existence.

It’s been a long week. As any teacher will tell you, the first few weeks of school are sort of like being thrown out of an airplane with a parachute tied to your ankle. You have to scramble around in a panic to get control as you plummet towards the earth with bugs in your teeth. On top of teaching there is also research to do, papers to write for professors, presentations to create, blogs to write, and books to edit.

I know that my life is no busier than yours, so you know what I mean. We all have pressures and deadlines, whether it’s a meeting, a class, an article, or whatever should be involved in your tailor-made brand of commitment and worry. It gets tiring and overwhelming. Classes can draw on a teacher’s energy like nothing else. By Thursday afternoon I am a vegetable. I sit in my office and do paperwork.

When the moments of life start overwhelming us, we react in different ways. We pray, we drink, we eat, we hide. Or, if it’s a particularly bad week, we do all of the above and usually regret it the next day.

I do all of those things. Nothing like a good comfort hotdog to get me through a tough afternoon. And I think enough of these blog posts take place in pubs for you all to get how much I love a good beer and a Becherovka. And though I do not pray to any concrete God, I do pray throughout the day in muttered vulgarity-strewn oaths.

But when it all comes down on me too hard, I go to the science news.

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