Tree Hunting

The phrase at the end of the clip reads:

    Pa-ri-zek /puh-ree-zeck/ n : a little stump.  You know, when you cut down a tree:     what you have left.

This is how a nice Czech girl once explained me the meaning of our last name.  It is only fitting for the abridged (in length and in frames-per-second) story I share with you here.  It is the story for the season and a story of the journey my family took this year in order to fill our living room with pine needles.

So, without further ado: seb_2004DecXmasTreeHunt.mov

It is only a specimen of the video’s original quality but byte-brevity is necessary from this remote land-line that I work.  Happy Holidays.

Foreshadowing January

I had my first nightmare about teaching economics last night.  It was my first class and it took me over a half an hour to take role.  I first handed the role sheet around and afterward, I decided to call it aloud.  Unexpectedly, everyone’s name was spelled something like ‘Ooogggcckkknnnn.’  How the heck do you pronounce that?  And then, regardless of whom i called on, another student would ask me a simple question I couldn’t answer and while I wasn’t answering the question I would lose the role sheet amongst the variety of torn papers I was holding.  As the role call drew out toward infinity, my fear of the lecture portion of class increased because I knew that I would have to explain a few things using the chalkboard and, go figure, the entire front of the room was barricaded with desks so I could not approach the board.

The prelude to teaching principles courses: what trauma.  I could only imagine what my nights would be like if I got a job in a truly savage job like commercial fishing in Alaska or a route as a US postal worker.