Critical Thinking & Word Play

Everyone's been amazing about my dad. Thank you so much.

He's back at home and needs to rest...no driving, no working.
My father is not an idle man. He works at Bank of America. He does yard work. He cleans the pool until it glistens like the Caribbean. He drives all over Raleigh for errands and helps my mom, nephew and brother.

I'm sure he's also added to his cadre of medicine, something I am sure he's not excited about.

Yesterday was day 2 of my Intro to Critical Thinking class. 1 day is equivolent to 1 week of work and what's frustrating is that our shipment of textbooks isn't due til Friday. Grr. I want examples of the type of writing she's discussing. I haven't done anything MLA style since 94. Good gravy.

I reviewed material, brainstormed and outlined material while watching England-Sweden and waiting for Jury Duty.

Then I taught in a hot classroom for 4.5 hours.

Then I jumped on a conference call to whittle down potential grantees for the Full Circle Fund Tech Circle.

While on the call, I walked toward Mission Street and hopped on a 14-Mission bus to make the screening of
Word Play.

I finished the call as the 14 approached the Metreon on 4th Street. I haven't seen a movie here in ages...probably because I find it criminal to pay $10 bucks for a matinee.

But I had complimentary tickets from
SFStation.com and my friend Mike introduced me to the crossword bug almost 4 years ago, now. Sure, I dabbled in puzzles before, but now I am almost a regular. I frustrate myself with clues and spend time looking up minutia on the web to expand my knowledge. I know that "epee" is a common clue.

And I love the geekiness of it.

I heard about Word Play on NPR. (NPR is featuring fully this summer with the release of "A Prairie Home Companion," cameo appearances of Tom & Ray Maliozzi of "Car Talk" fame in the Dis-nar (or Pix-ney) animated "Cars", and now the documentary "Word Play" that follows cruciverbalists to the national tournament, the history of the New York Times crossword puzzle, and the puzzlemaster himself -- Will Shortz.

I squealed at the potential geek level of this film and was sad that I didn't have geek companions to watch it with me.

I was sucked in with the titles. Of course they were clever...based on crosswords. But the music was excellent...eclectic. Cake. Gotta love Cake.

Then I was pulled into the history of the puzzle, how Will Shortz created his own major of enigmatology at the U of I and well, how he became head geek at the New York Times. The audience is also privvy to a band of cruciverbalists who love doing these things, including normal people, and not-so-normal people like Jon Stewart.

If you loved Spellbound or Mad Hot Ballroom, you'll dig this flick.

After the movie I headed for the bus station. The NL was due to arrive in 10 minutes and I checked to see if the O would be any faster.

Nope, that was due in about 30 minutes.

I cued up for the NL and began re-reading the piece from class - Chief Seattle's Oratory in 1854. I needed to brainstorm a list of questions and from there use the tagmemicist's theory of analysis to illustrate my argument.

I got tired brainstorming at 11:30 pm.

I slept until 4:30, woke up and finished my draft (it could be handwritten, thank God since I have neither web access nor printer at home). I worked on it til 6:30 am, showered, yoga-ed, and breakfasted. I also checked in on the Portugal-Mexico game and was surprised to find Mexico behind!

By 7:30, I was parked and on my way to the classroom for a 7:45 am start.

Christ. And then she reviewed what we needed and the entire class was spent rewriting the damn thing.

Tomorrow it's due -- typewritten.