Fishing With Dewey:

An hour and a half to Shabbona. No beer, no drugs. Just the open lake and two determined men with their fishing poles...well, we were men, anyway. That's right, two men with fishing poles battling the open air and environment. This is how the cave man must have felt while foraging for food:

Me: You catch fish yet?

Dewey: No. Me no catch fish.

Me: Me no catch fish either. Need beer.

Dewey: No beer. Catch fish first.

I really can't explain it. You get two guys out in the woods and a primitive chord gets stricken (struck? stroked? yeah, I know English all right) that puts us in sync with our ancient Cro-Magnon relatives:

Me: Me need woman. Then beer. Then fish.

Dewey: No. Maslow theory of hierarchy of needs say we need food first. Then take care of higher pleasures.

Even in his Neanderthal state, Dewey can still turn the gears of the male psychology. Not that it takes much...

After four hours, we caught twice as much fish as we did on our last trip (you do the math). Then somewhere along the way, I realize that this is the week I actually start work, as opposed to messing around with books and halfassed lesson plans with a full bottle of Elmer's glue shoved up my nose. Fishing even more ardently didn't exactly drive this spell away, but when we got home and I got to play Bumblebee Bingo with Dewey's daughter, I was more or less back in tune again. And just twenty minutes ago, I called the printer that does the school paper printing and he said yep, even though I never heard of you until two seconds ago, I'm thrilled to work with you, and if you get that paper my way at the end of the week, I'll have it printed by the beginning of next.

Who rules? Gregg rules.

I've got a meeting with my staff at noon today. Some are on vacation, but the seniors are (more or less) going to be there, which means we can probably whomp something up for the first day. The schedule is really weird at this place:

Wednesday-Friday Orientation

Monday (next week) Staff day

Tuesday Campus orientation for students

Wednesday First full day of school

So technically, I don't start teaching for over a week. Fine by me. As long as I figure out how to relax while doing so. Blogging seems to help, never mind what wiggo says about it.